Sometimes it's about paying attention to our actions, sometimes it's just about saving money. It's even better when it's both.
I live in a big house. Not exactly a suburban McMansion because it's much better planned out than that but it's still a lot of square footage. So we do lots of little things to keep costs down. Thermal drapes, efficient light bulbs, and keeping unused rooms doors closed are just a few things that keep our electric, heating and cooling under control. There is radiant heat and a whole house fan the former not quite as efficient as it was when we first started building as propane costs rose. Still for a 4 thousand square foot house, our electric bill is rarely over $150 and thats with seven people living here and a water pump that also uses electricity.
It irks me that I pay sewer and water taxes when there is no such thing in my area. I have a well and septic. You can then imagine that we are very conscientious about what goes down the drain. This is partly what led me to using natural dyes on my yarn. I don't want harsh things in my water table. This has also led me to making my own laundry soap and household cleaner. It's amazing what vinegar and borax can accomplish and with a little essential oil it smells lot nicer too.
So I want to pass on the laundry soap recipe website and tell you that not only is it a nice clean but it costs a lot less too. Living 30 minutes from a market also means that if you're out there is no quick trip to the store. Making your own means that when you're out you just whip up some more. I will add that I use a liquid Castile soap. My kids have very sensitive skin and Castile is nicer than soap. I remember when C was just a baby and getting a bath in the kitchen sink, a bar of Dove slipped off the edge and into his bath water. His whole body broke out in red itchy blotches. I am not a fan of the Lever company.
http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm
From the same site here is a multiple purpose spray cleaner. The author lists another recipe but I am uncomfortable using ammonia both for it's potential volatile nature and the smell is awful.
All-Purpose Cleaner
2T vinegar
1 t Borax
Hot water
a few drops of a mild dish detergent
10 drops of essential oil, optional
In a 16 spray bottle put vinegar, borax and hot water. Swish around until borax has dissolved. Add the drops of dish detergent and fill the rest of the bottle with water. Add the essential oil (I like using orange or lavender).
I use baking soda for scrubbing.
I wanted to pass this on. I want to add my voice to all the others out there that are saying no to harsh chemicals, no to spending big money on brand names, and no to adding more crap into our water table. I just need to get the dirt off my farm clothes and I don't need fancy labels, I don't need it to be colored or smell like the great outdoors. It just needs to clean the red dirt out of my clothes.
And one last thing: anything bleach can do peroxide can do. One will kill you if you ingest it and one will not. One is toxic and in some countries is a controlled substance the other turns to water in the sun.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Here Comes The Fall
The leaves are changing, and we've had our first good storm opening the door for all the rest and leaving us with nice wet ground for future burn days. That was the first thing I did after the storm was get rid of the back burn pile. The front one will take a little more effort. It has grown large enough over the summer that I will need to use the skid-loader to pull it apart into smaller bits.
The colder weather has turned everyone's thoughts to keeping warm and the requests for alpaca socks and gloves have started. I must disappoint because I have neither. I have hats, and shawls but no gloves and no socks. I can tell you where to get them!
On the same line with keeping warm is the need for fire wood. The storm spurred everyone into action on the hill and I hear chainsaws around every bend. We are no exception. A good friend loaned us a log splitter and after one intense weekend all the logs that my dad had spent time bucking up were turned into about 6 cords of wood, both oak and pine with extra for next year as well. When they logged, down the hill from us, the logging company brought us all kinds of lovely oak. That was last year and so this year we are truly blessed and it will continue to bless us into next year as well.
Stormy weather? Bring it on!
Last weekend was also the last farmers market in Garden Valley till next year. I will miss all the people that comprise the market and the regular community that congregates there. This last week I brought two alpacas to visit as well. I was surprised at how many of the regular people that I had talked to numerous times seemed to see me in a new light with the critters there. Suddenly my spinning took on whole new meaning. I came away with three new orders. A nice way to end the summer. It is actually what brought me back to the computer to update the blog, my fingers needed to do something different after knitting all day. The boys I brought were very well behaved and both kids and adults were enamored with them.
Some weeks ago a new alpaca came to live with us. "Danarious" or just Danny. He is a young rose gray Suri and I am in love. He is very well handled and easily approachable. His coloring is something special and next springs shearing just cannot come soon enough as far as my spinning wheel is concerned. He fits in nicely with the rest of the herd.
The rest of the goings on here are very standard for this time of year. It's time to wind down the garden, clean up the summer things in preparation for snow, time to think about snow tires and stock up on gas for the generator. This year I'm going to try a cover crop over the garden. I have some winter cereal rye that is supposed to do well in cold climates and help create an insulation layer when it snows to promote good bacteria growth for good soil in the spring. I've never done this before so it will be an interesting experiment. I'm not sure when to start it or if I'm already too late. There are still things to be harvested from the garden and even then I want the chickens to come through and clean up before I put down new seed. For now it has warmed up a bit and I will continue to pull zucchini and tomatoes out until they give up as well. It is probably only a matter of weeks before the first frost. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how it's working. If all goes well, I will have rye for my chickens to snack on. Healthy for them, healthy eggs for me.
The colder weather has turned everyone's thoughts to keeping warm and the requests for alpaca socks and gloves have started. I must disappoint because I have neither. I have hats, and shawls but no gloves and no socks. I can tell you where to get them!
On the same line with keeping warm is the need for fire wood. The storm spurred everyone into action on the hill and I hear chainsaws around every bend. We are no exception. A good friend loaned us a log splitter and after one intense weekend all the logs that my dad had spent time bucking up were turned into about 6 cords of wood, both oak and pine with extra for next year as well. When they logged, down the hill from us, the logging company brought us all kinds of lovely oak. That was last year and so this year we are truly blessed and it will continue to bless us into next year as well.
Stormy weather? Bring it on!
Last weekend was also the last farmers market in Garden Valley till next year. I will miss all the people that comprise the market and the regular community that congregates there. This last week I brought two alpacas to visit as well. I was surprised at how many of the regular people that I had talked to numerous times seemed to see me in a new light with the critters there. Suddenly my spinning took on whole new meaning. I came away with three new orders. A nice way to end the summer. It is actually what brought me back to the computer to update the blog, my fingers needed to do something different after knitting all day. The boys I brought were very well behaved and both kids and adults were enamored with them.
Some weeks ago a new alpaca came to live with us. "Danarious" or just Danny. He is a young rose gray Suri and I am in love. He is very well handled and easily approachable. His coloring is something special and next springs shearing just cannot come soon enough as far as my spinning wheel is concerned. He fits in nicely with the rest of the herd.
The rest of the goings on here are very standard for this time of year. It's time to wind down the garden, clean up the summer things in preparation for snow, time to think about snow tires and stock up on gas for the generator. This year I'm going to try a cover crop over the garden. I have some winter cereal rye that is supposed to do well in cold climates and help create an insulation layer when it snows to promote good bacteria growth for good soil in the spring. I've never done this before so it will be an interesting experiment. I'm not sure when to start it or if I'm already too late. There are still things to be harvested from the garden and even then I want the chickens to come through and clean up before I put down new seed. For now it has warmed up a bit and I will continue to pull zucchini and tomatoes out until they give up as well. It is probably only a matter of weeks before the first frost. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how it's working. If all goes well, I will have rye for my chickens to snack on. Healthy for them, healthy eggs for me.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Well, it's a deep subject
Home ownership is awesome. I have owned my home for nearly 12 years now. I love painting the walls anyway I want and not answering to anyone about any changes I might make. It's a good feeling when I pay my mortgage rather than flushing rent down the toilet toward someone else's benefit. But there are the downsides. If something breaks it's our problem to deal with and pay for. There is no landlord to call and say, "it's broke. Come fix.". This can be a small as a slight drip under the sink or as large as total roof failure. As a home owner you can take on as much or as little as you want. Maybe for you the best is owning a condo where you pay homeowners dues and someone else manages the landscaping for you and you have just a small space to care for or maybe it's a quarter of an acre or several acres. For me, it's twelve acres with several structures on it and well away from city provisions. This means that while I am on the grid for electricity I have two septic tanks and a well that are my joy to have because no one is telling me what I can and can't water or flush and my responsibility when things don't go right.
The privious owner was, to be nice about it, ignorant.
We have spent a great deal of time and money and sweat correcting his blunders over the last decade and once you get into the problem it's always worse than what you thought it was and twice as expensive to fix.
The septic to the original house had to be dug up and inspected because once we started pulling permits for the new house to be built we found that 1st owner had started the permit but never had it signed off. It and all the leach lines had to be uncovered. Funn.
The well is the current and on going headache. I suppose that for a man with an 8th grade education he should be given credit for what he did but for the amount of time that it has taken my husband away from us to manage it I will not forgive. He did things overboard, above and beyond what is nessacary because, by golly, if one foot down for pipe was what was nessasary, three feet would be better, right? So to dig it up we have to go way down. Then we find that the wire for the pump is wrapped around the water pipe, all the easier to break while digging. The wire is cheap, whatever He could afford at the time, not really the best for the job and you need to have special skillz to understand His rational for whee all the pipes lead to, where the shut off valves go to and so on.
This summer one of our goals was to finally put an end to our misery and get all this straightened out. Get the holding tank, the pressure tank, the pump the electrical all working together and in one place instead of in multiple places, and cut out the useless go nowhere pipes and set it up so even I can look at it know what's going on.
We're nearly there. The best part will be that even when the power is out we'll still have water! This also involved moving the generator to where it would actually do the whole property some good.
With all of that moved and re-established the third part of the plan will come together and thats where the chickens, ducks, and soon geese will get a new house with all the comforts. Heat, water that won't freeze in the winter, room for everyone and easy to clean out.
Back to the well. My husband is the DIY kind of guy and before you start imagining all the horror shows you see on the DIYnetwork, he really is skilled at what he does. The type of problems we run into are more along the lines of not having all the supplies needed or running out after running into unforeseen, previous owner, problems and the supply store being a thirty or forty minute trip away. That brings us to today. Got as far as getting the water from the tank pumped to the pressure tank and supplying the property but out of what was needed to get the water from the well into the tank. No biggy, we just use from the tank until Husband can come home after work today with the parts and finish. Except-- there are a number of small but significant water draws all over. Between toilets and keep full animal water buckets and auto sprinkler/water systems, in less than 24 hours we are down several thousand gallons of water.
So until this evening we are without water. A very familiar place with small inconveniences that we are more than accustomed to. We are just holding our breath till tonight when the last part of the system is glued in and we will be up and running again more reliably than ever before.
Still, it would have been nice if it had been done right in the first place. I'm not saying you have to have a bunch of schooling, just saying its ok to pick up a book now and then. Never let your schooling interfere with your education. -Mark Twain
The privious owner was, to be nice about it, ignorant.
We have spent a great deal of time and money and sweat correcting his blunders over the last decade and once you get into the problem it's always worse than what you thought it was and twice as expensive to fix.
The septic to the original house had to be dug up and inspected because once we started pulling permits for the new house to be built we found that 1st owner had started the permit but never had it signed off. It and all the leach lines had to be uncovered. Funn.
The well is the current and on going headache. I suppose that for a man with an 8th grade education he should be given credit for what he did but for the amount of time that it has taken my husband away from us to manage it I will not forgive. He did things overboard, above and beyond what is nessacary because, by golly, if one foot down for pipe was what was nessasary, three feet would be better, right? So to dig it up we have to go way down. Then we find that the wire for the pump is wrapped around the water pipe, all the easier to break while digging. The wire is cheap, whatever He could afford at the time, not really the best for the job and you need to have special skillz to understand His rational for whee all the pipes lead to, where the shut off valves go to and so on.
This summer one of our goals was to finally put an end to our misery and get all this straightened out. Get the holding tank, the pressure tank, the pump the electrical all working together and in one place instead of in multiple places, and cut out the useless go nowhere pipes and set it up so even I can look at it know what's going on.
We're nearly there. The best part will be that even when the power is out we'll still have water! This also involved moving the generator to where it would actually do the whole property some good.
With all of that moved and re-established the third part of the plan will come together and thats where the chickens, ducks, and soon geese will get a new house with all the comforts. Heat, water that won't freeze in the winter, room for everyone and easy to clean out.
Back to the well. My husband is the DIY kind of guy and before you start imagining all the horror shows you see on the DIYnetwork, he really is skilled at what he does. The type of problems we run into are more along the lines of not having all the supplies needed or running out after running into unforeseen, previous owner, problems and the supply store being a thirty or forty minute trip away. That brings us to today. Got as far as getting the water from the tank pumped to the pressure tank and supplying the property but out of what was needed to get the water from the well into the tank. No biggy, we just use from the tank until Husband can come home after work today with the parts and finish. Except-- there are a number of small but significant water draws all over. Between toilets and keep full animal water buckets and auto sprinkler/water systems, in less than 24 hours we are down several thousand gallons of water.
So until this evening we are without water. A very familiar place with small inconveniences that we are more than accustomed to. We are just holding our breath till tonight when the last part of the system is glued in and we will be up and running again more reliably than ever before.
Still, it would have been nice if it had been done right in the first place. I'm not saying you have to have a bunch of schooling, just saying its ok to pick up a book now and then. Never let your schooling interfere with your education. -Mark Twain
Friday, September 9, 2011
It's Just a Little Snip
This entry contains information from our latest visit with a vet. It will be graphic in detail so you are forewarned. Nothing here is meant to be medical advice. It's a blog.
Last week this time I was taking two of my 'paca boys to be gelded, Marksman and Tamerack. This is a fairly common procedure for boy alpacas because they can't all be breeders. The idea is that if you get rid of all the hormones and all their energy goes to making you lovely, soft fiber. They are called "fiber pets". As with most animals that you geld it also calms them down and makes life a lot more peaceful for all involved.
Tamerack has been a particular challenge to me. I have been in love with his fiber since I laid eyes on him 5 years ago. As he grew up I was looking at him as a potential breeder. I had someone else come out and give him a more experienced look over once he reached maturity and it was decided that it would not be a good idea. He has one leg that is ever so slightly turned out and his coat is not uniform throughout. That was two years ago. Ideally boys should be gelded when they are two. I am a little behind (and in breech of contract technically). He was causing so much ruckus and picking fights with all his other pen mates that I was ready to geld him myself. (Not a good idea by the way. This is not the kind of livestock that can have that sort of thing managed with rubber bands. Kay?) Finally an opportunity and the finances happened at the same time and I took him to get the job done. Marksman was just the right age. No worries there. He is a story for another day.
Dr. Elaine Krieg of Grass Valley was excellent. This was my first experience with her and she was calm, professional, and efficient. The first thing she did was check out his "undercarriage" and she informed us that he was very irregular. One side was extremely large. I had never noticed this before but then everything is really very tight up there and hidden behind their tails.
I am alarmed by this but mostly relieved to know that in a few moments we'll know why and know if it's serious.
When she is done removing the first side it is too small and too soft. When she is done removing the second side it is very oblong and hard at one end. This does not make me squeamish, I love this stuff. With an excited look in my eyes I ask her if we can dissect it. When she opened it up there was a hair ball. Yes. A lump of hair inside. She says sometimes a cell will go crazy and start producing where it shouldn't. Not cancer exactly but more like a T-cell growing in the wrong place.
All's well that ends well. Tam would never have been a good producer anyway and for the last week there has been little to no fighting in the pasture. Tam, being so much older than he should have been to be gelded has lost some of the softness to his fluff so this year will probably be used for felting or for rugs but I have great hopes for next year. His color is like peach oatmeal.
I actually have a picture of this, but they are on a different devise than I have access to right now. More later.
Last week this time I was taking two of my 'paca boys to be gelded, Marksman and Tamerack. This is a fairly common procedure for boy alpacas because they can't all be breeders. The idea is that if you get rid of all the hormones and all their energy goes to making you lovely, soft fiber. They are called "fiber pets". As with most animals that you geld it also calms them down and makes life a lot more peaceful for all involved.
Tamerack has been a particular challenge to me. I have been in love with his fiber since I laid eyes on him 5 years ago. As he grew up I was looking at him as a potential breeder. I had someone else come out and give him a more experienced look over once he reached maturity and it was decided that it would not be a good idea. He has one leg that is ever so slightly turned out and his coat is not uniform throughout. That was two years ago. Ideally boys should be gelded when they are two. I am a little behind (and in breech of contract technically). He was causing so much ruckus and picking fights with all his other pen mates that I was ready to geld him myself. (Not a good idea by the way. This is not the kind of livestock that can have that sort of thing managed with rubber bands. Kay?) Finally an opportunity and the finances happened at the same time and I took him to get the job done. Marksman was just the right age. No worries there. He is a story for another day.
Dr. Elaine Krieg of Grass Valley was excellent. This was my first experience with her and she was calm, professional, and efficient. The first thing she did was check out his "undercarriage" and she informed us that he was very irregular. One side was extremely large. I had never noticed this before but then everything is really very tight up there and hidden behind their tails.
I am alarmed by this but mostly relieved to know that in a few moments we'll know why and know if it's serious.
When she is done removing the first side it is too small and too soft. When she is done removing the second side it is very oblong and hard at one end. This does not make me squeamish, I love this stuff. With an excited look in my eyes I ask her if we can dissect it. When she opened it up there was a hair ball. Yes. A lump of hair inside. She says sometimes a cell will go crazy and start producing where it shouldn't. Not cancer exactly but more like a T-cell growing in the wrong place.
All's well that ends well. Tam would never have been a good producer anyway and for the last week there has been little to no fighting in the pasture. Tam, being so much older than he should have been to be gelded has lost some of the softness to his fluff so this year will probably be used for felting or for rugs but I have great hopes for next year. His color is like peach oatmeal.
I actually have a picture of this, but they are on a different devise than I have access to right now. More later.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
A Dangerous Garden
I was looking out my window this morning down at the front lawn. What? Lawn? Did I say lawn? Right! No lawn out there because you can't eat lawn.
About two years ago when I was looking down at the front of our house I saw empty brown dirt with lots of sunlight. I thought about our family's plan for putting in a nice lawn and landscaping it and the amount of raking and mowing it was going to take to keep it up. That's when I realized that our original place we were planning a vegetable garden just wasn't as practical as it would be to put it right there in front. Right out the door from the kitchen, in plain sight for us all to observe and enjoy (and defend from garden eaters). So we started moving our alpaca manure, wheel barrow by wheel barrow, over to the area. Husband put in the irrigation and tilled it all in. We made our furrows, brought our seedlings over from the greenhouse and the front yard garden began.
Last year was successful other than getting a late start and needing to bring the tomatoes in before the frost. We loved looking out the front windows and seeing our empty furrows turn into a jungle of squash, cucumbers and tomatoes. So this year we did it again. Husband tilled, I made our rows, Dad got our seedlings in. And then there were the volunteers. All the produce that didn't get picked and got buried under snow got tilled in and before we even had our green house seedlings in they sprouted and we had more than 30 tomato plants and a field of ground cherries. I transplanted the tomatoes into our rows but the ground cherries are just out of control. We're not complaining. If they ripen before it snows we will be in ground cherry heaven!
A garden is a dangerous thing. If you turn your back on it for even a day the squash will grow to the size of your arm and start making plans to take over the world. It is now the season where it is unwise to leave your car unlocked or your neighbor (that would be me) will fill your back seat with zucchini and crook neck.
Ours is a victory garden. Not something I ever thought about much but as there is more and more information coming at me where government (and my tax money) is working very hard at limiting what people can grow and sell I am looking at my garden with new eyes. The incident in Oak Park made a lot of people stand up and pay attention. The fact that the presidents wife did not stand up and pay attention also sent a message. Loud and clear folks, we are not supposed to be self sustaining. Not a conspiracy theory, a fact. If you are not at least partially dependent on some program They run They will hunt you down and find you criminal. It's a good thing it's not practical to milk alpacas. . . . .
I'm not a big fan of squash of any kind but it's not bad either. It tastes especially good when you grow it yourself. When you put food on the table that is either all or mostly from your own garden it's downright delicious. I don't care if that chicken is a little tough, I grew that chicken, I know that chicken, and I brought it in to be dinner. It is good chicken. No one will argue that farm fresh eggs taste better.It should be noted that without the alpacas this garden would not be possible. This blog is about the alpacas right? Alpacas have three stomachs and eat almost nothing but orchard grass. When all that is processed and released it makes for a wonderful manure. Our dirt here is highly acidic, tends to be hard and clumpy and when you fluff in the manure magic happens. Really. Magic. The chickens came about because of the alpacas too. Bug control. Don't believe those cartons that tout "vegan chickens." Chickens are not vegans.
To the point? Am I worried that one day someone in a dark suit is going to come out and destroy my garden and my chickens "for the health and safety of the people?" You bet I am. That garden is grown in dirt which is clearly not hygienic and those eggs are not pasteurized or laid in nice sanitary cages. Clearly they are a threat to the people. I'm here to tell you that I would not be here today had it not been for my ancestors eating from a garden and getting their eggs from a farm because they would have starved to death.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Home school that makes sense
Today is our first day of school. That is that our home school teacher from the charter school that we use made us her first stop and we talked about what the kids will be doing this learning period and some where in there we talked about M's missing teeth, riding bikes, how to avoid the bureaucracy of the school system while still satisfying the needs of the monster. Then we talked about gardens and dogs and alpacas followed with ducks and plumbing. Yes. Plumbing. Because she is just all that kinds of cool. She also spins fire and hoops and she's the most wonderful 58 year old any home-schooler could wish for.
While all that was going on C was still in bed, E was out helping Daddy lay rock and pour cement for our soon to be chicken coop while the chickens and ducks looked on with approval. Ms. M rode around on her bike displaying her not so new to her but new to Teacher ability to ride on two wheels. A good first day if I do say so myself. We top the day off with our usual Tuesday ritual of gymnastics and karate.
All three of them will test for their next belts on the 17th.
Before all that I found myself with a chicken in my lap while I doctored it's foot. No I don't know why it has that swollen bump on it's foot. It could be a bug that burrowed from the top, but it could just be bumble foot because our current roosts are square and not round. This will be remedied with the New and Improved Coop
Yes, tomorrow we will dig in and use books and get back to our regularly scheduled program. E will have to get up with his daddy and get his chores done before leaving for a writing class and then the little's and I will get reacquainted with their reading, rit'n and rithmatic. We'll also watch Magic School Bus and pick squash out of the garden.
I don't really want to start school. It's still too warm to think about school.
I have started a new shawl. This one is with the "herd blend" that New Era sent back to me and it's going to be very light weight and open. Me, being me and only able to hold my attention to three things at a time, will probably also start a nice winter hat with some of the black from the mill as well.
Next! I must learn to use a lathe! My shawls need pins and it would be fun if I made those as well. Must dust off lathe.
While all that was going on C was still in bed, E was out helping Daddy lay rock and pour cement for our soon to be chicken coop while the chickens and ducks looked on with approval. Ms. M rode around on her bike displaying her not so new to her but new to Teacher ability to ride on two wheels. A good first day if I do say so myself. We top the day off with our usual Tuesday ritual of gymnastics and karate.
All three of them will test for their next belts on the 17th.
Before all that I found myself with a chicken in my lap while I doctored it's foot. No I don't know why it has that swollen bump on it's foot. It could be a bug that burrowed from the top, but it could just be bumble foot because our current roosts are square and not round. This will be remedied with the New and Improved Coop
Yes, tomorrow we will dig in and use books and get back to our regularly scheduled program. E will have to get up with his daddy and get his chores done before leaving for a writing class and then the little's and I will get reacquainted with their reading, rit'n and rithmatic. We'll also watch Magic School Bus and pick squash out of the garden.
I don't really want to start school. It's still too warm to think about school.
I have started a new shawl. This one is with the "herd blend" that New Era sent back to me and it's going to be very light weight and open. Me, being me and only able to hold my attention to three things at a time, will probably also start a nice winter hat with some of the black from the mill as well.
Next! I must learn to use a lathe! My shawls need pins and it would be fun if I made those as well. Must dust off lathe.
Monday, September 5, 2011
The Time Has Come
For Cabbages and Kings. And it's time to start blogging about all the little things that happen here at Haven Ridge.
It's the end of summer and it still feels like we are just beginning. With the late winter weather occurring in June we are just starting to see our tomato's ripen, and our squash come in. As we follow the on going domestic terror of the FDA and the USDA raiding small farms I grow prouder and more clingy to our own front yard veggies and I'm starting to look around to see what else we are capable, both physically and finacially, of doing to secure our food source. It's an on going internal and external conversation I have with myself and those around me. Some of my surrounding loved ones are wondering if I will ever change the subject but it's not likely. It's a wonder that while our founding fathers were doing things like securing our freedoms of religion that they didn't see food as something to protect as well. But then, they didn't have Monsanto.
Today, Labor day, I did my favorite kind of labor--I knit. I pulled out a chair with the alpacas and giggled when they came up to sniff my shawl in progress. I could just see them wondering to themselves, "do I know this fiber?" Well, yes, they do. The black part at least. This yarn was some that I created with Reignee's fluff and plied with a multi jewel tone silk. Pretty to look at. I finished the shawl today but I'm not sure it will be the favorite thing I planned for it. I spun the black loosely and the silk is a thin strand wanting the effect of the black being soft and dominant but the silk to peak out in bits of color. The problem with this is that it means the black is shedding. Not spun tight enough to hold it all together. I also wish I had used larger needles. It's still pretty. Just not what I saw in my head. It's o.k. Relatively speaking I'm still very new to this business and I do see every attempt not a failure but the time where I learn to do it better next time.
Elsewhere on the ranch my DH and Fabulous Father (hence forth FF) were making great preparations for pouring the foundation of what will be our new and improved, bear proof, chicken and duck house. this will be our first attempt at a straw bale building. Still a stick frame but insulated with straw bale. This will be interesting eh? Well, we cannot afford the time or materials it takes every time a passing bear decides it's chicken for dinner. Or duck as the case may be.
So this is the beginnings of my new blog and the end of this post. For my next trick I will try to make a more explanatory front page of what and who we are. More importantly who the alpacas are and how they run my life.
It's the end of summer and it still feels like we are just beginning. With the late winter weather occurring in June we are just starting to see our tomato's ripen, and our squash come in. As we follow the on going domestic terror of the FDA and the USDA raiding small farms I grow prouder and more clingy to our own front yard veggies and I'm starting to look around to see what else we are capable, both physically and finacially, of doing to secure our food source. It's an on going internal and external conversation I have with myself and those around me. Some of my surrounding loved ones are wondering if I will ever change the subject but it's not likely. It's a wonder that while our founding fathers were doing things like securing our freedoms of religion that they didn't see food as something to protect as well. But then, they didn't have Monsanto.
Today, Labor day, I did my favorite kind of labor--I knit. I pulled out a chair with the alpacas and giggled when they came up to sniff my shawl in progress. I could just see them wondering to themselves, "do I know this fiber?" Well, yes, they do. The black part at least. This yarn was some that I created with Reignee's fluff and plied with a multi jewel tone silk. Pretty to look at. I finished the shawl today but I'm not sure it will be the favorite thing I planned for it. I spun the black loosely and the silk is a thin strand wanting the effect of the black being soft and dominant but the silk to peak out in bits of color. The problem with this is that it means the black is shedding. Not spun tight enough to hold it all together. I also wish I had used larger needles. It's still pretty. Just not what I saw in my head. It's o.k. Relatively speaking I'm still very new to this business and I do see every attempt not a failure but the time where I learn to do it better next time.
Elsewhere on the ranch my DH and Fabulous Father (hence forth FF) were making great preparations for pouring the foundation of what will be our new and improved, bear proof, chicken and duck house. this will be our first attempt at a straw bale building. Still a stick frame but insulated with straw bale. This will be interesting eh? Well, we cannot afford the time or materials it takes every time a passing bear decides it's chicken for dinner. Or duck as the case may be.
So this is the beginnings of my new blog and the end of this post. For my next trick I will try to make a more explanatory front page of what and who we are. More importantly who the alpacas are and how they run my life.
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