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In Memoriam

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Our dear friend and neighbor, Margie L. Friend Strawser, died suddenly on Saturday, October 11th. She was a devoted and faithful companion to her husband, Bill; a wonderful mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She was a tireless worker for her community. She came from a big family of 10 children and maybe that is where she learned to be so patient, considerate, kind and caring.

Margie had a wonderful knack of knowing exactly what to say to make each person she met feel that they were special – each person – from her family, friends and neighbors to the clerk at Foodland where she and Bill shopped for groceries.

Margie has been laid to rest in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery and is now at peace, but Pastor Bill probably said it best, “… a gaping hole has been left in the fabric of the community.”

Please keep Margie’s family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.

Barn Dance

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We took some time off on this beautiful, sunny day and attended the fifth Annual Aurora Barn Dance at Brookside Farm. This is a fundraiser, sponsored by the Aurora Project, Inc.
The barn was built in 1898 and is now privately owned by the Utterback family.

While everyone enjoyed a great meal, apple cider and mulled wine, Wolf Creek Session performed. They are a wonderful group that performs a mixture of Celtic roots music and traditional Appalachian sounds.

What’s a barn dance without a ‘dance band’? Enter Born Old playing traditional, old-time music from West Virginia.

Doug Van Gundy’s mother was the square dance caller. She did a wonderful job, getting most everyone involved.

After Lena participated in the children’s hike in Cathedral State Park, she and Sharon joined in the fun for the final set of square dances.

Wish we could share the beautiful music of the final waltz; so lovely it brought tears to your eyes. A wonderful time had by all, please join us next year!

Family – Mantidae

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The past couple weeks we have been entertained by praying mantis in our dyer’s garden. Pictured above on one of the cosmos plants is the smaller of the two.

They are truly fascinating to watch and have proven to be very distracting.

According to the Insecta Inspecta they are the “only insect that turn from side to side in a full 180-degree angle”. They are very aware of everything around them and turn their head to follow your movement.

This mornng the smaller one is seeking shelter from the rain under one of large sunflower leaves, a very creative umbrella.

Now we better get ‘un-distracted’ and get to work. Joe is coming to shear the lambs today!

“On Washing Fleece”

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In the latest “Spin-Off” magazine there is a great article by Judith MacKenzie McCuin, “On Washing Fleece”. She discusses “wool: the self-cleansing fiber” and historical methods of washing fleece including using “fermented suint cleanser”. Attracted by the assertion that “This method has the lowest environmental impact (minimal water use, no chemicals, and the wash water is good for gardens or compost boxes)”, we decided to give it a go.

Let’s start here, with Hercules’ very dirty fleece from last spring. Starting with one pound, we set up the bath.

We kept it warm and in a few days it began to ferment, developing a ‘slight white film’.

We removed the fleece from the dirty, foul-smelling bath now full of ‘the natural detergent’ suint, ‘primarily potassium salts’ secreted by a gland in the sheep’s skin.

Amazingly, the fleece appears very white even before rinsing.

After a quick wash in a weak detergent bath and two rinses (just to be sure that the lanolin had been removed), the fleece is beautiful; clean, soft and yes, as Judith says, “the smell washes right out of the wool”.

It has worked so well that pound #3 is now soaking in that same ‘fermented suint cleanser’. According to the article you can “Use the fermented water over and over; the more you use it, the better it gets. Don’t worry that it looks dirty – use the water until, as they say in Montana, it is too thick to swim in and too thin to plow.”

VERY COOL!!

Weaning Day

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Weaning day has arrived! We did our bi-weekly ‘FAMACHA and worm if needed’ routine and weighed all the lambs. Weights ranged from 60 lbs for some of the smaller twins to 102 lbs for Feisty’s big single bruiser (Wensleydale-Coopworth-Lincoln cross).

We separated the lambs from the ewes. Snostorm was not too happy about us moving his lambs to a new paddock. He is standing guard and shaking his head most emphatically, “No!”

We moved the ewes five small paddocks away, but it was still a very noisy day. Many of them spent their time waiting by the fence and complaining loudly.

After a noisy, stressful night everyone should adjust and calm down tomorrow. Ahhh, peace and quiet to look forward to.

Keets Graduation

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The keets graduated to spacious new quarters in the barn today! Whoa, wait a minute, just realized that you have been introduced to the lavender keets but not to our other special little ones.

They started here in the incubator.

And about 28 days later (+ and -), here they were! Five successful hatchlings!

Today, we moved all the keets from the brooder box into this spacious new lodging in the barn. They have been so excited all day hopping and fluttering and exploring their new space.

The Dye Pot

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In the dye pot this week . . .

We have been harvesting hibiscus blossoms daily and it took only about a week to get a quart baggy full in the refrigerator. After simmering the blossoms, I added 1 oz. of alum mordanted lambs wool. Not getting much color I added a little baking soda which turned the dye pot very dark:

Letting it soak a couple of days. Looks like it is going to possibly be a very dark green/grey/black color.

The daisies were harvested from roadside, field, and flower gardens: over 2 lbs worth was chopped up and boiled for a couple of hours yielding this color of dye bath after straining:

Baking soda was added along with about 7 oz. of unmordanted wool. The addition of the baking soda is suppose to result in a chartruse colored wool. It didn’t seem to be taking up much dye so I added alum as an additional mordant. So far the wool is looking Surprise!! Yellow.Tomorrow after I take out the wool I am going to see what the addition of more baking soda will do the dye bath and dunk some of the wool back in to see if it changes any. If not, yellow IS a very pretty color.

While the sun shines…

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Yeah, you guessed it

The sun is finally shining. We have spent almost all week making hay and here we are 1,048 bales later. Many, many thanks to everyone in the family for all their contributions!! A great big thank you to Mom for having a feast ready every evening!
Now to rest up for the few hundred bales of second cutting we hope to get. Time to pray for some rain to get that grass growing once again.