A day out on the Big Town

We thought perhaps we should spend one day away from home during the kids spring break, and at their request, after doing our farm chores and the neighbors farm chores (which were made more complicated by the escaping of three cows into the barn interior where they processed to cover every surface with cow shit and eat all the grain) headed out to the children's museum in Marquette where they spent a couple of hours running around like banshees. The second kid treat of the day was the movie "Peabody and Sherman" which was pretty decent, though wouldn't have me running out to watch it a second time.

My favorite part of the day was lunch! We ate at "the Wild Rover", an Irish styled pub. I had a plate of Scotch eggs (which I shared with my family and in thought with John Gray), Poutine with fried cheese curds, and a pint of Guinness. Eight hours later and I'm still stuffed. Home again just as the last bit of light was leaving the sky. Kids are in bed and Will and I may settle down with a glass of Elderberry/plum wine a neighbor traded us for eggs. It is rather puckery but tasty!

Tomorrow onward to the Erickson Center for the Arts where I am helping set up a display of American Folk Art- my Harrisford four shaft loom is there and Jane and I have been dressing her in readiness for some shawl weaving I will be doing here and there throughout the summer. I will post some photos of the warp we put on the loom....it is polwath & silk and I hand painted it in shades of green.

 

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Getting bigger (and deeper)

It snowed another eight inches the past couple of days; heavy wet heart breaking snow. We lost power just before going to bed last night and so I relearned how to play cribbage with Will over a bottle of wine, after Will filled every large vessel with snow to melt because we didn't think to fill up the myriad of water jugs we have. The power came back on sometime in the night and just when I got out of bed at five-ish in the morning, flickered off again. The kids had breakfast by candle light and around 9:00 the lights came back on. I was able to head out to the office after Will snow blowed the driveway and it did melt a bit during the day, though not all of the new stuff went away.

Poor Kim and her big brother still are locked away with their mum, but they should be able to be out in the sun and snow this weekend.

Kim is going to outgrow that sweater in a few days! She is nibbling on hay and nursing well.

She loves laying her head on her big brothers neck. He is adorable and they both have magnificent fleeces. I think Karen will be pleased to have them in her flock (I'll take Kim if she isn't!). Kashmir will stay here with us.

Muckle Mull, the escapee ram, went to the vets Thursday to be relieved of his "purse". I meant to take a picture of him lying in the back of the van but he was so meek and sad looking I forgot. Everyone at the vets office thought he was adorable (he was scared!) He is back in with his girls until he heals up and everyone will be rejoined after lambing at shearing time. He isn't talking to me just this moment for some reason.

 

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Early Lambs

Doing chores I was surprised and dismayed to see that Kashmir had given birth this morning to two beautiful black lambs. Surprised because her due date is April 2nd, and dismayed because it was cold and snowing and windy. The smallest lamb I feared was dead, but when I picked her up she stirred a bit. I hastily tucked her under my shirt and Will, who is home from a nine day trip to NH, finished chores and blocked Kashmir and her larger ram lamb in the lambing jug.

I first gave the lamb to Duncan to hold while I readied a heating pad and they sat together for 20 minutes with just a faint stirring from the wee ewe lamb. I checked her mouth; ice cold and her flanks were still cold. Decided to run a sinkful of warm water and immerse her in it. I held her head out of the water and she soaked for a good 20 minutes until she started trying to get her legs under her. I hauled her out of the sink and into a towel and finally she started bleating. Ten minutes with a warm blow dryer she was looking for food! I mixed up a wee bit of colostrum powder with warm water and she took and ounce of that but was busy butting my chest looking for something better. Outside then to her mum who welcomed her with those sweet nickering noises ewes make for their lambs.

I will monitor her progress every couple of hours to make sure all is well, but she is up and nursing now so hopefully she will make it on her own.

Granny Aching would be proud of me. (If by some bizarre oversight you don't know who Granny Aching is, pick yourself up a copy of Terry Pratchett's "The Wee Free Men")

It must be spring.....lambs are arriving!

 

 

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Beast Balm

I've been playing around in the kitchen again with natural oils, beeswax and herbs. My favorite moisturizing bar by far is the combination of coconut oil, shea butter, pure beeswax, and essential oils. I've dubbed these "luxury lotion bars", and these are available at my Etsy shop.

I had been given a salve of sorts that I decided I wanted to try and replicate, that was made only from olive oil and beeswax. I infused some pumice olive oil with calendula flowers to make a beautiful orange tinged oil with the properties of calendula flowers which are many: having all-around healing properties useful for a wide variety of skin irritations and conditions including wounds, insect bites, rashes, scrapes, abrasions, cuts, inflammations, and much more. Suitable for sensitive skin and babies. I then added pure beeswax to this oil to come up with a balm/salve that has the consistency of petroleum jelly, but without the nasty hydrocarbons!

This balm is suitable for both man and beast! It heals cracked paws, teats, hands and feet. Regular use helps heal and prevent chapping of skin exposed to sun, wind, water and dirt. My favorite thing about the salve is its moisturizing ability plus the beeswax helps keep the salve on your skin if your hands are in (non-soapy) water.

Calendula Beast Balm is available in my Etsy shop and is $5.50 for a two ounce double walled plastic jar that is safe to keep in the barn, your project bag, or diaper bag.

I will be using this on sheep udders this spring! April seems so far off right now.....

 

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A Long Two Weeks

I don't have much to report, but it has felt like these past couple of weeks have stretched out well over their apportioned time. First I had to pick poor Sam up from school on a Friday because he felt nauseous. He and Duncan were supposed to be spending the night at a friends house that evening and staying there all day Saturday. Sam hadn't been home for more than an hour before he started throwing up and the diarrhea started. He started feeling better Saturday morning when we got the call from Matthew's father that Duncan had thrown up....so Will went and got him and the two boys could commiserate. It all passed in a couple of days. So far so good for the rest of us.
Lila had Valentines day off and she and I visited with a friend who met us for lunch in Manistique at the Upper Crust Cafe which is right on Lake Michigan and has the best deli sandwiches..... Joanne brought Lila some Sayklly's truffles and a teddy bear, and fiber stuff for me! Lila also had Presidents Day off and she and I were going to do something fun but.....yes, she woke up at 2:00am throwing up and woke me to say she had vomited in the sink. I won't go up into the difficulties of cleaning vomit out of a sink, but it is sufficient to say it doesn't just go down the drain. I did learn a little bit about the digestibility of asparagus and how well my daughter masticates her food.

Oh, and Mull had to be removed yet again from cavorting with the ladies. He was going over the wall launching from his dog house hide-away. July lambs indeed! I think I was stuck in the driveway once this past week and then we had some really cruddy weather that was sleety with high winds that knocked the power out for a day. And to top it all off, Duncan had a sore throat on Thursday and turns out it is Strep throat. Antibiotics for ten days. On the bright side, my Jury duty was cancelled for Monday, everyone is feeling pretty good now, we played some Yahtzee, and there was a snow day!
I did sneak in some fiber fun too.

Joanne brought me this older Pat Green production carder to try out. It makes lovely batts.

The grey fiber some of last years clip from "Lady Tamar" one of the new huacaya girls we bought.

This is the yarn I spun up from that batt. It is just over a half ounce and it is pretty. Not quite as dark as the photo, but a solid medium grey.
Joanne also gave us these two new large alpaca rugs/ wall hangings/ throws to sell to help offset the cost of shearing this spring. We have a professional shearing crew coming out to shear and trim toes and grind teeth this year. It is more expensive than what we were doing but will be worth it i think. Doing teeth is a bit formidable! The alpaca throws are just under 4' x 5'. The original price on them was $250 for the elephant and $175 for the stag (which is slightly smaller). If anyone has an interest, make us an offer! :) They are in beautiful shape and are very cool! (And unbelievably soft).

I've had to hide them away because the kittens think they are for biting...they have an unhealthy fiber fetish and I've had to take away Lila's stuffed alpaca fur bears from them many times.....a bit disconcerting to see a kitten carrying around a teddy bear and mauling it.

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July Surprise?

We have our Shetland breeding group in the front pen, same as in years past. All has been well and Muckle Mull has his three girls and two additional ewes that are already bred in with him. He has had a roving eye though and has been ocularly fondling the ewes on the other side of the fence.

Imagine my surprise when yesterday I was in the main barn feeding the larger group of sheep and the camelids when I looked down and saw Mull gazing up at me with innocent eyes and what I swear was a smirk....he meekly followed me and a bucket of oats back to the breeding pen, where I fixed up where I THOUGHT he was going over with a couple of panels. Seemed to work and he stayed in there all day. This morning, however, he was back in the other pen! Grrrrrr. I picked him up and put him back over the fence (he weighs about 45 pounds and the fence is only sticking out of the deep snow about two feet). He laughed, I swear. I put more panels up.

Mr. Muckle Mull may have spent two entire nights in with the ewes I wasn't planning to breed. He may have been successful at seducing some receptive females with his flashy good looks and come hither eyes. Sheep have a 145 day gestation period so I've marked early July as possible lambing dates on the calendar.....at least they won't freeze!

 

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Hey Lady; Do you wanna Duck?

On my way home yesterday I stopped at the local market in Curtis to pick up a gallon of milk. The lovely Mandy said "would you like a duck too?". I did a double take at the poor frightened Common Goldeneye on the floor. It had been dropped off by one of the delivery people who found it on the highway. Many diving ducks mistake dark or iced pavement for rivers and unsuspectingly crash down onto hard pavement, and because their legs are set so far back on their bodies they can't move. Diving ducks are not good at walking but are damn good swimmers. I scooped the poor fellow up, brought him home and made a makeshift pond out of an 18 gallon Rubbermaid tote. I also had stopped at the bait store for a couple dozen small fish which I also put in the tub. He greedily ate every fish! Our guest spent the night floating with his bill tucked into the feathers on his back. This morning I went back for more fish, and while I was doing chores he ate half a dozen more.

I released him in Portage Creek right here in town which is the only open water I know of for miles. Hopefully with a full belly he can find his way back to his raft of comrades who are likely in the Straits of Mackinac. I stupidly left the remaining fish in the tub and left the bathroom door open. I suspect the kittens are having some fun....

During our recent flirt with Arctic air I took these photos of "frost feathers" that appeared magically overnight on the breeding sheep's water bucket. It was also very sunny that morning, so there are at least some perks to -15 Fahrenheit.

 

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Skadi

"God's Country" is what Michigan's Upper Peninsula is often called. What isn't widely known, is that the "God" in question is the Norse Goddess Skadi; the goddess of ice and winter....and apparently she is mightily pissed off!

No school today or tomorrow because of the cold (colder than the last cold snap). The kids are beside themselves with joy. The adults on the other hand had lots of barn prep and snow moving to do and we aren't looking forward to morning chores!

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Lady Tamar and Neha Von Hershey

Brrrr.....again. Chores were done in -11 degrees Fahrenheit this morning so little skin was exposed. I accidentally reversed the camera on my phone and took this all too real photo in my humble barn clothes.

My hair IS getting some grey, but those exposed stray bits are covered in frost!

Yesterday Will and I went on a big adventure to Menominee County (just about ten miles from Wisconsin), to visit an alpaca farm that was retiring. There were nine females left and we brought home two (showing good restraint I thought); Lady Tamar and Neha Von Hershey. They sound like baronesses from Ankh Morpork!

Neha is a black registered huacaya alpaca out of champion bloodlines. She has a sweet face and lovely black fiber. Tamar is rose grey in color and very soft too! The breeders were retiring and selling these girls at rock bottom prices. I mean that too.....Duncan could have bought one with the money he's been saving in his piggy bank ( darn! I should have asked him if he wanted one!). There was one more that tempted me with beautiful deep dark mahogany brown fiber. We are rounding out our colors and fiber types nicely with these two. I have my eyeball on a gorgeous dark grey huacaya on the Far East end and hope her price will come down as she isn't registered or breed-able. She has the longest and softest dark fiber I have ever felt.

In addition, they gave us ALL of last years clip from fourteen animals! I'm overwhelmed with fluffy goodness in a rainbow of alpaca colors. Of course it all needs to be sorted and washed and processed...

Kudos to Will for all the work he did digging out our friends trailer so we could go get the girls (and the fiber)!

 

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I'm not complaining....

I'm not going to bore everyone with dire weather reports, because we're pretty much all in the same boat.

That said; it is eight degrees below zero with a -31 degree wind chill.

We are toasty warm inside and I hope the wooly beasts are warn enough without. They do have good bedding, warm fiber, and strength in numbers. These are the kind of conditions that sort out the weak from the strong though. But enough. I did get out to visit and snap some photos yesterday.

My beautiful Fancy Pants.

She is nine years old and is going to break my heart someday.

Fancy and Foula

 

Muckle Mull and his ewes

Sweet, shy Maya

I think it is the little tilt of the head that steals my heart.

Nala and Deja

Daisy is not missing out on groceries! She is half shetland and half cormo bred to Mull for lushly wooled babies.....in late April when it will hopefully be warm again.

 

 

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