Iced In

December 8, 2013 by WoolyMama

Right now I should be drinking wine, eating delicious homemade pumpkin ravioli, and enjoying a lot of warmth and laughter with some of my best friends.

Instead, I am sitting in my pajamas drinking coffee and looking forward to next week, when our annual holiday book club meeting will take place due to today’s ice storm.

We are well and truly iced in here. And by “here” I mean our property, not necessarily the house, because we have to go outside and care for the flock, ice or no.

It’s miserable out there. The gates were iced over and stuck shut. The slope down to the pasture was all iced over. The outer pen where Lucy and Orzo currently live is all slushed mud and poo. The pig pen is nearly solid ice. So is the back deck, though Cini has been hanging out there anyway.

So yeah, feeding was tons of fun, with all that cold, wet wool pressed up against my legs, and jerk-face Jerry trying to knock the bucket out of my hands.

The good news is that the tank de-icer is working beautifully! The water tanks are nice and full and liquid.

In between feedings we all huddled around the fireplace for a bit and I got some actual sewing done.

New pajama pants for me in a lovely flannel I bought last year. I also reconfigured the serger so I could put a rolled edge on some holiday fabric squares to make napkins.

There’s a zillion other things I’d really like to get done. Like my Shepherd sweater, or some new Christmas pillows for the couch.

I also wouldn’t mind getting started on some cookie baking. Or knitting some socks with some of the yarn I’ve been dyeing.

These are the holiday colorways I came up with. It’s been fun messing around with color and learning how the chemicals work, but alas, the whole caboodle of supplies has been boxed up and is on its way to Lauria so she can finish up the JMF Sock Club yarn. However, I’ll be playing with it some more in the near future and helping Susan and Lauria with it next year once I’m a little more confident.

BUT rather than all of those super fun and creative things, I am going to make dinner for everyone.

No rest for the weary, as they say.

Today in Chickenland

December 3, 2013 by WoolyMama

If you’ll recall, way back in 2012 we were losing chickens at a maddening rate to foxes, and we had a particular group of free – rangers who would NOT stay in their pens, despite our many efforts. We built them a Fort Knox-style enclosure and dubbed it “the chicken prison”.

We still call it that. The residents are still “the prisoners”.

We had one mishap there shortly after the prison was put to use: a fox had reached through the wire, dragged one chicken out and slashed another’s throat. Her crop had been torn open and food was contaminating the entirety of her wounded breast. But after many hours it became apparent she was not ready to die and I ended up getting my hands on some sutures and sewing her back up.

That chicken’s name is Fleur, and she is still with us.

Which brings us to last night.

Around one this morning, Emily heard a disturbance coming from the front coop (lots of squawking and thumping), so she ran out; but cautiously. Two weeks ago the same thing had happened and she discovered a giant possum. This time, something large was heard crashing away through the trees, dogs barking wildly after it.

No intruder was discovered inside the coop, and no one was missing; but Lenore was suffering a deep gash in her throat.

I was in no condition to perform hen surgery at one am. And the wound looked significantly worse than Fleur’s had been. I told Emily to put her back in the coop, close it up, and if she lived until morning we’d sew her back up.

Not only was she still alive, she was full of piss and vinegar. She gave Emily a terrible time trying to catch her. She was also still scratching and clucking around, nibbling on food and bugs.

It turned out that though the wound was much larger, it had missed the crop entirely and had only torn the skin open. We thanked our (or Lenore’s) lucky stars and I cleaned out the area with saline, cut away some of the feathers, and sewed her up (I have a supply of sutures now, thank you very much).

It wasn’t the prettiest surgical job, nor even the most complete, but at least it will make healing more likely. She got a nice spray down with Blue Kote to protect it from infection and flies, and a good shot of antibiotics for good measure.

See what I did there? I spared your sensibilities by not offering a “before” picture.

What happens from here is up to the great poultry gods. I’ll keep her wound clean and give her meds to fight infection, but that’s about all I can do.

From now on, that front coop gets secured at night, guard dogs or no.

Putting Up The Hay

November 25, 2013 by WoolyMama

We got a delivery of hay today from our lovely hay people, and as soon as I sat back down inside the house to warm up (it’s frigid out there!), I realized that tomorrow’s forecast calls for sleet and rain. This means that all 14-odd 800 lb. bales of hay HAD to be moved down to the back field, lined up on cinder blocks and covered before dark.

This is normally a job that Paul does, but he doesn’t get home in the evenings until after dark.

So I bundled up and grumbled all the way out to the tractor and got busy.

It took ALL AFTERNOON.

It’s not so much that it is difficult work, but that it is slow going. You have to be very careful going down the hill with such a heavy load on the spear, and you have to line up cinder blocks for each and every bale.

I also discovered that the insulated work gloves I got from Tractor Supply for farm work didn’t hold up to freezing temperatures at all.

Thankfully my hand-knit hat kept my head nice and toasty – let’s hear it for wool!

I finished up just as it got dark, and I even dropped an extra bale in with the sheep.

I’ve got a pretty big workload ahead of me for the next few days. I painted Oona’s room but now I have to get it put back together properly. I started painting our rockers for the front porch and need to finish those:

Yes, I know it’s all over the grass. You see, there’s a difference between how I do things and how Paul does things. He prefers the “put it off until you have everything you need and can do it properly in one go”, whereas I hail from the school of thought of “why wait if I can half-ass it now?”

Tonight I’ll be sewing up napkins for Thanksgiving out of this lovely fabric I found at fabric.com:

Tomorrow begins the timeless tradition of baking and obsessive cleaning that will take us through to the holiday.

Let’s hope that sleet passes us by, shall we?

November-ing

November 20, 2013 by WoolyMama

As we careen toward Thanksgiving I’ve been trying with all my might to enjoy November and its relative calm. After the Big Meal it will be all Christmas and crazy, but for now it’s still fall, everything pumpkin is still in vogue for the month. There are still a few patches of color here and there where the rain and wind have not knocked them off the trees, and it’s still not bitter cold.

Although, truth be told, the weather here has been so bizarre I think I’d take the bitter cold just so I’d know how to cope. Instead we’ve had a day where it flurried like mad for about an hour followed by temperatures in the 70’s a few days later. You never know if you’ll need the A/C or the heat on.

It’s the ending of fall, and it’s bittersweet.

We will be having Thanksgiving at home this year with Paul’s family, and I am enjoying getting the house organized and cleaned in readiness for it (hey, cleaning is therapeutic for me!). In the meantime it’s starting to get hard to concentrate on school when there’s so much to be done and to enjoy, but we’re at least not falling behind.

Oona’s reading a lot of seasonally appropriate books about Thanksgiving (though the pickings are slim on these – as a historian I don’t like the ones that whitewash the history, even-or maybe especially- for little ones).

Yesterday my November issue of British Country Living came, and I spent a glorious afternoon with a cup of coffee and some gingerbread cookies from Trader Joe’s, pouring over its pages.

That mug, by the way, is one of my absolute favorites. It was made by my friend Anna Branner with Susan’s logo on it, and you can find more of Anna’s wonderful wares HERE.

To top off all things Novembery, we’ve been enjoying some homemade Pumpkin-Cinnamon Swirl bread. It’s wonderful toasted with a bit of butter. I used the recipe for the Cinnamon Swirl bread (made in the Pullman Loaf pan) from King Arthur Flour, but for the filling I added about a third cup of pumpkin puree and took out 1 egg and the water. It’s got just a touch of pumpkin-y flavor when it’s done and it smells heavenly while it’s baking!

This Morning in Pictures

November 8, 2013 by WoolyMama

I can’t get Churchill his breakfast fast enough.

At this point, the sheep have realized what trickery is afoot. I used feeding time to pen them into the small paddock to wait for Dr. Grover to come take some blood for routine testing.

Suspicious Alabama is suspicious.

Angry Bertie. She is not a fan of being handled. Or having blood drawn. Or the further injustice of getting a dose of wormer.

Aside from the bloodwork (to test for fairly common goat and sheep viruses) the flock has a clean bill of health. That’s enough for a happy Friday!

Shepherd Sweater Update

November 7, 2013 by WoolyMama

Well that was a pointless interlude – Paul came home, took one look at my computer, rebooted it, and it was good to go. No data loss, nothing.

Figures.

This is why I never, ever try to fix anything without first asking.

Anyhoo….

Here’s how my Shepherd Sweater is coming along!

It looks so cozy and comforting, like a hot bowl of your favorite oatmeal on a cold winter morning.

I am so glad I chose to knit the Shepherd version (besides the fact that being a shepherd made me feel like it was necessary); the cables have been so much fun and not too fiddly at all. I did go down several needle sizes – to size 5’s – but I am using completely different yarn than the pattern calls for (I am using wool that came off the very backs of the animals I’ve been caring for) and my gauge is still a tad larger than it should be. I went down a sweater size to accommodate the difference and it seems to be working splendidly!

I may even knit this again in another color.

It’s that good.

And Then My Computer Crashed

November 6, 2013 by WoolyMama

I had planned a knitting-filled blogpost with picture updates of my Shepherd Sweater, and then my computer crashed. This post is brought to you via my iPad, which, trust me, is terrible to blog from.

I am a little worried because it looks like my backup drive may not have been doing its job since mid-Octobwhen and I’ve uploaded nearly 1,000 pictures since then.

But, I probably can’t complain too much. After all, since I’ve been using a Mac I have only had this problem once, and I switched over from PC a few years ago.

About my sweater : I’m about 10″ in, and still going strong. The cables have been a lot of fun and it’s keeping my interest. I even managed to knit a bit while getting caught up on The Walking Dead.

We are still working on getting everything winter-ready as well. The flock is in their smaller paddock for the winter, the ducks are in a new little house, the porch railings have been painted. Everyone is getting wormed this week – the flock, the chickens, ducks and goose, even the dogs. The vet is coming Friday to check everyone out one last time before he retires from farm animal medicine.

It’s a busy time, so the fact that I have managed so much knitting is nothing short of a miracle. I may even try to get around to dyeing some sock yarn tomorrow!

Happy Halloween!!!!!

October 31, 2013 by WoolyMama

Pigs and Pumpkins

October 30, 2013 by WoolyMama

Because even pigs like fall – themed treats!

Happy Temperatures

October 25, 2013 by WoolyMama

It’s been downright chilly here for October in Virginia. We had a frost last night and are expecting another tonight!

The fireplace is in use full time now, the handknits are out, the apple cider is being consumed hot. There’s a lovely nip in the air, which is heavily scented with woodsmoke lately.

The flock is in weather nirvana!