changed my mind

I couldn’t bring myself to send the fleece to the mill.  I looked at it for a week and went over a couple of times to check it out.  The longer I waited the harder it was.  Sending the wool to the mill would give me about 25 pounds of yarn, all the colors blended together and the same weight.   I had agreed to send fleeces out to Texas, and although they were great sports about turning it into yarn, but I felt really bad about it.

The fleeces were not in the best shape this year because of the rain, so at first I thought that milling it into yarn was the way to go.  But the more I thought about it,  damaged fleeces are better to be done by hand.   Since this will be the last bit of fleece I will get from my sheep, I really do want to do it up.    So half goes out west and half will stay here.

I like the idea of being able to make yarn out of the individual fleeces is appealing.  I started with Wu’s fleece today and washed it in the bath tub.  It is drying on a screen downstairs and I am really pleased with how it came out.  Much better then I thought.

I divided each fleece in half, so Texas will get a bit of everyone that was shorn, except for Jason.  His fleece will be for Shelby at Green Top farm, the new home for the flock.   That should keep us all busy for a while.

What about farming?

The Democratic National Convention has been playing, and much like staying up to watch the Olympics, I am exhausted.  Yeah for recording television.  I stay up as late as I can, then watch the recording  in the morning while I knit. I got a bunch of rows done today, about 10 of 280 stitches.

So the fist evening was pretty touchy feely, as somewhat expected. I had hoped the Democrats would begin to take off the gloves and begin thumping McCain last night. Politics should be a good spectator sport.   I wanted to hear about economics and energy and also a bit about farming. 

The only mention of farming came from the Democratic Governor of Kansas, http://www.democraticgovernors.org/content/614/governor-kathleen-sebelius-biography

She talked about renewable energy that can be grown.  Good start, but does she realize that the price of corn has skyrocketed because of  bio-fuel?  If we are using corn in our cars, then speculators help to drive up the price because the crop has gone from food commodity to fuel commodity.  Just like oil.  ( Do you ever wonder why oil continued to go up even though more was being produced?  The price of a barrel of oil was driven by its sale as a commodity. Another topic for another day.)

So yeah for the corn belt.  Boo for the food market.   Corn is in everything, so the price of a taco shell to the price of beef is higher.  Not just because the cost of harvesting has gone up due to the fuel cost increase, and you need fuel to run your machines. But because corn has been the focus of bio-fuels.  There are other crops that can do this as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel

I am for getting off American dependency on foreign oil.  I am also for growing our fuel, but not to the detriment of the ability to keep the cost of growing food down.  I think that fuel from wind, sun, water and plants can work, but with balance.

What was missing from the speeches last night was a bit more about rural living and farming.  Its is all well and good that the former Pennsylvania Governor Warner thinks that folks should have broadband internet in rural areas so that there are job opportunities. However good the internet is, you can’t eat it.  No one ever died without internet, but you will die without food.

Does anybody else see the storm on the horizon?  It will be hard to buy new things to boost up our economy when we are using our income on food, housing and heating.  Just a thought.

Bushel and a peck

The end of August means that the apple guys are spending the weekend sitting in their truck at the Kenny’s Drug parking lot selling apples by the peck. I bought an apple crate of Isle La Mont’s yesterday with the intent of making sauce and pie. 22.00 for the bushel. Wow. Dozen canning jars, with lids were 11.50. The sugar was a couple of bucks. Cinnamon is in the cupboard as is the rest of the secret ingredients.

I think apples have gone up, or at least it seems like it. So even with 12 jars of sauce, we are looking at 2-3 bucks a jar. It used to be economical to put up fruits and veggies. Go to any Big Lots and there always is apple sauce at .99 cents a jar. I am a little bummed about this.

I bet ya that the guys who are selling the apples are bummed about it too. There is a trend in Vermont to use migrant workers, sometimes Mexicans and sometimes Jamaicans, to pick the apples. Why? Economics and frankly, not enough kids that will do the work on the cheep. Same for milking. Not enough of a labor pool to do the work for the amount of funds that can be allocated to do the work.

The cost of producing the food and getting it to the table is going up. I don’t mind having to shift my money from one area, like buying new clothes to food, especially if I can support my local farms. So at farmer’s market I bought 5 tomatoes, a stalk of celery, a head of lettuce, 3 small red onions, 3 small green peppers all for $15.40. 4 Amish Peaches, 4 long stem gladiolas and a coconut macaroon cake from the Mennonites, for $12.65. A little over 50.00 bucks for the produce, not counting the canning jars.

At 10.00 a hour working on the farm, that is 5 hours for not that much. I guess I could take the flowers and the coconut macaroon cake out of the deal saving 9 bucks or just under an hour, but how sad.

So what are the folks that try to make a living on minimum wage doing? Vermont’s minimum wage is $7.68. I guess that is a couple of tomatoes and a peck of apples. Are they able to support farmer’s market or are they doing the Big Lots generic apple sauce and damaged box of mac n’ cheese?

Go Jamaica, Go

I am taking an Olympic break here. Usain Bolt has been called freak of nature, and I agree. How many people can run like that? I like Walter Dix too. Usain runs for Jamaica and Walter runs or US. Usain just broke the world record and ran the 19.30 seconds in the 200 meter run. Wow.

Usain Bolt wears gold running shoes. But He didn’t act like a show off in this race. He actually grit his teeth and ran the whole race. Good for him.

So, I like the Jamaican runners. I have two Jamaican friends, Pauline and Mazie. They come to Vermont in the fall and stay all winter. Pauline is still a newly wed, since she and her husband married a year ago, but she was here in Vermont for about 5 months, I think newly wed time should be extended to them. They run a small general store, but I can’t remember what the name for general store is there. But from her stories, it seems like a general store.

Pauline is afraid of dogs, but has gotten to be good friends with Jigger our lab. They have a good understanding with each other. Pauline loves pork. I made them some pulled pork right around Christmas this past year and it was so dry, I couldn’t choke it down. Pauline didn’t complain about it at all. She is a good sport.

Mazie cracks me up. She loves salt cod and hates pork.  Mazie’s husband is a fisherman and she has a teenage daughter about the same age as one of my girls.  I learned this year that Mazie doesn’t swim.  Don’t know why I thought she would, given that she lives on a tropical island, and the water is bathwater warm.

They are a bit wonky like me, which is why I like my Jamaican friends.  They come up here to the land of ice and snow, leaving their families for months.  They generally work 2 jobs, the primary being housecleaning in the resort town Stowe, just south of where I live.  Then, they pick up extra work either doing more house keeping.  When I first met them, they lived in this grubby little hotel room that the employer had arranged for them.  Luckily this last year they got a small Condo to live in.  However, they still have to pay high rent prices.

Reguardless of the hardships and the time away from their home, they don’t complain and choose to look at the glass half full, rather then half empty.

So Go Jamaica Go.  Go Usain Bolt.  Pauline and Mazie, the weather is getting colder and I guess I will see you soon.

Shearing

We actually got a few days without steady rain, although occasional showers over the weekend, so the sheep were locked in the barn off and on to keep them dry. Yesterday was hot and sunny. We were able to shear.

Tiny isn’t so Tiny, it seems that she is pregnant again. The vet said that she should be able to deliver without issue. I am hoping that she is carrying a single and not twins though. I am always amazed at how black she really is.

Madame Wu is a beautiful silver gray. She is much lighter this year then last. She generally has the best fleece of any of the sheep in the flock because of the staple length and variation in the fleece. This year between shearings, she delivered two sets of twins. One set in September and one set in April. Then the rain has been really brutal. I am a bit afraid of looking but the tips seem cotted. UGH. Poor Becky, she reserved this fleece month ago. I will be working on skirting the fleeces later today.

This is Madame Wu in September 2007

She is a badger pattern, black sheep. Go figure. I think that she is gray. Funny how her fleece looks light brown on the tips, but it is gray of varying shades throughout.

The funny thing about the fleeces this year has been that they are all much lighter then last year. Wu’s fleece last year was about 14 pounds. This year it was 9. All of the fleeces are about 2 pounds lighter then last years. I don’t know if it is the lanolin content or not.

Craig Marcotte is my shearer. He does an excellent job on the merinos and shears for hand spinning fleeces. Very few second cuts and the fleeces stay together. Craig said that all of the flocks he has seen this year are in the same shape. Poor. As for weight changes, he doesn’t have a theory.

You need 50 pounds of raw fleece to make a run of yarn. With the fleeces that have already been spoken for, I am not sure I will make the minimum. There are several mini mills that I could use, but I am a bit leery as the micron is fine, and not all mini mills have experience with the fine wool. Too much is at risk so I might process the remaining fleeces myself, but the idea of hand combing 30 lbs of wool is overwhelming.

I will know more after I take a good look at them later today. The best part of shearing is seeing the condition of the sheep without the wool. They all look pretty good except for Hoot, she is a little wonky, but throws a 17 micron. She has grace because of that.