Life is still centered around the garden. It's hot, in the 80s and 90s, but cool at night.
The tomatoes are slowly ripening. I do enjoy picking something that turns bright red when it's ready. Makes a nice change from rummaging among green leaves to find green beans or peas. We have several big bowls of lovely ripe ones we need to do something with today. I think C. plans to cook them down to make sauce. I'm lobbying for catsup, and salsa, too. So much better than store-bought.
We've been saving our pennies, and bought a fancy-ass bright-red HUGE food processor to replace the old Cuisinart. It's magnificent. It's squatting, glowing red, on the counter. It's a Breville Sous Chef, which sounds pretty cool (though not as cool as the Robot Coupe, another brand). I've promised to never use it, so it should last a long time.
I hate those things (C. loves them). C. has five or more small ones, most bought second-hand. They've all got discs and stems and bowls, all in different sizes, and are all such plastic crap. I hate the way they all open and close and lock and work in counter-intuitive ways. I get frustrated and come close to breaking the damn thing every time I use one. Give me a knife and a cutting board, please.
But when it's time to thin-slice basketball-sized cabbages for the 10-gallon crock, I can see the advantage.
C. is thrilled.
The house was messy, so I decided to organize the books. That's how I roll. So now the messy house has stacks of books everywhere. I've been working on it for a couple of weeks. Most of our books were just plunked on random shelves when we moved, and it's been hard to find anything – especially anything in the boxes of books that were never unpacked! I tacked together a shelf for paperbacks, but will probably need to build one or two more. And the book sale is next weekend...
I'm off to feed the chickens. C. is preparing to slice some vegetables.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Sheep, sheared!
And I can almost say I did it myself.
C. is the fiber person, and she's always done the shearing. She thinks I'm insufficiently careful with both sheep and fleece. But she's busy with the garden, so I decide to step up.
I bait the triangular catch pen, in the pasture, with grain, and manage to catch Bambers.
I know professional shearers plop the sheep onto her butt and hold her upright, and take 10 minutes to peel that fleece right off – like mamma whipping off baby's jammies. I'm not up to that. I put the halter on her and tie it up tight, then sit on a stool next to her and start clipping at the neck. She hops and fusses. I try all four pairs of sharpened hand shears, and one is... okay. Not great. I think it might be hand strength that is the problem. Or the angle of the blades. I eventually go to the scissors, and manage to get the top of her neck down to the middle of her back. Like a reverse mullet. Or a crew cut that slid off the head onto the neck. I leave it for the day, and she gets the hell out of there. Yes, her haircut is tragic – but she is a little cooler, and it is a start.
Next day, I catch her again, and manage to shear her back and sides on down to the top of her tail before we both get tired. Now her haircut makes her butt look big. Heaven knows what the neighbors think.
Shearing is hard on the back, so I rest a couple of days and get back to it. I try the same grain game, but everyone is a whole lot more suspicious. Every time I get one in the pen and the gate nearly closed, she plows past me to freedom. Damn sheep.
They hadn't knocked me down (yet), but I am hot and frustrated. I need help. I find C. in the garden. She is in garden mode, though, not sheep mode, and was not enthusiastic. She has important garden stuff to do. I am hot, frustrated and convinced that one of the sheep needs to be sheared now. It's possible that one of us is being unreasonable.
Peevishly, she joins me at the big gate from garden to pasture. Peevishly, I bring a bucket of oats and the sheep halter. I step through the gate, the goats mob me, and yellow jackets fly out of the pipe next to the gate and sting me. And C. refuses come through the gate to help because of the hornets. Bloody hell.
OK. Plan B. I'll catch a damn sheep in the halter somehow, take her through the hornet gate, and C. will lead her through the garden and out the other gate to the shearing area (my cane and I are not steady enough to lead her any distance.) OK? OK. (Pity it doesn't occur to me to withdraw gracefully, lure the sheep back over to the shearing area and catch them there on my own. Duh.)
So I dump several little piles of oats to distract the goats, make a lasso of the harness and lay it along the top of the grain bucket. The greedy sheep push their heads into the bucket, I pull the loop tight, and I have two. OK, that's a problem. I manage to release one, and keep the other, just in time because here come the goats after the bucket. I pull Tricks the sheep, my intended victim, over to the gate, staying well away from the hornet nest in the pipe. C. opens the gate for me and I hand off the sheep, who drags C. away into the delicious wonders of the garden. I'm closing the gate, wary of hornets, and the other sheep plows right through me into the garden. In the pasture, the goats are fighting over the grain bucket, and one manages to get his horns and head through the handle. Now he's wearing the bucket around his neck, dancing to keep his brother out of the grain. In the garden, C. loses hold of the halter.
We have two sheep loose in the garden, one with a noose around her neck, and a goat stuck in a bucket. It is not our finest farming moment.
The sheep are skittish, we manage to herd them back into the pasture, and the goats are too distracted by the bucket of grain around the little guy's neck to rush the gate. I grab him and somehow wrestle his head and horns out of the bucket handle.
I withdraw to sulk and plot my revenge. C. returns to her gardening. Her hand is hurt from the sheep ripping the halter away.
A few days later, I have a cunning plan. I draft C.to help me move the triangular catch pen into the barn. I lure the three sheep into the barn pen, and shut the goats, and alpaca out. In a confined area, it's pretty easy to get a sheep into the triangular pen, where I sit and shear for a few hours. I'm nearly done when I cut poor Bambi on the thigh. And I had been doing so well. Sheep skin is so thin and delicate, it's easy to do. I lose confidence. C. kindly comes over and finishes for me. We dab that purple wound stuff on her to keep the flies off.
Done!
Yes, I sheared the sheep all by myself this year.
C. is the fiber person, and she's always done the shearing. She thinks I'm insufficiently careful with both sheep and fleece. But she's busy with the garden, so I decide to step up.
I bait the triangular catch pen, in the pasture, with grain, and manage to catch Bambers.
I know professional shearers plop the sheep onto her butt and hold her upright, and take 10 minutes to peel that fleece right off – like mamma whipping off baby's jammies. I'm not up to that. I put the halter on her and tie it up tight, then sit on a stool next to her and start clipping at the neck. She hops and fusses. I try all four pairs of sharpened hand shears, and one is... okay. Not great. I think it might be hand strength that is the problem. Or the angle of the blades. I eventually go to the scissors, and manage to get the top of her neck down to the middle of her back. Like a reverse mullet. Or a crew cut that slid off the head onto the neck. I leave it for the day, and she gets the hell out of there. Yes, her haircut is tragic – but she is a little cooler, and it is a start.
Next day, I catch her again, and manage to shear her back and sides on down to the top of her tail before we both get tired. Now her haircut makes her butt look big. Heaven knows what the neighbors think.
Shearing is hard on the back, so I rest a couple of days and get back to it. I try the same grain game, but everyone is a whole lot more suspicious. Every time I get one in the pen and the gate nearly closed, she plows past me to freedom. Damn sheep.
They hadn't knocked me down (yet), but I am hot and frustrated. I need help. I find C. in the garden. She is in garden mode, though, not sheep mode, and was not enthusiastic. She has important garden stuff to do. I am hot, frustrated and convinced that one of the sheep needs to be sheared now. It's possible that one of us is being unreasonable.
Peevishly, she joins me at the big gate from garden to pasture. Peevishly, I bring a bucket of oats and the sheep halter. I step through the gate, the goats mob me, and yellow jackets fly out of the pipe next to the gate and sting me. And C. refuses come through the gate to help because of the hornets. Bloody hell.
OK. Plan B. I'll catch a damn sheep in the halter somehow, take her through the hornet gate, and C. will lead her through the garden and out the other gate to the shearing area (my cane and I are not steady enough to lead her any distance.) OK? OK. (Pity it doesn't occur to me to withdraw gracefully, lure the sheep back over to the shearing area and catch them there on my own. Duh.)
So I dump several little piles of oats to distract the goats, make a lasso of the harness and lay it along the top of the grain bucket. The greedy sheep push their heads into the bucket, I pull the loop tight, and I have two. OK, that's a problem. I manage to release one, and keep the other, just in time because here come the goats after the bucket. I pull Tricks the sheep, my intended victim, over to the gate, staying well away from the hornet nest in the pipe. C. opens the gate for me and I hand off the sheep, who drags C. away into the delicious wonders of the garden. I'm closing the gate, wary of hornets, and the other sheep plows right through me into the garden. In the pasture, the goats are fighting over the grain bucket, and one manages to get his horns and head through the handle. Now he's wearing the bucket around his neck, dancing to keep his brother out of the grain. In the garden, C. loses hold of the halter.
We have two sheep loose in the garden, one with a noose around her neck, and a goat stuck in a bucket. It is not our finest farming moment.
The sheep are skittish, we manage to herd them back into the pasture, and the goats are too distracted by the bucket of grain around the little guy's neck to rush the gate. I grab him and somehow wrestle his head and horns out of the bucket handle.
I withdraw to sulk and plot my revenge. C. returns to her gardening. Her hand is hurt from the sheep ripping the halter away.
A few days later, I have a cunning plan. I draft C.to help me move the triangular catch pen into the barn. I lure the three sheep into the barn pen, and shut the goats, and alpaca out. In a confined area, it's pretty easy to get a sheep into the triangular pen, where I sit and shear for a few hours. I'm nearly done when I cut poor Bambi on the thigh. And I had been doing so well. Sheep skin is so thin and delicate, it's easy to do. I lose confidence. C. kindly comes over and finishes for me. We dab that purple wound stuff on her to keep the flies off.
Done!
Yes, I sheared the sheep all by myself this year.
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Weather change
And it's huge. The smoke from Canadian and Montana wildfires is gone. It's cooler, especially at night. Makes me think about getting wood.
My friend Darrell always said that August 17 is when the hot summer weather changes. I'd forgotten that, sure that hot July would go into hot August, and it would be hot forever. Silly.
It's so cool at night I quit opening the windows, and added another blanket to the recliner where I sleep.
It's wonderful, even though the fields are yellow and crispy and dry. We even got a little rain. Now there's blue skies and some beautiful wispy clouds, instead of the dingy white smoke that turned the sun and moon red for the last month. We had a record 15 consecutive days of over-90 temperatures (breaking a record set in 1894). I hear that the fires continue and the smoke will be back, but maybe lighter this time.
The garden is stressed, but surviving. Yesterday I mixed up a lime solution and poured it on the roots of the row of tomato plants with blossom end rot. I picked all the affected tomatoes so the plants wouldn't waste energy trying to ripen them. Not every plant has it, and not every tomato on each affected plant has it, so we're hopeful.
C. is out in the hall picking out "Shenandoah" on the pump organ. I forgot to mention we have a pump – or rather – a reed organ! It's an oaken beauty from the 1890s, and the kids got it for us at an estate sale. Our favorite estate-sale people gave them a great deal on it. C. has been wanting a piano since we sold ours 20 years ago. This isn't a piano, but it's pretty dang cool.
KC, our handsome grandson, came up to try it out. It's worth having just so we see more of him. He's had no musical education, but is very musical, and can play just about any instrument he picks up. We're all jealous.
In other news, the sheep are sheared. Seven eggs today.
My friend Darrell always said that August 17 is when the hot summer weather changes. I'd forgotten that, sure that hot July would go into hot August, and it would be hot forever. Silly.
It's so cool at night I quit opening the windows, and added another blanket to the recliner where I sleep.
It's wonderful, even though the fields are yellow and crispy and dry. We even got a little rain. Now there's blue skies and some beautiful wispy clouds, instead of the dingy white smoke that turned the sun and moon red for the last month. We had a record 15 consecutive days of over-90 temperatures (breaking a record set in 1894). I hear that the fires continue and the smoke will be back, but maybe lighter this time.
The garden is stressed, but surviving. Yesterday I mixed up a lime solution and poured it on the roots of the row of tomato plants with blossom end rot. I picked all the affected tomatoes so the plants wouldn't waste energy trying to ripen them. Not every plant has it, and not every tomato on each affected plant has it, so we're hopeful.
C. is out in the hall picking out "Shenandoah" on the pump organ. I forgot to mention we have a pump – or rather – a reed organ! It's an oaken beauty from the 1890s, and the kids got it for us at an estate sale. Our favorite estate-sale people gave them a great deal on it. C. has been wanting a piano since we sold ours 20 years ago. This isn't a piano, but it's pretty dang cool.
KC, our handsome grandson, came up to try it out. It's worth having just so we see more of him. He's had no musical education, but is very musical, and can play just about any instrument he picks up. We're all jealous.
In other news, the sheep are sheared. Seven eggs today.
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Hot, hot, hot
As the Cure sings. It's been over 90 every day for weeks. Bloody tedious.
We've been to a book sale, though, so there is plenteous reading material.
We work to keep everything watered, but there are yellow leaves on many plants. And we've got blossom-end rot on some tomatoes down at the bottom of the garden. I've been researching a solution – a guy on YouTube recommends dissolving a Tums antacid in a spray bottle, and squirting the foliage. Other folks dissolve a couple of handfuls of garden lime in water, and pour it on the roots. I guess the problem is that the plant can't make use of calcium because of heat, uneven watering or an actual calcium deficiency. So you apply calcium in an easy-to-access form, and sometimes it clears up. We'll try that tomorrow.
The peas and beans are still producing, but they have slowed down. We've had a few ripe tomatoes. Stupeechka was the first, as usual, around July 29. Since then, we've had some big Prudence Purples, a few Opalkas and some cherry types.
The guineas, who have been allowed out after sunset, have unfortunately discovered the orange and red tomatoes, and are pecking chunks out of them. I'm working on getting the birds all in at night and keeping them inside, but there are a half dozen that refuse to go into the chicken house and instead sleep in the pine tree out front. And every time I herd one over and open the gate to let it in, another one or two will get out. I wave my cane around, and toss grain on the far side of the chicken yard, and still fail to get everyone locked up. I'm tempted to wear a bowler hat and little mustache, get video of this, turn it to black-and-white, and speed it up. It'd be real cute.
I guess I need to buy some more chicken wire and cordon off the tomatoes.
And while I'm whining, I'll mention that, for the first time in two years, the goats have gotten into the garden, the little bastards. They pushed the gate – a 6-foot chunk of heavy cattle panel – off to the side and squeezed their pudgy, horned selves through. We fixed the gate, but they so enjoyed the raspberries and amaranth they figured out a way to jump between the top of the fencing and the wire above, after loosening the fencing by rubbing their big old goat butts on it. So I ran bright yellow binder twine from the posts, around the three wires and through the fencing mesh in big "v" shapes to hold it all tightly together. It looks a bit sad, but has kept them out. I think I'll move all the cattle panels we own to the garden perimeter when we get another pasture fenced this fall. We cannot have goats in the garden.
A weather change is finally coming – there's a 20 percent chance of a thunderstorm tomorrow, and then highs of 80 forecast for the next week. It'll be a relief.
Five eggs today.
We've been to a book sale, though, so there is plenteous reading material.
We work to keep everything watered, but there are yellow leaves on many plants. And we've got blossom-end rot on some tomatoes down at the bottom of the garden. I've been researching a solution – a guy on YouTube recommends dissolving a Tums antacid in a spray bottle, and squirting the foliage. Other folks dissolve a couple of handfuls of garden lime in water, and pour it on the roots. I guess the problem is that the plant can't make use of calcium because of heat, uneven watering or an actual calcium deficiency. So you apply calcium in an easy-to-access form, and sometimes it clears up. We'll try that tomorrow.
The peas and beans are still producing, but they have slowed down. We've had a few ripe tomatoes. Stupeechka was the first, as usual, around July 29. Since then, we've had some big Prudence Purples, a few Opalkas and some cherry types.
The guineas, who have been allowed out after sunset, have unfortunately discovered the orange and red tomatoes, and are pecking chunks out of them. I'm working on getting the birds all in at night and keeping them inside, but there are a half dozen that refuse to go into the chicken house and instead sleep in the pine tree out front. And every time I herd one over and open the gate to let it in, another one or two will get out. I wave my cane around, and toss grain on the far side of the chicken yard, and still fail to get everyone locked up. I'm tempted to wear a bowler hat and little mustache, get video of this, turn it to black-and-white, and speed it up. It'd be real cute.
I guess I need to buy some more chicken wire and cordon off the tomatoes.
And while I'm whining, I'll mention that, for the first time in two years, the goats have gotten into the garden, the little bastards. They pushed the gate – a 6-foot chunk of heavy cattle panel – off to the side and squeezed their pudgy, horned selves through. We fixed the gate, but they so enjoyed the raspberries and amaranth they figured out a way to jump between the top of the fencing and the wire above, after loosening the fencing by rubbing their big old goat butts on it. So I ran bright yellow binder twine from the posts, around the three wires and through the fencing mesh in big "v" shapes to hold it all tightly together. It looks a bit sad, but has kept them out. I think I'll move all the cattle panels we own to the garden perimeter when we get another pasture fenced this fall. We cannot have goats in the garden.
A weather change is finally coming – there's a 20 percent chance of a thunderstorm tomorrow, and then highs of 80 forecast for the next week. It'll be a relief.
Five eggs today.
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