The Thrifty Knitter

Bridgette was attacked by a German shepherd yesterday. I had just gone inside to call the city because I had seen the dog on my property and had just chased it off. The chickens were in their pen, but it charged the pen and the chickens flew to get away and some of them ended up flying out of the pen. This was the site of the first attack, where the dog took off part of her tail (and all of her tail feathers). She got away briefly and it caught her again and chomped her across her back, where she has puncture wounds.

She’s alive but mauled and limping, but I’m really cheering for her to pull through. She’s just so pathetic looking, I didn’t have the heart to take her picture, but maybe I will today. It’s a little gruesome. I kept her in a little hospital box last night in the basement with a fan because it was so hot outside yesterday (this happened at around 11 am). Ed helped me examine her and spray her down with Septi-Cleanse.

She ate and drank last night and this morning, and this morning, she laid an egg, which I took as a very good sign. She didn’t lay yesterday, so I was worried she could have a crushed egg stuck in her. If she lays another egg tomorrow, I think that will be an extra positive sign. I also talked to Jenny (who is also Ed’s daughter-in-law and a vet). She recommended I clean her up again and said if she seemed to be doing better and the other chickens don’t pick on her, I could put her out and keep an eye on her wounds. They’re social animals, so they really do better with their flock.

This morning I gave her a little bath and cleaned her up and sprayed her wounds again (which is pretty much her whole raw back, under her wing, and tail) and let her join the girls outside.

Faith and Buffy started to pick on her a little bit, so I separated her and was going to make her her own separate pen, but she really seemed to want to get in with the others.

When I let her in, everyone left her alone, and she got into the nest box with great difficulty (I eventually just had to pick her up and put her in there, because she kept missing the side and getting stuck between the perch and the box) and was hanging out there. I guess it’s a safe place to recover, because you can just act like a broody hen and plant yourself there without too much trouble (no way to really be chased, and you can peck at anyone trying to bother you).

I bunched a lot of bedding hay up around the box so she’ll be able to just climb in and out instead of hopping too far, and I’m going to keep checking on her today to make sure she doesn’t come under attack.

My other concern is for the sheep–if a dog like that took to chasing them in this heat, it could kill them without even coming into contact with them. I put up a sign in the store & hopefully the owner will see it and realize that the friendly family dog just can’t be let out to roam. It wasn’t at all shy of people–it didn’t drop Bridgette and run off until I was just feet from it, though I was running at it and screaming from 50 yards away–and even then, it just ran off a safe distance until it realized we weren’t going anywhere and got bored of waiting around. It didn’t strike me as a vicious animal, and I’m sure it’s a sweet animal at home. But aside from the danger to livestock a big dog like that poses just by “playing,” I’d also be worried about it mauling a toddler or little kid without even meaning any harm. I personally have two close friends who were mauled by other people’s friendly family dogs of the German shepherd persuasion when they were little kids. I can also add that my family had German shepherds when I was very wee (newborn to 7 or 8), and they were wonderful, patient animals–at home.

The problem is that a big dog, no matter how friendly at home, is a menace on the loose. And when it’s after your animals, it may as well be a wild predator, and any farmer’s going to shoot it. So you’re not only endangering other people and animals by letting your dog run free, you’re endangering the dog itself. I love dogs, but dude. If some dog makes a habit of killing my animals, it may as well be a coyote or a raccoon.

I’m trying to be understanding, and the last thing I want to do is shoot a family dog with a shotgun, so I got a paintball gun last night. I figure that should scare/lightly hurt them and also mark them (if I can get any good at shooting the thing). Hopefully the owner will do the right thing and this won’t be a recurring problem (and Bridgette will recover) and I’ll be able to leave it at that. In any event, we’re making progress on the perimeter fence and hopefully we’ll be all squared away in the next month or so and I can go back to seeing dogs as a non-threat.

Last night, I mowed under the electric fence so the charge is back up, and I made the chickens a temporary internal enclosure with cattle panels lined with chicken wire and connected with these, which are just brilliant. Now there’s an extra buffer between them & their fence should the dog return.

It’s been exceedingly hot and humid the last few days, and I’ve accomplished almost nothing after 11am. This morning, John from Sunflower Journeys came out and filmed me spinning in front of the school–it was already 90, but there was a breeze and some shade, still. He’s from Kenya and thinks he heat here is awful. Where he’s from, it’s a dry heat and an ocean breeze that makes it much more comfortable. (So now I get to say it’s hotter than Africa here! It’s still way better than Texas, though. But at least there, there’s AC everywhere.)

By the time he left, the sun was overhead and it was heating up. Once that happens, all I do is hold still and stay in the path of the fan. It was 99 today and 97 yesterday, neither of which would be in the horror range without the 90% humidity we’ve been blessed with.

All the poor animals feel the same way, apparently. They just sit in the shade and pant. Fudgy shows her handsome teeth when she pants.

The Shetlands are a little more stoic than the Merinos and Romneys, although their fleeces are just as long or longer (maybe not as dense, though?).

Mister Shivers’ yearling fleece is looking nothing like his lamb fleece! The gray is much darker, and so far, there’s no sign of the chocolate brown of his tips last year:

Here’s a bit of his fleece from last year, washed. The tips are chocolate, the middles about the same color he is now, and the base (closest to shearing) a pale heathered gray. A very strange fleece, indeed. But apparently the lamb fleece can be something of a mystery. I guess it’s like baby hair. I had light brown hair until I was 8 or 9, when it got really dark. Now it’s almost black.

Mostly because I want to be a good mama, but also to avoid stressing their fleece, I’m trying to minimize their exposure during our little heat wave, which apparently is set to continue through the end of the week. I set up a couple of fans in the little barn, and we put up a big shadecloth awning across the strip of the barnyard and over their water to keep it cool. Ever the neurotic mama, I check on them 10 times a day. At one point I peeked in and Fudgy was pressing her face against the fan.

They graze in the morning, before it swelters, spend most of the day in the barn, drift under their awning in the afternoon when the sunny spot betwen the barn door and the awning finally shifts, and then head out for supper around 6 or 7, when the shadow of the building finally gives them a little cover in the pasture.

I should go ahead and buy an AC. It’s the only sure way to put an end to the heat wave. And lucky me, I get to work outside all day tomorrow. Yay.

Ron & I have taken to making Ronnie faces all the time:

And I’ll leave you with an itchy Agnes:

Ta da!

The wonderful Dr. Dallas Caster came out yesterday to wether my ram lambs. He keeps Nubians himself, so he’s the go-to guy for everyone around here with goats or sheep. He wethered both boys, gave the lambs their CD/T boosters, and checked/trimmed/re-trimmed (my timid trials) the grown ups’ hooves lickety-split.

The wethering was easy peasy. He went with the elastrator, which works exactly the same as on the tails. It’s a tight little rubber band that is applied using a special pliers. The pliers with 4 special prongs stretches the band wide open. The empty scrotum is pulled through slack, then each testicle is shifted through the band and back down into the scrotum. Then the elastrator is closed so the band closed down around the top of the scrotum like a little drawstring pouch, and you check one last time to make sure both of the balls are int their little purse, then the band is rolled off the elastrator’s prongs, and the lamb is released without any fuss. If it bothers them at all, they show no sign of it. Hokey Pokey took all of 30 seconds to band. And Jayne, whose right testicle kept wandering away before it made it through the band, still only took a few minutes.

Like the tails, their little furry nutsacks will wither and fall off in 3-4 weeks, no fuss, no muss! Yay!

Mr. Shivers has a little Rob Courdry hairdo working right now. So far, he’s coat is heather gray, no sign yet of chocolate tips like last year.

Fudgy’s got kind of a high and tight going. By the end of the winter, she’ll have a luxurious afro. I love the little white spot on her nose.

I shoveled 10 heaping large wheelbarrows’ worth of old straw, hay & sheep poop out of the barn on Tuesday. I let it air out yesterday as best I could (the sheep wouldn’t stay out because it was so hot & shade’s scarce) before rebedding. But no one has straw right now, so I was stuck using old hay I got as a consolation prize from my straw lady. It’s all seeds and fine stems, so I’m really bummed it’s going to work itself into everyone’s fleeces and my careful blanketing will be for naught.

My blisters. I’m unaccustomed to shoveling muck.

Yesterday, I also worked with Ed a little on the fence, and today we’ve got another hot day of fencing ahead of us, although it looks like the high has been downgraded a few degrees. We’ll be Kansas-hot, not Texas-hot, thankfully. I suffer the winters here so I won’t have to suffer those Texas summers, so I’m especially whiny when Kansas goes all Texas on us in the summer. Last summer, we got a nice, lovely mild Kansas summer, and I’m hoping for another this year. (The summer before, Kansas got all pissy and made a Texas summer, which was crippling with no AC. I was on vacation for the very worst of it, but I still got a couple weeks of 100+, something I thought I’d opted out of when I moved.)

Found this in Marybeth’s photostream. This is such an amazing idea! I wish I had thought of something like this when I lived in Austin, because I had a sea of rosemary & oregano in my front yard. It would be a marvelous, cheap way to landscape a culdesac or any weird little patch of semi-public ground, especially if it gets plenty of walking traffic and you lived somewhere rosemary’s hardy and all other herbs are rampant perennials (Texas, for example). Brilliant!

Kind of makes me want to make a little bed in the park adjacent to our place… I wonder if it would get used?

The vet’s coming out on Tuesday to wether the boys! I won’t know until then what method he’ll use. I probably should have seen to this earlier, but it’s been a very busy couple of months. I’m going to have him help me with the adult hooves if I haven’t yet tackled them all (I only got two feet in with Agnes the other day before I got wounded; and last night, we left early to go see The Hangover, so I didn’t have time to try again).

The whole gang, including Jayne, is finally dressed for success! The twins went up a suit size today. Both they and Jayne were in between sizes, so I just put a quick seam up the back of the next biggest size, and when they outgrow them, I’ll just need to snip out the back stitching and zip out the bobbin thread and voila! They’ll be ready to go, already dressed in the next size up!

The twins are modeling tailored (“tailored” here = that loose fold you see flopped over on the top of Hokey Pokey) size C sheep suits, the size Mr. Shivers is wearing (he’ll probably need the next size up in the next month, because his fleece is growing quickly). Jayne is already way too big for a size C, but too small for the E (I don’t have any Ds), so he’s wearing a tailored E, the same size Agnes will soon outgrow.

After shearing next year, I’m going to wash all the sheep suits and have them screenprinted with something cute. Maybe I’ll make up a Cupcake Ranch logo….

I was all fretful about my hay not getting cut in good time, but as usual, I think I was really worrying over nothing. It should all work out just fine. I haven’t really seen any hay everywhere else being cut yet this year, so we can’t be too far behind (and after all, the folks who hay for me take their payment in hay, so it’s not in their best interest to let it get past its prime); and besides, this will give me a couple of extra days to get my hayport made. The hayport will basically be a couple of posts with cattle panels bent over and a tarp over the whole thing, but unlike my awkward weighted tarp-and-pallets arrangement of last year, this will be a more or less permanent arrangement (the less part being the fact that the tarp will probably  need replacing every  couple years), and won’t be a horrible pain in the ass for me to get to the hay on a windy day, and the tarp won’t be able to flap around mightily, then wear out prematurely and let in rain and snow and spoil my hay. I may even have enough room under there for the dead freezer I was planning to use for grain.

The original plan was to keep the dead freezer in the barn on cement pavers (the freezer box would keep the grain dry and the sheep and mice out of it–but it still can’t be out in the elements, or it will fill up with water), but that was when I had 4 sheep instead of 7. Now they’ll pretty much need the whole little barn–although it’s still perfectly ample for them–they don’t seem to mind being cozy, even in the heat. And really, I’d feel much safer knowing the freezer is away from the  sheep entirely. While they’re not rocket scientists, I’m not 100% certain they wouldn’t find a way in, and if they did, they’d just eat grain until they died (unlike dogs, sheep don’t really know when to quit, apparently).

Rachel has like seven intriguing projects on the needles, and I’ve got knitting envy. I’ve been so occupied with workshops & the animals that I haven’t knit anything besides that one little baby vest in forever. The sweater I’ve had on the needles for Ron since winter is totally boring me. I’m thinking of starting my Wildcat Hollow cardigan, which should be a relatively mindless but still fun knit.

Here’s the handspun, made from Alpacas of Wildcat Hollow 100% alpaca roving. I’m either doing a gradation yoke (the original plan), or I may alternate reverse stockinette stripes of each of the marls with a solid stripe of knitting (which I’m leaning toward now).

And I also want to spin up a bunch of crazy yarn for the Spinsters Club Farmers’ Market booth next weekend. And I need to finish my pegboard display for that and make some Spin Sacks. But first, I’m WAY behind on a million other things. To the batcave!

I took a shower and put on my Y’all Suck skirt and Rachel & Chris arrived, and although I had a little accident trying to trim Agnes’ hooves (I only made it through two before I was bleeding, so I gave up until tomorrow), I was reminded of who I am (someone who loves friends and visitors and life in general–wow, that sounds either pretentious or deluded! but it’s true!) and who I’m not (a chronically crabby mopey malcontent who only wants to wallow and complain about everything instead of actually fixing it–at least, not for long), and now I feel utterly happy and lucky and grateful again. Yay! Funny how seeing a friendly face just perks you right up. Plus, they brought a big box of kolaches from the Czech Stop. Double yay!

And the watermelon margaritas were delicious!

My goal for June is no personal spending, which also includes no rationalizing personal spending as business spending and a eat-the-freezer/pantry challenge for good measure. The freezer/pantry thing shouldn’t be too challenging because our freezer is absurdly well stocked (the bigger challenge is going to be as FIFO as possible about it), and we’re CSA members, so we’re guaranteed fresh veggies every week. We got this on Tuesday.

The radishes got munched before they made it into the salad, and the turnips, along with last week’s turnips, red potatoes, and some ancient parsnips and carrots lurking in the fridge, plus this the Egyptian onions from the last two weeks and last week’s greens, made it into an amazing roasted vegetable and homemade sausage (freezer; last November) pot.

We sliced up these bulblets and a big bunch of garlic scapes from our neighbor and tossed them in at the end. Marvelous!

I’ve also got lots of Felt School leftovers: lasagna, enchiladas, macaroni and cheese, and quiche. Luckily, we’ve got a commercial fridge, which means everything keeps a zillion times longer than in a residential fridge (just as stuff in the deep freeze keeps a zillion times longer than the fridge freezer, fyi if you’re considering a deep freeze), and lots of guests coming this weekend, so we’ll gobble up everything in the next couple of days.

I’ve been doing a little sheep maintenance over the last couple of days.

On Tuesday, reminded by the latest Geek Farm Life podcast, I wormed everyone. All of their eyelids were less than red, and some were rather pale, so I figured, better safe than sorry. While it’s not unusual for all sheep to have some level of internal parasites, a particularly heavy load can rob an animal of all its nutrition, and it’s not at all uncommon for lambs to die from worms. The problem with worming is that it’s very easy to cultivate resistant strains, so you don’t want to over worm. Ideally, you worm only the animals that need it, but without a lab and without running around catching fecal samples from each animal, it’s not practical for the hobby farmer to test each critter for worm load. But inner eyelid color has apparently proven to be a very reliable guideline. It’s not foolproof, because anemia can be caused by things other than worms, but you can fairly reliably estimate the worm load your animal is carrying by the color if its lower inner eyelid. The higher the worm load, the more anemic the animal will be, and the paler the inner lid. It’s called the FAMACHA system. Here are some charts you use to score the animals (I want a real life one myself, so I could get a more accurate sense of the colors I want to see):

While internet color is a little subjective, I did check the eyelids a handful of times over the course of a week or so, and noticed that they all became paler, so I thought an all-around dose was in order. Tina had recommended worming at weaning, typically around 2 months, so it seem right on time all around.

The lambs are still sneaking in for an occasional hit-and-run off their moms, but for the most part, they’re eating grass and grain, and Agnes and Fudgy are becoming increasingly intolerant of more than a few seconds of nursing. In fact, when the twins nurse off Agnes (which they always seem to do together), the force of the two of them punching her udder will send her back end flying a few inches off the ground. I don’t really want to bother with some elaborate separation system for just three lambs, so I’m really slowly phasing out their morning grain (both by reducing the overall volume, and by letting the lambs eat with them, so they wolf down an increasingly larger share as they grow), and hoping nature will run its course.

I called the county extension & they told me to separate the lambs completely and to gradually bring up their grain to 4-5# each (!), which seems madly excessive to me, considering they’re on nice pasture, and the adults get less than a pound a day. But then, I know fuckall about raising lambs. But I wonder if the instructions are different for market lambs. Great big Suffolk meat sheep are the dominant sheep around here.

Yesterday I trimmed the lambs’ hooves, which were kind of thin and papery (not the main hooves; just the excess stuff), presumably because it’s their first trim. I don’t think I went down as far as I could have, but their foot pads aren’t as pronounced as on the adult sheep, so I figured I’d rather endure the hassle again in a month or so than go overboard and hurt them and condition them to hate getting a trim–not to mention that the barnyard is wet and mucky from all the rain we’ve gotten lately.

Tonight I’m going to work on the adult sheep, probably just one animal each night until they’re all done, unless it’s somehow easy peasy lemon squeezy. They’ll pretty much put up with anything while they’re eating grain, but they don’t get too much and they’re pigs, so that’s a pretty narrow window of molestation, particularly for Fudgy and Agnes, so are too big for me to sit on their butts. Not too big, period–I’m just not deft enough to swing yet it on the bigger sheep. The boys are small (smaller than Jayne now!), so they’re not a problem.

I also need to get a jacket on Jayne. He’s already too big for the Size C jackets the Shetlands wear, but too small for the E Tina gave me. Or, he was last week, anyway. I’ll going to try the E on him again tonight at dinner and if it’s still too big, make a quick seam down the spine so his pretty, crimpy little coat doesn’t get all piggy. I’ve peeked under everyone else’s coats and their fleeces look wonderful so far! The twins are probably ready to go up a size as well, which means taking in the two Cs Tina gave me (they’re in As right now).

My next project is a hay cover, and I need to put a wiggle in it, as it’s almost time to hay. Speaking of which, I’m a little skeptical about the work going on on the water tower behind my property right now. They’re cleaning and painting the thing, and I’m worried they’re going to contaminate my grass. I think I’m going to hike back there right now and see what they’re using.

Paint. So those big clouds of vapor are paint vapor from them painting, not water vapor from them cleaning. Nice.

Also, I’m worried they’ve waited too long to hay my pasture and it’s going to be shit hay. And there’s rain in the forecast like every other day for the next week, so by the time it’s baled, I’m sure it will be nothing but stems. Also I wish I could pause time to get a week to catch up. I looked at my calendar and I’ve had guests 10 of the last 11 weekends and the farmers’ market the other weekend. And guests this weekend and farmers’ market the next and a guest the next. I’m in an endless loop of making beds and doing laundry and cooking and doing dishes. This is what it must be like to be a grandma.

And I ripped my favorite vintage house dress. And I look like a fishwife. And I don’t have any clean clothes because there are always sheets and towels in the washer. And my hay bale broccoli was a failure. And I’m broke. And the size of my ass somehow varies inversely with the balance of my checking account. And I’m two weeks behind on Art Club. And my hair is in a weird awkward phase.  And Marilyn and Kevin are talking about moving to Wichita, boo! And my desk is a mess. And I’m dehydrated. And the rest of my office is a mess, too. And my high from Felt School has worn off (it was super fun, though!), and I’m out of beer, and it’s too hot for wine, and I’ve still got the property line dispute with my neighbor hanging over my head, and Ed wants to put in fence posts tomorrow but I don’t know if I can get caught up tonight, and Ron went and saw Land of the Lost without me, and my toenails are a disgrace, and I can’t seem to focus and I’m feeling really Big Picture-y but I’m so far behind on the little picture that I can’t stop to blue sky.

Hm. None of that really seems too awfully, awfully bad, now that I stop and say it all. Okay, I feel a little better now. I’d feel a lot better with a margarita. When Rachel and whatshisname get here, I think I’ll make them drive me to that crappy Mexican restaurant in Osage for a margarita. I’m a genius. Except that doesn’t fit in with my austerity plan, boo. Maybe instead I’ll make watermelon margaritas here. Some wonderful Yarn School student, I can’t remember who but I love her, left behind a fair amount of tequila. Okay, I’m still a genius, more or less. Half genius. Genius with dishes. Drunk genius with dishes? Hm. Just plain drunk with dishes is probably more accurate, but far superior to mope with dishes. Nobody likes a mope.

Felt School was just marvelous! Everyone was really friendly and fun-loving & we had great fun playing games, felting, and swapping stories. Artist Betsy Timmer presented her work and techniques again, and shared some new (non-felty) work as well. John Njagi from Sunflower Journeys filmed some classes and interviews for a show on the resurgence of animal fibers in Kansas (he was also out here, and to several other local spinners’ flocks, for shearing day).

We started by carding and carding and carding:

After lunch, artist Betsy Timmer presented her felt works and some new pieces…

There was wet felting and nuno felting in the afternoon, and the clothesline was a-flutter with color in the typically boisterous Kansas wind…

Then Sunday was needle-felting and a little shibori and everyone adding the finishing touches to their FOs:

Katie’s hilarious giant felted mustache and little mustachioed tree…

And I didn’t realize until too late I’d missed Jennifer’s felt, thought I did get a nice shot of her fabulous hood:

The most elaborate piece was Sara’s amazing scarf, which featured ink drawings of sea creatures on chiffon fluttering through nuno and needle felted sea…

Felt School Class of Summer 2009:

Sara, Leila, Jennifer, Courtney, Marta & Katie

Yay Felt School! Hooray!