Cogknitive Therapy

Occasionally all the death gets to me. I'm not complaining. The result is one nearly-full freezer, including a deer, one and a half lambs, and bunnies collected on various evenings spent in the back of the truck with a shotgun. But I know when I pick up a gun with a sigh and a heavy heart that it's time to change tack. Thankfully there's always something around here that needs attention, and I'm easily distracted.

I sheared our sheep at Easter and still hadn't done anything with the fleece. I was never going to spin all of it, but the British Wool Board buys fleece from farmers. I'm kind of a farmer, so I called and registered my flock. "How many?" the lady on the phone asked me. "Uh, Eight. No Twelve. I mean 12 sheep, 8 fleeces." She let out a little cough-like laugh. Whether that was because of my tiny flock or because I can't seem to count, I'm not sure.

The fleeces were decent quality, but fleeces live on sheep, and sheep live outside. My sheep have been scratching themselves on painted sheds and living in a hay field. I gathered up my creosote-stained fleeces, gummed up with grass seed, and put them - along with a groveling note promising to buck up my act next year - in the bag supplied. I sewed it up with bailing twine as instructed and dropped it in to our local feed merchant. I'm not waiting for a cheque, I'll just be glad if they don't call and scold me.

I've spun one of my Dorset fleeces together with one of the Romney fleeces from my shearing course, and the yarn is soft. And you can have it in the colour of your choice, as long as it's white.

Hanging wet with a weight, to set the twist

I also knitted a tea cozy.

I can't explain that one. I didn't need a tea cozy. I drink copious amounts of tea, but quickly. My tea never has time to get uncomfortable. I did read a clinical psychology dissertation from Antioch University arguing that knitting reduces stress. I'm going with that. There's a Facebook page called 'I knit so I won't kill people'. Maybe I should start one called 'I knit as a salve to my animal-killing day job.'

Besides knitting, it's the start of preserving season. Also therapeutic. So far, only some carrots have died to make relish. Preserving coincides with the Agricultural Show season. This year I’m eschewing the local village show and moving up a league. I’ve entered the Melplash Show. A slightly-larger-village village show. I'm entering the bread making and the brownie making competitions. I've already been practicing both.

Grandma Gould's Carrot Relish and two loaves of wholemeal bread, proofing

I've entered my elderflower cordial, and sloe gin too. Both are tasty, but perhaps a bit more homemade than the judges would like. I mean, how much sediment and cloudiness is permitted? The rules aren't clear. Neither is my sloe gin.

I couldn't enter any chutney as we've eaten it all. I hope to have enough eggs to enter in the Farm Produce class, but the chickens have decided to moult en masse which means egg production will be way down. Those hens not moulting are broody, or laying in the hedgerow. If I follow the dogs and I'm quick I can sometimes find a nest, but the quality of those eggs could be dubious. They don't lay them with a date stamp.

The show and five classes has cost me the princely sum of £3.50 to enter. The only thing I have to lose is my dignity and some self-esteem (what's left after my call to the Wool Board anyway). If that happens, I always have my knitting.

Does anyone need their tea cozied?

Half-Assed and How Not to Do It

If I was ever qualified to write a book on a subject, it would be doing a job with only half the knowledge and a limited box of tools. That or finding novel ways of almost killing yourself.

Because of our way of life, I know that I'm going to have to do things I'm not completely prepared for, which are inherently dangerous. Farming has just come top of the league table as the most dangerous profession in England (we don't have Alaskan crab fishing industry to compete with).

Some things are always best left to a professional - electrical wiring for example - when tools and knowhow will save your life. With some jobs you can gain a modicum of proficiency if you know your limits. Like chainsawing.

I have passed my basic chainsaw qualifications and I feel comfortable using my chainsaw for straightforward jobs like logging and felling small trees that aren't under power lines. Contractors are coming to finish the fence on Milkweed so I needed to clear 300 metres of overhanging trees to speed up the fencing process and save some of the cost. We decided to let the contractors put in the rest of the fence because they have the hydraulic post-rammer. The posts will stay up longer than if I pounded them in by hand (see? - better tools.)

We had to improvise a mobile platform to reach the branches and the truck was our best option. It has the tailgate for lower stuff, and the top of the tilt for the 'up high' branches -

I admit this picture isn't the best representation of safe working, but we assessed the risks and did our best. That doesn't mean accidents don't happen. I stood on the tailgate and leaned to reach a branch, just as Mike let the truck roll forward slightly. The truck and I parted company and I chucked the saw away from me, as I was taught to do in case of a fall. I only sustained a bruise, but I managed to hit the truck with the saw -

Completely minor. But in hindsight, I know better than to reach too far and I know I should stop when my muscles are getting tired. But the fence line is clear now and the fence guys are coming mid-August.

While my muscles and my pride recover, I thought I would get on with some more sedate work: processing fleece. My crafty friend Colette managed to borrow a couple of drum carders for us to try. Neither of us knew how to use them, but we were unlikely to cause ourselves major injury by trial and error. A few scraped knuckles at worst. 

Until now I have hand carded all my fleece. A laborious task. It can take up to a year of picking and carding to get enough fleece to spin enough wool to make a jumper.

picture courtesy http://www.wcu.edu/craftrevival/crafts/carding.html

The drum carder is a technological leap forward. It was invented in the late 18th century. It can process fleece in less than half the time of hand carding. This takes the process from unbearable to just tedious.

You can read a synopsis of carding wool and its development here.

Colette had the foresight to look up a couple of YouTube videos, so she talked me through the basics. It goes something like this:

Take pile of clean(ish) fleece -

Pick out a handful and tease it into a loose bunch -

Feed bunch into drum carder by cranking handle -

Pull carded fleece from drum -

Now you have a batt of fibre. You can leave it as is, or roll it into a little cupcake-shaped ball for easy storage -

They're ready to spin. Colette lent me one of the carders to take home. I reckon I can now process both of my Polled Dorset fleeces in a couple of months. God bless the industrial revolution.

Something else I get a lot of practice with?-

Washing fox shit off of the dogs. It's not dangerous - it just smells that way.

We have had another chick appear from a sneaky clutch of eggs -

It's a Phoenix chick. The mother is flighty and distracted, so the chick is constantly peeping for attention. I tried fostering the chick on Susan but the chick rejected her new mother, fell out of the nest box and peeped furiously until I returned it to the original haphazard hen. The chick is just going to have to take its chances now.

This breed is pretty but not one I would recommend. Although the cockerel is lovely natured, the hens are highly-strung during breeding season. I'm tempted to take the whole family to the specialist poultry auction once the chick is big enough.  Someone with more fancy chicken know-how than I have would love to own them. I'll stick to breeds that thrive under my improvised trial-and-error efforts.

Results of the Sweater Challenge

Today was the final day. The bet was that I couldn't finish knitting my cardigan by midnight on 30 May -

Ta Daa! . Even though my husband tried to sabotage my efforts with extra pheasant duties, I finished it with 9 hours to spare. This included having to spin the rest of the fleece to have enough yarn to finish the job and learning a new technique out of a book to make the neckline.

It is the very definition of "homespun" and not exactly a complicated pattern. It's unintentionally more complicated when you use hand spun wool that has a lot of variation in thickness. The front of one sleeve was a good 4 inches shorter than the back, but I worked out how to add some stitches. When the sleeves are rolled up you can hardly tell. A blind man galloping by on a horse would never notice it.

In hindsight, I might have reversed it before sewing it together (the inside seems to be the better side!) but it fits and it's warm. I gave it a trial run picking up eggs this evening. Not too itchy, comfortable, and the sleeves stay rolled up. And the silver colour matches my hair - well, my roots anyway.

I win the princely sum of nothing, as it was a "double or quits" bet. But I do get the satisfaction of meeting a goal I set for myself, in spite of extra work and some gentle ribbing from Mike. In future I might not race to finish knitting projects as it means I'm more likely to drop a stitch or lose count on a row as my competitive streak kicks in.

Each time I knit a new project I gain more knitting skills in the process. That's the best part. And knitting is the only thing that encourages me to build up my feeble math skills. If you really want to geek out on the knitting/maths combo, there are a selection of resources to choose from. Unfortunately our local knitting group has folded (if it were an origami group, that would be a great joke). It's back to knitting from books and You Tube videos. I've got some fleeces to prepare first.

Fall Back

The clocks went back last night. In my old life, that gave me an extra hour in bed which I used to fixate on with an unhealthy obsession - a whole hour I planned to dedicate to strong coffee and the New Yorker magazine. I tried explaining daylight savings to the animals, the importance of keeping abreast of world events, and of course the pithy wit of the cartoonists. It fell on deaf ears and I had to get up and tend to them on their schedule, even though my clock said it was 6.15am.

If it wasn't for having to go to the bathroom, I'd never get through an issue of the New Yorker. As my friend Sara says "The bathroom is 'me' time". Amen sister.

My reward for getting up was a perfect autumn day, crisp and sunny. After all the rain of the past couple of days it almost made up for everything. Then I remembered the pheasants. Just like us, they want to get out and make the most of sunny days after a rainy spell. They were everywhere. I enjoyed a walk with two busy spaniels and we chased doses of them home. It's a shoot day tomorrow so they need to be where we can find them, not on some long distance hike and halfway to the next county.

I wanted any excuse to be outside today so there was more training for Spud and more chestnuts to squirrel away (pardon the pun), earmarked for a Christmas stuffing. It was Pip's turn to teach the young'un. Today's lesson: water. Beginning with synchronised pairs -

Ending with 'Doing it by myself like a big girl' -

There was also 'hunting for stuff that smells good' -

And even some lessons in sitting (under duress as it interrupts the smelling of stuff) -

And I got a bagful of chestnuts which I have toasted and put in the freezer.

I also learned the answer to the question "How free range is a free range chicken":

A: Very. I don't know if you can see those brown dots in the distance, but that's Grandma Brown and her chicks. She is working this field behind our house. No wonder her meat chicks are so lean. I'm going to have to start chasing them home with the pheasants.

The other downside to daylight savings is the shorter day. It's 5pm and the chickens are going to bed already. It does give me a good excuse to get on with knitting and spinning wool, a productive and respectable way of making the most of the longer evenings. I only have a few more months to finish baby sweaters for Liser's bump, and have been plying more handspun to finish the heavy weight one-

Pip is helping, mostly by contributing dog hair to the finished product. As I've said before, everyone knows dog hair has healing properties.

Feeding the Animals

I've been given my first beat to look after, temporarily, as Mike's underkeeper is on paternity leave. A beat is a huge pen full of pheasants. Looking after them involves keeping them in and fed, and predators out (and hungry).

There was a fox in my own garden around midnight last night, worrying my chickens. The chickens give a distress call which will wake me up from even a sound sleep, though I tend to keep an ear and the window open to make sure I can hear them if they need me. I will go to bed with the flashlight and a .22 rifle tonight.

Playing gamekeeper took up most of the day, but I found just enough time to prepare some hanks of wool for washing, and to make sure we were fed at least as well as the animals. I've got to find time to practice my breakmaking skills before Saturday when I will be entering a loaf of bread and a sponge cake in the 'Homecrafts' section of the Beaminster Summer Show. Summer shows and country fairs are a big part of the rural calendar. There are categories for everything from a carcase of your own home raised lamb to a jar of homemade honey to 'The Longest Runner Bean' - the latter being a prestigious and much sought after accolade. A lot of competitors take their entries very seriously, but some are like me and just participate to be a part of village life. Entering a cake is one thing; I wouldn't have the bravery (or secret fertiliser recipe) to compete against the hardcore bean-growing mafia.

This is what we had for dessert tonight, and it's one of Mike's favorites. Easier than pie, and you can make the crumble topping in big batches ahead of time and put it in the freezer. Great for dealing with September's glut of apples!

Apple Crumble Recipe

Peel 4-5 good sized apples and chop into rough cubes. Mix in a tsp of vanilla essence. Sprinkle with 1/3 c sugar if tart (cooking apples), less if sweet (dessert apples). Tip the apples into an oven ready pan and pat down.

In a separate bowl, mash together with your hands:

1 c flour

3/4 c light brown sugar

handful of Quaker oats

1/4 lb cold butter

until you have a crumbly mix. Throw in a big handful of chopped pecans to finish. Sprinkle this mix over the apples and bake at 325F about 40 minutes, or until crumbly topping is browned. Serve with ice cream or cream

Fleeces & Jams

This weekend, I finished spinning and plying 2 hanks of Jacob wool from the estate's flock. I spun the wool semi-worsted so it will be light and fluffy, and trap air for warmth.

The fleece on the left is being prepared for spinning - any debris is combed out and the fibers straightened. I then card it into rolags (little fleece sausages) and spin those into a single ply yarn, then ply the 2 singles together for strength and structure.

When I've spun enough of the white and chocolate colored fleeces to go with this grey, I will knit a pullover which I hope will be warm and very water resistant - perfect for British winters. At the speed I knit, it won't be ready until next winter (or maybe the next ice age).

To give you an idea of how stylish(!) it will look, my lovely assistants Dakota and Pip are modelling it for you:

I also went to check on my supply of crabapples today - not my most eco-friendly harvest as my supply is one tree 19 miles away. These crabapples Malus sp. 'Dartmouth' make the MOST amazing hot pink jelly and it's just so tasty that I make an annual pilgrimage. For the first time ever I was late for the harvest. I have a measly half a bucket full, less than a quarter of my usual haul.

It will be sacrilegious, but I will have to mix my little ruby jewels with another fruit, blackberries or cooking apples, if I want quantity over quality. But you know what? I don't. I'd rather have one jar of that perfect jelly and savour every spoonful, and just see it on the kitchen table. Everyone is entitled to a little beauty and luxury in their lives. Pink jam and a warm sweater is enough for me.