Rurification

Missy Duck

2012-03-02T04:30:00.000-05:00

Missy Duck and her cohort came to us many years ago from our friend, Faith.   There were five female rouens in the batch and they were thrilled to come live here since we have a creek very close to the coop. Duck heaven.

Over the years, we lost two of those rouens.   And we bought a few other ducks.

The pekins didn't last long because the foxes targeted their bright white hides faster than you can say duck a l'orange. K2 was heartbroken. Since then we've made sure to get ducks that can camouflage.

Once the last batch of ducklings got big enough to identify, we discovered we had three new males and three new females.

By then there were three ducks left in Missy Duck's original cohort.   They spent the day studiously avoiding the babies.

Missy Ducks was not thrilled with the new males.

At. All.

The second year, when the new males were full grown and had figured out what to do with the females, we noticed that Missy Duck would chase them away from her cohort. Again and again and again. She was fearless. It was pretty funny to watch, actually.

Then we noticed she did this:

Notice the curly male tail feather, the neck ring, the green head.

We have a cross-dressing duck. She's especially resplendent in the spring, during breeding season. In the fall, she goes back to her old self.

Indisputable Evidence

2012-03-01T04:30:00.000-05:00

K2 was delighted to proffer evidence that it will get warm and stay warm soon.   She's been begging - yes begging! - for a puppy.

No.

Really.   No. No way. Absolutely, positively no way.

So she switched tacks and started thinking about us getting more chicks.   Ameracaunas - the kind that lay blue eggs.

We're negotiating.   We don't need more hens, but some of them aren't laying, and I really, really, really want some blue eggs.   The problem is, we don't want 25 chicks.     We're investigating the possibility of K2 starting a little business venture and raising and selling them.   She's got the experience, we just need a covered place set up separately from the coop.   Stay tuned.

Snowdrops

2012-02-29T04:30:00.001-05:00

Poop Quiz

2012-02-28T04:30:00.000-05:00

Lily and I were walking around scouting out places for beehives and lo and behold, this is what we found.

I was so excited! I've been thinking we needed another poop quiz.

It was a sunny day so I took a pic of this specimen in the sun and in a shadow. I didn't know which would give you the detail you need to make an ID.

You can blow the pics up for a closer look.

This is old poop. I'm guessing it's been there since October.   It was big - really big.   As big as your hand with your fingers all stretched out.

It's full of short hairy fibers.   I'm guessing grass.

So, what do you think left it?

Whatever left this was big and probably eats mostly grass.   If you read the blog often, you might remember this story last fall.   I'm pretty sure that our specimen is related to that.

Winter Has Teeth

2012-02-27T04:30:00.002-05:00

And some are really sharp.

Winter has frozen fingers.

And lacey caps.

And watered silk.

All photos: Lily Jenness

Boiling Sap

2012-02-26T04:30:00.000-05:00

We've been collecing maple sap for a few weeks now. The flavor changes as the buds form on the twigs, and the syrup isn't as good. The silver maples have started to bud, so we stopped collecting that sap.

The sugar maple is still producing.   We've gotten about 30 gallons total so far.   On days when it's below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, the taps drip a fast, constant drip - almost a stream of sap.   K2 took this pic of a drip coming off the tap.

It's time to start boiling. Last year we had a fancier set up that our friend, Mike put together.   This year, Mike has his arch at the Daisy Garten Farmstead so he can demo the boiling, so we're using a somewhat lower tech system.

I got three really big pots [probably a total of $20 for all three at Goodwill] and I built a really hot fire in our firepit.

To start, I filled them all with sap - the three pots together hold about 10 gallons of sap.   As they boiled down, I transferred the syrup from the blue pot on the left, to the blue pot on the right, and from the blue pot on the right to the tall pot in the back.    At the end of the day, all the boiled down syrup was in the tall pot and I brought it inside to finish boiling it off.

The pots sit on grill racks that are set on two heavy iron bars.   The system worked fablously until I noticed that the grill racks were sagging from the very hot fire. I rearranged things a bit - very carefully! so that the bars were closer togther and I added a second rack under the left side. The last thing I wanted to happen was for all my syrup to spill into the fire because the rack broke. It worked fine for the rest of the boiling.   No broken racks, no spilled syrup.

A couple of things to note if you're planning on boiling sap yourself.

You're going to need strong racks and a very hot fire.
To get a hot fire, you need a lot of smaller wood in an open arrangement in the center of the fire - think teepee. Small wood = the size of your forearm.
Surround the smaller wood with larger pieces of wood around the outside. That forces the heat to the center were the pots are. As the big wood burns down, you can move it to the center and put more big wood where it was. Big wood = the size of your upper arm.
Use a ladle to move the sap from pan to pan. It will pick up ash from the fire, so as you move the syrup to the next pot, pour it through a strainer. That takes out a lot of ash.

Winter Geese

2012-02-25T04:30:00.000-05:00

Every morning we hear a pair of geese go over. We're starting to hear flocks of sandhills moving north.

Spring must be coming.

Lights, Camera....Action: The Sequel

2012-02-24T04:30:00.001-05:00

Do you remember last Spring when the crew of The Weekly Special came to the studio to interview me about dyeing yarn? Read all about it here. You can see the YouTube clip on my side bar -->.

I met some wonderful people and had a really great experience. Imagine how excited I was when the producer, Eric Bolstridge, contacted me to do a piece for The Friday Zone!

The Friday Zone is a program especially designed for kids 6-9 years old that's produced in Bloomington, Indiana by WTIU on the campus of Indiana University. They asked me to be a guest for a segment on color theory.

Of course, I said, 'Yes!'

We planned the material, packed up three boxes of dyes and tools and samples and headed to Studio 6 at IU on Wednesday afternoon.

After loading everything in with the help of some of the backstage crew, we got settled in behind the cameras with the rest of the crew. You can see a bit of the area where the crew stays during production. It was much much darker than these pics show.

This is Michelle. She was so friendly! We especially appreciated the time she spent chatting with us before filming started. It helped calm my nerves a lot.

A lot, I tell you. Michelle deserves a raise.

I was very excited to find out that she was one of the cameramen. Here she is behind Camera 1.

Sometime during rehearsal, I'm pretty sure I remember Mike, the stage manager, telling me to look into Camera 1. Now that I think about it, it would have been nice if I had actually done that.

I'm pretty sure that I never looked at Camera 1 at any time during filming.

I think my subconscious was working on the premise that if I didn't actually make eye contact with a camera, then quite possibly the cameras weren't there and there was nothing for me to be nervous about.

Denial is my friend.

This is Tyler, the audio guy. He helped me put the mic on without destroying the mic or strangling myself.

He said they prefer it when guests don't strangle themselves.

I think that's a good policy.

Here I am not strangling myself. I just let Tyler fix it all. He's especially good at fixing the loop next to the clip. This is a highly sought after skill, he tells me.

I think they should give him a raise, too.

Here are the hosts of the Friday Zone!

Emily and Taylor are rehearsing the opening segment of this episode.

And here they are during filming.

My part of the show was divided into three parts. The first part was at the couch, where I talk about some basic color harmonies. I brought way too many samples, but it looked pretty all set up.

This is what was going on behind the cameras.

The set is very bright and the backstage area is very dark. Everyone wears black and everybody is very quiet.

It took me a while to realize that the quiet was deceptive. Actually, there was a very lively conversation going on that I couldn't hear.

Here's the thing about being a guest on a show like this. You miss a lot.

Most everyone else on set gets to wear a little audio bud thingie in their ear so the producer, etc. can tell them what to do and how to adjust things better. The producer tells folks when to practice, when to film, when to stop, where to sit, etc.

The guest doesn't get one of those ear bud thingies. I'm guessing that this is true for all guests and not just me because I tried to strangle myself with the mic when they came out last Spring to film for The Weekly Special.

What this means is that there is a constant conversation going on only half of which you can hear. And when Mike comes over and asks if that arrangement is going to work and are you OK with this, he really isn't talking to you, he's talking to Eric, in the booth. But he'll be polite when you answer him as if he was actually talking to you.

So, basically, everyone else knows what they are doing and what's going on and the guest has no clue.

No clue at all.

It's a little disconcerting. But you gotta roll with it.

This is me on the monitor, and on the couch, not looking at Camera 1. [It looks like the monitor is one of those big ones on the wall behind us, but really it's a normal sized one on a stand, back behind the camera next to where the crew sits. Bad perspective. Sorry about that.]

This is me holding the color wheel. It's the one thing that I did really well.

Really, really well.

I held the color wheel up for Camera 1, so they could get a good clear shot of it.   For about 5 minutes. Then we realized that I should have been holding up another one. So I held that one up. This is what happens when you bring four different color wheels to demonstrate things with.

I hope that my skill at holding things up for Camera 1 makes up for the fact that I never actually looked at Camera 1 myself.

This is where we did the second part of my segment.   We've got a big white board ready to show what happens when we combine different colors of light - additive color mixing.

That's Mike on the left. He's the stage manager.

During the actual filming of this segment, I was standing where Taylor is in the pic, talking about additive color mixing and Taylor was manning the lights so we could see what happens when we mix them.

These are my beautiful helpers. They got to be on camera with me for the third segment - subtractive color mixing with dyes.

I learned a lot about being on set and on camera. Next time will be easier.

Here's what I learned about being on TV when you have no idea what's going on:

Don't expect to hear the whole Lights, Camera, Action thing. If they say that, and I don't think they do, it's in the earbud thingie and since you don't have one, you aren't going to hear it.
They do use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 hand signal. Watch for that. It means you're filming.
Trust that the hosts will lead you where you need to be in the conversation. Remember, they've got someone whispering in their ears about how to move the topic along.
Smile all the time. Especially if you're not planning on actually looking at Camera 1 to see if the little light is blinking or on or whatever [I would know which if I had actually looked at the camera] and filming is in progress.
Pretend that every practice is the real thing. For all you know, it is. I never did figure out if a take was just a rehearsal or not. It all felt real, until someone cracked a joke or stopped mid-sentence. Plus, I figured it would be bad form if I kept interrupting to ask, 'Are we filming?'
Figure that even if you are awful, they're probably going to be too polite to tell you and you can live in blissful ignorance until that segment hits YouTube.
Remember, YouTube is not forever. I hope.

All in all we had a wonderful experience. Thanks so much to the cast and crew of The Friday Zone for having us!

Stay tuned! I'll let you know when this episode of The Friday Zone airs.

Prism Towels

2012-02-23T04:30:00.000-05:00

One of the things I like most about weaving is how the colors of the interlaced yarns in the warp and weft blend. Each type of fiber gives the optical blending its own flavor.   It's magical.

Cotton yarns pixilate.   Little dots of color that seem so obvious close up, blend with their neighbors into something completely different at a distance.

This series of towels capitalizes on the color magic of interlacement.   The colors shift and blend and split like colors through a prism.

Blow the pic up to see what I mean.

This is the family's favorite set. I'll be doing these in a lot of colors.

These are $15 each. I do them in sets of four if you want a set. Machine washed and dried. 16"x24" right out of the dryer. Email me if you want them before they go up on etsy. robin at morenna dot com

Pansy Purple Towels

2012-02-22T04:30:00.000-05:00

Most of the time, my favorite color is some shade between blue and purple. So when I found myself buying yarn for towels, I, of course, bought several blues and purples.

Then somehow, one of the first warps on the loom this month were blue and purple. Then there was another one. And another one on the loom right now.

I'm doing them in big stripes and little stripes. Random stripes and regular stripes. With gold and green stripes and without them.

It's hard to decide which ones I like the most.

These are $15 each. I do them in sets of 4 if you want a whole set of them. Email me if you want them before they go up on etsy. Email: robin at morenna dot com.

Sunshine Bright Towels

2012-02-21T04:30:00.000-05:00

Here's a closer look at the towels I've been working on. I've done a couple of sets in sunshine colors with random stripes.

This set is yellow, red, orange, green with a bit of blue. Very cheery! I love them. [Only 2 left!]

This set is a variation on the set above, with more magenta and orange. It's a party in a towel.

$15 each. I do them in sets of 4 if you want a whole set of them. Email me if you want them before they go up on etsy. Email: robin at morenna dot com.

Foggy Road

2012-02-20T04:30:00.000-05:00

This road is surely leading somewhere exciting. Just around the bend.

Organic Insecticide

2012-02-19T04:30:00.000-05:00

I have a few trees and things that I generally keep outside in giant pots during the summer, but have to move in during the winter.

I have a bay tree, a meyer lemon tree, a patchouli, a couple of rosemaries and a lemon verbena.

They spend the winter in the studio, in front of the big windows. We keep it 55 degrees most of the time, so we don't have to water things much.

This year they have aphids.

Just kill me now.

I hate aphids.

Then I found scale.

Scale is a soft bodied little creature that sucks the juice out of your plants. They multiply readily and can really cause problems for plants.

There are two ways to get rid of these pests.

1.   Pick them off by hand.   Effective, but time consuming and not much fun.
2.   Spray them with something.   Much faster, but most insecticides are nasty.

Then I read a post on Caleb Warnock's blog about making organic pest spray.   He'd had aphids in his greenhouse this year and tried it and it worked.

So I tried it and it worked.

Here's what you do:

1 onion
1 whole head of garlic
2 Tablespoons ground cayenne pepper
hot water
quart jar and lid

Peel the onion and the garlic. You don't have to do it well. Chop the onion into big pieces. Throw the onion, garlic and pepper into a blender with a cup or so of water so it blends easily.   Puree it all.

Put it in the quart jar and fill it up with extra hot water so you have a full quart. Let it sit overnight.

The next day, strain it through a towel into a spray bottle.    Spray it on your plants.

Note: There is enough pepper in there to make my hands warm and tingle-y if I get it on myself.   Don't get it in your eyes!! Wear gloves when using the spray if you are sensitive to it.

Painted Hive

2012-02-18T04:30:00.000-05:00

K2 is done painting the new Langstroth hive. This is all her design.

Voila!

Here's a close up of the detail:

We used good quality exterior housepaint. Semi-gloss so it would be a bit easier to wash off if necessary.

It'll live in the studio for a while until we find a good spot for it outside.

Water

2012-02-17T04:30:00.000-05:00

Have I told you lately how much I love our creek?

photo: Lily Jenness

Parts of a Langstroth Beehive

2012-02-16T04:30:00.001-05:00

Langstroths look like stacks of boxes. It's hard to imagine while you're looking at the outside, just how bees move around in there and draw comb and raise more bees and make honey.

Here's a guided tour through a Langstroth hive.

This is the hive base. The white stuff in the middle is actually screening [which you can't see] over a white board which you can slide out.

Hives need excellent ventilation to let moisture out. The screen keeps the bottom of the hive open and keeps mice and things out.

The white board is only used when you need to do a varroa mite count. Slide the board in and leave it for 24 hours. Carefully take it out and count the mites. As long as there are fewer than 50 mites, the hive is OK. More than 50 mites and you need to do something about them.

This is the hive door. You can see it on top of the base, but under the supers [boxes] in the top pick.

Notice that it has two doors. You can rotate it to give you the size you need. A mouse can get in the big side. During the winter, you can tilt it so only the small door is open and that will keep out the mice that will try to winter in the hive.

This is a pic of a medium super and a deep super. There are shallow ones, too that are 1/2 the depth of a deep super.

Supers are the 'boxes' of the hive.   Supers come in different depths, which hold different sizes of frames.

Supers are open at the top and bottom.   They only have sides.

Most supers are built to hold 10 frames, though some are built to hold eight.

The frames hang down in super and that's where the bees will draw comb.   Some of the comb [the inner frames] will be brood comb, where they lay eggs and raise new bees. Some of the comb [the outer frames], will be for making and storing honey.

Here are two supers on a hive base. The bottom super is where the queen will be and where the brood comb will be. The next super up will be where the bees put the honey.

That is their honey and they need it to keep the hive going, so we won't be taking that honey.

Those two supers together are called the 'hive body'.

Because we want to have some honey for us, we can put more supers on the stack. But we want the queen to stay below where we can't accidentally hurt her, so we put a qeen excluder screen between the hive body and the top supers that we will be harvesting.

Here the excluder has been set on the hive body, ready to put another super on top.

Here is the next super set on top of the queen excluder.

Remember, all of the supers have open bottoms and tops, so the bees will be able to walk wherever they want in the hive at all levels [except for the queen, who has to stay in the hive body.]

Factoid: There's no flying around in the hive.   They walk around. [No running in the house.]

We can keep adding supers as tall as we can reach.   The supers can get really heavy, so they don't recommend that you stack them higher than is comfortable to lift down.

Rog recommended that you add a new super when the last one has comb on 7 of the frames.    That way the hive won't get crowded. If the hive gets crowded, they'll want to swarm to start a new colony.    We don't want that because we want the bees working with us in our hives.

[Note: One of the problems with Langstroths is that when we need to check the queen, we have to take all the supers down to get to the brood box and check on her.    That's a lot of lifting and monkeying with the hive and a lot of potential for accidentally killing or angering some of the bees.    This is one reason we're going to try a top bar hive, too.]

On top of the hive, there are two lids. The first is the inner cover, which has a notch in the back for the bees to come and go through and a hole in the center for bees to get into the hive. This also increases ventilation.

On top of that, capping the whole thing off, is the outer cover.

The whole thing will sit in a level situation, on top of cinder blocks so it's about 8 inches off the ground. That'll help keep the mice out and ensure good ventilation through the bottom.

We'll be building a top bar hive soon. Look for a tour of that hive in a week or so.

Shale

2012-02-15T04:30:00.001-05:00

We have a lot of blue shale on this place. In some places we have little oil slicks from all that shale. When we first moved here, I gathered all sorts of rocks from the creek to make a fire pit. The blue rocks exploded when we built our first big fire.

Note: Don't use blue oil shale to line a fire pit with.

If you look at our creek banks, you can see layers of blue shale alternating with orange iron-rich layers of sedimentary rock.

You can see the blue layer near the bottom of this pic.

The whole blue and orange thing makes me happy.

Here's a better view.

Most of the bottom of the creek bed is blue like that. After storms have moved a lot of water through, the bottom is scrubbed clean of algae, etc and the blue shines through.

Towels!

2012-02-14T04:30:00.001-05:00

Before:

After:

Pretty, huh!    I needed some Bright in my life.   I think these fit the bill quite nicely.

They're handwoven of all cotton. Machine hemmed.   They've been machine washed and dried. They measure 15" x 24" [or a little wider] right out of the dryer, so they won't shrink any more.    [These are the same types of towels that I use in my own kitchen.   They last!]

$15 each. I weave four at a time if you want a set.    Email me if you want to get some before I put them on etsy.    email: robin at morenna dot com

I've got another set on the loom and will be doing them in many colors this year.   I'll keep you posted.

Beehives

2012-02-13T04:30:00.000-05:00

There are a bunch of different types of beehives - and have been over the ages. The two most common types in the states these days are the Langstroth and the Top Bar Hive [TBH]. We decided to do both kinds this year to get a feel for how each type works.

Langstroth hives look like a bunch of stacked boxes. They allow bees to build vertically - sort of the way they would in a hollow tree. These are easy to expand - all you have to do is set another box full of frames [called a super] on the stack. However, the supers get heavy if they're full of honey and that makes them hard for a short stout woman with no upper arm strength to lift off in order to get to all areas of the colony.

Top Bar hives look like a long box set on a set of sawhorses. [They're usually not, but that's what they'll remind you of.] Top bars allow you to have easy access to all areas of a colony, but they don't have the expandable space that the Langstroth's have.

Here is a pic of our new Langstroth hive. It won't stay in the living room, but that's where we put it together. We haven't decided exactly where to put it outside yet.

In the meantime, K2 is in charge of painting the supers, base and outside cover. We'll start that today.

Snow

2012-02-12T04:30:00.000-05:00

I'd almost forgotten what it looked like.

Robin the Beekeeper

2012-02-11T04:30:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed that I added a new tab at the top of the blog this week - for Bees.    We're doing bees this year - and hopefully for a very long time.   Wish us luck!

We took a class from Rog Graham at Graham's Bee Works in Morgantown, Indiana last week and the first question he asked us was: Why do you want to keep bees?   Most of us want to be a little more self-sufficient. Some of us were in it for the honey, and some of us [like me] are in it for the bees.

I've said for a long time that I"m a worker bee by nature and I've wanted to keep bees for a very long time.   When I told my mom that we were taking the class, she mentioned that a very long time ago, my grandfather kept bees, too.     Clearly, it runs in the family.   Let's hope I'm successful.

As we learn about bees and beekeeping, I'll be keeping you posted here.    There's a lot to learn and it is fascinating information.   Eric and I have to tear ourselves away from the internet.    Thank heaven [I do!] for the www.   Everything we need to know is out there, posted by wonderful people trying to share their experiences.

Bee factoid:   Honey bees, Apis mellifera, are not native to North America. They were brought over from Europe in the 1600s.     Their name comes from Latin and means 'honey' [melli] 'bearer' [ferre].   It was a misnomer.   It took early scientists a while to figure out that bees don't carry honey, they make it from nectar.   Carolus Linnaeus tried to change it to Apis mellifica, which means 'honey maker', but the official rules of the zoological nomenclature dictated that priority is given to the older name.

For more great info about honey bees, see the Wiki article here.

Did you know...

2012-02-10T04:30:00.000-05:00

that maple sap comes down from the leaves and twigs, not up from the roots.    When you cut a maple tree down, it will ooze from the top that was cut off, not the stump.

The time to tap trees is when it is freezing at night and above freezing during the day.

Maple sapwood is different from most other trees.   In all trees, the sapwood consists of tiny water conduits that move water up from the root to the rest of the tree. Surrounding the conduits are billions of tiny cells: live tree cells and dead wood cells. In most trees, the dead wood cells are full of water, but in maple trees, they're full of gas. When the sap starts to freeze, frost forms on the insides of the gas filled cells - like frost on the inside of your windows on very cold nights. The gas inside the cell is compressed. As the frost forms on the insides of those cells, it pulls water from the water conduits, which forces more water up the tree.    When the temperature goes up during the day, the frost melts and is forced out of the gas-filled cells and pulled down the tree by gravity.   That is sap.

Source: Melvin Tyree.   Maple Syrup Journal 4(1): 10-11.

We tap our trees with taps like these.

Learning to Spin

2012-02-09T04:30:00.000-05:00

Spinning looks effortless.

Quiet, steady treadling. Even, regular pulling.

Twisting, drafting, twisting, drafting.

It's mesmerising and very very calming.

It looks so easy.

And it is. Unless you've never spun before. Then it's not easy, it's a lot of other things.

Like frustrating. And terrifying. And frustrating. And difficult. And frustrating.

It's really frustrating.

This is what you have to do to spin yarn: with your hands, draft only as much fiber as you want for your yarn, let it twist exactly as much as you want, let the yarn go onto the bobbin without breaking the yarn, draft quickly enough that the yarn isn't getting overspun before it goes onto the bobbin. And while you're figuring that out, you have to treadle with your feet at exactly the speed you need for your yarn.

At the Fiber Frolic at White Violet Center at St. Mary of the Woods College [near Terre Haute], four brave women gathered for three days to learn how to spin. Three of them had a little experience with a wheel or spindle. One had never tried to spin at all. I was their teacher.

There are several stages that one goes through when learning to spin.   Most people come to the wheel thinking that it can't be too hard.   Spinning looks easy.

Five minutes at the wheel sends them straight to the 'Why did I think this was a good idea??' stage.   This stage lasts for many hours of practice.    A lot of people quit during this stage. My experience is that the only people who never 'get it' are the people who quit during this stage.

Anyone who is willing to stick to it long enough to get to the other side of the 'Oh, crap' stage, is going to learn to spin.

This is when I remind people that no one sits down at a piano for the first time and plays a sonata. It takes time to learn the instrument. It takes patience and practice.

The next stage is the Aha! stage. After fighting the wheel, the treadle and the roving for what seems like years, and after having to wind yards and yards of overtwisted rope onto the bobbin by hand, suddenly the new spinner drafts only a small bunch of fibers and makes a finer yarn. Fine yarn takes a lot of twist and when you spin fine yarn, everything slows down. With fine yarn, you have time to think and draft and treadle and let it go on to the bobbin. Fine yarn is your friend.


The first Aha! moment lasts approximately a nanosecond, but I promise you that there will be more Aha! moments.   And sooner than you believe, the Aha! moments will be coming closer together.   And then, you'll have an Aha! that lasts a whole 5 minutes.

At which time, the spinner catches a glimpse of the 'Oh, this is what I do when I go like this' stage. It takes a few more hours of practice to fully achieve the 'Oh, this is what I do when I go like this' stage, but only a few.

It's important to take a lot of breaks when you're learning to spin.    Just standing up and getting away from the wheel can help.   Often beginning spinners say that they had a very hard time at first, but after taking a long break of a few days or weeks, they can sit down and everything clicks.   They are able to make great strides in finessing their skill.

Our spinning newbie was one of the most patient and even tempered new spinners that I have ever seen. She persevered and by the end of the retreat, she had this beautiful skein of plied yarn to show for it.

Congratulations to all of my new spinners!

Raindrop

2012-02-08T04:30:00.000-05:00

photo: Lily Jenness

Rural Yard Decor

2012-02-07T04:30:00.000-05:00

We have a little house, so while we were re-doing the bathroom, we had to put the toilet and tub somewhere, so they went outside.

Charming.

Sigh.

There's nothing that says redneck quite like a tub in your yard.

Eric asked me if he should just dig a hole next to the fire pit and install it as a hot tub. Then he suggested that we could use it as a big boiler for maple syrup.

I think he's been living out here too long.

I was telling my sister about it and she sent me this great pic.

My favorite part is the garden gnome behind the toilet. [If you look closely, it's a buddha, but that just hurts my brain, so I'm pretending it's a garden gnome.]

It's the next big thing in rural yard decor.

And you saw it here first.

Spiderweb

2012-02-06T04:30:00.000-05:00

photo: Lily Jenness

Indoor Plumbing is a Good Thing

2012-02-05T04:30:00.001-05:00

We're re-doing the bathroom. We only have the one, so it's kind of a big deal to gut it and all. This means that we [Eric] had to take everything out of the bathroom and start all over. The tub, the sink, the toilet.

And once again, I have a greater respect for the people who survived without indoor plumbing.

Don't feel too sorry for us because I do have a studio with a bathroom. Thank heavens. But it's about the same distance from the house as the old outhouse was. And it's winter. And sometimes, you just have to go when it's dark. And cold. And your hair is wet because you just took a bath [in the kitchen sink.]

As I traipsed out to the studio, in the dark, with wet hair, and a pair of sweats on under my nightgown, and mismatched socks because it was too dark to care, and a shawl wrapped around my head so my hair wouldn't freeze off, I contemplated what it would have been like to be going to an outhouse instead of a warm studio.

The thought of my bare butt hitting a 35 degree outhouse seat made my intestines retreat.

I'm so glad we have the studio. I think everyone should have a studio just in case they have to gut their bathroom.

Anyway.

This is what we found under all the wall board in the bathroom when we gutted it.

Red.

Blood red.

Intense blood red.

In a room that's only 6 x 5 to begin with.

I love red, and this is a fabulous red, but in this little bitty room it was like something from the movie Carrie.

When we gutted the kitchen a few years ago, we found the same color.   I thought it was an accident. I figured they painted it that color because it was leftover barn paint.

Nope.    The barn was never painted.

Now we know why.    They used the red to paint the kitchen and bathroom.

There were a lot of problems with the old bathroom. For one, we had a trick bathtub. It was gradually disappearing.    First blue spots started appearing.   Then they darkened and darkened and eventually became black.   Coincidentally the same color black as the metal the tub was made with.   Weird, huh.    [We know it was the scrubbing, but we have hard, HARD water and never could find anything that would clean that wouldn't eat the finish. Aggravating.]

Eric wrestled the tub out while we were at White Violet.   He was very grateful for steel toed boots, as the thing weighed about 200 lbs. He took it to the scrap metal place and got $40 for it.     That's a lot of metal.

We have the toilet back in and working.   Yay.   The new tub is in and the goal is to get it hooked up so we can use it tonight.    The red is covered up with green board, which is a vast improvement on the red.   Vast, I tell you.

Now we're arguing over what color to paint it.    I can't decide.    It needs to be pale, pale, pale since the room is only 5x6 to begin with.    Feel free to tell me what color you want it to be - none of us agree anyway and a few more votes won't hurt.

Fog, Woods, Sun

2012-02-04T04:30:00.001-05:00

photo: Lily Jenness

One of those spectacularly foggy days earlier this week. Lily spent an hour outside before breakfast trying to capture the mood. This is one of my favorites.

Tapping Time

2012-02-03T04:30:00.000-05:00

The winter has been mild and we're tapping early this year. My goal is to collect 20 gallons off the two trees that we're tapping. That'll give us 1/2 gallon of syrup. Enough for pancakes and waffles and jam and more jam and soup.

Mmmmm. I can't wait.

See this post for a look at how we tap.

Lemon Pickles

2012-02-02T04:30:00.000-05:00

When I discovered The Joy of Pickling, I found some recipes for pickled lemons. I tried three of them for the exotic fun of it and to our surprise, we found that we actually use and like them enough to make more when we run out.

So far, we've gotten the most use out of the plain ones.   We eat them in pasta especially - a lovely zesty tang in rosemary sauce or scampi.   Mmmm.

It's easier than you think to make them.   Once you try them, you'll be hooked.   We're making them 2 pints at a time now.

Lemon Pickles

1 pint jar
2 organic lemons
2 tsp salt
extra lemon juice

Wash the lemons, cut off the ends, and slice the rest of the lemon into rounds. Put a slice in the jar and sprinkle it with a bit of the salt. Repeat until all the slices are in the jar. Use all of the salt. You can press the slices down to make them fit. Put a lid on the jar and let it sit overnight to draw out the juices. The next day, add lemon juice to fill up the jar and then sprinkle a bit more salt on the very top slice.

Let them sit on the counter for 3-4 weeks, until the peel completely changes texture - it will look darker. At that point you can refridgerate them.

You'll find that they're a fun and interesting snack - surprising and delicious.

Mustard

2012-02-01T04:30:00.000-05:00

I have been dying to try mustard for a long time.    I just love the idea of it.

The problem is we don't actually eat much mustard. So it wasn't a priority.

Then I read a couple of posts on mustard at Chickens in the Road at the end of October and I decided that it was time.

So I went to Penzey's and got some mustard powder.   And some whole mustard seed.   And then it was the holidays. And birthdays. And then we needed to recover.

And then we made mustard.

I used a simple recipe and am thrilled to report that it really was simple.    Ridiculously easy.

Simple Mustard

1/2 cup mustard powder
6 T whole mustard seeds, ground up a bit
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
3+ T vinegar

Grind the mustard seeds a bit to give the mustard the texture you want. I was going for a stone ground texture, but over-did it. No matter, it's delish. If you want to skip the whole seeds, then use 1 cup of mustard powder instead of just 1/2 cup.

Mix the mustard and salt, then add the water and stir until well combined.   Let it sit for 10 minutes to develop the heat. The longer you let it sit, the hotter it will get.

Add enough vinegar to get the consistency you want.   The acid in the vinegar will counteract the heat.   The sooner you add it, the milder your mustard.   Cook's Illustrated explains why.

We couldn't decide what kind of vinegar to use - we have a dozen different types, so we divided it into three little pots and used a different vinegar in each: Chive, Italian Herb, White Wine [my own, homemade white wine vinegar].

The chive is hands down our favorite.   That lovely mild, oniony flavor perfectly compliments the mustard.   I'm in love.

That said, they're all very good, and I think the white wine version would be great as a base for honey mustard and that's on my list to try next.

Storage:   Montana Jones has a nice post about mustards and I'm going to take his advice and leave them out of the fridge for a few weeks to mellow.   When they reach the right flavor, I'll put them in the fridge.

Marmalade

2012-01-31T04:30:00.000-05:00

I love marmalade.

Sweet, bitter, sour.    Complex.

On croissants. On biscuits. On ice cream.

This is citrus season. As soon as I have buds on my meyer lemon tree, I know it's time to hit the organic produce section and start making marmalade and lemon pickles.   [Pickle recipe soon!]

This year, I made a mixed citrus marmalade - grapefruit, tangelos, oranges, meyer lemons.    I learned a few neat tricks from Food in Jars - go check out her post.    She does a great step-by-step. I love her idea of using the seeds and pith for pectin, but they add more bitter and K2 is not big on bitter, so I used pectin to thicken.

Marmalade:

2 grapefruit
2 tangelos
2 oranges
4 meyer lemons
6 cups water
4 T Ball low sugar pectin
7 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Note: I only use organic citrus for marmalade.   I don't want to eat pesticides.

Wash your fruit.   Use a vegetable peeler to get the zest off, then stack the zest and cut it into tiny ribbons.   Yes, it takes a while.   Keep thinking about the lovely marmalade that you'll be eating in a few hours. Set the naked fruit aside.

Put all the zest into a pot with the 6 cups of water and boil it.   Keep it at an active boil until the zest is cooked into a uniform color and tender.   It takes a while.   You'll be happily occupied with the next step.

Supreme the fruit. Start by cutting the top and bottom off [so it will not roll on the table].   Now, take a sharp knife and cut the pith off from around the outside surface of the fruit.   I start near the north pole, and cut the pith off the surface, down to the equator and then down to the bottom of the fruit.   Does that make sense?

Then I turn the fruit on its side and slice it in three big rounds.    Now, the fruit sections will come out much more easily - especially the grapefruit.   Pull out all of the fruit, leaving the pith and membranes.   Don't worry if it's messy and some of the fruit falls apart.    It'll fall apart anyway when it's cooking.    Pitch the pith and membranes.   Compost it or feed it to the chickens.

Remember the zest happily boiling away?   Check it.   When it's ready, add your fruit and the pectin.   Stir the pectin in quickly.   Then heat the whole thing to boiling.   Boil it hard for at least one full minute.

Add the sugar and salt and return it to a hard boil.    Boil it hard for at least a minute.   Since fruit size and juiciness vary a lot, you may want to test to see if it has jelled enough. Drop a small spoonful on a cold plate.   Wait a bit and push it with your finger or a spoon.   It should make big wrinkles or clumps.   If you don't think it's ready, then boil it for a while longer.

Note: The salt is to help cut the bitter. Grapefruit zest is more bitter than orange zest.

Nelly Novelty Yarn

2012-01-30T04:30:00.000-05:00

I've been playing around with the yarn. I decided some of them were lonely and needed to hang out together more.

Et voila! A yarn masterpiece.

I thought you might enjoy getting a sneak peak.

We're calling it Nelly Novelty. We have limited quantities of several colors. Here are a few of the warmer colors.

There's a lot of color action going on in these skeins. They are not for the faint of heart.

Here are a few of the cooler colors.

Each skein is 150 yds - enough to do a generous scarf or a midsize shawl. Use size 17 or 19 needles so there's plenty of room for the mohair to bloom.

We'll be introducing it at the Fiber Event at Greencastle, Indiana on April 20, 2012.

Email me if you want to purchase some early.

Minestrone

2012-01-29T04:30:00.000-05:00

All summer long, I can dozens of quarts of tomatoes and squash. We call it tomasqua. We use it to make tomato sauces and soups and all sorts of wonderful things.

Last week, I used it to make this lovely minestrone.

I like minestrone. A lot.

The recipe I'm going to give you is not very exact in some places. And it makes a lot. It's OK to be all loosey-goosey with the proportions. It will be delicious anyway.

Minestrone

1 onion
many cloves of garlic
a couple of tablespoons of oil and/or butter

1 quart of tomasqua + 1 pint of tomatoes OR
2 cans tomatoes + 1 medium summer squash chopped

4 cups chicken stock
1 can garbanzos
1 can white beans
some dried basil
some dried oregano
dash pepper
dash salt
dash sugar

Peel the onion and garlic. Chop finely and saute in the oil/butter until transparent. Really transparent. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for several hours.

Notes:

You can add carrots if you want to. I always forget.
It's usually better the next day.

Gravel

2012-01-28T04:30:00.000-05:00

We use a lot of gravel.   Tons of it, every year.   We call our favorite hauling guy - Quincy May of May's Hauling - to bring us a load of #11 gravel or sand when we need more. [I can never remember what size, but Quincy always does.]

We just used the last of our pile when we put in the strawberry beds a couple of weeks ago, and we needed more.    Time to call Quincy.

The problem is that our pile is up a little hill. The hill is mostly dirt and even though we've put some big gravel on it, it can still get pretty soft.   And, this is Indiana, where things stay soft for a long time and it takes ages for 'soft' to dry into 'brick'. So, there are only two times a year when we can get a dump truck up there: Winter when it's frozen hard and summer when it's dried out.

This is winter, but it's warm, so it's still soft.

We've been waiting and waiting and waiting for it to get cold enough and stay cold long enough for the hill to be hard enough to get a dump truck load of a gravel to the top without getting stuck or leaving huge ruts. [Been there, done that, no fun]

It was finally really cold for a few days and nights in a row, so Quincy brought me 6.5 tons of gravel.

Now I can dig more drainage around the back of the veg garden.

Spinning

2012-01-27T04:30:00.000-05:00

This is my spinning wheel. I love it.

It's an Ashford Traveller, double drive, single treadle.

I bought this wheel in 1990. We finished it with tung oil and I love the glow.

I bought a sterling silver orifice hook for it a few years ago.   You can just see it hanging from the tension knob by a blue ribbon. That orifice hook makes me happy.

I've spun some nice yarn on this wheel.

This weekend I'm teaching a spinning class at White Violet Center at St. Mary of the Woods College, just outside Terre Haute, Indiana.     The girls and I are headed up there this afternoon.   It's one of our favorite places to be.

Winter Water

2012-01-26T04:30:00.000-05:00

Winter Sunset

2012-01-25T04:30:00.001-05:00

The Sibley Guide to Birds

2012-01-24T04:30:00.002-05:00

A new field guide! I love field guides and I think it's important to have several different kinds. Thanks so much to my MIL for passing this one along to us.

This book is published by the National Audubon Society, and written by David Sibley.

It is organized by bird type - waterbirds first, then shorebirds, then birds of field and forest. Each entry has a color drawing of the bird both male and female [juvenile if necessary], as well as in flight, often with a flight silhouette. Significant features are indicated with arrows and a short description to help you identify gender and distiguish between species.

Even better is a description of the voice [very helpful!] and map of the distribution of the species over North America.

This is an excellent guide and one that I am very happy to add to our collection of field guides.

The Dead of Winter

2012-01-23T04:30:00.000-05:00

This is the time of year when we start to see the results of Tibby's and Blue's hunting.

They leave their catches out and about. Sometimes all we find is parts.

It's gross.

Ahem.

And now a haiku:

The dead of winter
are gathered in our back yard.
Don't step on any.

And a limerick:

There once was a girl in Solsberry,
whose animals refused to bury.
The rabbits and mice,
and moles became ice.
Their corpses made winter quite scary.

P.S. I did not illustrate this post. I think you know why.

Root Cellaring

2012-01-22T04:30:00.000-05:00

Since we do have a veg garden that's expanding, and since I'm doing my best to extend the season as long as I possibly can and since I'm hoping to have more potatoes, squash, etc. to keep over the winter, I got this book on root cellaring.

Mike and Nancy Bubel have written a field guide to all types of root cellars and cold storage and the things to keep in them. The book starts out with a long section on the types of fruit and vegetables to grow that can store over long periods of time in a root cellar or cold storage.

The next section is a discussion of the different kinds of root cellars, how they differ by temperature and what keeps best in them.

The final section is all about how to set up cold storage of your own. There are excellent descriptions of the types of root cellars built and used traditionally. I enjoyed the excellent suggestions for using spaces in your own home for cold storage with minimal building and investment. If you want to build a root cellar of your own, there are excellent guidelines for how to keep it healthy and how to control the temperature in different areas to keep different types of food through the winter.

This book is a definite keeper!

The Chickens Are Hard on the Coop

2012-01-21T04:30:00.000-05:00

If you look at the coop behind Bob and the ladies, you can see where they've pecked a hole right in the structure [at the far left in the pic.] The hole to the right used to be a nice rectangle, with a door. They've enlarged it and the door no longer fits. This year we're going to have to replace that side of the coop.

It's a good thing they lay so much.

Speaking of laying. Rumor has it [at chickensintheroad.com] that we can freeze eggs. Break them, beat them a bit and then freeze them. I'll bet we could beat a bunch and freeze them in ice cube trays.

One cube = one egg.

What do you think?

The Berry Bible

2012-01-20T04:30:00.000-05:00

This lovely book by Janie Hibler is a fabulous compendium of information about all aspects of berry growing, harvesting, preserving and cooking.

It starts with an A-Z encyclopedia of berries of all kinds: arbutus, sumac, thimbleberries and a lot of other exotic berries in addition to the standard blueberries, strawberries, etc. Each listing contains information on the common names, scientific classification, habitat, history, commercial uses, harvest, storage and notes for the cook. This section alone is worth the price of the book.

But there's more! The next 170 pages are full of all kinds of berry recipes.

This is a wonderful book! We find ourselves using this valuable resource more and more.

Rustic Fruit Desserts

2012-01-19T04:30:00.000-05:00

I've been wanting this book by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson for ages. I found it on Amazon but hadn't had a chance to look through it in person, so I kept putting off the final purchase. I finally took the leap and got it for us for Christmas.

Boy, am I glad I got it.

We love fruit desserts - for breakfast. We have a freezer full of fruit. We love finding new ways to bake it up.

There are over 60 recipes in the book, divided into the seasons, so that each section focusses on the fruit that you're likely to find during that part of the year.

Page 3 is a list of the types of fruit dishes and definitions for each of them so that you know the difference between a pandowdy and a slump, a buckle and a betty.

Here are the names of a few of the recipes from each season.

Spring:

Rhubarb and Bing Cherry Brown Betty
Boozy Dried Cherry, Chocolate and Hazelnut Bread Pudding
Lemon Buttermilk Rhubarb Bundt Cake

Summer:

Raspberry Red Currant Cobbler
Lemon Blueberry Buckle
Vanilla Spiked Plum Galette

Fall:

Maple Apple Dumpling
Fig and Mixed-Color Raspberry Crumble
Upside-down Pear Chocolate Cake

Winter

Cranberry Upside-down Almond Cake
Pear Sauce
Apple Pandowdy

Then there's a little section at the back of things you can make to keep in your pantry/fridge/freezer that make assembly of the recipes a bit faster. Here are a few:

Chantilly Cream
Vanilla Crumb
Galette Dough

I'm so glad I got this book. I highly recommend it!

Spring!

2012-01-18T04:30:00.000-05:00

The daffs are impatient this year.

I have to admit that I'm really enjoying the mild winter.

Really.

Really.

Towels!

2012-01-17T04:30:00.000-05:00

I need to make some towels in bright colors. I love towels in bright colors.

This is my starting line-up. It's mostly 8/2 unmercerized cotton with a bit of 10/2 and one flake [short ball of gold, far left in the pic.]

I'm seeing towels in magenta, cyan, kiwi and gold.

And some in blues and purples and kiwi.

And some in gold, orange, red and purple.

Oh. Yeah.

I'll do them at 20 epi, probably 20" on the loom. I usually figure 1 yard of warp per towel, then with shrinkage, hems and loom waste, they usually end up at around 24" long x 16" wide. A lovely size for a towel.

Bob

2012-01-16T04:30:00.001-05:00

Bob. King of the coop

Bob is our rooster. He's the only one we have.

One rooster is good.

We used to have more, but if you have more than one rooster, then they fight. A lot. And they're always competing for the ladies and that's hard on the ladies. Also, two roosters are way louder than one rooster because they're always trying to out-crow each other. [They do that with the lawn mower, too.]

Bob with the ladies

Wild Color

2012-01-15T04:30:00.001-05:00

This is the revised and updated version of the classic book on natural dyeing by Jenny Dean.   [Check out her blog - link in the sidebar]

Some friends and I did a lengthy study group on natural dyeing over the past 3 years.   This book was an invaluable resource.   Jenny Dean has dyed with everything. Her recipes are friendly and her instructions clear.

The first section of the book is a history of the use of natural dyes.    Then she has a section on Techniques.   This section is very useful. Read it thoroughly and keep it handly.

The vast remaining section of the book is organized by dye plant. She includes instructions for working with 66 different plant dyestuffs. (No cochineal, no mushrooms/lichens)

Each dyestuff has a description of the material, its cultivation and harvest and a description of the procedure used to extract the dye and put it on your fiber.   There are color swatches along the edge of each page that will give you an idea of the types of colors you can get from that plant using different mordants and dips.

I enjoyed using this book very much - so much so that when the new edition came out, I made sure it get one.   This is an indispensible resource for anyone interested in natural dyeing.

More ducks

2012-01-14T04:30:00.000-05:00

The ducks don't get a lot of attention on the blog - not because I don't love them, but because they love K2 a lot more than they love me. When I get close, they take off the other direction. It makes for difficult photo shooting.

The other evening after we were done putting in the new strawberry beds, the girls spent some time rounding up the ducks for the night and doing a good physical check of them all. This means each duck had be caught and snuggled a bit and checked over. It keeps the ducks a bit tame and lets us get a good look at them periodically. It isn't a big issue in the winter, but in the summer, when it's easy for them to get fly strike, it's imperative that we are able to catch them, hold them, hose them off and spray the meds on. Remember when we did that with Trixie last year?

Trixie is fine now.

See? Here she is with K2.

No lasting damage at all. And she loves K2 even more now.

[K2 is wearing work clothes. She just spent the afternoon hauling gravel and sand, and burning the cardboard pile. Notice the TARDIS blue fingernails.]

This is Jim. He's Trixie's boyfriend. [Yes, it's from the books.] He's a big feisty drake and protested being held. The good news was that he flapped around so much it was easy to check under his wings. He does a great job protecting his ladies.

This beautiful duck [the same one at the top of the post] is Prince Edward. His poof is gorgeous even though it's usually falling off to one side.

We have 5 other ducks, including a hermaphroditic one. I"ll try to get pics of her soon.