No matter where you go, there you are...

Like the old Johnny Cash song says -


I've been every where, man,










Take it from me - Paradise isn't paradise if it's 104 degrees and there are no trade winds - even the locals were complaining...







The views were often filled with condos and hotels -





I've been to Chinatown in San Francisco, Vancouver, Victoria and I've been to China...










We've seen the trees that reach to the sky and are older than the hills











We've crossed the deserts bare,













And breathed the mountain air...











We've seen the holy -













And the wholly incredible -












Of travel, we've had our share -









I've been to London, Paris, Vienna, Florence, Rome, Athens, Delphi, Germany, Mexico, Disneyland, San Diego, here and there -

But as Jane Austen said:

"Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."

Right on, Jane, right on.

Violets in the chilly spring

Sometimes at church we do "secret pals" - you know the plan - send little treats, pretty cards, fun things to your secret pal over the one or two months time, then have a party and discover who everyone's secret pals were - it is quite fun - to shop for your secret pal, and at times like today, to have a special treat delivered to your office.

One of the lockshop guys walked into my office carrying a little pink gift bag. "Someone brought this for you" he said.

Inside was a little green straw basket holding a little pot of purple violets, (which are now adorning my desk) , a little card indicating it was from my "SP" and this sweet little poem from a book "Sing Song, a Nursery Rhyme Book" written before 1873!


"Oh wind, where have you been, that you blow so sweet?
Among the violets which blossom at your feet.

The honeysuckle waits for summer and for heat,
But violets in the chilly spring make the turf so sweet. "


Thank you to my secret pal - it was a bright spot in my day, and a reminder that even in these coldest of days, that spring will come.


MONI Update - The Shepherd brought her home from the hospital in her new green sweatshirt - she was very glad to see her girlfriends and proceeded to eat and eat. But we're not out of the woods yet - because it's so cold, and because Moni is confined to a small pen in the barn sp he can give her medication, the rest of the girls have also been locked in the barn (he also didn't want Moni to freak when everyone else left the barn for the pasture). They're not too happy about it, but I guess that's life when you're a sheep. They'll get out tomorrow - it's supposed to get up in the high 40's and be sunny all day. Yeah!

Baby, it's COLD outside!

New York, you can keep your "haute couture" - here on the farm, we have "oat couture"

The temps are supposed to hit lows in the teens tonight with an Arctic blast moving down from Canada. The Shepherd went shopping at Value Village this afternoon - Since it is not supposed to rain, he went with heavy fleeces (ironic...) H.B.'s new coat fits him like a glove.

We think that he thinks he's got casts on his front legs because he walks all stiff legged, but he seems to appreciate the warmth of his new duds as he snoozes in the late afternoon sun.


Like any teenaged boy, Taylor wasn't too sure about his new sweater, but he seems to have gotten used to it pretty quickly.

It was snowing a blizzard this a.m. when it was time for me to leave for work. Since snow equals no work for The Shepherd/Landscaper, he played Chauffeur and took me to work. I was glad for the ride - cars were slipping and sliding all over the place!






Hey Danny - you look pretty good in red.

Pearl and Luna got Ladies size M - The Shepherd said he thought the M should stand for Maternity - they are pretty snug around those bumpy bellies.

The girls are locked in the barn with the heat lamp on tonight - he said they looked pretty comfortable when he went out before bed.

Even in the few minutes that I've been writing the temperature has dropped a few degrees and the wind is picking up. I'm really glad that he decided to do this.






The shepherd resisted the little pink hoodie that said "Princess" on the front for Miss Violet.

The funniest part about his shopping trip was explaining to the ever helpful sales clerk that he wasn't buying clothes for his daughters but for his sheepie girls. I'd love to have heard the coversations that brought up this afternoon.









I think Jewell looks kind of like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, don't you?

Moni update:
Moni is still in the hospital. (cha-ching) They were going to "turn off" her IV's over night in hopes that her body will start normal functions again, if that makes any sense. It sounded like her rumen system had shut down too, so they have given her something to get that back up and running.

The shepherd drove there this a.m. in the blizzard to take her some of our hay, as she wasn't eating. Everyone agreed that leaving her there overnight was safest considering the weather. We're keeping our fingers crossed.




Well, it is a neighborhood legend that when we have lambs in the front pasture, it stops traffic. I'm sure that these two running around in their new sweaters will give everyone a good chuckle on their way to work in the morning.

Looking back Sunday

Looking back to March 8, 2006 - the dafs were up and blooming - they are a few weeks away this year - it snowed around the county today - big fat fluffy flakes - that were gone in an hour - but the temp is 32 degrees out right now and it's supposed to get colder tomorrow.

Sheep update: The Shepherd took Moni into the vet today (cha-ching) - apparently she had developed some kind of magnesium/calcium toxicity - they almost lost her and the vets said that if the lambs had lived and started nursing, the toll on her system would have been so great and we probably would have lost her then.

Sheesh.

The Shepherd is concerned about bringing her home in the Arctic cold weather that has gripped our area. Hopefully he can devise some sort of coat situation for her.

Hopefully the weather doesn't get too bad tomorrow - I'm signed up for a crocheted hat class at my LYS tomorrow night. It sounds like it will be fun.

It was one of Those days...

WARNING: This is a sad post - as always, life and death happen on a farm - sometimes simultaneously - sometimes, just the death part...


Yesterday was a sad day on the farm at Marietta Shetlands - The Shepherd normally gets up and feeds the sheep then comes in and has his breakfast. As the company he works for has cut back to four days a week, for right now, he has Friday's off, so he went back out after his morning oatmeal to check on the girls, especially Moni, our dark brown ewe, as she wasn't taking the cold very well, grinding her teeth and shivering - (he even put up the heat lamp).

What he found was Moni, with a dead ram lamb, and one more coming. It seemed to be coming normally, feet first and head in the right place, but it must have been in the birth canal too long, as, even though he assisted, it was also dead.

Moni seems OK - she passed the afterbirth yesterday afternoon and has been eating and moving around. He decided not to milk her colostrum (although we've never needed it, it would be good to have some in the freezer) so her milk wouldn't come in so much. He's still "on watch" with her, but today she is out in the pasture munching on grass - life goes on.


In Memory of Buddy -

Buddy was the wether that we had in with H.B. as his "buddy" - What we hadn't really noticed until about a month ago, was, that H.B. was not letting him eat and, in typical ram fashion, being kind of mean to his pasture mate.

But Buddy was a lover, not a fighter and often as not, he would just lay down so H.B. couldn't chase him - but sometimes he was still getting "pummeled".

The Shepherd had separated him out from H.B. but he didn't seem to be gaining any weight, and after shearing and the ultra cold weather that we've had the last few days, it seemed that there were other problems. As he was talking to the vet about Moni, they chatted about Buddy and decided that he would bring him in and they would put him down.

I suppose, in other times, on other farms, Buddy would have met his end on the farm and been cooked up for soup - Since neither one of us care for lamb, we have no small white packages in the freezer, and he rests in peace here.

After shearing, we also are wondering if Jewell is "with lambs" - hopefully there's one hiding in there - if not, it will be the end of a blood line because the ram she was in with, Danny and his newly shorn pasture mate, Taylor will be going to the auction soon - probably not this weekend as the weatherman keeps saying it is going to snow - looks like it might, but it's 41 degrees out right now.

So that's how our week ended. When you have a small flock, each animal is so valued. When you are a farmer, the value is in your harvest. When you are a shepherd, your harvest is in the spring when the lambs come. Essentially, we lost a quarter of our harvest.

We still have high hopes for Pearl and Luna who were bred to H.B. - they are looking pleasingly plump, and like their moms before them, getting pretty bitchy. They are several weeks off though - I'll keep you posted.

Hair today, gone today

Sinda has heard that the vishus sheeps were getting their furs clipped today - she has come out to snoopervise.









Life as you know it is about to end H.B. - you will suddenly be a scrawney looking rascal.








Whoa, I was right!











Our friend Margot came with her son William and daughter Emily, who is our goddaughter.









Marsha Adams has been shearing our sheep for many years. This was her last shearing for us. She is retiring. We are sorry to have this happen. She has become a good friend.




Margot is trying out her new video camera while the kids looked on.

It was really sweet, when Marsha was shearing Moni, who is very pregnant, she stopped and asked the kids if they would like to feel Moni's belly. She thought the baby/babies had been kicking at the sound of her shears - but they apparently had stopped - just soft and warm tummy to be felt.




While The Shepherd was otherwise distracted, our friend Diane, who had also come to watch, snuck into the feed bin and offered H.B. a little handful of sheep kibble. He gladly accepted - she now has a friend for life.






















Marsha is showing off Violet's fleece. It is really beautiful and incredibly soft.

Eight fleeces - two of them are pre-sold. Pearl & Luna were just 6 month fleeces, so they were very small and will be combined with the rest of the white alpaca that we blended their fleeces with last fall. Taylor's fleece will be featured at the Spindrifter's Sheep to Shawl at the Skagit Highland Games in July and Moni's fleece was sold last fall at our spin-in.


Danny's fleece will be blended with an fawn colored alpaca cria fleece that he bought last fall from our vendor neighbor - they are very close in color and it should make for nice spinning.





Hope you enjoyed your little slice of a "day on the farm"

Fascinatin'

The moon..................................Venus

Fascinatin'

So "fascinatin' ", I almost drove off the road because I was transfixed.

Fascinatin'

The "technical/astronomical " term when the moon and a planet are together like this is called a conjunction. Read more about it here

Totally Fascinatin' that I was able to take this picture with MY 5 year old Fuji Digital camera - (it rocks!)

If'n it wasn't so dang cold out, I'd pull up a chair on the back porch and just cogitate on the whole situation.

Fascinatin'

We've been able to see pairing of the moon and Venus a bunch recently because the sky has been clear at nights. It's like being given a gift each time I see it.

Fascinatin', just fascinatin'

Yup, they've got whims, alright...

more funny pictures of cats here

What do you mean, IT"S SNOWING!!!

For Pete's sake, it is the 25th of February - our snow should be done for by now. But just after lunch it kind of started to hail, then it really started to snow, and by 4:00 when I checked with The Shepherd by radio he said it was coming down pretty hard in the North county and he would call me when he got home. (both companies we work for have the Nextel phones, so I can "beep" him during the day if need be - cool huh?)

At about 4:45, he called - "I think you'd better start home," he said.

I normally work until 6:00 p.m., but we were nearing white out conditions by that time and he feared for my safety - the Jelly Bean is not really the most reliable snow car, and, lets face it folks, we here in Western Washington are a bunch of weenies when it comes to snow.


So I got my stuff together, and started home. One of the fellows I work with helped brush the snow off my car - it was pretty much all covered in a thick layer by then.


Now,I grew up in Eastern Washington, where, in "the old days" we used to get a foot or two of snow every winter. I learned how to drive in the snow. But, it's a "different" snow over there - dryer and not so slippery - and the people who drive in it are not IDIOTS like they are here on the West side.











My normal 20 minute trip took about 40 minutes and it was just about as slippery as I can remember driving in. In fact, even though I had slowed down to about 10 miles per hour when I got close to our road, the knothead that was behind me was following so close that I couldn't brake to turn, it was so slippery - so I had to keep going down the road and come in the back way which involves going up one hill and down another - by this time, I was driving (spinning out) in a white out. Yikes.


Finally got to our driveway - The Shepherd was pacing back and forth - he had shoveled a path from where I park my car to the back door - (I wear Crocs, which inconveniently, at this time of the year, have holes in them....) He is such a nice guy!


Anyhow, all these pictures were taken just after I got home - it had snowed this much in an hour, and I was REALLY glad that I was home before dark, I am pretty sure that, as slippery as it was out there, that I would have ended up in the ditch if I had waited that extra hour to head home.







One thing that The Shepherd rescued off the front porch was my book order from Barnes and Noble - bought with the gift card that my younger sister gave me for Christmas.

I got three books -

#1 "The Crochet Dude's Designs for Guys" by Drew Emborsky - It has some pretty cool patterns in it and two that The Shepherd approved of - looks like I'll be busy, busy, busy -




The second book I got was Sys Freden's new book "Contemporary Crochet, 27 European Designs" -
Oh, man, this one makes me drool. Very, very cool stuff. I think it is going to make me get very serious about making something for myself.



I also got a new paperback, "Firefly Lane" by a local author (and a NY Times Bestseller) Kristin Hannah. I have always enjoyed her books - but it looks like it will be a while before I'm sitting on the front porch to read...

Well, I'm off to finish my church newsletter, and tomorrow night is payroll - so I'll be busy for the next few days. Have a great weekend.

Scarves for Troops

Sometime last fall while I was our "surfin' the web" I stumbled on a website called CitizenSAM, or Citizen Support America's Military.

They have a program where you can make helmet liners (must be knitted and I don't knit) or scarves - (can be crocheted - bingo!). It has to be WOOL, as that #1 - is inherently nonflamable and #2 - a good insulator, even when wet. The items can only be black, charcoal, brown, tan, or combinations of these colors - and I figured that Regina's wool was basically, tan.

I had already spun up about 450 yards of "Regina yarn" when The Shepherd decided that he wanted to ply the Regina and Anna Dee wool. OK, I just set those skeins aside and started on the new stuff, so I figured I'd have enough to make a scarf.


So, here it is. 12" x 42" per the instructions and single crochet so there are no "holes" in it (I guess they don't want it to look like lace???)

I have emailed the lady in charge of the scarf program and am "awaiting my orders" - I hope it is OK. I also hope that they will allow me to put a little note in with the scarf explaining that it is handspun yarn from our own sheep, and that it was made with love and respect for the soldier that will receive it.

I'll keep you all posted.

Hi, my name is Tina and I'll be your waitress today...

Who's that lady? Where's The Shepherd?

"Pearl, do you know where he is???"

"I think I heard him say something to her about going to a far away place called Salem, Oregon. Something to do with church, what ever that is."




"He told me she'd take good care of us. I think I remember her from before. Do you think we can talk her into extra kibbles?"

Don't even think about it girls. I'm wise to your ways. You and the boys will get the same great service from me that you get from The Shepherd.




Yup, I'm the Stand-in Shepherd this weekend. The Real One has gone off for our church Annual General Meeting and some R&R -

And I get to stay home and putter around. I have a long list of things I need to get done.

But I had a few minutes to sit with the girls tonight after feeding was over. Do you remember Violet? We brought her home from our friend Nancy's last fall. She is such a sweet little peanut.


And just look at her wool...

I call dibs.....





Look out Black Sheep Gathering - here comes another first place fleece!


Hmmm - think I'll go make that shrimp salad I've been thinking about all afternoon. Yum.

A few random thoughts -

*****I'm tired -It's 1:30 and I still have my blog to update!

*****Tonight was church choir night - I rush home as quickly as I can from work - generally get here between 6:15 & 6:30 - snarf something down (tonight it was popcorn!) and then we have to leave by 7:00 to get to Blaine by 7:30.

Our choir has been shrinking. 10 years ago we had about 16 or 17 members - it is the only choir I've ever been in where there were more basses than sopranos! But we are down to 9 members! We have lost all our basses except for The Shepherd (who is our director) - one of our tenorettes has a broken arm so she's out for the rest of the year - (two retired sisters are tenors so we call them the tenorettes) one of the altos had another meeting conflict and one of our two remaining sopranos is sick, AND our accompanist (92 year old Reah) is just back from being ill with the flu since Christmas! We have a good time though. Tonight we worked on some songs that we haven't sung for a while and we didn't sound half bad.

We are starting to do more things a capella to make it easier on Reah - We have a choir service in March and Easter and Mother's Day coming up too. It is going to be an interesting spring.

*****I get emails from Sunset magazine with recipes, ideas for garden plans, etc. Today it was recipes - 25 reasons to love Bacon. Like I need another reason to love bacon.....

*****On the whole, I am not a very politically "active" person - I AM a card carrying Demo - but all they got from me was $25 - so it wasn't a real big deal - they still sent me an inauguration photo of President Obama (doesn't that have a nice ring to it??) amd a nice letter from VP Biden - I think I may write back to him. It seems to me that the Stimulus money would go a lot farther if they suspend the Davis/Bacon/prevailing wage act. They could put two or three times as many people to work if they would do that, and still pay decent wages.

*****I decided when we got home at 9:30 that I needed to wash two more skeins of the "Regina" yarn that I spun last fall. I'm using it to make the Scarves for Soldiers Scarf (yes, I'll tell you more about that soon) but I ran out just before I got to the required length and didn't get the edging finished either, so one more skein to go. Might as well wash both the skeins that I have left, so I put them in a sink full of hot soapy water and came back to the computer to work on my NO NAIS WA letters to my state representatives and senator. A group of concerned people have gotten bills before BOTH our state House and Senate Agriculture committees to make NAIS VOLUNTARY in Washington state.

I don't think is is possible to stop NAIS - it is already part and parcel of the USDA - BUT they have given the states the option to make it a voluntary program - seems to me the best way to go. I hope that the efforts of these people come to fruition. Anyhow - copy & pasting all those (25) letters into emails took me over an hour or more - remember I had those two skeins of yarn in hot water? Well, it wasn't too hot after all that time - so I just finished rinsing it and hung it to dry. I think it will be OK.

*****During Joys & Concerns on Sunday, someone told of the death of a one year old baby in the community, from complications of croup - a virus that is characterized by a barking type of cough. It seems terribly sad to me that in a country as rich as ours that children can die of a simple childhood disease. Terribly sad.

So, I'm off to bed I guess. My eyelids are so heavy that just about every time I blink I fall asleep - yup, better get to bed.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Nothing says love any better than a big pot of pretty primroses on the back porch. I see it every morning on the way to work, and every night when I come home. I am one lucky woman.

Looking Back Sunday - The Eighth day of April 2007

Looking for pictures taken on the 8th day of the month I found April 8, 2007 -

Sinda was out playing on the lawn -







This is Regina (of the wool I am using for the Scarf for soldiers) - That is Luna and her brother, I think.

This year's lambs will be her soon - we are scheduled for shearing on the 3rd of March. So, look for the weather in the PNW to turn cold (it always does the week after we shear).




Tulips and pansys - what a beautiful flower pot The Shepherd put together that year.

Michelle at Boulderneigh gave me an award last week, so I'll go fetch it, and I have joined Franna in paying it forward. I can't show you what's "Off the Hook" yet, because it hasn't been delivered, but my Soldier Scarf is coming right along. I'll get to it next week too.

Cheers! And have a great week out there!

Off the Wheel -

Here is another picture of some of the yarn from Regina. I found a web site where you can make scarves for soldiers in Iraq & Afghanistan. The scarf can only be made of wool and only in certain colors and one of them is tan - I think this looks pretty "tan" - don't you?








At Christmas time, the ladies in our office (there are only 7 of us) exchange names and do a gift exchange. The young gal whose name I got is also a crocheter - so I thought what a better gift than to spin her up some yarn.

She really likes pink - and Nancy at NW Handspun Yarns had a big basket of balls of "potluck roving" from Kathy Green, a local processer, and one of them was, ta da, this pretty rose color. Since I hadn't had time to spin up the yarn before Christmas, I just gave her the bump of roving in a Christmas bag, with the promise that I would spin it up for her. She was really delighted, because the friends that she crochets/knits with are all self proclaimed "Yarn Snobs" but none of them spin, so she'll really have something special to work with. It ended up spinning out to about 300 yards and was surprisingly soft. Last night I wound it up into three little yarn cakes and took it to her today at work. She was very pleased.

On the Wheel

I thought I'd show you what I've been working on lately.

This is shettland wool from Regina (one of the girls that we gave to a new home last fall) - I think she was registered as fawn, but her wool spins up to be a very pretty carmel color.






I had probably 3 or 400 yards spun up before The Shepherd decided he wanted something a little different.


I will be plying it with brown from Anna Dee and our friend Denise will take it and knit The Shepherd a sweater vest. She knitted up a sample and it really looks pretty - sort of heathery. We figure that she'll need somewhere in the range of 1000 to 1200 yards - if I can do 200 yards a week I will be happy, (I generally try to spin for about an hour before I go to bed every night) but it may take me longer than that. I have some shetland/alpaca blend that is, as the old saying goes, "burnin' a hole in my pocket", but I kind of promised that I would finish the sweater vest yarn before I start anything else....

Next - off the wheel, on and off the "hook" - as I crochet, I don't knit!

Looking back.....

Hens & chickens that needed to have some of their winter detritus cleaned off was one of the pictures I took a year ago today.

There were lots of pictures of Neelix in that file too, but, even after six months, I am still too sad to include them here.

Hope you had a good weekend.