Stupid Stollen, Books

That stollen I made last week? I tried cutting it in half and doing an extra rise, which still didn't rise too well. But then when I shaped the loaves, they rose nicely. But after baking the loaves still had a gooey layer inside, while the outsides were almost too dark for my taste. So I don't know what's going on with the daggone things.

The Emperor's Tomb had a little more excitement toward the end and there was a description (the author's interpretation) of the real Emporer Qin Shi's tomb. But, geez, there was a triple agent (Russian, Chinese, American), some of the guys couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it, and some of the situations were just so cartoonish - not funny, but exaggerated and difficult to believe. But I finished it and went on to Lana Turner's autobiography. I just finished that today. Don't know what I'll tackle next. Really need to get back to my spinning.

Bread Not Cooperating

I'm taking a break in the middle of making stollen. It's on its first rise, so I have a little over an hour, even more if it rises as badly as it did last year. Stollen is a German fruit bread, NOT fruitcake. It does have candied citron and orange peel, raisins, currants, and almonds in it, but it is a yeast bread, it is not sweet like a cake, and there is more dough than fruit. My mother started making stollen years ago. I guess I was about 10 years old or so. I don't think it was a tradition in her family, so I don't know what prompted her to start. But now it IS a family tradition, since I and at least one of my sisters makes it. DD isn't much of a baker, so maybe I can pass it on to DGD.

The tree is up but not decorated yet. I should be putting lights on now while I'm waiting for the dough. And I have to close the chickie girls in before it gets too dark to see.

It is now THREE hours later. The stollen dough has NOT doubled in bulk YET. I'll be up till midnight trying to get the stupid things done. Good grief!

Correction

The author of The Emperor's Tomb is Steve Berry, with a B, not Steve Perry. It reads like a bad James Bond story. At least it's going quick.

Recovery, Spread thin, Books

Have plied two good sized skeins of the new BFL/silk blend I'm spinning. It's turning out sorta tweedy when you look at it close up, pale brown from a distance.

Went to fiber guild meeting on Saturday to get away from the invalids - yes, that's plural. DD has been running MIL around to her various doc visits and changing dressings on her leg ulcers. However, DD now has a job that she just started, so I get elected to do that, plus take DH to therapy, plus pick up DGD after school. ACK! We're trying to get a home care nurse in to change MIL's dressings, so that will be one less thing to worry about, and it will save me about 34 miles worth of gas each time.

Just the other day finished reading Jean Auel's new book, The Land of Painted Caves. It's the last of that series. Now working on The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Perry, about the Chinese emperor's tomb with the terra cotta soldiers. It's kinda boring so far, about Chinese politics and two guys vying to be the next premier (or whatever he's called) and the two factions involved. So far the only thing about the tomb is the finding of old original documents from the first dynasty, including original Confucius writings (which have been stolen, of course). If it doesn't get more interesting in a hurry, it's getting canned.

Spinning, Books

I've been trying to get some more spinning done than I usually do. I'm working on a BFL/silk blend (BFL being Bluefaced Leicester, pronounced Lester) that's really nice, soft, easy to spin. I already have one big fat skein done (two ply) and tonight finished filling one bobbin's worth for the next skein.

I've also been debating on what to read next. I finished a bio of Rita Hayworth last month. Boy, was she messed up. She was abused physically by her father, then mentally by 2 out of her 4 husbands. Orson Welles didn't hurt her, but he was too concerned with his career. And Ali Khan was too much of a playboy. Her last husband was 40s singer Dick Haymes, who was a drunk and a real jerk.

I have a bio of Lana Turner waiting for me, but I think I'll wait on that for now. I also have a couple of Star Trek paperbacks and the novel Show Boat (that the musical is taken from) that I haven't read yet. Ava Gardner was in Show Boat; I read her bio a couple of years ago. And I've been wanting to re-read the Harry Potter books. So I guess I say "eeny, meeny, miney, moe." I've been working on two coffee-table books - Hagia Sophia and The Tower of London, which I've also just finished up last week. I've found a lot of my books these last several years at the local annual library sales in the spring. Any that I don't want to keep get passed along to my sister or mother-in-law, or are donated back to the library.

Kids, Thanksgiving, Snot

Day two of the Mosheim School Heritage Days went a little better than the first day. I had first, second and third graders visit me this time. Kindergarteners were scheduled during the first half hour, but they didn't show. Then sixth graders were scheduled for the last half hour and they didn't show either. I would have liked having the 5 yr. olds, but didn't miss the older ones at all. The little kids are easier to impress with hand shears, the smell of a dirty fleece, the spinning wheels and the spinning process itself. Basket weaver Diane brought a whole variety of baskets on Tuesday, including one made of whale baleen, some teensy ones, including one made of horse hair and one of telephone wire.

Thanksgiving Day was the same ol', same ol' as far as the food went. DD provided the turkey and potatoes, but I had to cook them, plus vegetables and gravy. I made an apple pie on Wednesday and DD brought pumpkin pies (which were overdone because her oven is hotter than the setting). We told her to get an oven thermometer.

Thursday morning I had woken up with a scratchy throat, usually the precursor to a cold, and it didn't disappoint me. By the time we ate, around 2, I was blowing my nose about every 10 min. Yesterday and today I've been wheezing, coughing, spitting, and napping. I've been sleeping in the recliner the past two nights, partly to stay slightly elevated and partly because I can't be coughing in my sleep right next to DH. He can't afford to catch a cold right now, which brings me to . . .

Spinning, Baking, Counting

Mosheim School Heritage Days is now half over. I had 4th, 5th, and 6th graders come through today, 30 min. per group of 1 or 2 classes, with K thru 3 coming in tomorrow. I asked not to have 7th and 8th graders this year, since last year's crop were rude and visibly disinterested in spinning, wool, sheep, knitting, etc. Even some of today's 6th graders were on the verge of being jerks. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, though. The little kids actually enjoy this kind of stuff. Friend Diane, a basket weaver, participated for the first time. She had a grand time.

I got 3 apple nut cakes and 2 loaves of Anadama bread made on Saturday. Tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday will be apple pie day, probably Wednesday, since DGD will be here. She's off from school and DD has to go out of town, so we'll have her. DD is making pumpkin pies for Thursday and bought the turkey. (Gotta remember to get that out of the freezer tomorrow.)

Countdown, Garlic, Playing Dress Up, Spinning

Lo and behold, the garlic is finally in the ground, as of this past Sunday. That's 3 days later than last year. But the 13th is firmly into the 3rd Quarter of the moon, so we'll see if it makes a difference in how it grows. We have Duganski and Purple Glazer, both hardnecks and both saved from this summer's crop. And we have Susanville, softneck and saved from this summer, and Inchelium Red, also softneck, from new stock ordered this fall. Unfortunately, there won't be as many as I had hoped because we broke the bulbs apart almost a month ago, planning on planting back then. So some of the cloves got dried out and shrunken and were no good to plant by the time we had a chance to.

I've been debating with myself whether to get into reenacting. I'd go with a Colonial time period, I think. There's plenty of opportunities around here for Civil War reenactors to play, but can't see myself wearing hoops, although I could be a field hand, I suppose. Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park is nearby and is set around 1786 (which is when Davy was born). And Martin's Station, in Wilderness Road State Park in Va. is set in 1775, when Daniel Boone was moving people west. I have friends at both places who "dress out" (I think that's what I've heard the Crockett folks call it), so I could easily get pointers. I've looked into the various parts of the costume and know someone who sews period pieces. Right now the cost is the main thing preventing me from jumping in. A shift I could make myself, and probably petticoats, too, but I don't think I'd want to attempt a jacket/gown/short gown. And then there's the stays (that's 18th C. lingo for corset), without which I'd be considered a trollop, I suppose. I do already own a long, wool cape from my Hippie days (NOT) around 1970, that I think might not look too out of place. And I'd have to find suitable shoes. So there you go, I'm not even half dressed. Something ELSE to save up for.

This coming Monday and Tuesday are Heritage Days at Mosheim Elementary and Middle Schools. I'll be doing spinning demos for the kiddies. I may have mentioned this before, but the 7th and 8th graders were bored to tears by last year's demo, at least that's the way they acted. I guess it's not cool to show an interest in spinning at that age. LOL I'm hoping I don't have to deal with them this year. I have all my "stuff" ready to go - part of a raw fleece, some clean fleece, samples of different wools and other fibers, fiber preparation tools, and a few things I've made from my handspun yarn.

Allergy shots tomorrow. Yippee skippy.

Photographic Nightmare

The Full Hunter Moon (plus one) is climbing and Cygnus the Swan is high overhead, flying along the Milky Way. I like the winter constellations like Pegasus (the Great Square), Orion (the most obvious constellation in the sky), and then later, Leo (that's mine). Occasionally I get ambitious and try to find the Andromeda Galaxy (just off one corner of Pegasus in the constellation Andromeda, hence the name).

Yesterday, DH and I spent about 4 hours at his mother's, going through her photos. ACK! Very little organization. She has about a dozen albums, but they're those "magnetic page" ones. Half of them open up as you turn the pages because they don't have enough static and the other half have STICKY pages, so once something's in there, it's IN there. A terrible thing to do to photos, especially the older ones that I'd like to scan. And what's not in the albums is in photo envelopes, file folders, regular mail envelopes, boxes, etc. in a plastic storage tub.

So yesterday's time was mainly spent going through pictures and asking MIL who was who, if I didn't already know, and writing names on the backs. Oh brother! Her memory got worse as the afternoon wore on. Somebody she said was Joe Blow at noon became John Doe at 3 pm in a different picture. If it was obvious to me that she was wrong about a name, I just left it off or put a ?. We brought two tubs home with us and last night I started going through and sorting out duplicates, photos from different time periods (it's easy with dated pictures), and some other categories. Today, I continued the same. I'm still not done.

And nothing personal if you, dear reader, are the same kind of person, but MIL saved every stinkin' card - birthday, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, get well, retirement, Secretary's Day, you name it - she ever received, not to mention wedding invitations, programs, tickets, hospital bracelets (her own, not her son's), shreds of ribbons and fake flowers from wedding favors, newspaper articles about some neighbor's kid or somebody she worked with, etc. We are gonna have one helluva bonfire when she goes.

One good thing that has come out of "The Great Photo Roundup" is that I've found some old pictures of MIL's maternal grandmother. Here's one of them.
I already have a bunch of her father's mother. I've been e-mailing to a 2nd cousin of hers (who is actually DH's age), so as I scan them, I send them to him. There are also some of DH's father as a youngster and teen and of his grandfather, which I'll be passing along to DD and DGD. DH is voluntarily estranged from his father - hasn't had contact in about 40 yr. - but DD would like to know more about him and his family, so I've been working on that genealogy, too.

Mostly Spinning

Nov. 5 - The Bradford pear trees in the surrounding yards, as well as our own, are getting to that "Red Sails" lettuce stage - red on the tips of the branches and green at the base, so they look like giant heads of leaf lettuce, like the trees at the shopping center a few weeks ago. And the gingko trees in town have finally turned bright, pure yellow.

I've finally finished one bobbin of the wool/silk blend I'm working on. On to number two, probably tonight after supper. Sheesh, it's only 6:40 and it's already getting dark. Time to close the chickie girls in for the night.

Nov. 6 - Well, I did get some spinning done last night, almost three hours' worth. That's not as much as it sounds like, though, because I'm spinning it quite thin. It's between 1/3 and 1/2 a bobbin-full. I have an Ashford Joy that I use for spinning singles and an Ashford Traditional that's mostly reserved for plying. Ashford wheels are made in New Zealand. The Joy is a folding wheel that's easy to transport to guild meetings, demos, my SIL's house, my front porch, or wherever. I have it adjusted to spin at an 8:1 ratio, that is, it puts 8 full twists into the yarn with just 1 revolution of the drive wheel. That way I can spin faster without treadling faster. The Traditional is set up for a 6.5:1 ratio, since plying doesn't need to be spun as tight as the singles. I also have a plying flyer and bobbin on the Traditional so I can ply the two bobbins of singles together without having to stop halfway and empty the bobbin. The only time I put the normal size flyer/bobbin on the Traditional now is if I have a spinning student, though, come to think of it, that's not REALLY necessary. It's more an aesthetic thing.

Tonight I'll be putting the girls to bed at 5:45 instead of 6:45. Time to start getting light-deprivation syndrome. LOL

Using a pig

Oh poop! I forget to put the October 29th activity for Howell Farm on here. It was blacksmithing. They may have had the farrier there too, to reshoe the horses. If the horses on a farm in 1900 just did field work and didn't travel over the roads too often, they may not have been shod, just trimmed periodically, which would have saved the farmer some money (or time, if he did the trimming and/or shoeing himself.) Since our horses often do wagon or carriage rides on the farm lanes, which are dirt but are pretty hard, and on the blacktop/macadam roads surrounding the farm, they are shod. During the winter, they will have calks, kinda like giant snowtire studs, added to their shoes for traction on frozen or icy ground.

This coming Saturday, the 5th, is one of my favorite activities - Bacon, Sausage, and Scrapple Making. A Mennonite family from Lancaster Co., PA, is kind enough to do their pig butchering at Howell Farm. The pigs, usually two, are killed, gutted, and sawn in half lengthwise at their farm the day before. The family, usually three or four siblings, their mother, their spouses, and some of their children, arrive around 8 am and set up their work area on a couple of picnic tables covered with plastic. They show where the different cuts of meat come from, how to cut a ham properly, what part of the pig the bacon comes from, etc. As the men cut the various pieces, the women wrap and label them and put them on ice. The woman also do some of the trim work (see below about scrapple, cracklin's and sausage).

When the work area is set up in the morning, two fires are built for two big iron kettles. Initially, water is added to each kettle - a little in the lard kettle while it's warming up so it doesnn't burn or crack, and a lot in the scrapple kettle.

Contrary to popular belief, scrapple is NOT made from lips and a**holes. LOL When the pig is gutted, the liver (and possibly some other organ meat) is ground and cooked. Then when the pig is cut up, other meat scraps are collected, ground up, and added to the kettle with more water, along with the liver, etc. This cooked meat is called the pudding. Flour, corn meal, salt and pepper are added. I can't remember if anything else goes into it or not. The flour and corn meal thicken it and it's spooned into loaf pans to cool and set up. This is the ONLY scrapple I'll eat. I do not touch the store-bought stuff. Ergo, I haven't had scrapple since around 2001.

Into the other kettle goes any and all fat trimmings, some with a little meat still attached. This simmers away all day and renders the pure lard out. The solids that remain are a little bit of heaven - cracklin's - not to be confused with chittlin's, which is fried intestines. Ewww! The hot, liquid lard and any solids are slowly ladeled from the kettle into the sausage press, which has been cleaned and lined with several layers of cheesecloth. Then any liquid coming through the spout is caught in storage cans about the size of those popcorn cans that are around at Christmas time. After most of the liquid lard has come through on its own, the lid of the press is turned down and more liquid is squeezed out of the solids. The disk of solid fat and meat that's left is then pulled out of the press, dumped out on the table, broken apart and salted. Tastes like bacon, but better.

Some of the meat is cut small and set aside for sausage. When it's all been cut, a big meat grinder is brought out and fastened to one of the tables. The grinder is powered by a belt run by a one-cylinder donkey engine or "One-lunger," the same one that's used to power the ice cream maker in the summer. The meat is ground, then seasonings are mixed in and it's ground again. The sausage is packed into a sausage press, casing is added to the spout at the bottom, and while one person turns the wheel to press the meat down, another person stoops in front of the press with a big basin or tub and gives the sausage an occasional twist as it emerges and fills the casing.

Visitors are allowed to sample the cracklin's and some of the scrapple (since it's been cooked). By the end of the day, every scrap of meat and fat is off the bones and has been used somehow.

Fall Colors and More

Our fall colors have gotten to the gold/bronze/ maroon stage now. Still pretty, just more subdued. This picture is from 2007, looking out the front door. Glad we didn't get that early snow over the weekend. Heck, this place gets paralyzed when it snows in JANUARY! Snow before Halloween would have put them over the edge.

The six new pullets have integrated pretty well into the rest of the flock. I think they're over trying to fit four or five into a nest box to sleep. Tonight I found two boxes with a pair in each, one with one of our more docile older hens, and one by herself on a roost. I'm only getting one or two eggs per day right now, and sometimes none at all, due to molt and shorter daylight. I could put a light in the coop on a timer, but it would involve 3 extension cords, so I'd rather just put up with less eggs.

Mosheim School's Heritage Days is coming up at the beginning of Thanksgiving week. I'll be doing a spinning demo again for them. They have the various classes rotate through the demonstrations for 30 min. each. Last year, most of the younger kids (3rd grade was the youngest, I think) seemed interested in the spinning, but the 7th and 8th graders practically yawned in my face. I've requested that the 7th and 8th graders be replaced with K thru 2, so I'm not wasting my time being there. Hopefully they'll have time to rearrange the schedule.

One of my sisters was here last week, so we went through the family pictures that I have and she picked out which ones she wants me to send her. DD joined us for part of the time, so we had lots of laughs trying to figure out mystery people (unlabeled photos), trying to see details with a magnifying glass and a jeweler's loupe, and just seeing some of the stupid things in the pictures. For instance, my mother had a skunk coat when she was in her 20s. It was a knee-length, black fur coat that just happened to be made of skunk fur. Nope, no smell. Here's my mother wearing the coat and my father in something a little more sensible. Then when the kids came along, that coat went out for Halloween more than once. Ha ha! Just add a gorilla or monster mask and we were SET!

Tapioca Pudding, Garlic, Heirlooms

Oh, my achin' back! And feet! I just made tapioca pudding. I need to get a barstool. That's why I don't make tapioca pudding very often, because I have to stand for a full 40 min., stirring it constantly, waiting for it to come to a boil. Well, turn it up, you might say. Nope, can't do that. Bringing it to a boil any faster than on medium will give me burnt milk and crunchy tapioca. Blech! (remember "blech" from Mad Magazine?) Actually, I do use the so-called "quick" recipe on the tapioca box. Yeah, right. I got news for ya. 40 minutes ain't quick.

Haven't gotten my garlic in the ground yet. Maybe this week some time. The new moon is on Wednesday, so will totally miss "the dark of the moon." But I know the planting's not going to happen tomorrow, so if I miss it, I miss it.

DH wants to try to do all heirloom varieties next year, at least of tomatoes and peppers. I won't have any trouble finding heirlooms; there's a bunch of them out there. We've already tried several (Cherokee Purple, Amish Paste, Roma, San Marzano, Aunt Ruby's, Jupiter pepper, et al) and had mixed success with them. My favorite is a cherry tomato, Grandpa's Minnesota Hardy, that we did this year. I've saved some seeds for next year.

Comment on Oct. 8th

See the Sat., Oct. 8th, blog. Apparently I'm not allowed to make comments on my own blog! I tried to post the following comment on the Oct. 8th posting and it wouldn't let me. ??

And the comment is - - - That song that I thought should be called "Tin Lizzie"? It's "Rag Doll" by Aerosmith. I heard it today on the radio.

Apres SAFF

I'm back from SAFF. Didn't buy nearly as much as usual, but met up with a friend who I haven't seen in a year. I left at about 8 this morning, got there about 9:45, and started walking. LOL I left there a little after 12, stopped on the way back for lunch (found a big Chinese buffet - Yummo), and got back around 3. My feet are KILLING me.

I got a pound of light gray Bluefaced-Leicester/silk blend combed top, 13 oz. of Merino top in a darkish fushia, 40 in. size 8 Addi Turbo circular needles (I'm going to try another Shetland style shawl with the BFL/silk I'm currently spinning and wanted a slightly smaller needle to do it.), 3 bars of soap (lilac, kitchen soap to get rid of garlic and onion smell, and one with more moisturizers for apres-gardening), and 3 pairs of alpaca socks (irregulars, so only $9/pair - 2 for DH and 1 for me).

And the friend is a member of the Limestone Creek Fiber Guild that I go to monthly. We're both "charter members," but Debbie doesn't usually attend during llama show season (now) and I wasn't able to attend during the summer market seasons until this year, when we switched to a Friday market, so we only saw each other a few times a year. Well, for one reason or another, Debbie hasn't been able to come to the meetings since last summer. I knew Mary Lou (Guild mother) would have some of her girls at the llama show, so I took a walk by the stalls on the way to the show ring, where I saw Debbie's farm sign too. I got to the show ring just in time to see Debbie getting ribbons for her girls' fleeces! She was so excited! So I tagged along with Mary Lou and Debbie while they were walking their llamas back to the stalls, and talked a little about what was going on. Debbie's a hugger, so I got 6 or 7 hugs over the course of the 30 minutes I hung out with them. She said she was getting proficient on the triangle loom, but was still tense when spinning. I told her to remember to breathe. LOL

Next show, Charlotte, June of 2012.

SAFF

Only two more days till SAFF. OK, so it's REALLY only one more day, since it opens tomorrow, but I'm not going until Saturday. It runs through Sunday.

SAFF stands for Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. I've been going since 2002 (or 2003 maybe?). Can't remember exactly. It's held at the Western NC Agric. Center (read here: fairgrounds), right across the road from the Asheville Airport. There are a bunch of vendors selling all sorts of fibery stuff - supplies for spinning, weaving, knitting, etc., raw fiber, commercially processed fiber, yarn, stuff made out of yarn and other forms of fiber, books about fiber and what to do with it, plus live fiber animals - sheep, llamas, goats, and rabbits. There are also three days' worth of classes and workshops offered. There's even a guy who makes chairs, rockers, and weaving benches with woven cord seats. Way cool! It can be overwhelming for a first-time visitor, but probably just as exhilarating as for a Disney-phile visiting the Magic Kingdom for the first time. LOL

This is actually a small show compared to some others. The first one I went to is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Show, held the first weekend in May just west of Baltimore. That one is maybe twice or 2 1/2 times the size of SAFF. And the Dutchess Co. Fiber Festival (I THINK that's the official name), held in Rhinebeck, NY, is about half again as big as SAFF. There are other big ones around that I've never been to (yet). There are shows all over the country, but I've only been to Kentucky Sheep and Fiber (their first year in 2010), Michigan Fiber Festival (just a little smaller than SAFF), and Garden State Sheep Breeders show (small at the time, but may be bigger now; it's been at least 10 years since I was there), besides the aforementioned Maryland, Rhinebeck, and SAFF. Charlotte, NC, will host a new show next year that I hope to attend. Fortunately, it's not on a race weekend, so traffic will be manageable.

I have a few sheep fleeces that I've been holding onto for about five years now that desperately need to be washed and carded. I MUST take them with me and drop them off at Ozark Carding's booth. I think I might use the resulting roving to braid into a rug or maybe chair pads for the kitchen chairs and front porch rockers. It'll have to be dyed because the wool is white and there is no way I'm putting a white rug on the floor in OUR house. I'll just have to decide at what point I'll do the dyeing; while it's still roving or after braiding. Braids would be much easier to handle, but as roving, I can do different colors and then blend them as I braid. Or maybe a little of each. And I have a little bit of light gray roving left from a previous fleece, so I should be able to work that in too.

Puppy Update and Reading

If you haven't already read the September 6th blog about the puppy, do that first. I'll wait. . . .

(humming
(tapping toe)
(more humming)

OK, now that you're back - - - - I think the one thing I say to Chloe the most is "Whaddayagotinyermouth NOW?!" And I think she is actually learning what it means, because she will usually either drop what she has or run away from me. "Catch me, catch me!"

She's up to 27 lb. as of last Thursday's vet visit. She got the last of her puppy shots and isn't due back there until next October. Don't know what kind of breeds are mixed up in there, but it isn't anything too tall. She'll be a solid, mid-size dog and we hope she'll turn into a good farm dog. She's already mostly ignoring the chickens and we're trying to get her to chase off any visiting cats and NOT pounce our cats, thereby causing the cat to run, resulting in a chase. Next door's beagle/bassets come by some evenings and give Chloe a good run and wrestle session. They still have a few pounds on her, and they have much better stamina from running around the neighborhood all day.

I'm currently in the middle of reading a bio on Rita Hayworth. She had a rough childhood, if you could call it that. Today's her birthday and I caught the tail end of "The Strawberry Blonde" and beginning of "The Lady From Shanghai," on TCM, but got interrupted about 15 min. into "Shanghai". I couldn't get back to the TV until the movie was over.

Musings and Popcorn

Pet peeve: People who makes words plural by adding an apostrophe before they tack on that last s. So how do they make possessives?

Regional vernacular: One of the favorite sayings here in TN, and I'm sure in other parts of the South as well, is "Bless your heart." This is often, but not always, said by a woman (rarely a man), sometimes condescendingly, to an old person who doesn't get around too well or needs a scooter, or to a younger person helping an older person get around, such as with a wheelchair or pushing a shopping cart for the older person, especially if said older person forgets what they need in the store. (Ask me how I know.) Or it might be said to anyone who is obviously not in the best of health (leg in a cast, maybe?). Or to someone going through a hard time with just about anything in their life. We've come to the conclusion that "Bless your heart" is a euphemism for "Sucks to be you!" But heaven forbid a proper Southern lady would stoop to such vulgarity. LOL

Chickens: We got 6 new pullets a little over a week ago, since we've gradually lost some of the older girls for one reason or another. Our pen is divided in half, with a gate, so for the first two days the old and new girls were separated. The new girls had their own little coop made out of a doghouse. But then we were supposed to get an all-day rain and the tarp we had wasn't big enough to cover much of the pen for the new girls (which the old girls already had on their end), so the day before the rain, we opened the dividing gate and let the two flocks mingle. OK, so far, so good. No huge fights or pecking, and everyone was able to keep dry if they wanted to. But the new ones were still returning to their little coop at night while the old girls went into their coop as usual. We let them continue to do that until yesterday. With temps forecast in the 30s for last night, we decided to force the new girls into the big coop, where it would be warmer. So DH closed the door on the small coop after he let the 6 out in the morning. Then last night, when the main flock was heading in for bed, he herded the others in too. There was some squabbling and I think three of the new girls slept on the floor (not for lack of roost space).

The new girls are Partridge Rocks, one of the color variations of the Plymouth Rock. They appear black from a distance, but are actually mottled black and brown.

Garlic: Our garlic is about ready to be planted. The bed is all tilled and the one variety that we had to order has arrived. We'll be planting Inchelium Red, Duganski, Purple Glazer, and Susanville. Last year's Inchelium, grown from bulbs saved from the 2009 crop, didn't do too well, so we decided to start with fresh stock. The Purple Glazers did very well when replanted last year, so we'll continue with our own cloves. This will be the first replant for Duganski and Susanville. We've eliminated Music this year - it was popular, but the cloves are much too big. There aren't enough in one bulb to get too many new bulbs out of it. There will also be less hardnecks this year. Garlic scapes just didn't sell well enough to warrant planting that many again. The scape is the flower stalk that grows on a hardneck garlic. They should be broken or cut off right at the top leaf while still soft. That puts more of the plant's energy into the bulb. Scapes are edible and can be saute'ed, stir-fried, made into pesto, or chopped and added to any dish where a little garlic flavor is needed.

Popcorn: Next Saturday's program at Howell Farm is Corn and Popcorn Harvest, which is kind of self-explanatory. Some people don't realize that popcorn is a different type of corn than sweet, Indian, or field corn. The hard shell acts like a pressure cooker when the corn is heated. The moisture in the kernel heats up and suddenly explodes the shell (the "pop" sound), and the kernel turns itself inside-out.

On the evening of Friday, the 21st, there will be a presentation, "Pleasant Valley in the Revolution," with reenactment programs on Saturday and Sunday.

More Howell Farm

On Sept. 27th, I started telling you about Howell Farm. I didn't really get very far. So here's some more.

Saturdays are the big visitor days. There's a specific activity each Saturday geared toward the seasonal farm work, like Maple Sugaring, Sheep Shearing, Haying, Corn Planting, etc. Maybe what I'll do is talk about the activity coming up next. Most of them are the same each year, though the timing may change a little. Sometimes there is an entirely new program, to be tested on the unsuspecting public.

Since I already described Fall Festival (threshing), I'll do two to catch up. This past Saturday, Oct. 8th, was Pumpkin and Indian Corn Harvest. This was a low-key event, which is necessary after a busy weekend like Fall Festival. Folks can go out into the pumpkin field to pick their own or they can choose from some that have already been brought in from the field.
And they can help pick Indian corn, which are then tied together, usually in bunches of 3, for decoration. They may choose to buy one for their own front door.

A tangent - A new visitor center was built in 2002, so the historic farmhouse would no longer have to bear the brunt of that role. An old barn was moved from another Mercer Co. park a few years later and re-erected as part of the visitor center. There are now some Friday evening programs being held. And the historic house is now in the midst of restoration and repairs.

On Oct. 7th, there was a presentation, "Get to Know Your Quilts", which was sort of a lead in to next Saturday's Quilting program. There will be quilts on display and visitors can learn to quilt.

Musically Eclectic

A few weeks ago I said I would continue to 'splain my musical preferences.

Country - I got into country music for a while back in the mid- to late-70s. Even went so far as to go line dancing a few times. What was I thinking? Most of the stuff released lately, the last 10 years or so, is blah and tune-less. Not many toe tappers or catchy tunes. Yeah, even Shania. I like some of Tobey Keith's songs, Garth Brooks is OK (though he's really more 80s-90s), and Trace Adkins is OK. And you can keep the real old, twangy country, a la Hank Sr., Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, etc. The only one of the old-timers that I really like is Patsy Cline. Some of the individual songs are OK, like "Take Me Down To The Little White Church". Don't know if that's the actual name or not. I used to like Sugarland, then they started doing syrupy ballads. Yuck! But then they redeemed themselves when they released the one about the fatal attraction, "Stuck Like Glue".

80s and 90s rock/pop - Mostly depends on the individual song. I don't usually pay attention to who sings what, if the radio station even announces it. One local station puts tags at the ends of all the songs with artist and title, so I've picked up on some of the names. And actually, when disco ended, I didn't pay attention to WHEN songs were released. They all kind of slopped together. I like "Africa" by Toto, "Land Down Under" by Men At Work, "Saturday Night" by Kiss, "Come On Eileen" by ? (DD calls it the armpit song because the guys in the group wear bib overalls with no shirts and spend most the time with their arms in the air), "Who Are You" by The Who (and their two other CSI themes). There's one that sounds like it should be called "Tin Lizzie" but I don't think that's the name. I like Heart, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles. Sometimes I start humming or singing along with a song and DD looks at me like I'm nuts, because she thinks I shouldn't like that kind of music because it's a relatively recent release. (Say THAT three times fast.) And even though it's parody, I think I should include Weird Al Yancovic - "Another One Rides The Bus," "Stop Draggin' My Car Around," "I Love Rocky Road," etc. I like most of Al's songs, as well as the originals that they're based on.

Ethnic - I like polkas (Saturday morning radio when I was little), like Hawaiian/Polynesian, LOVE bagpipes, like Greek, Russian, other eastern European (particularly with balalaika), like samba, rumba, etc. (favorite is a tango, "Jalosie"), like Middle Eastern (belly dancing music), like some reggae. Don't care for oriental.

Same day, different subject

In my post on September 24th, I said I might not finish spinning that yarn for the farm. Well, TA DA! I finished that last 100-yard, two-ply skein in the nick of time. So the last 6 skeins were delivered last Saturday, which made a total of 20 skeins of bulky yarn. Quoth the raven, "NEVERMORE!"

Nighty-night. Don't let the bedbugs bite (which is a real possibility these days!)

More threshing

OK, I said I would post more threshing pictures. Here ya go! First, the farm's steam tractor, showing the PTO and belt that drives the thresher. Next we have the thresher itself, a much better picture this time. This photo was taken when the crew was taking a break, but to the right there are still some grain sacks waiting to be filled. To the left you can see a metal pipe. The straw is blown up this chute and into the barn loft.

Did you know? Straw is the stem of a grain and is hollow, hence the name of that plastic thing you drink a soda with, whereas hay is the (solid) stem and leaves of a grass like timothy or leafy plant like alfalfa that has been dried. In fact, the more leaves, the better. Many types of grass are used for hay; some grow better in some parts of the country than others. A good quality hay, with no mold or weeds, smells WONderful. Since my back yard used to be a pasture, the grass in it smells a great deal like hay when it dries after mowing. Hay has lots of nutrients for the animal eating it, but straw, while edible in a pinch, is a poor feed. Straw is better used as bedding for the horses, cows, sheep, chickens, and other farm animals, because it absorbs a lot of their urine. It is then spread on the fields, along with the manure, which feeds the next crop of grain, corn, etc. Recycling at its finest.

And just because I like this picture, this is looking up the lane on a June morning.

Lettuce, threshing and chickens

Observation: Yesterday I looked across a parking lot at a row of dogwood trees. They reminded me of bunches of giant red leaf lettuce, with frilly leaves that are green at the base and red at the tips.

We visited Howell Farm over this past weekend. It was Fall Festival weekend and it certainly felt like fall, with temps in the 60s. They harvest their wheat and spelt in July and store it until the first
weekend in October, when it is threshed. Threshing separates the grain from the straw and most of the husk that is around the individual wheat or spelt seeds. Spelt is an old-time grain, sort of a cousin to wheat. The farm grows spelt for animal feed and wheat for grinding into flour. There was also some plowing being finished up in the Hunter Rd. field, which will presumably be planted in either wheat or spelt in the coming weeks, after the field is harrowed to smooth it out. Farmer Ian did the plowing with Belgian team Chester and Jack. Sorry, I don't have a picture of them, but I DO have a picture of another team the farm used to have, Buster and Duke.
Actually, a farmer with this size farm (130 A.) in 1900 New Jersey probably wouldn't have owned a thresher. There would have been a crew that traveled the countryside, going from farm to farm. The neighbors would have brought their wagonloads of wheat, spelt, rye, barley, etc., to have them threshed, and they would all share the cost. Since crews like that haven't been around in quite some time, the farm owns a full-sized thresher that has to be run outdoors, and a barn thresher, a scaled-down version that could be used in an empty bay in the barn. Either type is powered by a long, flat belt from a tractor or engine. The farm recently bought a steam tractor to power the big thresher, which is more authentic than using a McCormick H. Some pictures of tractor and thresher next time.

We got some new pullets this evening. They're Partridge Rocks, the mottled brown color-variation of the Plymouth Rock. A friend is raising them, so we bought 6 from her. She was able to catch 5 tonight, with one more coming tomorrow. (Chickens are easiest to catch in the evening when they go in to roost. They don't see in the dark very well.) We already have Barred Rocks and a couple of White Rocks, plus some Buff Orpingtons and Ameraucanas, but have lost a few over the past two years. The young girls are about 4 1/2 to 5 months old, so they should be starting to lay very soon, if they haven't already.

Howell Farm

In 1984, Howell Living History Farm had its grand opening. It had been donated to Mercer Co., New Jersey, 10 years earlier, with the stipulation by its last owner, Inez Howell, widow of NJ Congressman Charles Howell, that it be used as an educational facility. So the county went through its governmental red tape and hoop-de-doo and turned the farm into a county park. It's operated as an 1890-1910 working farm, with work horses and oxen providing much of the power. Actually, oxen weren't used so much in New Jersey at that time, but a program to train interns to use them was put into place at the farm. Pete Watson was hired, though I'm a bit fuzzy on whether he came on as intern trainer. You see, Pete had gone into the Peace Corps some years before, and being an English major, naturally he was trained to work with oxen. You see the connection, don't you? Oh, well, anyway, Pete was trained right here in Tennessee by Ben Ellingson out near Nashville. He later went to Africa (I don't know which particular countries) and trained farmers over there to use oxen for field work, rather than using hand tools. So when he came to Howell Farm, he put his oxen expertise to work. Here's a picture of the yoke of oxen the farm had when I started volunteering there in 1994, Lyon and Giant.

Giant, the black one, is an Angus steer. Normally, Angus steers are destined for a trip to the slaughterhouse at about 15-18 months old. But the year Giant was born (sometime between 1984 and 1994), there was a football game between the New York Giants (who play in New Jersey, of course - ??) and the Denver Broncos. The governors of NJ and CO made a friendly bet - if the Giants won, Colorado would pay with a steak dinner. I don't know what NJ would have payed if the Broncos had won. A pair of cement shoes, maybe?? Well, after the Giants won (hence the name), the guv of CO sent a whole steer, fer goodness sakes. Rather than treat his cronies in the State House to steaks, the NJ guv did the right thing and gave him to Howell Farm. After they got a teammate for him - that's Lyon, the red and white one, a Hereford steer - they were trained to work together. Those things on their faces are to keep them from grazing when they're working. Here are Frank and Jesse; they were the farm's oxen in 2002.

They are Milking Devons and were trained in New England, where there are a lot more oxen still doing farm work than in NJ.

More later.

Fibery Stuff

Wow, it's been over a week since the last post. I guess nothing earth-shattering has happened around here.

This weekend is Alpace Farm Days, when alpaca farms around the country have open houses. So I took DGD and visited two of the four alpaca farms here in our county. The owners of farm #1, Silver Thunder Alpacas, are former spinning students of mine. I see him around once in a while because he works at our local Tractor Supply. Her I don't see but once a year or so. It was nice to see how their farm is coming along, with new gates (can never have too many gates), a new little farm store building, and a new cria from this spring. Baby alpacas and llamas are called crias. They're building their herd up slowly and have 8 females and at least 5 or 6 males (though not all the males are used for breeding, some are just for fiber).

The second farm is Appalachian Alpacas. I did a spinning demo and display there two years ago for Alpaca Farm Days. The first day was very windy and blew all my display stuff all over. The second day it rained just sideways enough to get my stuff wet (I was in a gazebo). So that was a flop. Today was much nicer. A friend of mine, the hostess of our local fiber guild, was weaving on a small triangle loom and a man, who I knew from a local weaving guild, was spinning (yes, men spin too, for you non-spinners out there). This farm has a bigger herd than the other one because the daughter and SIL of one owner lives next door and keeps their alpacas with mom's. So they had 8 crias, all fairly young, with their mothers, plus a few females with no baby. Didn't see where the males were.

While I was there, our guild mom told me about a new fiber fair that will be held in Charlotte, NC, next June. They have a website, but there's nothing much on it yet. I hope to go, if I can save up enough spending money. Charlotte's about a 3 1/2 to 4 hr. ride, so I don't know if it warrants an overnight stay or not. Depends on how much walking around I do. There's another show next month, SAFF, or Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair, just south of Asheville. That's only 1 1/2 hr. away, so that's easy to do in one day. I have a couple of fleeces (sheep) that were given to me that I desperately need to have processed (since I don't want to wash them myself). I don't mind carding, but can't stand washing. Which is why it's taken me about 3 years to process another fleece that I bought. I still have about 2 pounds left to do. So, anyway, I absolutely MUST take those 2 or 3 fleeces with me and drop them off with the fiber mill that will be there as a vendor. They're in Missouri, so they'll then ship back a box or boxes of nice clean roving (long continuous strip of carded wool).

In keeping with the fibery vein, I need to wash yarn this week. The yarn I've spun for Howell Farm needs to be washed, measured, weighed, and labeled before Thursday. That last half pound of wool that still needs to be spun? Yeah, well, I guess it's not going to get done before we go, unless I get ambitious tomorrow. LOL

Musical Conglomerate

I've been thinking about some of the stuff I put on my profile. There's just not enough room to elaborate. So here are some of my eclectic musical tastes.

Big Band and other 30s/40s - Glenn Miller was my first big band "love." I still like Miller, but now like Benny Goodman, Harry James, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, and others. I also got my first taste of the Andrews sisters from some old movies. They're still my favorite singers from that era. I've gotten most of the Time-Life Big Band CDs and Your Hit Parade CDs from 1940 through 1959.

The 50s were kind of lost for me, since I don't remember anything much before 1955. My mother would play the radio in the morning, so before school during the week I'd hear Eddie Fisher, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, etc. I guess some of them are OK, but I don't go looking for them. On Saturday morning we'd listen to Bernie Kosnoski's Polka Show. If I need a hit of polkas now, I see if the Big Joe Polka Show is on RFD TV. LOL We watched the King Family on TV, Frank Fontaine was on the Jackie Gleason Show, Judy Garland and others had their own shows, and Annette and Frankie sang on the beach. I never heard the new rock and roll at home, except occasionally on TV, like Elvis or Chubby Checker. Overall, I can take or leave that decade. Which is why I don't listen to those Your Hit Parade CDs from the 50s too often.

The 60s and 70s kind of overlap. I didn't ride a bus to school until Jr. High, but I lucked out with a cool bus driver who played the radio. I remember the whole bus singing along with "The Name Game," and the boys in the back would always try to do "Chuck" before the driver caught them. My first 45 was Petula Clark singing "Downtown." I like the Beatles, but never got an album, only a couple of
45s. I have 5 or 6 Simon and Garfunkel albums (and when I say albums, I mean LPs, not CDs), 5 or 6 Billy Joel albums, 3 Monkees, 3 Paul Revere & Raiders, "Tommy" by The Who, plus a few that make me wonder why in the world I bought them. I collected about 300 45s, too. I had a transistor radio (remember them? it took a 9V battery) that I'd turn on and put under my pillow so I could listen to the radio at bedtime. The battery lasted forever. I listened to either WABC in New York or WFIL in Phila. Then when I had some extra cash (not often), I'd go over to Korvette's (dept. store) and get a couple of 45s or occasionally an album. Folk songs, Mamas and Papas, etc. made their way into the mix along the way.

Classical - My mother had bought a few of those multi-record compilation albums of classical music, where you get one movement of this symphony, a snippet of that sonata, a whole piece in some cases, if it was short enough. And then there were Looney Tunes. They used a LOT of bits and pieces of the classics in those cartoons. And "The Rabbit of Seville" and "What's Opera Doc?" use almost whole movements from The Barber of Seville and The Ride of the Valkyries. So I contented myself with those until I started working. There was an older man in the office next to mine who was an opera and classical buff, so we'd get talking about music. He introduced me to a lot of pieces I wouldn't have bothered with otherwise. When "Fantasia" came out, I was in hog heaven. So, the CDs I have now are Beethoven, Copland, Gershwin, Grofe', Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Strauss, Verdi, and Vivaldi, plus one of Fiedler and the Phila. Orchestra and one of different marches.

More later.

Birds of a Feather

Why do chickens molt when the colder weather starts? I have one that started last week, which isn't bad. By the time it freezes, she'll be refeathered. But there are always a few who are still rather threadbare when we're getting some frosts, or even downright freezes, at night. I knew before getting chickens that they molt each year, but the first year it happened I thought one of them had exploded! LOL There are a LOT of feathers on those girls. I haven't actually seen any of them losing any (our house is about 100 ft. from their pen), but it looks like they shake and fluff their feathers and lose a bunch in that spot. Then later, when they're in a different spot, they shake again and lose more. Some of them get really pathetic looking and with others, you'd never know they were molting except when they spread their wings and some flight feathers are missing. Here are some of the girls.

Short 'n' Sweet

BIL and his oldest son have arrived; they'll be here a week, I think. Put a hurtin' on that pot of chili I cooked up, then sat on the front porch for awhile and watched puppy Chloe play with neighbor Bill's dogs. Then after I closed the chickens in for the night and collected eggs, I came in and caught most of America's Got Talent. I was rooting for Poplyfe, the young band, but Landau Murphy won. He's a really good singer too. You don't expect Frank Sinatra's voice to come out of a black guy with long hair in braids.

We started some zucchini and yellow squash about 9-10 days ago and bought some cabbage plants, so some of them will be going in there. Don't know if the squashes will do anything, especially with 49 degrees forecast as an overnight low tomorrow night, but the cabbage should do OK. We have some lettuce in the raised beds too. We'll see if we get to eat it or if it's just going to be chicken food.

Stinky Dogs and Hungry Horses

I'm back after a few days. MIL had to go into the hospital on Sunday afternoon, via ambulance, for a medical problem. The ambulance was because she couldn't walk and there was no WAY DH and DD could get her out of the house and into the car. Soooo, we had her two dogs at our house from Sunday night till this morning. They have never been leashed trained, the old one doesn't come when he's called, the old one also paced the house almost continuously, even through the night, until DH got out of bed and went and slept in the recliner. I'll bet you can guess why. Yup, MIL sleeps half the night in her recliner, then goes to bed around 3 or 4 in the AM. They also stunk, so they got hose baths this morning outside. Since her house was empty yesterday, DH took advantage and went over the carpets with our shampooer while DD and I cleaned house real good, the stuff the cleaning lady doesn't get.

One of the BIL's is coming down from NJ tomorrow, so I'm making a crockpot of chili for supper. Put it together, turn it on and forget it.

Other than that and cleaning up the house, I have no idea what I'm doing tomorrow. What I SHOULD do is spin up the rest of that stupid wool or at least wash what is already spun. I've been doing some genealogy searches on rootsweb and have found a few people, but I doubt I'll be able to get back to that for a few days.

All in all, a pretty boring blog today.

Can you smell it?

Smell what? Why, the cinnamon and apples, of course. The 4th apple walnut bundt cake was put in the oven at 7:30 pm and the first two are ready to go out to the freezer. We stopped at the Friday Fair market yesterday and one guy had one small bag of Jonagold apples left. So I figured I may as well get started on fall baking. Some of those apples are huge, so I still have 4 left. No, no more apple cakes. But I'm not sure what yet. I'll be doing cookies, I'm sure, but not with apples, and pumpkin and apple pies around Thanksgiving. I use Granny Smiths for apple pie because they stay firm when they're cooked.

Welcome, Tina and Linda.

I belong to the Limestone Creek Fiber Guild, which started as an informal get together of fibery folks about once every other month. This was about 4 years ago? Maybe 5?

* * * * * We interrupt this blog for an important bulletin. Just tasted cake #3. As I suspected, I forgot the white sugar. I did put the brown sugar in, so it's not totally yuck. I had added the white and wheat flours to the mixing bowl, then stopped to make supper. Mistake! When I went back to it, I skipped over the white sugar. I thought the batter was a little different, but couldn't put my finger on it. Drier, maybe? I wondered about the sugar. Now I know. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog. * * * * *

Now Limestone Creek meets pretty much every month. The "den mother" is a llama owner, as are some of the other members. Then there's a new every-other-Tuesday group nearby - the name escapes me at the moment - so I've started going to that once a month. It forces me to get some spinning done. In fact, most of that farm yarn I talked about was done at the Limestone Creek meetings.

End of Two Tunnels

I supposed I'll slow down to posting once a week or so once all the newness wears off, instead of almost every day. I just finished yet another major branch of the Fisler family. Just one smallish branch to go.

I have a Family Tree Maker program that I enter all the informtion into. Then I can print out ancestor trees, descendant trees, etc. with whatever data I want to include. Some of the popular (and, therefore, annoying) first names on the Fisler hit parade are, for the guys, Samuel, Joseph, Benjamin, Charles, Jacob, Lorenzo (believe it or not!), Wade, Felix and Leonard. For the gals, it's Rachel, Elizabeth, Mary (no surprise there), Hannah, Henrietta, Sophia, Sarah, Ann/Anna/Annie, and, believe it or not, Euphemia. Yep, there are 3 or 4 Euphemia's just in one branch. At the other end of the spectrum are the "Your parents named you WHAT?!!" names, like Euphemia (LOL), Lynnton (male), Elbert, Mulford, Luberta (female), Thorn (male), Vestina (female - not a blood relative, thank goodness), Athalan (female - that's what it looks like on the actual census page, too), Kesiah (female - I've come across this name in a totally different section of the family, too), Barzillai (male - also unrelated to the Fislers), Gilden Elvin, who married Ola, the previously mentioned Oarmel/Armel/Armol, and one woman who also had three different versions of her name - Lorene (not bad), Lonzene (bad), and Alonzene (worse). There are a couple of names that I like, but would never name my kid that - like sisters Arabella and Isadora, and distantly related Cornelia. And one woman married Clayton Moore! No, not the Lone Ranger. He was a RR Express agent.

And then there are brothers who marry sisters, which isn't too bad, or the guy whose first wife dies, so he remarries . . . her sister or cousin. Got a couple of those. Or the guy who marries a distant cousin with the same surname. ACK! And THEN when he remarries, it's to her sister/cousin with the SAME NAME again. I think the only situation I haven't come across (yet) is where multiple wives have the same name, at least the first name.

Is there a gene for farming? I haven't actually counted, but at least 75% of my father's side of the family, up to 1930 anyway, were farmers. My mother's family were more city folk. I'm glad I don't farm full time. Just trying to get the garden to grow vegetables, not weeds, is a chore.

I'm also almost at the end of a spinning project. When in NJ, DH and I volunteered at a living history farm for about 8 years. Each year, after the sheep are shorn, they get the wool processed into roving (washed, dried, and carded into a long continuous strand about 1 inch in diam.). A spinner would then spin the yarn from the roving. We visited the farm last September and I learned that there are at least a couple dozen bags of roving being stored. The two employees there who spin don't have time to do it. Since I spin, I offered to bring one bag home and spin up some yarn that they could sell in their gift shop. I picked a bag of medium gray that's an amalgam of several sheep; it weighed about 8 lb. I'm now on the last half pound and expect to finish it in the next two weeks. That includes making two-ply yarn, winding it into skeins, and washing the skeins to set the twist. I also made some labels for the skeins with farm's logo on them. About half of the yarn has already been sent to the farm and the rest will go next month. So pretty soon I can get back to spinning for myself. I have a wool/silk blend that I think I'll work on next.

I am determined to get to bed at a decent hour tonight, so buh-bye

Dogs and ancestors

Had the house more or less to myself yesterday. DH took MIL to the doctor this morning (a 6 hr. ordeal counting that he has to get up at 6 am) and then went to work on BIL's tractor this afternoon. I say more or less because we have two dogs - a 15-year-old rat terrier-type cross and a 3-month-old retriever-type cross. The old dog is a piece of cake . . . now. In her heyday she could be a real piece of work. The pup, on the other hand, is a handful when she's between naps. I never had a dog who liked to chew and eat stuff like her - random scraps of paper, cellophane, fuzz, toy stuffing, dog bed stuffing, the dog bed label, , used dryer sheets, the bathroom rug label, leaves, cat s--t (ewww - trying to break her of that REAL fast), chunks of old dry grass from the mower, chair legs, cedar chest legs, the wooden handle of a flag, horse hoof trimmings (yes, you heard me right - dogs LOVE horse hooves). At least she seems to be catching on to housebreaking OK.



I've been working on the genealogy stuff again tonight, to the exclusion of most everything else except seeing who got to the finals on America's Got Talent. Some of the main family names I'm working on are Lamb, Fisler, Inman, Heisler, Houlroyd, Richter, Cooper, Carmody, McChesney and Barton. The LDS search site has a lot more census info on it starting this year, with transcriptions of US censuses from 1850 to 1930, and actual images to look at for 1850, 1870, and 1900. Some birth and marriage records go back farther. And fortunately for me, most of the family were homebodies. I can confine my searches pretty much to NJ, PA, and NY. There are very few (considering how many there are total) that moved out of the tri-state area. I have a few notebooks that I'm putting my copies of records into, but I think I'll need more, or at least bigger for the Fislers. Note to self - buy some dividers for the different branches so I don't have to flip through to find the descendant printouts I've been following.

Another late (for me) night - 11:25. Still have to give old dog her pill so she doesn't pee in her sleep.

Bleary eyed

. . . from looking up genealogy records on the computer for the last 4 hr. Currently working on my father's mother's family. Holy cow, what a prolific family! And why, oh why, does everyone name their kids after uncles, aunts, cousins, so there are dozens of people with the same common names. I, at least, skipped back over three generations (me, my mother, and my grandmother) when naming my daughter, who is named for her gr-gr-grandmother. Even the names that are unusual, aren't THAT unusual in this family, except for maybe the guy named Oarmel (or Armol or Armel, depending on which record you look at). And amongst the hundreds of folks in NJ and PA, there was one, at least, who moved to North Carolina and was in Mars Hill in 1910. That's just about an hour's ride from where I am.

Linda, you might not have wanted that nice wind this morning when Lee blew through. It was raining sideways. Then it's been on and off (mostly on) all day since then. Where was this rain back in July when we could have used it?

Gotta hit the sack.

Day One: Continued

Three hours later. OK, so it's actually more like 4 hr. later because when I hit "Publish Post" before, it stayed as a draft. Thunder and the couple dozen drops of rain we received have gone for the moment. Never did actually see any lightning.

The back story: I'm a retired secretary who worked for NJ Dept. of Transportation for 34 yr. Twenty of those years was as a medical secretary, which I really enjoyed. Every once in awhile the State would offer retirement packages and one came up that I (and DH, who also worked at DOT) couldn't pass up. BUT, taxes and auto insurance being sky high in Jersey, we knew we couldn't stay there after retirement unless we moved to the "projects." Since DH's mother was already living in TN since 1977 and we had been around much of East TN over the ensuing 20+ years, we decided to move. So in 2002 our house in NJ finally sold and we found a place in Greene Co., TN. We got 7 times as much land (2.87 A) for 1/9 of the taxes (yeah, I figured it out). Our car insurance dropped in the hole.

The name of the farm, Cherokee View, came from the glimpse of Cherokee National Forest we get between some little hills by our place. The view is better if I walk up the hill to the north, but I rarely go up there. The view from the house is much better during the winter when the trees are bare. Here's a summer view from a few years ago when the close trees were shorter.



Our lot is a double flag, that is, a 50 ft. frontage goes back about 400 ft., then widens out on both sides. Most of the left side flag (southeast) is a downhill pasture, about 3/4 acre or so. One of the neighbors has 5 horses that they were rotating between their half acre pasture, our pasture, and another neighbor's half acre pasture. WAY too much horse on WAY too little pasture. They give them hay too, but, boy, do they beat the ground up. Now their little pasture is gone because they've taken the fencing down so they can sell their house. They'll be moving within a month or two to a bigger property with several acres of pasture, and none too soon. These same folks seem to accumulate dogs too. They started out with 3, all good sized. Then a stray beagle (probably had basset in her too) had puppies at their house. They kept two of the puppies, but once they were too big to keep track of when let out to potty, they let them run the neighborhood all day. So if a car doesn't get them, a farmer with a gun might. And if they don't take care of business soon, there'll be MORE little beagle/bassets running around, since it's a brother and sister and they're about 7 months old now.

The right side flag is uphill toward the north (the highest point of the property) and gradually slopes down along the northwest side. The garden is along that side and counting several raised beds here and there, is about 6,000 sq. ft. total. More on that later. At the back of the property, toward the southwest, we adjoin a semi-wooded lot that used to be a pig farm, according to the locals. There's no remnants of the smell left, thank goodness. The chicken coop and pen and a storage barn are down there along the fence. Right in the middle of the property is the house, which the builder skewed slightly from the lines of the property so it faces directly east, west, etc. I'd compare the builder to the builders of the pyramids, but I've met the guy and I wouldn't insult the Egyptians like that. And I doubt he's even heard the term "feng shui," so I know that's not why he did it. Last but not least, the one story, cobbled together "barn" is next to the pasture. It was built by a committee, apparently. There's a stovepipe to nowhere that drips during rain, so a 5 gal. bucket sets underneath. The starlings have inhabited the spaces between the roof and ceiling of the one, completely closed-in room that is a workshop. And then we went and built yet another room onto it for storage. LOL

Have to go gather eggs and close the chickie girls in for the night. Which I did about an hour ago, after failing to figure out why this post didn't post.

Nighty-night.
Chris

OK, Here we go

OK, let's try this thing called blogging. I suppose I'll switch between subjects such as genealogy, gardening (and the related selling-of-the-produce - see also greenegrown.blogspot.com, started by Greene Grown originator and all-around good guy, Butch Larkin), reading, chickens (we have 18), dogs (we have 2), cats (also 2), and probably some other stuff that doesn't spring to mind right now. I think I'll like the freedom of being able to just ramble hither and yon between subjects, not like answering an e-mail, where I have to, more or less, stick to the subject.

I hear thunder outside right now, which means the electric may blink off for a moment, just enough to reset the computer, which doesn't like to be reset when it's in the middle of an online session. So I think I may just cut this short and pick it up again later after said thunder and accompanying lightning (the REAL culprit) has stopped.

Oh, heck, add spinning and the related wooly details and fiber shows and occasionally weaving, embroidery, and needle felting, to the list in paragraph one. Sheesh, how could I forget that?

Bye for now.
Chris