Thyme Flies When You are Having Fun!

Have you noticed lately how one thing leads to another? I started in January writing our farm newsletter, which went out yesterday as a February/March issue. The February newsletter calendar had our spinning groups, first and second wednesdays of the month, 10 to 2 potluck, washing wool workshops, the gentle yoga workshop....events that now are history.

The Second Annual Dye Retreat Weekend, coming up March 11, 12th and 13th had consumed some time with posters, the web site, registration forms, and preparations and planning. There is still room, and for local folks who will not spend the night the cost is less. There is still room, so if you are interested go to our web site to register.

We had an extra wet felting workshop for some people who made backgrounds for some landscape art they will enter in a Massachusetts art show. The Walkabout group came to snow shoe, and we fed them a pot roast lunch with all the trimmings. And our afghan class met for the second square, learning a lot about gauge and blocking their squares, and starting the second pattern stitch.

We had two women come to use the facilities for processing their own fleeces. One came with fiber to wash in our two washing machines. The other carded 8 ounces of fiber on our older Patrick Green electric drum carder. They both left happy with their accomplishments. One woman came hoping we would process her fleeces, and left happy with the idea that, although we do not wash fleeces for other people we do offer our facilities for them to do it themselves. She will be back.

The sheep need to be shorn. We have done two of them ourselves, with bags so big we are thinking they will have lambs very soon. They all heavy with lambs and wool, making it difficult for them to all get to the feeder for grain. We "crotched" ten of them, which means we cleaned the wool off their hind ends and around the teats, in case they have lambs in the next week....and we made a decision to have Jeff Jordan, from New Hampshire come to shear them all next week. We invited our fiber community to come for the day, have a pot luck lunch, maybe buy some raw fleeces, and visit and spin or knit. That will happen Thursday, March 3rd. Anyone interested in sheep is welcome to come.

The two sheep that were shorn last week stayed in the barn for a couple of days, and now they are back outside and seem warm enough. We have cleaned out the barn to make lambing jugs and put down straw bedding, and the first thing I do in the am and the last thing at night is a barn check to look for signs of early labor. One thing to watch for is a ewe that is not interested in grain. Lambs could come at any time.

Meanwhile preparations for the sugaring season are underway, doors on the new sugar house, barrells, buckets, taps, washed, wood unburied from snow and stacked.

Who says winter is not a busy time for farmers?
We love what we do....and play when we can.
Life is good.

Grammy's Hooked Rugs

My Grammy Thurston, my mother's mother, enjoyed making hooked rugs. She was well known here in Maine for her talent and skill with hooking rugs. The rug pictured here now hangs above the mantle in our living room, never having been on the floor to be walked on as it was precious to my mother, and now just as precious to me.

Mammy Thurston died when I was eight years old, and I can still remember watching her sitting at her rug frame patiently adding narrow hand cut strips of dyed wool loop by loop until the design she had planned was created.

She used a backing of burlap, to which she drew a design, perhaps using a pattern. She carefully chose the wool fabrics in the colors she wanted. Sometimes she used tweeds or patterned fabrics, such as you see surrounding the floral centerpiece in the rug shown here. If she did not have the right colors she dyed light wool squares in a pot on the wood stove. I believe that the dyes she used were Cushing's Dyes, which come in little paper envelopes. I suspect she had to mix them sometimes in order to get all the shades she wanted for her pattern.

The wood stove was used to heat the kitchen, and my grandfather sat in his rocking chair at the end of the stove with his feet propped up after supper. When Grammy T was dyeing wool she dissolved the powdered dye in a small cup used only for dyeing wool, added some vinegar, and added water from the tea kettle. She then decided how intense the color should be, often dying two or three shades of the same color. This was done by putting two or three pots on the stove with water enough to cover the wool squares and then adding a teaspoon or so to one, a Tablespoon to another, and even more to the third. She added the fabric and let it simmer for a half hour or so until all the color was absorbed into the wool and only the clear water remained in the pot. Then she would let it cool, rinse it, and hand it to dry.

Then she cut the wool squares into narrow strips in three piles and proceeded to work the design in her rug. Sometimes she did not have enough of a particular color, and would dye more, which may have been yet a different shade, but in the finished rug she worked all the colors in so that the end result looked as if it were planned that way.

I have to admit, I do not remember all these details of dyeing and hooking from watching her at such a young age but I do remember her standing at the wood stove stirring the dye pots, and sitting at her rug frame hooking. I have learned much about dyeing and use Cushing's Dyes(still manufactured here in Maine)and a little about hooking rugs over the past 10 years. I believe her example as an artist has influenced me to enjoy dyeing wool yarn and create designs using wool. These activities feed my soul and energize me. I am very grateful for these memories of my Grammy.

Getting Ready for Sap Season

February at the farm is a time for getting ready for maple syrup production and this year is no exception. The harness is cleaned, and needed repairs are in process. We will start working with Bubba, walking him around in harness, then pulling a drag to prepare the trails for collecting sap. Bubba really likes to go, and we often stand in front of him to keep him from moving forward while we are pouring sap into the sap tank.

This year there is plenty of snow on the trails. We plan to jerririg a rounded front for our sleigh runners to make it so Mary Ann can sit on it while driving Bubba along the sap trails. We had talked about making a snow roller for him to drag using a piece of culvert filled with cement, but never got arount to it.

For collecting sap with the horse we use a 65 gallon tank on a very old pung. A pung is a low slung rig with shaves and a seat for two at the front. Ours has two seats (carries 4 people) and the back seat easily lifts off making space for the tank on the back. We tend not to fill it to the top, which could make it too heavy.

The sugar house is built, coupola and all. The evaporator in place complete with a new smokestack. Buckets and taps are emerging from storage to be prepared for tapping trees.

We have entered an agreement with some neighbors, who will tap trees and gather sap, which will make it easier to have enough sap to boil every day. It takes about 100 gallons in the storage tank in order to have enough to boil and in past years it often took a couple of days to have that quantity collected. The neighbors plan to help us collect sap and feed the wood fired evaporator. They have already helped us gather and stack wood and work on finishing the new sugar house.

In previous years there have been 4 or 5 days in the three week season that were "100 gallon days" but usually collection yields around 75 gallons a day and sometimes a lot less depending on the weather. For our trees it generally takes 60 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, and we do not want the evaporator to boil to low and burn. This year we hope to be able to boil every day once the season begins. The season begins when there are several days in which the nights are cold, and the days are warm, which is what triggers sap flow in the trees.

Stay tuned for more information about our 2011 maple season....