Washing Wool

Over the past 2 weeks I have washed 50 pounds of wool in our washing machine. A young couple called us on the phone asking us to wash the wool and mohair from their animals. They were not sure how many pounds. We agreed on a price per pound, and when they brought the wool I realized what I was taking on.

The wool was very dirty. I sorted through and weighed each fleece, one box for dark wool, one for white, another for colored mohair, and another for white mohair. As I sorted I was making a judgment about what fleeces I could manage.

To wash wool I fill the washing machine with HOT, hot water...140 degrees in fact. I add liquid soap and put the wool, encased in mesh bags. NO AGITATION! Let it soak for 30 minutes. This means set the timer I keep with me as I do other things. When the time is up, drain the tub of the very grungy water, take out the wool, refill the tub with more HOT water, enter the wool again, first rinse for 30 minutes, NO AGITATION. Repeat draining, removing wool, and refill with a second wash with soap. Wait 30 minutes. Repeat draining, removing wool, and refill two more times for two rinses. Whew! The whole process takes two and one half hours of soaking not counting filling, draining and spinning. And when you are done you know bunches of dirt and lanolin have gone down the drain and the wool looks white when it looked gray to begin with.

Then the wool is spread out on racks to dry. This is when I begin to see bits of vegetation that did not get picked out of the dirty wool, and I find myself picking a bit out every time I pass the drying rack. Some of the wool dries overnight. Some of it takes several days. I know it would dry faster if the layers were not so thick, but I have limited space. I am looking forward to having a drying rack that is stacked high with screen shelves. As it is I have to wait several days for each load of wool to dry before I can do the next one.

Now I have a much better handle on what is involved with washing larger quantities of wool.
This summer we will build a fiber building that will have the capacity to wash and dry wool using solar thermal hot water. I will be glad when we are able to wash our own fleeces and the operation no longer takes over our bathroom with wall to wall wool.

Spring Farm Rhythms

There are rhythms on the farm. Spring rhythms get us out to tap trees and collect sap when the nights are cold and the days are warm. It is quite a pleasant thing on the nice days. With this comes boiling sap on the wood fired evaporator and collecting sap around the southwest field using Bubba, the draft horse. He really likes to work, and the pung we are using now works well on the snow when it is not too deep. And the snow is melting, oh my. And it is getting warm earlier than usual. We have done 12 batches of syrup already when in previous years we would just have started boiling at this time in March. We have had several warm days when the sap did not run, and we are hoping for some cold nights next week.

The chickens are laying really well as the days get longer. The garden is now clear of snow, and though we usually have seedlings started, this year we will plant less because we are building the fiber building. Chores have their own rhythms twice a day, every day. Chores require less in the summer when the animals are on grass. And now we have the new pole barn and can drop a bale of hay down into the feeder and walk along the middle when sheep can not invade us and drop grain on both sides with ample space for every ewe to eat. Everyone gets hay and the water buckets are filled twice a day.

Spring brings new lambs, with a routine of checking in the barn frequently for newcomers, and watching the lambs explore, jump, play and grow.This year we are bottle feeding 3 lambs, Willow (one of the triplets), Wooly and Woody, twins of Celine (who is not making enough milk for them). Feeding a bottle is fun at first, and now I am looking forward to having grandchildren visit to help with this particiular part of chores.

We are getting ready for Maine Maple Sunday, which requires bottling the last of 2009 maple syrup and which takes me to the dye kitchen. We are creating a recipe book for Cushing dyes so that we can reproduce colors. Our friends Anne and Cheryl have come to help create the process and the sample book. Today we are off to spin at Anne's house. We will take the samples to show the group. Maybe I can get that pair of socks knitted from the toe up finished today.

Record Day for Sap Collection

After chores yesterday we started the day collecting sap with Bubba, our draft horse. We harnessed him up to the pung, which held a 65 gallon container. He was ready to go. The previous day we had gathered sap into 5 gallon buckets and carried them to the edge of the snow. With Bubba we traveled to each set of buckets and emptied them into the big container on the pung.
We filled it once and went back for 1/2 a tank more.

Mary Ann finished the maple syrup in the evaporator that was almost done while Cayenne and I put in 35 more taps. Every tree was dripping fast. We collected more sap into 5 gallon buckets, and pumped it into 32 gallon containers to store. We also refilled the galvanized tank that feed the evaporator. In the end we estimated about 250 gallons gathered.

Lets see, 250 gallons will make about 5 gallons of syrup, which requires over 20 hours of boiling. Our syrup is rich, extra dark syrup. We believe this is at least partly because we use red maples as well as sugar maples. It also takes us 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup rather than the generally accepted 40 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup.

Pancakes for breakfast this am? You bet.