Bird(brain)feeder
This shot was taken through our kitchen window this afternoon. It’s no wonder we go through birdseed so fast. Neither of us has a real problem with this sort of behavior; if we did we’d put a stop to the same animal pilfering cat food from the back porch. Given this bent I’m not sure why we have adopted the double standard which precludes raccoons and opossums from doing the same?
Past(el) moment
Our older daughter has always had a knack for drawing, did quite a bit when she was younger, and has a particular knack for cartoons. The drawing below, which was created when she was about twelve, has always been my favorite because it elicits, for me, a moment and a very particular feeling. Is it not one of the motivations of art to transport the viewer to a time, a place, or an emotion? We store these data in our heads and call them memory. Just as data is stored it is also retrieved. I wonder what initiates the recall of any particular piece of data from its register and into consciousness? Is it possible that sculpture, painting, the written word, or perhaps a concerto can motivate remembrance? I believe they can. For me, this drawing reminds me of times when the day’s work was done and I have been able to spend a minute or two enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of the farm. Admittedly those times have been few and far between – but they happen, and when they do they have been as colorful as the image.
To (feed) bees, or not to (feed) bees
We mentioned in our Daily Journal the other day that we have been listening to the bee hives several times a week for some time. None of our bees overwintered last year and we have been anxious about the new colonies we established last spring. Bee hives overwinter with honey resources they are able to produce, accumulate, and store during the late summer and fall. Once they hold up come winter they are on their own until nectar flows begin in spring. People that tend bees are of diverse opinion when it comes to feeding their charges. Some supplement as the season descents into winter, some feed throughout the coldest winter months, many provide supplemental feed in early spring, and some do nothing at all. We’ve been discussing whether it is too early to begin providing supplementary feed as the hives become more active with the increasing number of warm days. We made some sugar syrup a week ago and the weather then turned colder. It was warm over the recent weekend so we put the syrup out and a few individuals found it. It has turned colder once more so I think we’ll hold off on supplementation until the warmer days become a bit more predictable. As of this past weekend I can report that all the hives were buzzing with activity.
After talking with some very experienced people and looking closely at the hives that we lost last year we concluded that our bees had fallen prey to infestation by the Varroa mite. Varroa is thought to be a contributing factor to CCD or colony collapse disorder. In any event, once that determination had been made we were up against a very difficult management decision. Without years of selective breeding for mite resistance and for hygienic behavior our only option was to treat with chemical miticide. After much research we decided to go with a 25% thymol paste. Thymol is a natural product extracted from common thyme as well as from a number of other plants; it is a rapidly degrading pesticide and has no withdrawal period for honey. Fall treatment of the hives consisted of two 10-day applications and, as far as we could determine, there were no ill effects on the bees.
World and U.S. honey markets have experienced recent, and significant, upheaval. A federal grand jury in Detroit returned a 19-count indictment against a honey processing firm, charging that it blended corn syrup with honey and sold the mixture as USDA Grade A, pure, product. Moreover honey imports from China to the U.K. were pulled from store shelves when samples tested positive for both streptomycin and chloramphenicol.
Raising bees may have its ups and downs, but we are glad to know where our honey comes from.
The view from Sisyphus’s hill
Whether raising crops or livestock, farmers spend a great deal of time negotiating the proverbial Sisyphean hill. I know that all work is work but farming is particularly difficult work. It can be emotionally draining (some of the time), physically demanding (most of the time), and requires self-motivation and self-sacrifice (all of the time). Although we are not fulltime farmers, we know something about the hardships and rare rewards of working the land. In particular we have come to experience the ecological and economic challenges of sustainable livestock husbandry.
Not wanting to make this post overly negative let me point out that there are times on the farm when one can indeed pause atop Sisyphus’s hill to take in its steep, precipitous, cliffs and appreciate the green valley floor below. One of those times is afforded by an appreciation of harvest; a hay mow overflowing, a silo filled, or (as in the case of the current photo) a full crib of ear corn. Such times are also afforded by views of cows with healthy calves, ewes with lambs, and by geese with following goslings. Finally, they occur when one’s table is replete with farm-raised product. Eating what you have produced is eating locally in the extreme and allows one to minimize their carbon footprint.
I have always described life on the farm as an oscillator. If you expect farm life to unfold as one is lead to believe it will by so many printed periodicals it will surely disappoint. On balance farm life is, at its best, a break-even proposition. This life is difficult to be sure, it also has immense rewards. One must grab these as they present themselves and savor them as one would make a hard candy last a very long time.
(literal) Reflection
Your Mother was right when she told you that things aren’t always what they seem. The photos show a Silver Maple growing by our lower pond. My older daughter grew the tree from seed while we were still living in Indiana. When we made the move to Pennsylvania she dug up the sapling and brought it along. The image on the left shows the tree and its reflection in the still waters of the pond below. While reflecting on its reflection (sorry) I decided to borrow one of my father-in-law’s photographic tricks and focused (literally) on the water. The photo on the right is the result rotated 180º but otherwise unaltered. The ground into which the tree appears to be rooted is the lower bank of the pond. Pretty nifty, don’t you think?
Of fractals and Fibonacci
We negotiated a bridge spanning the spillway of one of our local reservoirs yesterday and captured a few photos of the water as it flowed beneath. It wasn’t until we looked over the images that it occurred to us that the water, frozen (as it were), mirrored the graceful reticulations of intricately knitted lace.
Fractals and Fibonacci sequences are just two ways in which science may explain what nature has known since before the dawn of time. We refer to the patterned beauty of nature as Art. Nature’s art is ineffable, not to be chased, harnessed, understood, and then copied. We try and fail to dissect and to understand what is, in fact, the summation of individually simple side consequences of millions upon millions of regular and ultimately unknowable events which have taken place over the very smallest and the very largest of time scales.
Coliforms … friend or foe
I have already mentioned that our domestic water supply is drawn from a surface spring. Having been raised in the city, this fact had been perhaps the most significant hurdle between me and rural living. I remember thinking .. water doesn’t come from the ground .. in order for it to be safe it must emanate from pipes .. right?
We recently had our water tested (see posts about the Marcellus gas shale industry) and can report that the results were well within recommended levels for things like iron, sodium, and sulfates as well as for compounds of particular concern (such as arsenic, barium, strontium, and methane for example) when fracking is occurring in your neighborhood. The test parameters which fell outside of recommended levels were those for total coliforms and fecal coliforms. I’m sure that anyone who reads this is now aghast .. positive for coliforms! Take a deep breath. Coliforms are gram-negative bacteria found ubiquitously in water, soils, on plants, and in the digestive systems of mostly warm-blooded animals. Although a number of these may cause serious human disease, most comprise part of the normal (human) bacterial flora and are considered opportunistic pathogens; that is, they cause disease when host conditions are ripe to do so. The presence of coliform bacteria does not necessarily indicate that your water is unsafe; its presence however may indicate that other, potentially pathogenic, organisms may be around. If you look into our spring house you will see lots of little critters (mostly pill bugs, centipedes, and spiders) crawling about its walls. If you peer into the reservoir itself you will see a number of salamanders and newts darting about. We were told by pervious owners of the farm that they used to put a trout or two into the spring each year. They’d allow these to feed and to fatten until it was time to harvest. We suppose the trout also acted as the proverbial Canary in the Coal Mine and would be a real-time indicator of water quality as well. If you look around the spring house the surrounding wood is busy with the traffic of a variety of wildlife including birds, domestic dogs and cats, deer, raccoons, possums, and mice; and more unpredictably bobcats, bear, porcupine, and foxes. The place is teaming with the activity of warm-blooded animals (which harbor and deposit fecal coliforms). To discover the presence of coliforms in our spring should come as no surprise – we expect them to be there. It is wrong to conclude that the presence of these organisms makes the water unfit for consumption. For years we drew our domestic water straight from the spring. To put those of you who might be concerned about the presence of coliform bacteria, pathogenic or not, you will be glad to know that we now have a UV filter in place which instantaneously kills any biologically active material in our incoming water stream including bacteria, viruses, and protists such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia. Our water is excellent. It is soft, clear, cold, and delicious. We are grateful for it – coliforms and all.
Double take
I have passed this facility at our local market several hundred times, yet only yesterday, noticed a phrase in the advertisement which accompanies it. Please do not misunderstand, it is a wonderful thing that purified water can be so readily available to consumers in this way. To be clear, the motivation for this post came from the surprise that I registered when I read the phrase … “Like Water Used to be!” My first thought was, Does water not taste like it used to? And, if so, When did this happen?
I am aware that there are global concerns about water; and, in particular, the availability of clean drinking water to nourish an ever-growing population (human and otherwise). A quick gathering of statistics brought the many problems into clear relief; 884 million people do not have access to safe water and 1.4 million children die each year as a result of diseases caused by organisms which are found in unclean water. I am also aware, in some general sense at least, that there are significant water issues in the U.S. as well. What took me up short however was the realization (made so clear by the statement which is the focus of this post) that a number of folks apparently do not have access to water that is both delicious and pure … like [it] used to be.
I suppose I had thought that the real issues of water supply and quality were somehow concerns of countries in the developing world. What shocked me was the uncomfortable realization that these issues affect my world too. Sure, I know that there are worries about U.S. water supplies and that one in three counties here will experience greater risks of water shortage due to global climate change in the near future. Perhaps the fact that fifty billion units of bottled water are consumed by Americans each year should have given me a hint. The fact, which I was able to ignore in my little clean-water corner of the world I call home, is that water quality is enough of a local issue that facilities like the one shown above are here and they are here to stay. This negative realization is made more worrisome, for us, by the encroachment of the Marcellus gas shale industry. We wrote, in an earlier post, about the potential impact of hydraulic fracturing on our own domestic and agricultural water supplies. Let us hope that the situation never, ever, mirrors that reflected upon by Coleridge in verse: Water, water, every where … Nor any drop to drink.
Waste not
Purchasing weaving yarns by the cone is usually more economical than buying smaller quantities, and having lots of leftovers in the fiber stash increases the chances that what is needed for the next project will already be on hand. However, eventually, one ends up conceiving a project that requires something beyond the contents of the current stash. For those living out in the middle of nowhere, this means mail-order, and a wait. Another inevitable consequence of planning for leftovers, is that you accumulate a lot of odds and ends that don’t want to gel into anything in particular. The combination of an enforced wait and an accumulation of odds-and-ends presents a good opportunity to embark on a project to make something small and quick and utilitarian, like dishcloths. Handweaving something so every-day, that will be repeatedly soiled and laundered until it wears out, may seem to some like a waste of time, effort, and materials. However it is a great way to experiment with a new technique, while producing a useful item (that will almost certainly be more absorbent than most commercial versions), and saving some scraps and bits from going to waste. Besides, there is something particularly satisfying in making an item that will be used daily. It forges a connection with our ancestors who made many of their own clothes and household items. Included in the fiber mail order were several cones of cotton flake, a slubby cotton that makes an excellent addition to dishcloths and dishtowels. Some of the current dishtowels are getting a bit threadbare. The next project?
The dishcloths started today have as warp several colors of unmercerized 8/2 cotton, with a weft of natural-colored cotton flake, in a honeycomb treadling of Bolton Cord (Marguerite Davison threading #17). Treadled as written, the honeycomb pattern wasn’t turning out to be very uniform; alternate pairs of pattern repeats were failing to close together into “cells”, leaving conspicuous bands. Adding an extra pick to each repeat solved the problem, and because it was only a dishcloth, the various trials to find a solution don’t have to be ripped out, they just add a little character.
On beginning
Now that the wedding shawl project is finished, it is time to start something new. Sometimes this requires encouraging some creative inspiration; by leafing through pattern books and back issues of Spin-Off and Handwoven, or digging through the yarn stash and piling skeins and cones in different combinations, waiting for colors and textures to come together and suggest something. Usually, however, it is simply a matter of turning to the next item in the “things I have been trying to find time to make” list.
In The View From Saturday, by E. L. Konigsburg, a boy named Noah is being taught how to do calligraphic writing by an elderly woman named Tillie. She teaches him that filling the pen with ink properly involves six separate steps. Noah objects that six steps is a lot to do before you can begin writing. Tillie responds that the six steps to fill the pen ARE the beginning of writing.
It is easy to get impatient with, or bogged down in the preparation, when you are anxious to see a woven or knitted project begin to take shape. It helps to regard the preparatory steps as the actual beginning. Getting a warp measured out, threaded on, and tied up could be considered preparation for weaving. However if you regard it as part of the weaving process, your project is half finished by the time you throw the first shuttle. Knitting a test swatch to check the gauge is a tedious step that it is always tempting to omit, but it is faster and less frustrating than ripping out the first four inches of a sweater because it is turning out to be much larger or smaller than expected. Knitting a swatch and checking the gauge should really be a step in the process, as necessary as assembling the yarn and needles.
Several projects are begging to be undertaken, and surfaces are littered with skeins of wool or colorful clusters of cones of cotton warp, bits of paper with scribbled calculations, and pattern books sprouting clumps of page markers. Rifling through the various caches of “UFOs” (unfinished objects) has yielded one or two that are ripe for finishing and not yet gone by into “what was I thinking when I started that?” (or worse, “what was that supposed to be?”). One or two of the resulting projects may end up as false starts, but there is no doubt that something has begun …
Pairodox and the USDA
It has been mild, and snow-free, this week and the sheep are delighted to have been able to glean what green things remain in the pastures. They would rather do this than work the ample supply of hay they have been provided. You may wonder, when looking at the photo below and others we have posted, about the ear tags. Pairodox Farm participates in the Scrapie Flock Certification Program which is administered by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service). The certification protocol is lengthy, requiring five years of probationary status before full certification may be granted. Our farm became fully certified in 2011. Scrapie is a neuromuscular disease that affects sheep and goats. It is caused by a prion and is related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. Unlike mad cow however, scrapie does not appear to be transmissible to humans. Nonetheless, we are pleased to have been certified as a scrapie-free farm.
It was windy
I was moving bales of straw when I noticed shafts of light entering between the boards which comprise the wall of the Big Barn. As it pierced the darkness of the haymow the light illuminated dust that I had disturbed. The wind stirred the chaff into wild waves and turbulent eddies that reminded me of schools of small fish darting frenetically in response to unseen threats or other influences.
Moody waters
We took a walk this morning. The sky was overcast and the river seemed moody … cold, dark, and quiet even where it was moving quickly. Living the way we do has made us come to look at and to appreciate water in ways which we used not to. Water which supports our livestock is drawn from a drilled well near the barns; that which we drink flows from a surface spring which emerges just outside the house. Our supply of domestic water fluctuates with the mostly seasonal vagaries of the surrounding water-table, one of many constant preoccupations. Although we have always had water, there have been times when its flow rate has been very low. Just two summers ago we needed to dramatically limit consumption, and showers and laundry were very carefully scheduled. Luckily there have also been times when we have not had to worry about such limitations.
We recently commented on the local development of Marcellus shale gas deposits. One of the techniques used by this industry to extract previously untapped reservoirs is called hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). Fracking involves injecting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure into rock formations deep within the earth; this fractures and expands existing fissures in the rock and allows natural gas to rise to the surface. Our fear is for the potential for methane gas and, more insidiously, dangerous chemicals to migrate along these fissures and to pollute our water. Many of the chemicals used by the fracking industry are known to be toxic to humans and other animals, and several are known carcinogens. Potentially toxic substances include petroleum distillates such as kerosene and diesel fuel (which contain benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, and naphthalene); polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; methanol; formaldehyde; ethylene glycol; glycol ethers; hydrochloric acid; and sodium hydroxide.
Our concern for water is genuine. It is not hyperbole to argue that without it … this place ceases to exist.
On knitting lace
The project highlighted in our post entitled Knitting Lace is now done. Joanna has been working on this wedding shawl for our daughter Celia; its structure is based on traditional Estonian lace patterns and is made from nearly ¾ of a mile of 2-ply, lace weight, hand-spun yarn made from the fleece of a three-year old Shetland ewe.
For knitters, lace presents its own challenges and rewards. For one thing, it is less forgiving than other knits. If you drop a stitch or accidentally omit an increase or decrease in plain knitting and don’t notice it for a few rows, it is still pretty easy to fix. Mistakes in lace are often very difficult to fix after-the-fact, which usually leads to backtracking, ripping out down to the mistake and knitting it over. On the other hand, mistakes in lace are usually easy to catch within a couple of rows, when the pattern doesn’t align properly.
While being knitted, a lace fabric is generally a bunchy, unprepossessing object. It doesn’t really bloom until it has been blocked, dampened, and pinned to dry in its finished shape. Then suddenly the pattern appears in all its intricacy.
Shetland wool is ideal for lace knitting. Its long-staple makes it possible to spin it very finely into a nice, even, lace-weight yarn, and the resulting fabric, whether knitted or woven, has high luster and surprising softness. It is no accident that the legendary ring shawls, so fine they can be passed through a wedding ring, were traditionally knit with Shetland wool.
The gallery below is comprised of a number of images showing the finished shawl . Hovering over an image will reveal its title; clicking an image you will take you to a carousel view and you can then move forward and back as you choose. Clicking ESC will bring you back to the gallergy view. Thanks for viewing.
I will close with a note concerning the images which appear on this Pairodox Farm blog. All photos are taken using point-n-shoot cameras (Nikon’s COOLPIX p7000 and Sony’s DSC HX9V); post processing is done using Gimp V2.6.
Summer kitchen
We traveled to visit friends this weekend to talk over the recent performance of our Sheep-to-Shawl team at the Pennsylvania Farm Show. As discussion waned I took a walk around some out-buildings. One particular structure there has always intrigued me, an old summer kitchen. In the days when cooking was done over a wood-fired cookstove the summer kitchen was used to avoid over-heating the main house. All warm-weather cooking, canning, and perhaps laundry was done there. I once wrote the following about an old barn which lies on the Susquehanna flood plain within a few miles of Pairodox, ”Each year, after harvest, this solitary structure emerges from the crops which shielded it from view. I delight in watching how the lights of sunrise and sunset illuminate and reveal its character. I enjoy imagining the animals it may have housed, the feed it may have protected from the elements, and the machinery it perhaps harbored from the snows of winter and the flood waters of spring time. The structure, revealed, speaks of rest and rejuvenation after a long season of hard, productive, work. This rest is important and every bit as much a part of the yearly cycle of events as spring rains and summer sunshine.” Every time I see this summer kitchen the same sorts of thoughts run through my mind. How many meals has its now sagging walls surrounded? How much history, expressed in human generations, has it weathered? What did it observe of the lives of so many that worked the surrounding fields? The building now sits and is subject to the inexorable pull of entropy, if you look closely it lists to the east. Its siding is weathered and some of its windows are long absent. If it could speak it might recount stories only known as fragments by those still with us who have heard them.
There was a summer kitchen on our place when we first arrived. It was to the north-east, only a few feet from the house. It was quite old and deep with the sediment of birds, rodents, and other transitory inhabitants for which the aging structure provided shelter from summer heat and winter wind. We thought it would do nicely as a chicken house and tried to move it (closer to a source of water) at a time when we were not yet fully schooled in such things. The structure collapsed, in transit, as we tried to negotiate a small gully. It was beyond repair so we burned it in place. I’ve always regretted its loss. It would have been nice to have been able to resurrect the structure and to wonder about its history, meals prepared, lives lived and lost, and lessons we have yet to learn. Old buildings intrigue me and I wonder whether they have anything akin to a soul. I believe that they do and that this is something we all have felt when within the confines of these structures. If it can be said that structures have character, then perhaps is it this that we wish to rekindle and come to know when we renovate? There has been much reward in renovation for us. We have done so for our home and for a number of pieces of farm machinery. On a practical level, renovation has often been our only option when funds were unavailable to do otherwise. On another level, however, we have always been pleased to have been able to make like-new. There is a very old saying in the family which shows how it is that we have adopted this attitude: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Next time you think about throwing something out and buying a new one, do yourself and the earth a favor and consider making like-new.
