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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …