It's harvest time. I left the garlic in too long this year. I did a better job with not watering as they were hardening off but left them in about a fortnight too long. This resulted in a lovely treasure hunt but I think I got most of them. This was a wee portion of the harvest - such fun. I'd just been away for a week at a Master Dyer's retreat (more on that later) and worried about all of my crops with the encroaching cold, especially this little beauty: I'm so excited to have a fair few proper squashes and really hope I'm able to get them to ripen. The weather has warmed a little again so... fingers crossed. Next year, tomatoes and squashes and the like are going in about a month earlier and going to be covered at the start of the season as well. Will it help? Who knows but it will be a worthy experiment. In other news... later, I think actually. I have so much going on and so many announcements but they'll have to wait. Sorry folks, there are no babies for sale at this time. Thanks to everyone who's messaged me with requests. I don't think we're going to be breeding next year. If you're still looking, do drop me a line and I'll send you in the direction of some great goat producers. The Farmer's Almanac says my region is supposed to have a particularly cold and snowy winter. Now, I'm not sure what the track record of the FA is but I do know the people around here say if the berry bushes are full, it's going to be a tough winter. This year, the mountain ash and saskatoons were as laden as I'd ever seen them and folks reported record numbers of huckleberries in the high country. Funnily enough, the temps have been dipping way down, as low as 3*C/37*F overnight. That's a low we shouldn't really get for at least a month. At least the colours are fantastic. On the one hand, this cooling trend has got some challenges (tomatoes... so... close); on the other hand, it's been great. No one in my house is a heat lover, so there's that but more so, it's kicked us into squirrel gear big time. The woodshed is filling at an all time high rate, we've got canning going like crazy, though the dehydrator's been a bit quiet (I'll have to get on that asap). And, I've actually got winter crops started early enough that we might actually get to enjoy them as the weather turns! I've got a tonne of things coming - kales, broad beans, spinach, chard, cilantro, nasturtiums, and the all important carrots: I had great success growing carrots in buckets this year. I love the idea of being able to move them into the greenhouse to overwinter, mulch them, etc. But also, I don't have the usual worries about tree roots and our rocky ground. I've been improving it and building ever up and hope to have at least one big overwintering carrot bed but these are the insurance. There was a quick bit o'harvesting. The crookneck is an old beastie. Something between a summer and winter squash. If you catch it early, it's tender and cooks up just like zucchini. As it gets older, the rind gets pretty hard and then, well, I'm not sure. But I do like how it looks. And just because they can't help themselves, there's yet another hen on yet another nest. So, there may be another crop of babies coming. And there's more news but we'll save that for later. For right now, I need to get to my dye pots! I had such great intentions of writing something pithy about the value of our work and being mindful of that on Labour Day. One of the things that's odd to me is that we're at a time when days like Labour Day are important because for many, they're a day off work, not because of what they represent. For me, the most appropriate way to spend Labour Day is working for myself. So it was a canning and planning day. Fortunately, I also have a friend with a birthday so we had supper with good friends, which was lovely. I came home, dealt with a varmint (more on that later), and baked like a mad woman. I figured since this is the first busy week as we all get our wits about us, I should get some baking in. For us, school starts the day after Labour Day and ironically, this is one of the busiest weeks I've had for a long time. I'd call that one a planning fail but it's all towards an important end goal. So, I went from garden leftovers: to a delicious chutney: And made sure broody hens had enough to eat. Spun a lot because: projects. And yes, it's overspun but it's going to be plied so that's no biggie. And during it all, I managed to participate in the conversations around #fairfiberwage. Don't know what's going on there? Let me share some links: From Laura Fry, Abby Franquemont, Mary Beth Temple, Andrea Longo, Miriam Felton, and a bunch of great conversations. Seemed pretty fitting on Labour Day. Whatever you were out there doing, I hope it was good labour. So, as luck would have it, I'm short on space, cash, and time but managed to bring another loom into my life. I have a wee loom addiction and have now added another large loom (this one a floor loom) to my repertoire. I started weaving on rigid heddle looms and have gradually worked my way up to "real" looms. This isn't intended to be pejorative. There are some amazing rigid heddle weavers out there but I found that I was always having trouble with tension - especially because when I warp a loom I want yardage! I'd warp too long of a warp for the loom to keep good tension. Don't have a clue about what I'm talking about? Rigid heddle looms are a simple loom - two shafts, and direct warpabe, and easy and fun to use. But like I said, they also have challenges. Here's a good video showing the use of a rh loom. So while these looms are fun and great for those of us in small houses, I am really interested in weaving more complex patterns with out the fiddliness of doing that on a rh loom as well as yardage. I had always convinced myself that I sucked at warping from a board and, much like I do with math, made it this overly complex process that seemed too daunting to be achievable. Well recently a friend of mine was selling her tabletop loom and I thought "now or never". I have had a few tabletops pass through my hands. I buy them with good intentions and move them on. This time, this one stayed, got warped, and woven on. And, the warping was so easy, I now use a warping board to warp my rh loom rather than taking up all of the useable space in the house haha. And, I did find the tension a bit more even. So the other day, I'm on fb and there's an ad - estate sale, floor loom. I'd seen the previous ad - way overpriced but this one was literally down the road from my friend's house so nice and close, someone I kind of knew, and not too high a price. I went to look at it and it seemed all of the pieces were there. I thought it was a LeClerc (as many looms in Canada are) but the assembly isn't quite right. So now I have this puzzle: that requires re-assembly.
Fortunately, the folks on Ravelry, particularly Warped Weavers, have been awesome. I'm hoping that I'll have it set up this weekend when the Woodsman and the Young Man can assist. Until then, it's back to work and dreaming of weaving. |
AuthorI'm a 40-something writer and smallholder living in the wilds of BC with my family, our small herd of Nigerian Dwarf Goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, and cats. Archives
August 2017
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