Too Busy


Fill in the blank in your own way: I'm so busy and so tired that _______.

I've got a great one, and it's not even farming related. It's just life.

First, a little background. I found myself having to write two books this winter (long story, will post to other blog eventually,) so I've barely noticed the ice, cold, and snow as I've had my nose pressed to my monitor, my body hunched over the keyboard.

I took two trips in February, both working trips. Melissa has been working like a crazy woman for the US Census (mail your form in or she'll send someone to knock on your door!), working 10-12 hour days.

So for nearly two weeks I've been doing all the chores, the dogs, the cooking, the dishes, everything, while she drives around in the incredible fog we've been having. Seriously, fog day after day. I feel as if I'm living inside my own little dome, and the rest of the world has disappeared.

So yesterday I ran around doing errands, getting the car tires fixed because both rear tires were leaking, then to a meeting, then dropping off the car at Melissa's meeting so she had a way home, then calling a neighbor for a ride home. Karen dropped me off and immediately drove away, thank god, otherwise she would have seen this:

I'm so busy and so tired that...

...last night I walked up to the house and held out my car keys, pressing UNLOCK.

I stood there, unsure why the front door didn't open, so I pressed UNLOCK again.

I might need to get a bit more sleep.

Llama Spit and Other Images


Before I leave for my annual weeklong writing retreat, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share some images from this last week as I did chores. Also, since the Farmer is very busy with an 8-week short-term job with Uncle Sam and won't have time to read this blog, I'm going to 'out' one of her hobbies, then slip away into the night so she can't yell at me. Now and then she'll say, "You aren't going to blog about this, are you?" When she asks that, then I can't. When she doesn't, well.... We bloggers live dangerous lives, with big fat lines running through them. Sometimes it's kind of fun to cross over those lines....

The Farmer is strong and tough. She drives a Farmall 706 row tractor, a big son-of-a-gun. She has a chain saw, a wood splitter, a four-wheeler. She has a weed whacker that can fell small trees. Yet what does she do when she comes inside? She fusses over pretty little flowers.

I'm not at all into fussing over flowers, and barely remember to water them. I just want them to look nice without any work. But thanks to the Farmer, there's lots of blooming going on here:





She knows what sort of orchids these are, but I don't care about that---I just like looking them as I walk by.

Other images from this week...

The puppy pretending she has a broken leg.





Pumpkin looking pensive....





Helen, the last duck remaining. (The other two? The puppy got one, and a predatory bird got the other. Damn.)




Chachi eating his treat in a private dining room, with Tucker the jerk standing there trying to intimidate Chachi into leaving the treat for him. All three llamas are in the same pen this winter, and it's just like a junior high school in there.





This hen gives new meaning to the phrase 'beady-eyed.' What she's really saying with those baby blacks is, "Steal my egg one more time and I'll peck your eyes out and stuff them down your throat." Sadly, I stole all the eggs she was sitting on.





A lovely snow morning...



Nearly every single person who meets our llamas wants to know if they spit. "Yes," I say, "but not at us." We would never stand for it. The llamas, however, do spit at each other now and then, and have been known to spit at lambs that might have been bugging them. Melissa had a close call when she accidentally got between two llamas about to attack each other with wet, green glops. Their ears were back, their glares were fierce, but she yelled and waved her hands. "Break it up!" Their ears went back up, and they wisely swallowed their slimy projectiles.

I saw this the other day. Had to stop and stare. What the heck? Oh, llama spit.






I don't know who did the spitting, but his aim was WAY off. I should go out there with a bucket of soapy water and make all three llamas clean off the barn. How else will they learn?

I Make The List

I just learned that some guy in Gouverneur, NY made a list of 30 outstanding farm blogs for the Gouverneur Times. Hey. That's cool. Here's what he had to say: "She writes, she farms, and writes about farming everything that goes wrong and some things that go right. This blogger is an inkslinger (a gunslinger with a pen instead of a gun). Her articles are vivid and you can absolutely picture everything she is talking about. This is one farm blog that you will want to follow."

Wow. Thanks, Tim.

Unfortunately, now that I've made Tim's list, I may find it hard to stay on it. That's because this winter has been boring.... blissfully boring. Nothing has died. (Ooops. Not true. Our peacock Ben died, but I'll write about that later.) Nothing has gotten out of a pen or into a bin of feed (knock on wood). I haven't fallen on the ice and broken anything (knock on wood.) I only got the car stuck once, and that was in the neighbor's driveway so I had lots of help getting unstuck.

I've been writing like a crazy woman (thanks to two spring deadlines...not the best situation, but a schedule of my own making.) Melissa's been spending lots of time inside because this winter has been cold. She just finished repairing a retractable extension cord that burned out ten years ago and has been hanging in the shed, useless, for all that time. Nothing makes the Farmer happier than to fix something she's been unable to use for ten years. I even helped, holding the dangerous steel spring in place so it wouldn't leap out and slice off one of Melissa's fingers. (When she'd first opened the case, the 30-foot spring had leapt out like a Jack in the Box, startling even our brave Farmer.)

In addition to such fascinating repairs, we've been taking photos. I took some the other day, uploaded them, and found Melissa had taken the exact same shot, only in different light. So here's what winter looks like out our bedroom window:




And again,



And again.



Every winter I worry about our two barn cats. Will they be warm enough? Could we ignore our allergies and let them into the house, hoping they learn to use the litterbox and avoid the three dogs? No, not practical. So every winter I build a few cozy spots up in the haymow, making little cubby holes by stacking bales, then lining them with wool. I still worry, but when I touch them, their fur might be cold, but their skin is warm.

During the day they are even warmer. In fact, this year they have decided that we purchased huge, 700-pound bales of hay just for their use. They are cats, after all, so everything is about them. Here are Maisie and Pumpkin lolling about on their 700-pound beds. Ahh, the life of a barn cat...

Ahh, Winter

We have a nice layer of ice over everything, and more ice is coming this weekend.

A coating of ice on the snow and trees is lovely. It sparkles in the sun. A coating of ice on the ground where one walks is not so lovely. I did chores this afternoon, so over my boots I pulled on the clever footwear that helps you stand upright on ice. (Can't remember the name...YakTrak? BakTrak? YakBak?) They are made of rubber strips covered with coils of metal, and work okay.

Somewhere in this house I have something better, but I'm not sure where they are: a pair of serious spikes. They're awkward to attach beause you have to sit down and strap them on, but those things have 1/2" spikes. When you step onto the ice, you know you aren't going anywhere. (I'd gotten them for a winter photography class on the North Shore of Lake Superior years ago, where we were walking on icy rocks paying more attention to the camera than to the ice. One fall and you were a quick five foot slide into the icy water.)

These yakky things, though, provide less confidence. So I walked from building to building with my arms out for balance, gaze locked on the ground in search of less shiny spots in which to step. shuffling along like a 95-year-old (no disrespect intended to those who are 95---you should walk carefully.)

It took me twice as long to walk the 700 feet to the mailbox, and I lost all sense of time as I entered this Zen Zone of step, look, shuffle, step. I didn't have my cell phone with me, and Melissa was inside recovering from a neck procedure she had this morning. (More on that later when we know how it worked---we're aiming for headache relief.) So if I landed on my keister and broke something, it was either crawl back to the house, or crawl to the road and flag down a passing motorist, of which there are about 3 per day. Luckily the Yak things worked well enough, or perhaps it was walking like I was 95.

The dogs are always surprised by ice. Open the back door and all three go blasting out to do their thing. Two seconds later they've spread their feet wide in alarm, and the look on their faces says, "Whoa!" They, too, begin walking as if they're 95 (which is 13 in dog years, and 2 of them are 13! What synchronicity...) When I let the dogs back outside two hours later, they do the same thing. "Whoa!" And the third time? "Whoa!"

Gotta love dogs---they are the best optimists in the world. "This time the world won't be slippery."

The sheep do fine in the ice because they walk the same path. It gets worn down, and the droppings of round sheep poop add lots of traction. The only animal I'm worried about is Chachi, our aging llama. He doesn't like going up and down the hill to the hay anyway, and when it's icy, he won't do it. When he does venture out, he walks like he's, well, 95.

So he's locked in a pen in the barn with his own water and own hay. That way I don't have to worry about any broken llama legs.

I'm all ready to do chores all weekend, and make sure the animals don't have to negotiate a skating rink to get to their hay. But I think I'm going to brave the front hall closet and search for those spike attachments.

I may need them.

Snow, Bad Sheep, and the Loch Ness Llama

This winter we set up a long row of six big round bales, surrounded them with feeder panels, and let the sheep and llamas have at it. It's close enough to the house that I can look out the dining room window and see everything, which I enjoy.

The llamas liked to eat on the far side. Zipper, the dark brown llama, would appear and disappear, looking a great deal like the Loch Ness Monster.

Now you see him...



Now you don't...




And here he is again, coming up for air...





Here's a ewe sitting on the hillside, contemplating life, or snow.





After we got all that heavy snow during the holidays, it took me awhile to notice that the llamas were no longer eating on the far side. They were eating on the closer side. Neither of us paid too much attention until it was TOO LATE.

Here's how sheep are supposed to eat their hay:




Here's how they were eating the hay today:




No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. There are bad, bad sheep standing IN the hay, freely peeing and pooping on perfectly good food. And how much of this peed-on or pooped-on hay do sheep and llamas like to eat? None of it. Can't really blame them.

The snow blew up against the back of the feeder and became hard-packed and ice-coated. It basically formed a convenient ramp leading right up to the feeders, leaving only two feet between snow and the top of the panels. Two feet is nothing for a sheep to hop.

This snow build-up is probably why the llamas stopped eating from that side---they were standing too high above the hay to reach down comfortably and eat.

So today Melissa and I suited up. It was 5 above, so we were comfortable. We marched down to the feeder armed with a shovel and some seriously sharp and dangerous gouging and chipping tools. For an hour we hacked and shoveled and hacked and shoveled, occasionally using inappropriate language as the gouging tool bent back or the ice wouldn't yield. Finally we lowered the snow pack to 3 and 1/2 feet below the top of the panel.

One hour later I looked out the window. All was well. Good. All our hard work paid off.



Two hours later I looked out the window to see this:




Heavy, heavy, sigh.

I really don't know what to say that wouldn't require me to censor the entire sentence....

Tomorrow we will suit up again, and hack and shovel until we get the snow level low enough to foil the leaping beasts.


(On the happy side, though, YARN sale is still going on...scroll to earlier post.)

Treat Yourself to Yarn!

I hope everyone had a great holiday. If you didn't get what you wanted for Christmas, here's your chance. Rising Moon Farm now has yarn for sale.

So here's the yarn's story: The sheep were sheared during a lovely late March party. It's cold here, so if you're going to be outside, you've got to turn it into a party.

Then the fleece hopped a ride with my aunt and uncle back to Broadus, Montana, where a relative who owns the Big Sky Quality woolen mill cleaned, carded, and spun it into white yarn. Then the US post office brought it back to me from Montana.

Then up to St. Paul, where a very talented woman named London hand-dyed and hand-painted the yarn. (www.myfriendlondon.com---please paste this address...I can't seem to make the link work.) London did lots of fun, spring and summer colors, just what we need to get us through the winter!

I've had several knitting experts look at the yarn. When Annie Modesitt, author of Romantic Hand Knits, and Joanne Seiff, author of Knit Green, raved about 'spring' and 'great hand' and how soft the yarn is, it really set our little shepherd-hearts a' poundin'.

It turns out that Merino sheep isn't the only breed to yield a soft yarn---our yarn is wear-against-your-skin soft, and is sturdier than Merino. Our sheep are a Corriedale cross, and Corriedales were developed by crossing Merino with English Leicester sheep.

Our friend Kathy took a skein of undyed yarn and pronounced it wonderful for cables. Here's a little sample she knit: (Thanks, Kath!)




I kept two skeins for myself, and have started a pair of socks. I'm including what I've done so far so you can see that there isn't any irritating striping. London is a master dyer!

Here's the hand-painted sport weight I chose:




And here's the sock, so far...



What follows are your choices:

1) one natural brown yarn (no dye, just Mother Nature and Ewe #704)

2) 10 colors of hand-dyed worsted yarn

3) 6 colors of hand-dyed fingering yarn

4) 7 colors of hand-painted sport yarn


London dyed the yarn in batches of 2-4 skeins, so you may want to buy all of a dye lot so you'll have enough for a project. The approximate length and weight of each DYE LOT is listed after each color, as is the price.


Here we go.... (UPDATE---much has been sold, but there are some lovely skeins left! Here's what's left:

3 Coral, 1 Green Grass, 3 Tangerine, 2 Lavender, 2 Pretty in Pink, 2 Bright Turquoise, 1 Pink Roses, 3 Candy Corn)


1) Non-dyed, non-painted... Just some lovely brown yarn that Ewe #704 made all on her own...



We have 0 skeins of this.
1 skein at 3.1 oz, $ 9 SOLD Laura
8 skeins at 3.6 oz, $ 10 (3 sold 12/28, Amelia...5 SOLD to Laura
1 skein at 4.2 oz, $ 12 SOLD Laura

(This naturally colored yarn is not quite as soft as the other yarn, so you might want to use it for something that won't be worn directly against the skin.)



Hand-dyed Worsted Weight:



I realize that yarns don't usually have subtitles like books do, but this yarn has one: The Color That Freaked Out the Camera. It's a lovely color, bright and lively, but not as flourescent as the camera thinks.

Coral: 3 skeins
3.6 oz (208 yds): $13
3.6 oz (208 yds): $13
3.7 oz (215 yds): $14




Purple Rain: 0 skeins
3.4 oz (195 yds): $13 SOLD--Kathryn
3.5 oz. (200 yds): $13 SOLD--Kathryn
3.8 oz (220 yds): $14 SOLD--Kathryn




Cornflower: 0 skeins
3.5 oz (200 yds) :$13 SOLD: Karen
3.8 oz (220 yds): $14 SOLD: Karen




Tuscan Gold: 0 skeins
3.5 oz (200 yd): $13 SOLD-Ellen
3.7 oz (215 yd): $14 SOLD-Ellen
3.8 (220 yd): $14 SOLD-Ellen




This green is brighter than in the photograph.

Green Grass: 1 skein
3.4 oz (200 yd) $13 SOLD Peg
3.5 oz (200 yd) $13 SOLD Peg
3.6 oz (208 yd) $13





Faded Denim: 0 skeins
3.4 oz (200 yd) $13 SOLD
3.5 oz (200 yd) $13 SOLD
3.7 oz (215) $14 SOLD



Corn Tassel: 0 skeins
3.5 oz (200 yd) $13 SOLD-Ellen
3.6 oz (208 yd) $13 SOLD-Ellen





Celery: 0 skein left
3.5 oz (200 yd) $13 SOLD: Amanda
3.6 oz (208 yd) $13 SOLD: Amanda
3.7 oz (215) $14 SOLD: Sarah Jane






Summer Straw: 0 skein left
3.3 oz (190 yds): $13 (SOLD--Phyllis)
3.6 oz (208 yd) $13 (SOLD--Phyllis)
3.7 oz (215) $14 SOLD---Pam




This is another color that made my camera cover up its lens and cry out in pain, "Too bright! Too bright!" Big baby.

Tangerine: 3 skeins LEFT
3.7 oz (215) $14
3.8 oz (220 yds): $14 SOLD--Ellen
4.0 oz (230 yds): $14
4.1 oz (240 yds): $15






Hand-dyed Fingering Weight:



Autumn Leaves: 0 skeins
3.6 oz (360 yds): $19 SOLD--Kathryn
3.8 oz (380 yds): $20 SOLD--Kathryn




Lavender: 2 skeins LEFT
3.4 oz (340 yds): $17 SOLD Peg
3.7 oz (370 yds): $19
3.8 oz (380 yds): $20




My Blue Jeans: 0 skeins,
3.1 oz (310 yds): $16 SOLD--Pam
3.3 oz (330 yds): $16 SOLD--Pam
3.5 oz (350 yds): $19 SOLD--Pam
3.7 oz (370 yds): $19 SOLD--Pam




Rhubarb Sauce: 0 skeins
3.4 oz (340 yds) $17 SOLD: Sharon
3.5 oz( 350 yds) $18 SOLD: Sharon
3.7 oz (370 yds) $19 SOLD: Sharon




Pretty in Pink: 2 skein LEFT
3.1 oz (310 yds): $16 SOLD Peg
3.2 oz (320 yds): $16
3.4 oz (340 yds): $17




Bright Turquoise: 2 skeins left
3.3 oz (330 yds): $16
3.4 oz (340 yds) $17
3.5 oz( 350 yds) $18 SOLD---Maggie
3.6 oz (360 yds) $19 SOLD--Maggie





Hand-painted Sport Weight:



Lemon Lime: 0 skeins left
3.3 oz (190) $15 SOLD--Renee
4.0 oz (230) $17 SOLD--Renee
4.1 oz (240) $19 SOLD---Ellen






Wild Blue Yonder: 4 skeins (I like this so much...may selfishly keep..not sure)
3.9 oz (225) $17
3.9 oz (225) $17
3.9 oz (225) $17
4.0 oz (230) $17



Pink Roses: 1 skein
3.8 oz (220) $17 SOLD Peg
3.9 oz (225) $17 SOLD Peg
4.6 oz (265) $19





Lilac Bush: 0 skeins
3.9 oz (225) $17 SOLD-Pam
4.0 oz (230) $17 SOLD-Pam





Mother Earth: 0 skeins
3.8 oz (220) $17 SOLD-Pam
4.0 oz (230) $17 SOLD-Pam





Watermelon: 0 skeins
3.7 oz (215) $17 SOLD: Kath
3.9 oz (225) $17 SOLD: Kath
4.3 oz (250) $19 SOLD: Kath




Candy Corn: 3 skeins
3.8 oz (220) $17
3.9 oz (225) $17
4.0 oz (230) $18


There. That's it. Hopefully there's something here for everyone!

What next?

Claim the skeins you want in this blog post's Comment Section, where I'll also post updates about what's available, or email me directly.

Then please send a check to Rising Moon Farm, Box 21, Zumbrota, MN 55992. Please include $5 for postage if you're ordering 1-3 skeins. Postage for 3-5 skeins is $7.50, and 5-10 skeins is $10. Once I receive your check, I'll ship the yarn.

Sorry we aren't set up to do PayPay yet... something to work on in the future if people like the yarn.

We are SO excited about our yarn...from our sheeps' backs, to yours....

Wishing you a warm and safe New Year's!

Catherine and The Farmer (who will never take up knitting, but who's proud as punch of the yarn from her sheep)

I'm a Yarn Tease

So we raise sheep. We shear the sheep. Our shearer Drew says, "This wool ain't worth much." We like Drew. We believe Drew. Drew knows a great deal about sheep and wool.

But our dear friend Drew isn't a spinner or a knitter (at least not that we know of), so he must be forgiven for not knowing that our wool is actually very good for spinning and knitting. We sold some yarn and roving made from it a few years ago, then had more spun into yarn this year.

Our friend Kathy knit with it, and raved about its softness, even though there isn't a speck of Merino or alpaca or angora in it. She said it makes great cables, which will mean something to those of you who knit, and not much to non-knitters, or to knitters like myself too cowardly to try cables. She showed it to a friend who designs patterns for Vogue and teaches knitting, and Annie thought it had great 'spring' and immediately took some home with her.

It's been interesting, as shepherds, to begin paying more attention to what happens to the fleeces once our sheep are done with them.

And now we've hooked up with a great hand-dyer, and she's happily dipping our yarn in dyes and painting them with dyes and having all sorts of fun. Here's what she's done so far....




So, this is just a tease, 'cause she's not done yet. When she finishes, we'll give the yarn silly names, perhaps put labels on them, then offer them for sale on this blog, and on our website. So check back mid-January, when you've recovered from the holidays and feel a need to increase your stash (that's knitter talk, by the way. I'm so good at picking up jargon, no?)