Land of the Midnight Sun

The day before the summer solstice, sunrise, June 19, 4:40 a.m.

 

Still light, June 19, at 11:00 p.m.

 

Gotta love summer!!!

 

Shearing Day

Struggling with a stubborn ewe. The shearer is as old as I am!

 

All done and ready to bag.

 

Stuffing the fleeces into the bagger.

 

All bagged and ready to go to the wool depot.

 

Such a fine flock of lovely ewes!

 

International Traveler - Not

June 1, 2016

     Day one of my holiday to visit my sister in Colorado... and I'm still sitting at my kitchen table. My husband and I headed for the airport early, made some stops in town and stopped for a $6 meal deal complete with a hot fudge sundae cause we knew we had plenty of time. The International Destination area at the airport was strangely absent of people when we arrived. I was trying to figure out how to use one of the machines to get my boarding pass when a fellow came along to help, asked what airline, then said, "You're late for that flight."

     "Late? How can I be late? It doesn't leave for an hour!" I said.

     Well, I was indeed late, 4 minutes late for their 1 hour prior to flight minimum check in time, and there was no way they would let me go on that flight. They offered an alternative through Cincinnati arriving in Denver after midnight, but I'd have to catch a bus to Boulder when I got there and my sis doesn't like to drive after dark. The idea of being stranded at the bus stop when I got there didn't sound like a very good alternative. So I got a boarding pass for the same flight, but for June 2nd, and we drove the 2 1/2 hours home.

     I thought I was pretty much resigned to all this, called my sister and let her know what happened and that I'd be coming a day later. But my clearly remembered overnight dreams may indicate I was a bit frazzled by the situation. I dreamed of rescuing my neighbour's turtle (tortoise? about the size of a dinner plate) from under the snow while he greedily munched on last night's leftover vegetables. Then I spotted a very large lizard like creature struggling to exit from our barn loft. He had eaten so much he was having a hard time getting his big belly out of the window. Freaking, I ran for help and found a hunting party standing around in my kitchen comparing guns. I frantically attempted to get in a word edgewise to remind my husband that we had to leave for the airport, SOON, but I was ignored. I spent some time trying to figure out how to hold the turtle, cradled upside down like a baby didn't seem appropriate, turtles would surely be uncomfortable that way. I settled on an over the shoulder baby burping style position, headed off to take him home - then I woke up. We did see "Neighbourhood Watch" on Netflix a couple nights ago. That may have influenced my brain bit

June 2, 2016

     So, day two. We left earlier, not stopping. I'd planned to spend my 2 hours of regulation arriving before flight time reading a book I'm halfway into. Oops, I left my Kindle plugged in at home...

     Arrived at the airport a little after noon and had lunch. My husband hung around long enough to see that I got through customs. Cripes! Shoes off; liquids, gels, etc. in a separate Baggie - I knew this. Electronics, i.e. Laptops, also separated. Everything is done by machines with, thankfully, a human aiding the uninitiated. Your passport is pretty much all you need, stick it in a machine and it knows all about you and your flight (I'd booked on-line). Time - 1:37, two hours to wait before departure, one and a half before loading. But at least I'm here!

     Going from the Edmonton Airport to the Denver Airport could be compared to being a bumble bee, happily buzzing with a few other bees around a rose bush, flying into a pop can, and on exiting the can finding himself in a colony with a million other drones. Busy does not describe it! You take moving sidewalk after moving sidewalk, an escalator, and a train to get to the main terminal. Thinking I knew where I was going and knowing if I hurried I'd catch the 6:20 bus to Boulder, I quickly phoned my sister at the free phones available (my cell doesn't work outside of 

Canada) and zoomed out to catch it. No bus, missed it. Went back inside, fortunately made an inquiry and found out they moved the place to catch the bus! So I called her back and told her I'd be on the 7:20 bus. Then I had a leisurely coffee and decided I'd wait for the bus out at the new bus station. With a certain amount of confusion and some wandering around I managed to 

locate the new ground transportation area and discovered the bus was already there! Almost missed it again!

     Touring along toward the mountains at 8:00 p.m. I noticed the sun was on the verge of dropping behind the mountains. At home it would be bright daylight. Those latitudinal parallels and proximity to the mountains make quite a difference. My sister was late picking me up, the bus was in early, but here I am at last eating a meal saved for me, settled down in my sister's home and ready for a nice long sleep.

June 3-9, 2016

     It's always a trip down memory lane to go to Boulder, the town where I went to high school and college, met my man, married and soon thereafter departed for Canada to start a brand new chapter of my life. It's grown, lots, but the places I knew are still there though some of them have been repurposed. My old high school is now a classy senior housing facility - the spacious grounds now filled with cottages. The movie theatres I worked at from the age of 16 through 22 or so are now all real theatres, for plays. Downtown Boulder is an upscale pedestrian mall and Boulder Creek has walking/biking trails and parks where it runs through town. The University has grown dramatically. But the mountains haven't changed, most older neighbourhoods are much the same, and it is still one of the most beautiful places a person could live if you want to be a city dweller.

     I had a great visit with my sister, looked at old photos, ate some fine meals, walked around the lake in a park near her and talked old and new times, shopped a bit... And when it was time to go I made very sure I arrived at the airport 3 hours in advance of my flight!

     Here's some holiday pics...

 

One of two customs line-ups at the Denver Airport

 

Moving sidewalks at DIA

 

"The Sink", an old college hangout.

 

The amphitheatre

 

My old Alma Mater

 

View from Flagstaff Mountain

 

Pearl Street Mall

 

Me and my sister on Boulder Creek

Josie's Pups

Josie is our Maremma guardian dog. She watches over our sheep flock with the help of her 2 year old pup Thor. When the snow was still on the ground, pregnant Josie (on her territorial rounds or chasing a coyote - who knows?) disappeared for three days. We looked everywhere to no avail. Fortunately she reappeared but with a deep wide cut all around her hips and belly area. It looked like she was snared or caught up somehow in some downed smooth wire. How she got loose we'll never know. 

 

Anyhow, she (and the vet) took good care of that cut and it was well healed before her litter of 7 pups was born. We found them in the corner of the barn all snuggled up and nursing voraciously on the morning they were expected to arrive. My, oh my, it's quite incredible how quickly those puppies have grown! Starting at 5 weeks they practically inhaled their meals of lamb milk replacer and puppy chow. Now, at 9 weeks, they're getting regular dog crumbles and water and I always wonder if I'm giving them enough. It goes down so quickly! But I don't want to overfeed because the experts all say you don't want big breed dogs to grow too fast, makes for future arthritic and hip problems. I just keep checking their condition and activity level and they're looking good, thriving in fact.

    

Josie is a wonderful mom. She and Thor take the pups on tours around the farm, making sure they know every little place of interest. We have a regular feeding time ritual every day at 7:00 a.m and 4:00 p.m. I head for their pen in the barn with a bucket of chow and all the puppies underfoot. I spread an old sheet on the straw and put 2 roasting pans on the sheet. While doing this the pups wait politely (really, they stand aside and wait!) until I pour their food in the pan. Then it's gobble gobble till it's gone. We play a tumble down game while I roll them off the sheet, then I sneak away through the lambing barn so they won't follow me to the house.

Because these dogs are meant to be sheep guardians rather than be pets, raising them has proven to be a mixed bag of joy and frustration. Just try to tell your friends, neighbors and grandchildren that they aren't to be cuddled and loved, that they must be chased away if they try to hang around human activity. They look like tiny white fluffy polar bears, stare at you with sad puppy eyes, and wag their tails in innocent expectation like they'd really enjoy being petted. 

 

On the other hand they chase your bottle lamb away while you're trying to feed him; wait up by the barn until you look the other way then sneak under the yurt to enjoy a nap on the cool ground underneath;  howl and cry like something is killing them if they find themselves all alone in a strange situation; and they really enjoyed frolicking in my seeded garden playing chase, jump and roll until we added page wire to the rail fence they were crawling through.

But they're settling in. Josie parades a string of them on a round of the home yard in the morning while the sheep are accomplishing their daily chore of keeping our grass under control. They're curious about everything, setting up dominance patterns which may change completely when they get to their permanent homes. They alternate between activity and sleep, more sleep, more activity. Josie took 3 pups across the beaver dam one day and one fell in. You should have heard the hullabaloo! For some reason the wet one was pounced on by the other two and I had to grab them by the scruff of their necks to stop the chaos. Josie just looked on, didn't seem to think there was any reason to fuss.

 

Last night I went up to the barnyard to feed my bottle lamb. I was so pleased. The pups were all relaxing among the sheep, bonding to their family. It seems like the older they get the more this is happening. You see the sheep and the pups and grown guardian dogs are there amongst them.

I'll miss them when they're all gone, but it sure will be peaceful around here.

Old Folks at Home

     I just finished reading a book called "The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules" by Catharina Ingleman-Sundberg, one of those free or nearly free Book-Bub e-books. It's  about a group of seniors who escape from an old folks' home in Sweden and commit a crime so that they will be put in prison, a place which they think will be far superior in every way - better food, more choice, cable TV, library, exercise in the fresh air, jobs to do... The "home" they reside in is abysmal - plastic food, doors locked, pills to keep people settled, no fun, very little in the way of entertainment.

    

     I've heard that "prisons are better" idea dozens of times. "We should commit a crime! Prisoners are better off than seniors!" And it could be true. But would we want to hang out with crooks of all kinds? Goodness! Would an elderly person be bullied in prison? 

     I wonder though, is respect the norm in publicly funded senior homes? You hear such terrible stories. You are quite powerless when you're old, at least when you're to the point where you require assistance to accomplish your daily routine. Let's face it, most of us say we NEVER will and never want to move to a senior home. BUT there could come a time... 

     Good health - that's the key. Without health, physical or mental, you slowly become dependant. For awhile your dependence can be absorbed by your family. Then one day they can no longer cope.

     Many of us cared for elderly parents and we don't want to inflict this burden on our own children. But here's the thing that scares us about "assisted living". Once you're in a senior care situation you begin to lose your individual rights. At some point your doctor, your family, someone besides yourself, decides it's time for you to move to the next stage in the system. Husbands and wives are sometimes separated due to differing care requirements. You get shifted according to your physical needs and/or mental capacity. Your societal needs - friendships, familiarity with your environment, with the staff, individual preferences - all take a back seat to the institutional structure. 

     Many who are in-care are unable to speak for themselves. I've always said, if you're in care you had better have an advocate, someone who visits often and makes sure you're being treated well. But I've spoken to people who either had a family member in care or worked in a care facility. Advocates that perceive shortcomings are none too welcome. Stressed and/or short staffed care workers (who may be in underfunded situations not under their control) don't want someone in their face telling them they're not doing their job properly. 

     I have lived in the same house, on the same farm, for 42 years. I could just about get around blind and deaf. I don't want to leave here unless I'm in a box, neither does my husband. I've slowed down some but I still garden, have sheep, make a fire every morning, cook and clean, go for walks, jam with my friends, have a dog, like to party. All of this would go if I moved to town to a senior home. I'd have reading, writing, and TV. I'd be safe, could make some new friends...but I think I'd be bored silly. That's something I've noticed - people who live in towns and cities get bored when in the country for any length of time. Townies may be surprised, but people who live in the country get bored in town.

     Most of my friends are country dwellers. Discussion of these issues comes up in gab sessions, even with the youngsters (between 50 and 65). We wonder, why can't there be facilities for seniors out in the country? Places where you could have a dog, a fenced yard, a small garden, go for walks on unpaved ground - surely it wouldn't be that difficult! For staff you'd need (part or full time): an LPN (licensed practical nurse), a cook (real food), a maintenance person (who would double as a gardener and a driver), and a housekeeper. You could have about 8 tiny homes attached by covered walkway to a main building where meals would be served. Everyone would have wifi and satellite TV. There could be an exercise room, a family entertainment space, a kitchen (residents would be allowed to cook if they wished), dining area, maybe one of those fancy bathtubs made especially for seniors. It could all be worked out. It would be pretty much a cooperative effort amongst the residents. Ahhh, dream on...

     As our kitchen table conversation goes on we all realize we would have to do all this ourselves; government sponsored places are unlikely to stray from their norm. It seems quite impossible and very unlikely that we would get organized before it's too late. Questions arise. Where would we do this? Everyone loves their own place! No one wants to move. How would we finance this senior utopia? So the discussion fizzles out and we put the idea on the back burner.

     But there's something we can do, we can and should investigate what services are currently available for seniors who opt to remain in their country homes, eligibility criteria, cost, ease of access. If services are minimal, underfunded, understaffed, we should determine our needs and lobby local (and provincial) government to upgrade these services. From many different sources I have heard that  it's less expensive to care for seniors in their own homes than in an institutional setting. So beefing up rural care services may simply be a matter of letting funders know what's needed. It would be a win win situation.

Oops again

Once again I need to say oops. I may have to dump this program (app, called Blogtouch pro ) if I can't get it to function sanely. Now it's throwing in past blogs at random and adding them to the bottom. I half expected to find my whole blog history filing through. ?!#

From Fleece to Quilt

    We traded our goat herd in for sheep for several reasons, mainly because marketing was easier, more sheep auctions closer to home.  My husband wanted to tan the hides of the ones we butchered for ourselves, fleece on, to make soft throws and rugs but never got around to it, other more pressing projects always taking precedence. Instead the hides were, and still are, tossed onto the roof of the dog kennels so the birds can pick at the fat. But I, being the homemaker part of the bargain, wanted to do something with the wool. I only managed to complete one project using wool the whole time we've had sheep.

     When I got pregnant I figured I should learn to knit. In my thinking that's what mother-to-be were supposed to do. I made one jumpsuit that fit my son when he was 2 and one sweater that was too small when he was born. So I had already determined that knitting wasn't my strong point. Besides I had no spinning wheel or drop spindle, and had no clue how to spin except in circles. As luck would have it, our local hall hosted the answer for me to use my wool - a quilting course! 

     It was important for me to take it from the fleece to the quilt, so the first thing I did was take the newly shorn wool down to our lake to wash it. Wet wool is mighty difficult to handle but I got it all sorta washed and onto an old bed spring to dry in the sun. I borrowed some combs and a hand crank drum carder (see below) from a friend and bit by bit cranked away at the fleece until it became rectangles (batts) of combed wool, reasonably devoid of straw and weeds. I was nearly ready!

    But I needed some material squares for my quilt cover and a simple design to arrange them in. Our local thrift shop had all I required so I snipped and sorted till I had something I figured looked pretty nice, then sewed the quilt cover with my old treadle sewing machine. It was looking pretty good! I was ready to take the course. The instructor had never before encountered someone who wanted to make a quilt with real wool, most folks use perfectly uniform synthetic quilt batting, but she rose to the challenge and we made only one change - we added a layer of cheese cloth over the wool. My treadle did itself proud (though it has never been quite the same since - went out of sync somehow due to the thickness of the wool) and before too long I had the quilted part of the quilt ready for the backing. Our quilts were sized so that a bed-sheet backing should fit just right...but when I pinned it on IT DIDN'T FIT! For some reason it was about 4 inches too short.

     By this time I was getting pretty tired of looking at that quilt. It had been a long and, for me, difficult process. When that sheet didn't fit I just groaned. I rolled the darn thing up, put it in a large garbage bag and stuffed it under my bed. Never looked at it again for several years until one day I got the courage, took it out, refitted the sheet and sewed it all together. That quilt stayed on our bed for many years, even after a dry cleaner made it go all lumpy. It was hard for me to retire it. After all I was pretty proud of my fleece to quilt accomplishment. But it did have one wee flaw. Some of the long straight pins that held the backing on before I sewed it had worked their way deep into the wool. All were found eventually, one sharp reminder at a time!  

       -------------------------------------------------------------------

From Wikipedia 

     Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibers to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibers between differentially moving surfaces covered with card clothing. It breaks up locks and unorganized clumps of fiber and then aligns the individual fibers to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fiber for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.

     The word is derived from the Latin carduus meaning thistle or teasel, as dried vegetable teasels were first used to comb the raw wool. These ordered fibers can then be passed on to other processes that are specific to the desired end use of the fiber: Cotton, batting, felt, woollen or worsted yarn, etc.

   The simplest machine carder is the drum carder. Most drum carders are hand-cranked but some are powered by electric motor. These machines generally have two rollers, or drums, covered with card clothing. The licker-in, or smaller roller meters fiber from the infeed tray onto the larger storage drum. The two rollers are connected to each other by a belt - or chain-drive - so that the their relative speeds cause the storage drum to gently pull fibers from the licker-in. This pulling straightens the fibers and lays them between the wire pins of the storage drum's card cloth. Fiber is added until the storage drum's card cloth is full. A gap in the card cloth facilitates removal of the batt when the card cloth is full.