November - Waiting for Snow

 Downtown Evansville's Old Fashioned Christmas (photo by Brian Carter)

       November is a month in which everything seems to be holding its breath.  Halloween is over, and the green begins to drain out of the plants and grasses as though it is being slowly sucked down into the ground.  Like an old photograph left out in the sun, the color of the landscape slowly fades to sepia and then toward the monochrome of winter when all will turn to black, white, and grey.  The roses are still holding onto a bit of green, as they will do until the last possible moment, but everything else is leaching its color into the soil.  Seed pods appear seemingly out of nowhere looking like some kind of alien life form.  Sometimes it is only by their location that I can identify the plant they once were.  

       There is never enough time to get everything done, and if we got everything we had planned to do finished, we would find yet more to do because that is the nature of the season.  We are nesting, putting by, bedding down.  

     I managed to turn over a section of soil in the front garden to make another attempt at planting European poppies.  I had been given a small packet of seeds last summer by the elderly Amish woman in Cashton from whom we buy perennials, and I scattered them directly onto the lightly worked soil last October.  They failed miserably, and not a single shoot emerged this spring.  It was with some chagrin that I returned this September to ask for more seeds so I could make a second attempt.  If I can establish them, I will be happy to have them pop up wherever they like.  I believe I can harvest the seeds from this variety to use in cooking and baking while still leaving plenty to spread their colorful blooms everywhere.

       All of the brightly colored gourds we grew and displayed as part of our Halloween decorations were scooped up into a wheelbarrow and dumped, somewhat unceremoniously, in a heap near the back corner of the house where we hope they will volunteer in spring and we can avoid mistaking them for edible squash.  Gourds are beautiful things, but they're decidedly unpalatable, though outdoor critters like them.

      The garlic - all 120 cloves - has been planted and is lying quietly under several inches of straw.  Why, you might ask, would someone plant that many cloves of garlic if not to sell them?  Garlic scapes is the answer.  Garlic scapes are the lovely little flower stalks that emerge from the green leaves of the plant in midsummer.  They are a delicacy, and they can be chopped up and frozen for later use.   Because they are not as strong as raw garlic, you can toss them in or on just about anything you like in the same way you would green onions.  By the way, garlic leaves are also a treat when picked young - mild but tasty.

     I have wrapped our young cherry tree with enough chicken wire that it looks like something out of a high security prison yard.  Under the tree are the ashes of our beloved corgi Juju.  The mice and rabbits ate the little tree right down to the ground last winter leaving only two fragile, brown stems less than a foot above ground.  Harvest insisted I leave them alone because, as she says, "The plants always come back for you.  Just wait and see."  So I left the little sticks to themselves.  By some miracle, two tiny shoots emerged at soil level, then three, then four, and the tree leafed out again even bigger than before.  I suppose you can't keep a good dog down.  I've done everything I can to make sure that Juju's tree won't be damaged again this year.  I'll be shoveling a path through the snow so I can check on it every couple of days.

     

     I had plans to thoroughly weed and till both of the gardens before frost, but that got away from me.  There will be need to be some serious weed pulling in spring before I can till the soil, or I'll regret it later.  I'll just have to live with it looking ratty when the snow melts.

     I managed to bribe, cajole, and herd the chickens (not as easy as it sounds) into the garden area so they could scratch about in the late fall sunshine while  I winter-proofed their run and coop.  I wrapped their run in clear, heavy polythene plastic sheeting so they will be out of the wind and the worst of the cold when the winter sets in to stay.  I plugged in the heat lamp in the coop as well.  When the cold really bites in February, the girls will spend almost all their time in there snuggled up and warm.  I submerged the water heater into their water bucket and plugged that in to keep the water from freezing over.  Back in Victorian times, the chickens would have had a warm barn with other animals in it to keep them warm, and they could drink out of the animal troughs, but we have neither barn nor barnyard animals to accommodate them, so we have to resort to electricity to do the job horses would have done for us.  Naturally, the girls were totally oblivious to all this effort as they scratched about. 

(left) Barbara browsing among the broccolini

                                                        (right)  Judy, alert as always

     

     Once they figured out what was on offer, the chickens were only too happy to trundle over and wander in through the garden gate.  I kept a fairly close eye on them while they were out there for fear that a hawk flying casually overhead might spot an unexpected mid-afternoon snack.  I've continued to let them out as often as I can, but as the days grow colder, they don't go far from the comfort of the run and the coop.  Judy and Isis, who are smaller and lighter than the other girls, will venture out for only brief periods before deciding it's too chilly and heading back inside.  

     Rather than raking leaves out of our yard to be picked up at the curb, I raked up wheelbarrow loads of them and tossed them into the chicken run as the base layer for their winter bedding.  The chickens love stomping around in the leaves almost as much as children, and it's a much better, and less wasteful, use for the leaves as well.  I will note here that Scott Johnson of the Low Technology Institute reminded me not to use walnut leaves as they are toxic to other plants and would affect the garden soil if they were tilled into it, so I only gathered up maple leaves, of which there was an abundance.  I was saved from raiding the huge pile of leaves across the street only by the misfortune of the city leaf pick up vehicle arriving and scooping them up before I could get to them.   Leaf envy.  It's a thing.  

     We harvested a good number of squash from the garden, and I rescued two more from the front porch of the former Masonic Lodge where the town's mock graveyard had been set up for our radio play production of Twisted Tales of Poe last month.  We sustained a good deal of mouse damage last year in the basement pantry (they like chocolate chips and candle wax in addition to squash), so my initial thought was to put the squash into mesh slings and hang them from the rafters.  An easier option presented itself in the form of the wire table I use for skirting fleeces, and they are now away from the wall, safe from little teeth, and have plenty of air circulation.  Nevertheless, I have been forced to put out mouse traps again so that our foodstuffs are not contaminated.  Each time I go down into the basement, I announce in a loud voice, "Hear me, all ye mousies!  Stay far away!  To come here is to court disaster!"  So far, no mice.  I sincerely hope they go elsewhere.  It's reality, but it isn't pleasant.

       The weather this November has seesawed back and forth.  One day frost lies crisp and bright on the ground, and the next day it feels like early spring. We've not had a hard frost yet.  Given that in February the temperature will drop to well below zero for days on end, the lakes will be frozen over, and ice fishing huts will dot the frozen surface all the way from one end to the other shore, I welcome every one of these warmer days; each day holding off the cold a little longer and bringing me closer to spring again and a green world.  Even so, we march inexorably toward winter.  The fire in the woodstove burns every day, all day and into the night, and we keep the teapot warm by sitting it on top.  On the weekends, I usually fire up Milly in the back kitchen, and that area of the house gets nice and toasty.  When we had the back kitchen built, I insisted on having a grate put in the kitchen ceiling so that the heat from the woodstove out there could make its way up to the second floor.  It's remarkable how well this combination works.  Our heater doesn't really come on until early morning when the fire has died down.  We figure we break about even using wood instead of gas, but the wood comes from trees which are being cut down anyway because they have fallen over or need to be removed for some other reason, so the wood doesn't go to waste, we get heat, and it keeps our local arborist in business.  

   The weekend before Thanksgiving is Evansville's Old Fashioned Christmas.  The shops on Main Street put on their best finery, and there are horse drawn carriage rides, including Bo, the wonderful, black Percheron who ferried us around for Sweetest Day last year (see "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" from last November for that story). There were two new additions this year, shown above, and three horse-drawn wagons rolled through town until just before dark on Friday evening as they must have done over 100 years ago.  On Saturday morning, Santa and Mrs. Claus arrived downtown by fire truck as they do every year.  Our Santa has a real beard.  I think children know the difference.  These little ones don't need coaxing to have a chat with Jolly Old Saint Nick.

      

     The following Thursday, Thanksgiving  Day arrived, and as usual, Harvest organizes a complete culinary blowout in grand Victorian style.  This year's menu was as follows:  Roast duck, baked acorn squash with mixed rice stuffing, pumpkin and squash soup, sweet potato casserole (no marshmallows), another stuffing of breadcrumbs, dried fruits and nuts; Harvard beets, carrots, green beans with almonds, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, pecan pie, vanilla custard cups, and cranberry sauce. There were only three of us at the dinner table, but that mattered not.  I took charge of roasting the duck and preparing the stuffing, carrots, mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls.  Harvest did everything else except baking the pie which was purchased from a local woman who bakes in her home.

The antique roaster is pressed into service to cook the duck.

    The size of each dish was moderate, but even so, we had Milly's oven and the conventional oven going simultaneously and both stovetops as well.  We felt very fortunate to be able to offer so many wonderful dishes to our guest, and not a scrap went to waste.  Even the chickens got the leftover pie.

                                                                         

                    

 Bear waits patiently for his portion of the feast

    

       I must add a side note here to those who avoid duck because of its greasiness.  I read a recipe somewhere years ago that has made all the difference, and I pass it on to you:  Before you roast the duck, prick it all over, just under the skin, and then put it into boiling water for about 5 - 10 minutes.  This accomplishes two things:  a good portion of the excess fat is left behind in the water, and it makes the roasting much faster.  I've done this for years now, and it never fails.

     And as we wait for snow, we have been inspired to try brewing tea in a unique way.  This odd looking bit of kit below is a samovar.  More precisely, a "samovar on wood".  The name will become clear in a moment.  

     Sometime last winter we discovered an amazing vlog on YouTube called "Country Life" (I highly recommend it).  It isn't at all what you might imagine - American farmers driving enormous tractors across vast fields or ranchers driving cattle out on the open range.  It's a vlog produced by a couple and their son  who live in a small village in Azerbaijan near the Caucasus Mountains.  They have a homestead on which they work an organic garden and raise cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, and geese with two pet rabbits and two dogs. We have watched all manner of interesting projects and hand farming, including the building of a new house with only three men to do it.  The wife makes the most incredible dishes over an open fire or in a wood-fired, hand built oven, and she cooks outside all year round, even in the winter with wolves howling in the mountains nearby (I do not jest).   Almost every episode, and there is a new one about every three days, includes the brewing of tea in a much fancier samovar than our low budget version which looks a lot like a leftover prop from Star Wars.  We were so fascinated, we had to try it ourselves.

Our very own samovar on wood

     The idea is simple.  There is a doughnut-shaped reservoir inside the top container into which water is poured.  A fire is built somewhere (ours was in the woodstove), and once burning, hot branches are dropped down the central chimney of the samovar where they continue to burn and heat the water.  When the water is hot, the little spigot is turned and the teapot is filled.  There is a dish built into the top of the samovar on which the teapot can sit and stay hot from the steam of the hot water.  It's amazingly efficient and not at all difficult to clean. It is, however, very smoky, and I found myself having to put the burning brands into a coal scuttle and taking them carefully out to the porch so they could be dropped down the chimney.  As you can see, the contraption was placed on the cement rail of the porch well away from any flammables.  There's a bit of technique as to how large and how long the pieces of wood need to be and how much can be dropped down the chimney without snuffing out the fire, but I think my first try was pretty successful.  It will likely be put to use more often when the weather allows us to build a fire outside (We are not as cold hardy as our friends in Azerbaijian).  For now it has a place of honor next to the woodstove and stands ready for service.  It's ugly, but I love it.

     We certainly enjoyed the tea.  The couple in the vlog make tea from all manner of things including leaves, flowers, roses, and herbs.  A glass teapot allows one to view the tea as the hot water is being added to the pot.  Many are stunningly beautiful and look quite tasty.  We tried our own version with rosehips and black tea.  From what we have observed, in Azerbaijian the tea itself isn't sweetened.  Instead, little dishes of sugar chunks or sweets such as jam are served with tiny spoons.  The tea is drunk with a small mouthful of the sweet.  I will leave those of you who may be in the dental profession to fret about this. 

     

     And so, dear reader, we leave you on the cusp of winter.  May your own holidays be full of light and good friends and family.  May your hearths be warm and your teacups full and hot.  Until next time. 

     

Happy Anniversary - Victorian Technology Institute Turns One

     The VTI this past July

     It seems hard to believe that I started this blog a year ago.  It was just a few days after Halloween, and I was nursing a broken right wrist (see "A Skull, a Spectre, and a Snap" for that story).  I typed the first blog entry using my left hand and right index finger, figuring out how to use Blogger as I went.  It took nine hours.  I've cut that time by half, but it's still a slog, mostly because of how Blogger works (or doesn't work) with images.  But it's been worth it.

     It's been a busy October.   Harvest and I travelled to Kidron, Ohio, to go to Lehman's: a huge store that carries almost everything a low-technology person could want.  I've been making purchases from them for years, first via their paper catalog and now though their online store, but it's worth making the drive and going to the store to shop.  I had been lusting after an Alladin oil lamp for years - it gives much better light than a standard oil lamp - and Lehman's had a large selection of them.  It was high time to get one.

 

     Our trip to Central Ohio took us by some interesting roadside oddities.  Wisconsin may have its giant chainsaw-carved logger statutes and enormous mice with cheese, but Central Ohio's oddities have a regional flavor all their own.

                         If the Trojan horse relocated to Central Ohio, it would look like this.

A team of four "draft" horses made out of straw pulling a vegetable cart.  Their eyes are small squash, and their ears are corn cobs. 

  Rather than staying at one of the tourist hotels in the Amish community area, we opted for a B&B at Buckeye Ridge Farm in Wooster, Ohio, about 20 minutes away. We had a little cottage all to ourselves.  The farm owners, Lynn and Steve, raise Spanish cashmere goats and buckeye chickens which suited me right down to the ground.  We had great walks in the woods with Bear who loved crunching along in the leaves.  The goats were quite personable, and of course, the relative merits of various chicken breeds were discussed.  I helped Lynn evaluate some of her cashmere, which, of course, meant I had to have some of my own, and I came home with a small bag of the precious stuff which will be blended with some super-soft wool to make a luxurious yarn.  

        

This handsome fellow is either Fabio or Antonio Banderas.  He's gorgeous, but since it's breeding season, he smells absolutely dreadful.  

Kidron is smack in the heart of the Ohio Amish community, which is handy for a store  like Lehmans that sells low-technology goods.  The settlement, as it's called by the Amish, spreads over several towns and counties.   The Amish are well-known for their skill in woodworking and furniture, but there are any number of other craftspeople and small specialty shops scattered among or within the farms, their skills or wares only visible through small signs located at the end of long driveways.  Because we enjoy finding beautiful handmade items and keeping away from the crowds, particularly this year, we found ourselves following these little signs up hills and down dales to find the farms in question.  

     GPS will do you no good whatever here:  you need to navigate by knowing where the particular road is that you might have seen yesterday which is by that school near the fence that runs along the side of this barn and up and over the hill on the left.  I'm not joking.  Our Amish area in Cashton is quite navigable, but this area is vast.  Add to that the Amish farm aesthetic:  white house, dark green curtains, white or red barn, and navigation becomes even more interesting.

   In Wisconsin, the Amish specialize in greenhouses full of plants and flowers, wooden items, rugs, and maple syrup in addition to the numerous furniture shops they are famous for.  In Ohio, it's hand-woven baskets.  We managed to find a beautiful dog bed basket made by a young man who, at his father's request, signed the bottom of the basket for us while we chatted with his father.  Bear enjoys it enormously.  

   

   I won't claim to be any kind of expert in Amish life and culture, but I can say that it appears that many of the Amish groups in this area of Ohio are far more "liberal" than here in Wisconsin.  Tractors seem to be allowed if they are pulling something down a road but are not in a field.  Given the hilly nature of the terrain, e-bikes are a real thing here, as it avoids hitching up the buggy to go to town for just a few necessaries.  I'm sure that many people were grateful when it was determined that they were acceptable.  The bikes are usually black, sometimes white, and all have the same dark gray panniers on the back.

The little bike trailers that are made for towing children behind a bike, however, can be any color at all.  They are used for carrying all kinds of things that the rest of us would put in the trunk of our car.  And with all those bright colors, they are highly visible, which makes for safety when cars are whizzing by.  

     Our arrival was at a particularly opportune time, as the Mid-Ohio Draft Horse and Carriage Sale was taking place that week in Mount Hope.  Amish people come from all over to purchase horses, buggies, and tack.  This makes for interesting traffic jams at stop signs where cars, buggies, and tour buses compete to get through an intersection.  The auction itself is spread out over three days:  draft horses on one day, horses and ponies for carriage and buggy driving the next day, and the buggies themselves on the third day.  By chance we happened upon the "used car lot" of the buggies that were going to be up for auction.  There were at least forty of them.

         Knowing that it was likely that would buy almost everything I saw at Lehman's, I had set myself a generous, but not to be exceeded, spending limit.  I'm happy to report that I came in under budget.  Just.  We did come home with that lamp I had been waiting for, a pair of new butter paddles, several other kitchen items including a dough whisk that's become one of Harvest's favorite baking tools, and a wooden food dehydrator that can work in a conventional oven, in the oven of the wood cookstove,  or on top of the soapstone stove in the parlor.  I've been making good use of it drying apples on top of the parlor stove where I can use the gentle radiant heat to good effect.

    Once home, it was time to finish rehearsing "Twisted Tales of Poe," a radio play I was performing with Evansville Community Theater.  A radio play is done as if it was one of the old radio broadcasts from the 1940s and 1950s, with actors moving back and forth from their seats to the microphones to play their characters.  These broadcasts often included a live audience.  Naturally, we had commercials as well, as the old programs would have had, including our very own Ward Hurtley Funeral Home - perfect for Halloween.  I was cast as Montressor from The Cask of Amontillado, and I had a great time portraying that vengeful villain.  Of our three nights of performance, on October 28, 29, and 30, two were sell-outs.  

  

                                           The cast of "Twisted Tales of Poe" in our 1940s costumes.

    

      One of Poe's best known tales, The Cask of Amontillado was published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846.  This magazine was part Vogue and part Good Housekeeping.  I imagine it caused quite a stir when it was published and read by Victorian ladies.  Amateur theatricals were all the rage in the Victorian era, and there's no reason not to imagine that, at the very least, Poe's tales would be have been read to chilling effect in a darkened room with thunder and rain outside and rapt listeners sitting by a fire inside hanging on every word.  

     In keeping with the Poe theme, I bought two bottles of Merlot and made wine labels for each of them which read:

  E.A. Poe    

Amontillado     

 Montressor Winery, Italy

    1846

 

and gave them to our director.  The labels were so well done that at first, some of the cast members thought I'd actually found a wine called Amontillado! 

         A Victorian etching of The Raven

    Which brings us around again to Halloween 2021.  The painted sugar skull from last year came back out and was placed at the bottom of the stairs and filled with springy frog toys, and the lanterns, with real candles, were lit as always to enhance the ambience.  We have been known as the Witch House for several years now, to the extent that if someone in town asks where our house is, and we tell them, "It's the Witch House," the questioner will often respond, "Oh, yes.  I know exactly where it is."  It doesn't have to be Halloween for the house to be recognized as such.  We are the Witch house in May and June just as much as in October, and we have a reputation to maintain.   Unlike last year, this time we were able to enjoy the arrival of the trick-or-treaters. Though there were certainly not as many as in 2019, we expect it to pick right up to the usual 600 (I do not exaggerate) next year.  Of course, parents dressed up as well, and there were a good number of costumed dogs.  This year, the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz seemed to be the most popular canine attire.   

     Harvest cackled for two solid hours, amusing adults and older kids while giving the youngest just a moment of pause.  She only does this at Halloween.  One of the directors from the play sat with us on the porch drinking mulled wine and enjoying the show.  This was far preferable to driving to the hospital with a broken wrist.

                                                Harvest waiting on the porch for the first trick-or-treaters

   

     I even got a photo of the Mysterious Lady again this year.  She was the most elegant witch I've ever seen, with full Day of the Dead makeup, a silver wig, a stunning purple velvet hat and a matching cape that went all the way over the horse's rump.  I have no idea where she gets her clothes, but I sure would like to find out.  As usual, she made only two passes down the street, and I had to run to catch up with her on the second pass.  She was kind enough to stop for me to take a photo.  I still have no idea who she is or how she arrives in town.  She simply appears and disappears like the ghost she may be.

     

     And so, the Victorian Technology Institute begins another year with new adventures to be had and new skills to learn and share.  Happy birthday to VTI, and Happy Halloween to all our readers!  

 

Sheep! - The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival

 

Lily and Snuggles

These are my people,  This is my tribe.

    At last, after a two year wait, The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival was able to resume this year.  This event is the highlight of my year.  This post will give you a tiny window into this event where I am able to fully be the person that almost nobody sees - the person who is a spinner, a wool judge, a teacher, and a member of a unique community that meets once a year for a weekend in which we share our collective addiction to all things fiber and sheepish.  

    I've had a long-standing interest in European pre-industrial life skills, particularly in what the common people ate and, in particular, how they clothed themselves before modern, industrial cloth production.  The seed of this interest was planted by my high school English and European History teacher, and I blame him for my nearly life-long obsession with fiber.  What I wanted to know - what I still want to know - is how people made decent, sometimes luxurious, clothing for themselves without the use of machinery.  

    In order to begin to find the answer to my question, I had to learn how to spin wool.  I was in my mid-twenties when I started to learn from a woman named Hope Parschell who lived in the California desert.  Hope cooked on a wood cookstove and had bags of wool tucked everywhere throughout her house.  Her entire existence was magical, and I wanted some of that magic for myself.  And that's where it began.

    Over the years, I've learned how to spin well, and I've won my share of First Place and Best of Show ribbons.  It was a natural progression, therefore, that eventually I should learn about shearing sheep, what to do with a fleece once it's off the sheep, and how to prepare the fiber to make it possible to spin it into yarn.  And somewhere along the way, I had to have a small, spinner's flock of my own sheep, because that's just what one does, you know.  While I was shearing sheep and processing fleeces and talking to fiber folks, I learned about the different breeds of sheep that produce wool and what makes a good fleece or a poor one.

    Which brings us to my arrival in Wisconsin on Labor Day 2004, spinning wheels in tow.  Only a week after my arrival, a friend of mine took me to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.  I do not exaggerate when I say that it was a life-changing event.  There were sheep everywhere, and people who knew about sheep and wool, and people who were spinners, and people who were weavers and knitters, and people who knew all kinds of things, and people who loved these people who loved sheep and wool.  This was a complete departure from my experience in California.  There, people's eyes would glaze over rapidly or they would listen with a baffled expression when I began to wax lyrical over sheep and wool.  Suddenly, here in Wisconsin, I was no longer an oddball.  These were my people.  I had found my tribe at last.

    In February of the following year, I was part of a shearing team at a local farm.  My mentor, Mary Wallace, and I skirted* 130 fleeces that day standing on a hard-packed dirt floor in an unheated barn while the freezing wind raged just a few feet away outside.  I came very close to frostbite that day, but I was introduced to the people who would become my fiber family.  They asked if I would like to volunteer to help at the fleece show at The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival that September, and being under the influence of endorphins caused by freezing feet, I agreed.  It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

    That September, I arrived at the festival grounds and met Mary at the barn that held the fleece show.  There were rows and rows and rows of fleeces in bags stretching halfway down the barn.  I had never seen anything like it.  It was dizzying.  It may sound odd, but to sheep people, the smell of a barn full of fleece is incredibly comforting.  And before you sneer, sheep don't smell bad like goats.  They smell, well, warm.

  

Tables of fleeces stretching down the length of the fleece show barn.  Each bag contains a fleece from one sheep.  

    

 

     I can no longer remember exactly what I did that day, but I was hooked.  Over the next few years, I learned to judge fleeces and eventually became the Coordinator of the fleece show, a teacher, and a fleece judge in my own right.  The fleece barn is my home and my domain for three full days.  I love it.

The late Neal Ketner, who taught me how to judge fleeces and was an all around wonderful person

      But the fleece show is only part of the festival.  There are two barns full of vendors selling every imaginable sheep or fiber-related product, including delicious sheep cheese and soap made with sheep milk.  I often find myself a little breathless after touring the vendor barns - there's just so much to see and touch and eat and talk about.  Since I am instantly recognizable in my Victorian wear, friends and folks who have seen me judge fleeces or teach will stop to have a chat, and we catch up on news.  

    The festival offers classes on all kinds of subjects that involve fiber: spinning, knitting, weaving, dyeing, felting, and basket making.  While basket making isn't technically working with fiber, the students create a basket for storing wool, so I suppose that's the connection, plus it's wildly popular.

                                                   Yarn made from a rainbow of fibers by one of the students in my class     

    There is a fashion show and there are demonstrations of all kinds, including, of course, sheep shearing.  And there are competitions of all kinds including our own fleece show.

  Best in Show Winner, Jolyn Meehan, with fleece show judge Letty Klein.  Jolyn won Best in Show out of a field of 160 fleeces!

 There are, of course, competitions for sheep breeders.  These look exactly like dog shows, with all the primping and pampering one would expect, except the competitors say "baaaaah" instead of "woof".

      One of the events which attracts a large number of observers is the Sheep to Shawl competition.  This is basically an insane fiber relay race.  Adults who probably should be examined by psychiatric professionals are given a bunch of fleece and they have to prepare it, spin it, and weave it into a shawl in about four hours.  These people are serious competitors with uniforms that can be (ahem) rather unique.  They practice for months prior to the competition with each team member taking on a specific part of the process.  Kind of like baseball but with wool.  Sort of.  It's the closest a spinner and weaver can get to an athletic competition, and the victorious team will take a winning lap throughout the barns, shawl held high, to great acclaim.  

            Two teams of Sheep to Shawl Competitors from other fiber festivals.  Note the rather  unique uniform on the team below.

 
    

     When I need a break from working the fleece show, I try to take at least half an hour to watch the herding trials.  I could watch them for hours.  If you've seen the movie Babe, you may remember the dog named Fly.  Dogs like Fly - border collies - are the most brilliant dogs ever, and they need a job to do.  Each dog has to go out and fetch a bunch of irritable sheep and move them through a series of gates and pens at the shepherd's command (usually a series of whistles).  The dogs race, run, crouch, stalk, lie down, and move the sheep this way and that to get them where the shepherd wants them to go.  Sometimes the sheep have other ideas, though.  At the end of the day, win or lose, it's clear that the dogs love their people, and for them, it's a good day's work done.  

                                                           Tresa Laferty and Tele

        And, of course, there are sheep.  From early in the morning until long after the sun goes down, we are treated to a concert of "baaaahs", "maaaahs", "buuuurs", and "blaaaahs" from the sheep penned just outside the barn.  There is a Hall of Breeds where people can look at sheep on the hoof that they might never see. 

Dozing Soay sheep.  These are a primitive, semi-domesticated breed.  They seem quite relaxed, don't they?

 

Two Shetland sheep (left) and a Scottish Blackface (above).

A snuggle of Shropshire sheep.  They've been sheared recently, so they look a bit naked, but they don't seem to mind.

A Shropshire lamb looking for trouble.

Buddy, the big Cormo ram.  This guy was a love bug and wanted me to keep scratching his ears for hours.

  

    

                                A white Border Leicester with a Shropshire pen pal.

And what would a festival be without a party?  There are any number of dinners and get togethers in the evenings.  For some of us, it is the only time we will see each other until next year, so we make the most of it.  In the fleece barn, we have a constant supply of chocolate on hand.   My  crew thinks it's there to keep me happy, but the truth is they eat most of it.  On the other hand, the four of us who stay in the hotel together have wine and cheese to enjoy as well as other goodies we may have brought with us.  Most of the time, it's good wine.  This year, it was nearly undrinkable, but as exhaustion set in, it didn't really seem to matter.

    On Sunday afternoon, after the fleece sale ends and we have balanced the sales, we linger just a little bit longer together, doing an extra spot check of the barn, sweeping the floor yet again, anything for an excuse to stay a bit longer  The weather often changes during the course of the weekend, and on Friday when we all arrive, it may have been sunny and warm and feel like summer, but by the time we leave on Sunday, it may be much cooler.  

    The festival is a ritual of the season.  Fall is setting in.  The shepherds will be breeding their ewes for lambing in spring, but the long, cold winter still lies ahead.   We have fleeces to wash and yarn to spin, but the tribe is dispersing to their several homes, and we won't see each other for another year.  Hair will turn grayer.  Children will go off to college or get married.  Lambs will be born and bought and sold.  

    This  cycle of gathering with other sheep folk has repeated itself as long as people have been raising sheep - thousands of years.  I can sense the echoes of those gatherings of long ago when I talk with a shepherd about their flock or admire another spinner's yarn.  It feels timeless.  We have put our selves into this process, well beyond the reach of mass production of sheep and wool.  Technology will come and go, but the process of raising a sheep and hand spinning its wool into yarn has staying power.  We are in the process of rediscovering what was commonplace to our ancestors and nearly lost: how to feed and clothe ourselves well and comfortably from the animals we raise on our own farms or those nearby.  And I still don't know how they did it, but I'm going to keep trying.

*Skirting is the process of removing the undesirable parts of a fleece so that only the good wool remains.  It can be a messy, smelly job.

Flax to Linen the Low Technology Way

    It's been a busy time during the last month as high summer is drawing to a close.  Scott Johnson of the Low Technology Institute https://lowtechinstitute.org and I took some time away from working, building, and gardening to teach a three-part workshop on growing, processing, and spinning flax.  

    First, just a touch of history (I promise).  Flax is a plant fiber, unlike wool, and requires cultivation to produce useable fiber.  Flax has been used since ancient times to create beautiful, hand spun, handwoven linen fabrics that would seem almost impossible to recreate today.  Flax was, literally, worth its weight in gold in Egypt.  Linen mummy wrappings were made from flax, and, of course, the pharaohs wanted only the very best for their trip to the afterlife.  Those very revealing garments worn by women in the tomb paintings of those pharaohs - very fine, very sheer linen.   

    Flax was also grown throughout Europe and is known to have been used to produce cloth at least 3,000 years ago in England - way, way, way before the spinning wheel was even imagined.  And flax has crept into our English lexicon in all kinds of sneaky ways, as you will soon discover.

    Before cotton was available, linen was used for everything from sheets and towels to underclothing. And in case you're wondering: no, people didn't wear the same clothes every day all year round for years on end.  They may have only had one or two outer garments at a time, usually made from wool, but they changed their linens (their underwear made from linen) quite frequently to keep themselves as clean as possible.  You might only have two sets of outer clothes, but you had a bunch of linen unmentionables.   If you wonder why we have "linen sales" today, it's because sheets and pillowcases were also made of linen back then.  Unlike cotton, linen lasts.  It was common for linen items to be listed in a will.  Many people have been given their grandmother's linen tablecloths and napkins, and they never seem to wear out.

    There's a reason that fine linen fabrics are so expensive, though.  The process of converting flax plants into linen yarn to be woven into fabric is time-consuming and labor intensive in the extreme.  It takes a ridiculously long time to do it - so much so that one has to wonder who came up with the idea in the first place and why.  However, in a world where fossil fuels were minimal, such as the Victorian era,  flax and wool would have been two fibers that could be grown, harvested, and processed our local area.

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    Not just any old flax seed will work for fiber.  If you imagine that you're going to be able to go to the local co-op, scoop up a pound or two of seed, plant it, and have fiber to spin, you will be sorely disappointed.  There are two kinds of flax: the type for seeds and the type for fiber.  Almost all of the flax grown nowadays is the type for seeds only, and the plants are completely unusable for fiber.  The varieties that produce fiber are hard to come by and are often imported.  

    Scott has been growing a small plot of flax for about three years now, and the first half of our workshop series centered around growing and processing flax. On the first day of the workshop Scott took the participants through the planting and growing process, including instructions from The Book of the Farm published in 1842 by Henry Stephens. Spanning three volumes, 91 chapters, and 1384 pages, it was the farming bible of its day.

                                                              Toni harvesting flax                                           

    After learning the basics of planting and growing, everyone trooped off to the flax field to harvest the flax.  We spent a good while pulling the long, thin stalks out of the soil by hand.  Flax is harvested by pulling up the plants rather than cutting them down.  Thankfully that's easy to do on Scott's small plot, but it would be back breaking labor in a large field under a summer sun.

    The plants are then tied into bundles with more flax and laid out to dry in the sun.  I have to admit that my bundle tying skill was seriously wanting.  The bundles held together - barely.  I'm a good spinner but a lousy bundler.

Brian bundling flax like a pro.

  

                                                                                                                        Flax bundles along the fence line

                                                                The flax harvesting crew

Scott teaching his son, Felix, about the mysteries of flax.  Felix was quite interested in it.    

    After the flax dries out a bit, it's time to  ripple and ret it.  Rippling is done by passing the tops of the flax stalks through a giant comb which pops the seeds off the plants so they can be saved for next year's crop.  With the scarcity and expense of those European seeds, every seed saved from Scott's flax crop counts toward a larger plot each year.  

    Retting is just a fancy word for rotting.  If you have a nice, dewy lawn and about five weeks to spare, you can spread your flax out, flip it over every couple of days, and have lovely, silvery, "dew retted" flax.  The faster, but smellier, way is to submerge it in water for about 10 days until the outer part of the stalk begins to rot away  You know the smell of a lake in the middle of summer when the water level goes down and the lake weed starts to rot?  That's the smell.  It's fairly awful.  Scott retted a crop in his canoe, and I wonder if the smell ever came out.  It tends to linger.  (Correction:  Scott says this only takes five days in his experience.  He did not, however, minimize the extent of the smell.) 

    After retting, the flax is allowed to dry out again, which takes most of the evil smell away, and then it's time break it.  This sounds like some form of medieval torture, and if you look at a flax break, you might be inclined to agree.

                                                                    My antique flax break
    

    The useable fiber in a flax plant is inside the stalk, and breaking the stalks begins to release the outer layer and expose the fibers inside.  The idea is to hold a fist-sized bundle of stalks in one hand and then bash the heck out of it between the jaws of the break.  It's a lot like chopping cabbage with a wooden cleaver now that I think about it. If you're doing this on a windy day, keep the wind at your back.  The chaff flies absolutely everywhere and will happily embed itself in your clothes, your hair, and your socks.   

 

Ani hammering away with the flax break.

    The next step is scutching.  Scutching comes from the Old English or Scottish word scutch meaning "to beat or whip".  Sounds lovely, doesn't it?  The piece of wood that is being used is called a "scutching sword".  Oh, dear...

Flax hackles

    This vicious-looking contraption is a flax hackle, the ultimate in fiber torture devices.  In order to remove the last of the chaff and obtain a fine, smooth, spinnable fiber,  the hanks of flax are run through the nails.  The larger, more widely spaced nails are used for the first few passes, then the middle set, which  is more closely spaced, and then the finest set.  As each bed of nails receives the flax, it becomes finer and finer, eventually resulting in something that looks like blonde hair - "flaxen-haired" - and is ready to spin (almost).  

    Hackling leaves behind coarser and shorter strands of fiber called tow which can be spun into twine or even rope.  A "tow rope" didn't just tow things: it was made of tow  Scott tells me that in processing flax, only 10% of the original plant remains after the entire process is complete, so saving and using every little bit is important.  Tow is also a dandy fire starter, and Scott has caught me more than once mooning over the piles of tow he wants to use for rope and I want to use for kindling.

    Another sneaky entry into the lexicon at this point is "tow-headed", meaning blonde.

                                             Scott holding one of the beautiful hanks of hackled flax

    

    That beautifully hackled flax will happily tangle itself into impenetrable knots if left unattended, so it must be twisted into a strick in order to keep the strands in order

.   Scott takes a handful of the hackled flax he's been working on, goes twisty-twisty, and, hey, presto! a perfect strick lies in his hand.  You would think, being a master spinner, this would be a piece of cake for me.  Nope. I take my handful, set my tongue just so and whine and grumble and curse the day I ever laid eyes on this stuff, and eventually I am rewarded with a less than perfect, but still serviceable, strick. By the way, strick appears in English  about 1400 A.D. and is  apparently the root form of "strike".  More torture.  Poor flax. 

    And after all the growing and harvesting and drying and rippling and retting and more drying and breaking and scutching and hackling and twisting into stricks, it is, at long last, ready to spin.   If you are a wool spinner (feeding, shearing, carding, spinning), you are likely to be exhausted just reading this.

    

    Spinning is my specialty, so this is where my skills enter the picture.  First you need a distaff.  

    A distaff is a stick of some kind that you tie your flax onto.  It can be attached to your wheel like so:

                                                

    Or it can be s stick that sits on the ground like this one or is held in the crook of the arm, which makes it portable.  Many distaffs are simple, but other ones are highly decorative with elaborate carving and painting including one with a beautifully carved image of St. George slaying the dragon.  I do not lie.   

    Since women did most of the spinning, and used distaffs, yet another term creeps stealthily into the language: the "distaff side" meaning the woman's side of the family including her female relatives.  

    Putting the flax onto a distaff is called "dressing", and I think this is the most important part of the entire process of transforming flax into linen.  This is the place where the grower, the processor, and the spinner meet and, metaphorically, shake hands.  As I spinner, I am taking the work of others into my hands to produce thread from the fiber they have spent so much time and effort to bring to my wheel.  

   The lovely little stricks are untwisted and, slowly and carefully, the fibers are fanned out, layer by thin layer, into a fan shape and then rolled onto the distaff.  

We sat in Scott's parlor and chatted about all manner of things while we fanned out our fibers.  Among other topics, I learned all about the various methods of tanning leather, including brain tanning, which is not a conversation one usually overhears at a local Starbucks.  

Fanning out the fibers

  

  Rolling the fanned fibers onto the distaff.

    And finally the drizzly day came that was the culmination of all the work that had been done - spinning!

                                         The Cooksville Schoolhouse where we held the last class session

   

        

    The moment flax is twisted into thread, it is no longer flax; it is linen, and its value increases substantially.  All of the participants in this final class were experienced wool spinners, but none of them had ever spun flax.  They found it quite a challenge to change from their customary wool spinning technique to the technique required for flax, as I had also experienced when I started to spin this fiber.  It's a very different process compared to spinning wool.  Wool is very forgiving, but in spinning flax, there is little room for error.   Some of the participants soon discovered that it was a meditative process once they got the rhythm of it.   While we spun our threads, Scott sat in a corner in the back, quietly teaching himself to spin tow.  He thought nobody noticed.  I did.

     At the end of the class, we all laid our little skeins out on the floor to admire them - even Scott who had to be coaxed into showing his.  It was fascinating to see the differences in the various skeins, and every participant  showed promise in becoming a good flax spinner with practice.

    Learning a dying art brings us closer to the people of the past for whom this was a common, but vital, skill .  For me, it is one more way to experience part of what life was like for rural people in this area during the Victorian era.  When I'm at my wheel with my distaff at my side, my wheel turning steadily, and linen thread running through my hands, I feel a connection to all the women who have done this task before me and to those who keep this skill alive in the face of technology that can do it faster, but not necessarily better, than the work of human hands.