It has been a very unusual summer on the farm.  This is one of the first days this summer that we have been blessed with enough leisure time that I felt like doing some work on the Farmhousefibers blog.

Prior to this weekend, we had been battered by storms and heavy rains nearly ever week since April.  We have been experienced flooding, fallen trees (8 total)  and several power outages.  Today we have been blessed with sunshine and comfortable temperatures. What a relief to be able to sit on the porch with the laptop and just enjoy the nice weather, humming birds, and other wildlife.

I spent part of the morning cleaning up the latest fallen tree which happened to fall right on top of Laura’s Chinese dragon garden ornament.  Needless to say, the three foot tall dragon ended up as a pile of limestone chips!  Laura has been searching the web and has already located a replacement and mentioned a potential road trip next weekend.  That will give me a chance to try out the new Nuvi GPS  I received as an early birthday gift.

Have you ever had an activity that you did not really like to do, and then, when you found you could not do it, you missed it? Our extreme winter weather lately has posed one of those dilemmas for me right now. I have been trying to get my stash of llama fiber either processed at the mill or ready for hand-processing. Step one is washing the fiber. Since I am now set up with two wash tubs, hot water, and a recycled washing machine to spin the fiber dry, my washing efficiency has improved considerably. Still, it is hard work. On a work day or weekend I can generally wash two to four fleeces per day. Fortunately I run out of drying racks about that time, so I usually have a couple day break between batches. Late in the fall and even on Christmas break from work I have been able to push through a few loads while the weather was warm. If it is at least in the 50’s, things go pretty well, but the 40’s are tolerable. Once I got caught when a cold front moved in and the fiber was freezing to the tubs! That was miserable, and even wearing liner gloves under my rubber gloves failed to keep my hands warm. I was glad to be done with washing fiber for awhile…maybe even until spring!

We had a brief respite from the weather in early January, which of course was touted as a global warming event. A couple days even broke records and reached the mid 60’s. You are darn tootin’ that I took advantage of that. But since then, we have been flirting with zero degrees at night and winds that have begged me to close the westward doors on the llama barns. Marlene from Timbre Ridge Farm, who supplies the kid mohair and angora bunny for the Lla-Moh-Bun yarn, is ready with another lot to ship to the mill. But I still need to wash the llama fiber before sending it. I look longingly at my wash tubs, laced in icicles, and wish we’d have a break in the temperatures so I could get busy. Just a little touch of that global warming would be welcome right now. I might even dare to try some fleece if we get into the 30’s this weekend; that shows how desperate I am! And to think just a couple of weeks ago I was secretly happy it had gotten cold enough that I had to stop washing fleece. Like a cat on the wrong side of every door, it seems we always want what we can’t have.

—Laura

Laura and I were awakend this morning around 3:00 am by the loud roar of the wind as it howled through the trees surrounding our house. We sat up and listened as the wind pounded the house with small twigs it was trimming from the tops of our trees. The two wind chimes on our porch were in constant motion playing an eerie tune that was somewhere between Handel’s Water Music and an electronic jam session by Massive Attack. Suddenly Laura heard a crash outside and immediately dressed for a barn trip to check on the llamas. When she returned she gave me the bad news that a large limb had blown off of one of our trees and was blocking the road. It looked like I was going to have a couple of hours of chain saw work once daylight arrived–still a few hours away on one of the shortest days of the year. Since all of the llamas were safely tucked into the barn and I couldn’t work on the fallen tree until daylight we decided to go back to bed and finish our nights sleep. We had just gotten back to sleep when we were awakened by the sound of a chain saw and flashing red lights tracing a path across the wall of our bed room. Apparently the county sheriff and our local road crew had decided they could not wait until daylight for us to reopen the road. After about 30 minutes of constant chain saw work they had the road reopened and had saved us hours of work with our light weight chain saw. At least we had gotten to see our tax dollars at work. Our local government really does a great job taking care of our county roads We certainly owe them a nice cup of Java the next time we see them.

Winter has been a little late coming to Farmhouse Fibers but it came in with a fury yesterday. Yesterday morning Laura and I headed to Bloomington, Indiana (about 20 miles away) to pickup bread and bagels from Panera Bread. We thought we had a few hours before the weather hit, but by the time we arrived in Bloomington it was snowing heavily and the roads were already covered with a slippery layer of snow.

We were both surprised when I turned into Panera’s parking lot and the car got half way through the turn and decided to continue in a straight path toward the mediun divider. I was only going a couple of miles per hour, but it was still pretty scary. Needless to say, we were having second thoughts about our Saturday morning road trip.

We walked through the heavy snow into Paneras and loaded up on coffee, bagels and bread and headed back toward Martinsville before the roads got much worse. Once we had the car tucked safely back in the garage we ate a quick breakfast and headed out to the barn to check on Lewis and the other llamas.   They were obviously much smarter than we had been because they were all snuggled in the comfort of  the cover of the barns.

If you have visited our site in the past you probably noticed that  the site has gone through a significant makeover.  We have re-created the site in Wordpress.  Using Wordpress will enable Laura and I to provide a more up-to-date and better organized site.

We hope that you enjoy the new site.

Fred

We are finally offering our custom blend Lla-Moh-Bun for sale online! This is a special yarn for your special projects. It is about 47% Silky Llama, 47% Kid Mohair, and 6% Angora Bunny. This yarn has an especially silky feel to it, with extra high luster. The Angora Bunny will add a bloom to the yarn as you work with it. We are very excited about this yarn. It is the culmination of effort between Yellow Wood Llamas and Timbre Ridge Farm, who provided the kid mohair and angora bunny. Spinderellas in Utah worked with us to have the yarn custom blended and spun. We invite you to try some for that next special project!