The life of a farmer

We got a call last night and an e-mail this morning detailing mom's day yesterday.

Hello girls and sister,

Finally I have the time to tell you the bad news. The barn roof collapsed today. Dad and I were at the barn early this morning and he came home about 8:00A.M. and I came home about about 9:00 A.M. [ed. it was all okay then] Dad went back to the barn about 11:30 to plow in the back of the barn so he could get hay to the heifers before lunch.
He [saw that the barn had collapsed and] called me, Vaughan and 911 and he called Mario, who is a farmer, and Mario called his list of farmers, and within minutes the yard was full to capacity with vehicles and emergency trucks. There were so many people that it was overcrowded. Those farmers who helped during the flood were all here with cattle trucks and chain saws and everything. They were amazing. They worked along with the fire department to cut holes in the wall of the barn and rescued one cow at a time. There were a lot of cows that were trapped under the collapsed roof and we only lost a couple of cows that the vet had to put to sleep.
Some heifers were shipped to other farms, and at this point I do not know where they went, and we opened up the heifers area and put in bedding for the milking cows. I looked after getting the milk replacement ready and fed the calves and Audrey came and helped me. It is a good thing that I have been feeding the calves morning and night for a couple of weeks and knew what to do as the men were so busy, they did not have the time to look after the calves.
The cows were finished milking about 9:30 this evening. I was supposed to work at the Gilbert & Sullivan Dinner Theater this evening, but instead the ladies at the church brought some sandwiches and turkey soup and coffee for everyone. We also received some wonderful turkey salad sandwiches from Mama's Pub on the North side. The owner has horses and her heart went out to us. She wanted to help in any way she could. The sandwiches were delivered by her mom.
I had better get to bed because tomorrow is another day, I have to get up early to feed the calves and then go to church and distribute communion. I am sure that some good will come out of this. I am so thankful to God that it happened on a nice warm day [ed. -3 is warm compared to the -30 we've had recently] as opposed to a very cold and windy day and that no one got hurt and that we only lost a few cows [ed. I think losing 3 cows is bad enough]. It could have been so much worse. On cold days everything freezes in the barn if the doors are opened for even a short time. Also dad was supposed to be installing some new lighting in the ceiling in that part of the barn that collapsed this morning, but the young guys who were supposed to come and help only came in the afternoon, so he was waiting for them to arrive to help him install the lighting. They could have been trapped in there too, if they had been in there. So even though we had a terrible thing happen, in the end maybe it is all for the best. Maybe we will get a new barn for the cows. Love you all and take care. Mamoo

The barn as it is now

Some farmers brought more tractors to help prop up the wall to prevent further collapse

The back door that the cows use to access the field in the summer.

The left side of the barn. As mom said, the cows that were in this part were easy to rescue. They just opened the gate and out they came. But you can see one cow that is still trapped.

Trapped cows. You can see two here.

They had to cut away whole sections of the walls to get to some of the cows.

Trapped cows. This poor gal had to be hauled out.

Once she was outside, she couldn't get up because her back legs were cramped. The vet gave her a shot for the pain and they covered her with warm blankets.

Dad getting a halter on a cow to lead her out.

Dad with one of the cows.

Many people showed up to help.

They had to cut through metal bars to rescue some of the cows.

The firemen put blankets and towels over the cows heads to protect them from the flying sparks.

Cow waiting to be freed. The man in the blue to the left is the vet.

Interior shot.

Another interior and more trapped cows.

More trapped cows.

This cow did not want to go back in the barn. I can't say where as I blame her.

Coffee time!

A well deserved bowl of turkey soup.

And you all remember the saga of the flood last spring and the evacuation of the cows? Because the cows were stressed, their milk production went down and was not expected to recover until each cow had calved again. The cows had begun to clave and the milk production had started to go up a little bit. Dairy farmers here have an agreement with the Milk Marketing Board that they will produce X amount of liters of milk. If they are over quota they get paid less for the milk that is over quota and if they are under quota they are fined. Because of the move during the flood and the stress that the cows endured, Dad has been under quota since last spring. The MMB has given him until the end of 2009 to make up the lost production or face a fine that is approximately the equivalent of one months production value. That would be a month in which all the the usual expenses occurred. Cows are rather expensive creatures to feed, house, and keep warm. Add to this the loss of production due to the poor quality of the hay that the cows are eating this year because last summer was so cool and wet. And add to that the fact that the 40 year old silos have deteriorated to the point where they are no longer used and have to be taken down.

Production is down so much that my parents are not even drinking their own milk. Because every drop now is precious, they are buying it from the store.

And now this.

More stress on the cows that will probably make the production drop even more. And the loss of three milking cows, which is probably 120 litres a day. It adds up.

And a couple of weeks ago during the cold snap that we had, three cows decided to calve early and did it outside! Poor dumb beasts. I believe that one of the calves froze before anyone found it and one had frostbite on its nose but survived.

So the next time that you go to the store, please don't complain about the price of milk. Just thank your lucky stars that there are people out there like my parents who keep producing it.

The College Playoffs

Craft College style.


Some intrepid soul at work decided that enough was enough. Too many complaints about the cold and snow. Too many people moaning about the winter. Something was desperately need to chase away the winter blahs.
So the Photo department challenged the Graphics department to a ball hockey game at lunch last Tuesday. There were many interested players.

And many interested spectators. I watched most of the game from the comfort of a second floor classroom. Which is why there is a grid in the second picture. It is the window screen.


Photo won and was challenged by Fashion. That game went down yesterday but unfortunately, I didn't get to see any of it as I was kept running over my lunch hour. I'll let you know next week when the winner plays another challenger.

And it only took 25+ hours

Monday I printed leaves - 4.5 hours
Tuesday I ironed interfacing and cut leaves - 2.5 hours
Wednesday I ironed interfacing and cut leaves - 2 hours
Thursday I printed more leaves but got sneaky and printed my whole screen (13 leaves, 5 different kinds) I gave up on each leaf type being a different kind of fabric. Only the hand dyed fabric were printed exclusively as maple leaves This sped up the process quite a bit and I only spent 2.5 hours.
Friday I cut the last of the leaves (3 hours) and as I stated before, they totaled 163.
Saturday I hiked down to the school where I was able to spread out, take over large tables, and use the industrial sewing machines.
I cut out my pattern pieces and sewed a liner. Then I started sewing on all of the individual leaves. - 4 hours
After getting a good start at school, I came home to snack on Jalapeno Corn Bread (thank you Bill) and sewed more leaves. There was probably another 4 hours of sewing that night.
Sunday Back to the school by 11 and sewing the last of the leaves and the bottom of the pillow on to the leafy part. Inserting the liner and stuffing it was almost the end! Yeah!
I used bean bag Styrofoam pellets. Sewed up the liner, zipped up the zipper and called it done! - 3 hours.


Total time not including research, idea development, pattern development, making of the screen, doing test prints, and a concept board, etc. (total time approximately 12 hours) was 25.5 hours.

And here's the finished product, not in it's natural environment.

Leaf Pillow

I must be insane.......

163 leaves have been printed for my pillow. And with the material that I am using (basically fake suede) and the printing ink that I am using (Speedball metallic gold) you can only get one good print before you need to rinse out the screen and re-coat the edges with tape.
One print.
163 leaves.
Yup.
Insane.

Here are some of those leaves that have been printed. On the left are the cut ones, on the right, are the ones to cut.

I made a pillow that was the approximate shape of a pile of leaves. And I started to sew. And sew. And sew. And sew...... you get the picture. It strated to go much quicker when I realized that I didn't need to sew all of the leaf spines down, just the main central one. And later if I needed to sew more of the leaf, I could. A lot of them will be overlapped any way and would be tacked down by the stitches on the top leaf.
Things started to get much quicker.

I am now more than half way through my leaves and I still need to put a bottom on my pillow. There will only be leaves on the top and sides of my pillow. The bottom will be a solid piece of fabric with leaves that overlap the edges.

It is due on Monday so I have a lot of sewing to do in the next 24 hours!

Post Cards from the Selv-edge

The penultimate installment......

This month was the brain child of a Stargate enthusiast. (see the stargate in the upper right (I was told by Jan (the enthusiast) that the stargate was supposed to be on the bottom of the postcard. She felt that it was now like some sort of funky funky space ship. And that wasn't a good thing.
This one had actually been sent through the mail as is (ie no envelope) and as a result had suffered a few losses. Someone somewhere had stuck down some stars with glue and whatever machinery that dealt with this postcard while it was in the post office didn't deal too kindly with some of the stars. As I mentioned before, some of these postcards had more of a "deal with something that bothered me". What bothered me on this one was the small spots of glue. And the blank back (but more on that later).
You can see below that I added some paint to the missing star area. I also added some moon stones. I looked up and down for some star sequins (something that I never thought that I would admit too) and (of course) once I decided on the moonstones and passed the postcard on, Mira decides that she wants to sequin a small fish that I had given to her about 4 years ago and she had out her sequins. And she has star sequins. Of course! Why didn't I think if of asking her?

Detail......


And now the back. Badly photoshopped to lose the addresses but you get the general picture.

Jan likes (loves) Stargate and the main characters name is John. So what better than the classic message of "Wish you were here".......
Now I am anxiously awaiting mine that still has three people to get through before it reaches me. One of the postcards seems to have been lost in the mail and in trying to track it down, I saw a photo of mine. It is much changed and I am looking forward to having it back.

Blanket

Before Christmas I was approached by a woman who wanted me to weave her a blanket. "I've looked for a purple blanket that I liked for years and haven't found one. Would you be interested in making me one?"
Hmmm.
Commissions and I have a shady past. I haven't done a lot but with the exception of one dyeing commission, I have always had a problem with something going wrong. Sometimes my fault, but not always. Stupid calculation error when I estimated and then took the estimation as "fact". My fault indeed.
So I was hesitant to agree. But a commission is a guaranteed sale and so thinking "Guaranteed sale" I worked out a quote and presented it. She agreed and so I went ahead.
The way that I normally work out my prices is to take the total time to make the warp, dye the warp (if necessary), and warp the loom and divide the total hours by the number of projects on the loom. So if it takes me two hours to make the warp, three hours to dye the warp, and three hours to warp the loom and there are four scarves in the warp, then I average it out to 2 hours per scarf before weaving, finishing, and washing.
In this case I did the same thing. I decided that I would put on two blankets and weave the weft differently. Only that I never would have been putting on a blanket in the first place if not for the commission. There was NO possibility of selling a second blanket. I also didn't take into account the hour and a half that it took me to make the skeins into balls so that I could use the yarn. So I should have priced the blanket as a "one off". Alas, I did not.
My Bad.
And my lesson learned. So I think that from now on commission work will have a premium price that will take into account any glitches that may arise.
All was not lost though. I had decided early on that the second blanket would make a wonderful Christmas gift for my brother and his partner.
And I was right.

moaning, bitching, and waulking

Ah, January.

In New Brunswick, that means short days (but getting longer) and cold weather. There is usually what we call a "January thaw" when the temperatures leap to above zero and melting happens only to have us plunge back into the deep freeze. This year we have foregone the thaw part and skipped right into "Holy **** is that ever COLD!" -34 C the other morning! Not including the wind chill factor. For those of you from balmy regions, a wind chill is how cold it feels with the wind blowing every molecule of warmth from your body. Think humidex in reverse. It has been this way since Monday and tomorrow we are scheduled to have a daytime high of a balmy -12 C. Ah, bliss.

Pretty sick when -12 seems warm.

I'm taking a new class this term. It is Surface Embellishments 2. This is where we get to apply a lot of our techniques learned last term into actual projects. The first project is called "Pillow Talk" and we are suppose to make a pillow that "says" something. This could be actual words or some sort of conceptual idea. We need to incorporate dyeing, silk screening and stitching on our pillow.

After looking at many images of pillows on the internet, I decided to make a pillow that resembles a pile of leaves. Thinking of the childhood pleasures of jumping into a pile of leaves. I can't remember the last time that I jumped into a pile of leaves. It certainly wasn't a pile that I raked up! But what joy and carefree abandonment. With no thought to the consequences. Which in this case would be having to rake up the leaves again. And put them in the bag. And get the bag to the curb while hoping that some drunken yahoo doesn't kick it open and spread the leaves out again. Sigh.

While I would like to make a beanbag chair the size of a pile of leaves (all the flopping with none of the raking) I am going to have to settle for a model beanbag pillow. Maybe 18 to 24 inches round. And sort of pile shaped. It is due in two weeks and I'll be back periodically with a report.

In the mean time, I'll leave you with an image of some yardage that I wove in the summer 5 years ago. It is 6 yards, 38 inches wide, 100% wool that I and another woman wove for a waulking demonstration the summer that I was pregnant with wee Nicole. It lost a yard in length and 7 inches in the width during the waulking.

And for those of you wondering what waulking is, it is fulling woolen fabric by stitching the two ends together, wetting it with hot water, and grabbing and squeezing it and the pounding it on the table. It is done by a group of people around a table and the fabric is passed around the table so that it is evenly fulled. See a video here. It seems in the video that they are doing it dry. Thankfully we were outside on a bright sunny day because we managed to get everything soaked!

Did I show you this?

It turned into these (plus one more that found a new home before I remembered to photograph it)
These are more of my "stash scarves". Who doesn't like to expand their stash? And I have found the perfect thing to do with my stash piles. Plastic containers actually. Once I have enough yarns in a particular colour range (in this case brown) I make a mixed warp and weave scarves. I usually use different wefts so that each scarf is a little different.

Happy New Year

2009.

My sister gave me a couple of puzzles this Christmas. Christmas is the one time of the year that we do puzzles. The rest of the year seems to be a little too busy.

My first reaction was "ohhh! Aren't they pretty!"

And then I actually looked at the image with the eyes of puzzle builder and though "ohhh! Evil Puzzle!" Lots of dark areas, lots of reflections in water, lots of back and orange fur.

Day One

It took me over 2 hours to sort the pieces and do the frame. I decided that it was not going to be a one day puzzle.

Day Two

Thankfully I had help. Mira and Bill both helped quite a bit. Simon and Liam put some pieces in. Even Nicole helped in her way. Which usually consisted of her pointing at a blank spot and asking,"Where is this piece?"

Day Three

And the last bit of the puzzle was actually done when I wasn't looking. I was out doing a job for someone and Mira finished it off.

Day Four

2009. Hmmm. I wonder what the picture of my year will look like in December 2009.

Mamoo's Yarn

Mamoo is what we call my mother. To make a long story short, my niece couldn't say "memere", and everyone else called my mother "mom" and in her mind, it came together as Mamoo. Seeing as my dad is a dairy farmer, we all thought that the name fit.

Ma-moo. Get it?

I decided that I wanted to spin her some yarn so that she could knit a pair of mitts or gloves or a hat or whatever she decided.

So I chose to blend some fibers that I had. Black superwash merino is the base of the fibers. I also had some purple alpaca, and a bit of green and blue merino. When blending fibers, I usually weigh everything so that I know the fiber content percentages. Not this time. Oops. I'm guessing that the superwash is about 60-65% with 30-35% alpaca, and a small amount, less than 5%, merino. I kept blending and adding until I had a colour combination that I liked.

Which was then spun into a relatively fine singles (sorry, no WPI)
And plied into yarn. I finished it on Christmas eve and had to set the twist. In most houses it would be no problem to dry a skein of yarn overnight in the winter. Some people even have to run a humidifier in the winter. Not here. We are horribly humid. Partially because of poor insulation. Partially because we cook a lot and have many house plants. And partially because there are 6 of us living in a relatively small place.
In any case, even though the skein was wrung out as much as possible, rolled in a towel and stomped on, and sat in front of the dehumidifier for about 10 hours, it was still a little damp when I wrapped it up before heading out to my parents on Christmas day.
It is 270 yards (I think I forgot to tell you that, Mamoo)
Mamoo, I hope you have fun knitting with handspun!

From the Archives

of what I wove.

100% silk
Walls of Troy pattern
16 EPI
15 PPI
Hand dyed

Merry Christmas

How ever you celebrate this time of year, may you have a wonderful time.

My tree this year came complete with a small girl under it. May yours have wonders as well.

Post Cards from the Selv-edge

The December edition, part one.
Earlier this month I had two post cards handed to me. These have been handed around Fredericton as well as being shipped across the country and somewhere along the way, one was delayed and had begun traveling with a companion.
One of the other participants and I did an count and realized that one postcard has been lost altogether. We are trying to figure out who last had it. I guess that that is one of the problems with shipping things across the country. Things sometimes get lost. Like the Christmas parcel that I sent to my sister in England one year. It never arrived. Sending maple butter through the mail is always a risky prospect. One never knows who may snag it out of the postal stream for some personal enjoyment.

But I digress.....

This one was started by one of the Fashion instructors. It has a definite "pattern" feeling to it.
Here is the after shot. I took a few layers of pattern paper from an old dress pattern that I had (but never made) and sandwiched them between the main postcard (which was sheer) and some red printed organza. I then folded up the edges from the organza back and top-stitched the "frame"


Here you can see the window from which the lady is peeking. The letters behind her are from the pattern bodice piece.


And here is the back. The "message" for this one is simply the pattern preparation instruction. I had considered enclosing some sort of message, but in the end decided against it. I couldn't decide exactly what to say.

I still haven't decided what to do with the other one.

The next one to come back to me should be mine! It will be very interesting to see how it has been transformed.