My second trip to Rolly's farm started a little later in the day, when the farm was in full swing, bustling away. Due to the foster puppy inhabiting what is normally Rolly's workshop kitchen, we were banished to dying on the porch, which should be wonderful in April in Eugene, but not today. It was snowing and we were untying tiny knots around skeins of yarn that had been soaking in cold water for the last couple days. I took a picture of the snow on my jacket but it seems my camera didn't think that image needed to be saved (the camera was full of pictures so you only get one for now). In short, it was FREEZING! I think all my fingers and toes went numb.
Anyways, the flow for the day was to squeeze the water out of the skeins we had put in to soak before, and untie and retie the little pieces of string around them to make it loose enough that the dye can properly permeate the yarn. Again working with five skeins at a time, we set up crock pots and electric canning pots all around the house, set the temperature to simmer around 180F I believe, added some vinegar (scientific method: a few glugs), some dye, and then the yarn. While those pots sat to simmer until the water turns clear and the yarn has absorbed all the dye, we headed out to the fields.
All of the animals: dog, sheep, and alpaca, needed to be let out to pasture which took some juggling. The two female dogs could not share a fence line, some fields are accessed by going through other fields, and the alpacas and sheep needed to be separated. I learned the key difference between alpacas and sheep today on Rolly's farm: sheep run everywhere. Alpacas meander. Rolly opened the gate, and out came an egger stampede of sheep, all thinking, "there might be food! there might be food!" A few minutes later, the alpacas on the far side of the field look up. Rolly shouts back at them not to bother heading this way, and we walk around to let them through a maze of dog-proof fencing to their own field. The rams also have their own pen, and have taken to humping each other - it seems one of the females is in heat and these poor boys can't help themselves.
Three years ago, Rolly retired from the breeding business. One of her rams wasn't listening very well and had his own plans. Last year or the year before, he got out and got friendly with a bunch of the ewes; including his mother. Now there is a pair of inbred sister and brother wandering about with a few brain cells missing and some unique fleece.
With all the animals put out to graze and the thunder and lightning and rain/snow/sleet/snane/hail coming down harder than ever, we set to shoveling out the barns - in record time. After all that, it was time to warm up for a while until the sheep were ready to come back in - about an hour. We headed upstairs to the spinning studio and set up some equipment in front of the heater to salvage some very magenta yarn that had been sitting for too long and had gotten eaten by the moths and the puppy and now were tangled messes of broken ends instead of skeins. Theoretically, we would open the skein onto the umbrella swift, and connect the end to the electric skein winder, and we would have a nice, newly wound skein. In reality, we spend the hour picking out ends and untangling the yarn bit by bit to get it on the skein winder. At least it was nice and warm.
When we felt a satisfactory level of frustration and had enough small victories of making miniature balls of hot pink yarn from the broken pieces, we headed back out to undo the shuffle of the animals (too much grass and they get the runs...). We nicely prepped all the barns with hay and oats to encourage the animals back in, though the icy rain probably helped too, and then began opening gaits. The first in was a little old alpaca who got her own special pen in the corner farthest from the opening and with her own private line of dining options. She happily led herself right in, though she gave me the wide berth a stranger deserves. Next were her grazing companions - a couple other alpacas and a sick ram in need of a shot. After a couple attempts to catch him for the shot which he was carefully evading, we opened the sheep gate. Sure enough, the stampede came thundering back in at a full run with the same "food, food, food" look in their eyes. The rams and single unaltered male alpaca across the way required some shaking of the food bucket for them to be reassured enough to come charging in for supper. By this time, the sick ram had probably let his guard down about us trying to catch him for a shot, and we had a new sneak attack planned, so in we went again and finally caught the ram. Rolly handed me the ram's head with the instructions to "hold him like this" with his chin straight up in the air. It seemed to work, the large snouted creature held still as Rolly undressed one leg and stuck him with a shot in his hind.
Most of the dyes had exhausted (meaning the water was clear and the yarn colored), so we unplugged them and let them sit to cool off. Our final task was to put some roving in to dye. Roving is the wool after it has been washed and carted (brushed) and pulled in to a long, thick, fuzzy ropes, ready for spinning. Again, we started with the crock pot and some water, added vinegar when it was hot, and then I picked red dye to go in the bottom of the pot. Half the roving went in to the pot, then I picked red, orange, and yellow to go on next. We folded the rest of the roving over that into the water, and put the same colors in the same order on top. We gently patted the fiber into the dye to make sure everything was getting colored, then left it to sit for a while.
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