Ye Olde Batt-less

Good-bye Norma Jean...
Only in this case it is Honeydew and all my sheepies...
Yes I'm ridding myself of my many woolly friends... and none of them are named Norma Jean but I sense that maybe I should have called at least one of them Norma Jean. Good-bye Fanny girl... doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Yes, I'm selling my sheep and my llama. I can't believe I'm finally making the decision to do so but I am. So I will have to rename my blog to Ye Olde Batt-less. Actually you can relax. I am still Batt-full and not Batt-less yet. I will still have my alpacas. I was made an offer on my flock of sheep and the buyer wants Honeydew too. I'm ok with it. Actually if you want to know the truth I jumped at the chance. I am keeping my alpacas and that will make farming my fibre a whole lot easier.

When I originally decided to get into the fibre producing end of things I wasn't really sure what I was doing (not having done any of it before)! I decided on the alpacas first and then I decided to try out the sheep when I knew I was buying the fibre mill. Last year when I decided to sell the mill, the sheep kind of became redundant. I started to rethink my whole operation especially when I had so much trouble finding hay for my animals.  Honeydew has always required careful management... I can't let her near the alpacas because even though they are not the same species they will breed with each other. I didn't want freak animals being bred here so always I kept her away from the male alpacas who seem to lose their minds completely when any kind of animal is in heat.  I once tried putting a ram in with them and the alpacas ganged up on the poor guy and they tried to rape him... yeah... we hurriedly got the poor ram out quickly. So for a while now my paddocks have had to be managed carefully at all times.  Rams in this pen.... breeding ewes in that pen.... sex crazed alpacas in another pen.... new mommas in another pen... and weaned lambs somewhere else.  All in all, it has become a major headache.  I always knew that I wanted the alpacas but the sheep and the llama were an experiment and almost from the first moment I had them I knew that I didn't enjoy them as much as the alpacas. So when this offer for my sheep came along, I was happy to negotiate a price with the thoughts of having an easier time of it with just the alpacas. (There's also this really nice floor loom that I want...!!!)

We are prepping all animals for transfer to their new home.  The sheep will need shots before they go and we will probably do their hooves too. They also need to be tagged and ready for travel. So tomorrow we will round them all up and start tagging etc.  They will be joining a larger flock on a larger spread and they will have approximately 100 acres to wander. Lucky buggers... and the nicest thing about it all is that Honeydew will be someone elses headache... I mean pet. : )

Meanwhile back at my funny farm I have a love sick alpaca who can't believe his bad luck.

After Mishka aborted her fetus this summer we felt that we would try to re-breed her later in the month. If you recall a few weeks ago, I put here on my blog, a porn video of alpacas on my front lawn, having sex, for all the world to see.  It was that day that Teapot and I decided to put the two creatures in love, in a paddock of their own for a few days, and give them time to have as much sex as they wanted. We wanted to know for sure that Mishka would be preggers over the winter. Well, the one week turned into three and a few days ago we decided that they had had enough time to do the dirty and we could remove them from one another.  Coal seemed to not be getting it that Mishka no longer wanted anything to do with him.  He kept chasing her around from time to time and she would run away from him until he got tired of chasing her then they would go back to grazing quietly for a while and then the chasing would begin again.  As a result, she went into her old paddock with Honeydew, meanwhile Coal went back with the other males.

This morning I went out and Coal was looking sad and very pathetic and he was making strange and very sad noises.  He kept looking across the fences to his girl friend and mooning over her (there's no other word for it).  Later today we watched him jump the fence of the paddock that he was in, in an attempt to reach his one and only true love. Once he jumped the fence he quickly realized his dilemma. He was now in his old paddock... and he couldn't reach his girl friend because we are smart and have a fence around her that is far too high for him to jump.... now he's all alone with no girl friend and no pals to drink beer with and commiserate with him about the girl that dumped him. Meanwhile Mishka watches from afar as though she couldn't care less. I think she had enough of him and is quite happy to be back in the harem. Still, poor old Coal is the picture of misery and you can't help feeling a little sorry for him.

Mishka, I'm sure, will be lonely for her pals after Honeydew and the sheep leave on the weekend. It will be a full 11 1/2 months before she gives birth to a cria if everything goes well. I am not sure that she will be happy in the interim. I may have to buy her a pal... hmmm... perhaps another female alpaca is the right idea!!! That way she won't be all alone....

Still, Teapot probably wouldn't like it.....

: ( Waaaagh!

Whenever you're looking forward to something it never happens... the last few days I have been steaming about the fact that I am home and not out in the park where we wanted to be.  We even invited friends to come to the campgrounds for a lovely dinner which we were going to cook up on the barbecue... we had it but not at the park. Oh no! We had it here on the deck.  The camping trip did not happen.

Last year we had a new set of tires put on our truck... the old ones were quite worn... the day we had it done the Tire place didn't have time to put on new tires and do an alignment too. so we went to another cheaper place.  It was not good however we didn't know it until this spring.  Once the snow melted back in late March early April we started hearing a strange noise in the front end of our truck and we wondered what the heck was going on. We didn't have the money or the time to take it to the mechanic to have it checked out.  It turned out that we needed a new alignment. This was fairly quick considering that we had only had one done the summer before.  We decided that the alignment could wait for a few weeks until school closed and Teapot had time to take it to the tire place and have the alignment done.  He took it just after I got back from Olds.  It was good money after bad though.  They rotated the tires and took an old one off the spare and put it onto the front of the truck and we thought we were ok.  About a week after it was done (while Teapot was away too) I started hearing an even worse sound so I had Pops take it and drive it around for a while so that he could figure out what the sound was.... the sound just had been getting worse. That's when we discovered that one of the tires was fit only for the dump.... and the other was not much better. Clearly something other than an alignment was needed.  So with no money for tires and repairs we have no choice but to drive it carefully until Teapot is back in school and bringing home a regular paycheck... Teapot felt that pulling a trailer was putting too much stress on the bad tires and so we are not camping... we are home.

Poop!

I am hoping that we can take the girls for a nice shopping spree later in September maybe to GP or PG. But till then we are home and canoeing will be on hold till BC River's day. Waaaagh!

Banana Pancakes, Clinging Desperately To The Tail End Of Summer, And Too Many D-mn Pets!

For weeks the whore has been missing. 4 weeks to be exact. The day we brought Narmin home Squeeky (no I didn't spell that wrong) went missing. We waited and hoped (especially Daughter #1 since it is her cat). Then we waited and hoped some more. But day after day and then week after week went by and there was no sign of her. We began to give up hope.... and put it down to a coyote or eagle that she was gone and gone for good. Last night Teapot was doing his thing and I was doing my thing in different parts of the house when Teapot called out to me, "where's the kitten?" And I said, "She's right here with me." That's the kitten the Squeeky had back in the spring.) Teapot said,"well, I'm hearing a cat crying outside and it's not Midnite." So I went out on the steps and caught sight of the tail end of a grey cat with white legs running around the corner of the house. Figuring that she had probably gone wild after so many weeks of being missing, I figured I had better bar the dogs away and open the kitchen door wide, which I did. She scurried inside and headed for the safe zone upstairs. (Daugher #1's bedroom is the safe zone for all cats since the dogs know they are not allowed in that room.)

Squeeky hiding out in Daughter#1's bedroom. Sliding doors in bedrooms are great as they can go in if you leave it open just the right amount and the dogs cant follow.

 Daughter #1 had already gone to bed and so we opened the door to her bedroom and turned on her light and re-introduced Daughter #1 and Squeeky to each other.  Of course the whore is pregnant again.

I was hoping to keep the Little Monster to whom we have become very attached and is a much nicer cat. (Even though her name is Little Monster she is a really sweet natured kitten she just likes to jump out of no where and attack the bums of passing pooches....  thus Little Monster!)

Now we have three damn cats and I'm not sure what to do. Squeeky is definitely not my favorite cat as she is half wild. She was not socialized much as a young kitten and so she really doesn't want to be around anyone and she hates dogs... this is not the best house for her obviously. Daughter #1would be horrified if I tried to find a new home for her. So as I sit here eating banana pancakes I am trying to figure out what to do. If she stays she has to go to the vet.... like now.... and we have to abort whatever is happening in her belly. Camping trip.... what the heck do we do about that with a pregnant cat who needs to go to the vet and if we leave her with no one around other than the parents who come by every second day to put out food for the cats will she disappear again.

Mmmm these pancakes are good.

So today we have the tent trailer packed and we have food packed and we will be heading off to the great outdoors... I think I have managed to head off a back flair up.  We will go to the same campsite that we went to before in the hopes that we can have another idyllic few days. I am bringing wool. It will be cooler. I will need to spin. Yes wool, not ramie. So there. I am bringing my wheel and my Swalesdale I think... maybe not... maybe I'll change my mind and take my cotton tapestry. Oh I don't know.... what should I take..... argh. And the Damn cat what do I do about her?

I'm clinging to the last vestiges of summer... but I think summer is over, really.... that mild wind turned off to a shivering cool wind yesterday and now I open the windows only to find that I have to close them again because I'm chilled in no time flat. I'm bringing extra blankets camping with us too. I'm sure we are all going to freeze... oh and a wool hat... I'm actually thinking a balaclava might be good considering how cold my nose gets at night... However, Teapot finds it extremely disconcerting to roll over at three in the morning and see a face covered in a balaclava next to him.... so usually I just put my nose under the blanket up against his back, which keeps my nose warm but not as much as a balaclava. I have a lovely wool watch cap that I wear to bed camping on those bivering cold nights, that way my head and ears stay toasty warm... I just wish the stupid furnace in the trailer would work... the switch conked out on us a few years ago, and though Teapot tried to fix it, it has not restarted so it gets mightily cold at night... unless the weather is lovely and warm (like above 15 degrees at night, and I don't think it is going to get that warm in the next few days!)

The toes are starting to complain... and I hear them saluting my slippers each morning as I slip my toes inside... Thanks to Nanny in Newfy for these lovely slippers... you couldn't have gotten me anything better for Christmas. The toes are not complaining as much as they would normally since I have these lovely slippers to wear... and wear them I do....

I headed off shopping the other day and when I got to the grocery store, there I was in the line up at the cash register in my top and cullottes complete with slippers on my feet. I even wore them camping.... and that's all I took camping... (well flipflops for swimming, but mostly it was slippers all the way). I think my slippers are cool and that's what's going with me camping again today.

Choke... Christmas.... don't even want to think about it... and there's not one silk sock to be found in my house.....(remember I was going to knit a pair of silk sock each month????)  I'm resolutely thinking about summer and summer things to do... like kayaking, canoeing, and swimming and reading and relaxing.... right... it's my vacation.... and I WILL have fun.... no matter if there are ice crystals forming on all the exposed surfaces some mornings (its called frost...).

Gee... I had better go and sharpen my nails... they are getting a little dull for clinging to the last vestiges of summer!

I'll keep you all posted on the cat issues....

Gee, those banana pancakes were good.

Camping On Hold

My back is giving me trouble... another flare-up!  : (

End Of Summer

Well this is one of those rare mornings.  There is a wind blowing in from the south and quite heavily too (enough to make my bedroom door rattle and wake me up)! But it is a soft summer wind. A wind that carries with it the promise of tropical storms.  Somewhere I imagine, in the tropics, as the warm wind rushes to the north and us, a cool wind from up above in the further reaches of the stratosphere will come rushing in to replace it with rain and bitter reminders that even in the tropics, summer does not last. I love mornings where its overcast but still quite lovely. Tepid I think is the word that best describes this morning's weather. A sweet morning that tells the summer birds that it is time to move on.... there are no birds singing this morning... it is terribly quiet and already I miss the trill of the birds calling to each other. I imagine that the only place to hear them now would be at the side of the river, where warm winds and early morning fog sweetly tease and bid the birds to move ever southward.  This is the perfect morning for sailors, or a morning where the leaves on the trees dance their end of summer worship dance.  It makes me want to dance too... it makes me want to unfurl my sails and go exploring.

I have noticed that my old friend languor has come to visit me again. We have taken a trip to tranquility and I find that all thoughts of spinning and weaving and knitting have flown through the window. As a matter of fact... from the stack of dishes waiting to be done this morning I have been downright lazy.  I am reading and that is my excuse.  Daughter #2 and I had been entertaining ourselves watching old movies which allows me the time to spin or knit as I go. But we reached our capacity for movies and finally agreed that the public library was to be our source of entertainment. She has devoured five books to my one and a half. But we both have chosen books that will take us away to exotic locals. I have finished a book that takes place in 1860s Egypt, and am now reading a book that takes place in1930s Marrakesh... which takes me far from my armchair, far from my mundane chores. Last night I found myself, sitting in the light of the kitchen window with moths flittering around my head, with the balmy wind billowing the table cloth outside on the deck at midnight, and still the camels and the sand of pre-war Morocco kept me captive. And the books I am reading you ask? The Mistress Of Nothing by Kate Pulinger and The Saffron Gate by Linda Holeman, both very good reads.

In My Lady's Garden....

The carrots have come better than I could have imagined for so new a garden space....

But that is where the fineness of my garden ends.

We have three lovely zucchini plants.... and I thought I might get something good with them ... alas, the frost came two nights ago and put an end to that...

I will get one zucchini if all goes well it still has a bit of growing left to do.

The beets however, never came to anything. Teapot thinks it is because there was too much manure in the soil of that part of the garden therefore burning the beets before they got really started.

They are small and a daren't pull one since I will get so little yield anyway. I will harvest what I get... but I am not expecting much.

The tomatoes I grew in buckets on the deck but they were slow to come since I was late planting them and so as you see there will be nothing from them either.  The blooms have only just come on them and then two days ago the frost took my plants and they are looking very sad indeed.

Still the flowers were quite nice.... this picture does them no justice... that for sure.... marigolds and Dahlias and Alisum and Phlox are growing well The Lavatera just came out in time for the frost and so the blooms are there but the leaves have faded quickly.

I do think I was lulled into a wet year at the start and it made for lazy watering.... so they could have been better and I didn't have as many petunias (the store was out of them by the time I was ready to plant)... they always make a good show.

Tomorrow Teapot and I will take the girls for one last camping trip... (Monday to Friday if all goes well) I expect that if the weather continues in this manner I will be the only one submerging in the water.... it takes a great effort to lower myself beneath the cool waters but I always do... regardless of the sun shining...  and meanwhile the Daughters and Teapot look on in utter dismay thinking that the only time you can swim is when the sun is in full throttle. Still it will be a great opportunity to dip our paddles again... before the inclement weather of autumn is upon us.

The end of summer leaves me quite melancholy. I think I will go and read and submerge myself once again in the sunny climes of Marrakesh.

Once Upon A Time.....

..... there was a very heavy set lady, who on Friday morning remembered that since her husband was away,  it was up to her to get the garbage to the edge of the road in time for the garbage truck which came at about 8 a.m.  She rolled out of her bed and decided to let the rabble out so that they might go and pee and poo in the peace of the cool morning air while she was packing garbage bags to their fullest capacity with the garbage that was needing to be got rid of... ( I know... you're never supposed to end a sentence with of... but bare with me I'm not fully awake yet, though I should be.) She looked out the door and the doggies and kitties were milling about waiting for her to come out with them.  It was early about 7:30 a.m. and with some trepidation she stepped out fully dressed in her somewhat thread bare nighty with nothing else.... and I mean nothing not even a pare of skivies (undies for you non-Newfies).  She looked through the trees to her nearest neighbour and felt that it would be safe since her neighbour had left for work a few day before and was not expected back for at least a week since her job was in the oil fields.  With some trepidation she walked to the end of her driveway with two garbage bags... it was quite a walk in the cool morning air and soon she felt the perhaps a sweater would have been a good idea. But she carried on since turning back was just farther to go in the coolish morning air.. With trepidation still, she looked up the street for bears since there were no more houses that way just raw bush, and bears had been recently roaming the neighbourhood, and down the street aware that it was not unheard of to see people going to work at this time of the morning. She was aware that there was a slight fog down the road while up the road there was beautiful crisp clear air.... obviously the river fog was rolling in and out mightily. She put the garbage bags close to the edge of the road and noticed the lovely green rhubarb growing by the road at the end of her driveway that was not fit to eat because of both bitterness and roaming dogs lifting their legs against it but would be good if she picked the leaves for oxalic acid.  She bent over knowing that she was safe from onlookers since she had checked up the road and down the road.  She began plucking the leaves for a lovely batch of oxalic acid.  She picked and picked  until she had as many of the leaves as would fill her brewing pot.  That's when she heard a soft voice of an elderly gentleman.... "you know the rhubarb stalks are what you are supposed to pick." Jumping clear into the next century she came back to earth with rhubarb leaves covering her like the feathers of a burlesque fan. Strategic leaves covering her all too clear female parts in the light-coloured, back-lit, thread-bare nighty that she was wearing.... By that time, the elderly gentleman was moving along the road toward the clear end of the road....

Damn! The bugger came out of nowhere obviously he had been in the fog all along.

The end....

I'm now going to my bedroom to change out of this stupid nighty and put on some decent clothes..... obviously your not even safe in the blasted country!

I Forgot....

I seem to say that a lot these days.

After I finished posting yesterday I headed off into town to do what I said I was going to do.... Only I forgot the camera. Which means no pics as promised...  I can only tell you a little background leading up to the little/big renovation.  When my parents moved to this community after retiring they had had one bad experience after another with housing and buying and selling.... they always bought high and sold low for one reason or another mostly due to unforeseen circumstances.  So my Dad dug in and insisted that they would rent... which is difficult in a town where transients are coming and going all the time.  Friends of ours were selling and old mobile home and so we... Teapot and I... bought the mobile home so that my Mom and Dad had somewhere to live.We knew that the mobile home was old... but the price was right and we felt with a little work it could be fixed up. Mostly we have done superficial work... like painting the salmon pink kitchen cabinets white, putting up wall paper over the horrid turquoise wall board. Covering up the patchy flooring with new lino, and tearing out the carpet in the living room and laying new flooring there.  Two years ago the old front veranday was starting to rot away and so we tore that off and jacked up the front porch addition and put new supports under it and new steps/veranda on the front and new skirting around the whole thing. We freshened it all up with a coat of paint and made it look better.  We have over the year put in a new and more efficient furnace too. Finally this last year there started to be some problems with leaks forming in the bathroom. At first they were small leaks but they got more difficult to fix... now the bathroom has always been a bit of a problem... from the linoleum tub surround (yes you read that right... there was flooring on the walls) to the old tub painted brown on the outside, clearly something needed to be done.  Then the floor went squishy near the toilet... that was in January and a bad time to be renovating a bathroom... we made some minor repairs in an effort to be a stop gap till summer when renovating the bathroom would be more feasible. About two weeks ago we discovered another leak which was clearly the last straw as suddenly we realized that water had been leaking for sometime and was draining further than we would like... (that's an understatement by the way).  So I called a carpenter who worked on our house renovation a few years ago who we had been happy with and had him take a look.... He agreed to the job which was a great relief to me.

It was only after the walls were opened up what a great fiasco we were embarking on. The floor was fully rotten but luckily not the joists... but all the insulation had to go.  Thee exterior wall too was nothing but a load of rot and mold. Basically the carpenter had to strip the whole room down to just the casing and at one point there was nothing but the bare metal siding between the inside and the outside.  It was quite dramatic. 

I just love our carpenter/contractor... he is a gem... truly. He with fortitude, has dug us out of what really could easily have been a condemned building and has patched his way into fixing up what I swear I should have paid someone to light a stick of dynamite under.  He has framed in a new exterior wall... He has built up the floor again. He has vapour barriered everything. He has put up barker board. And he is now, this morning starting to put in the new large shower complete with medical grab bars for my Dad who needs them and a new higher than standard toilet, with a new vanity and sink. There will be a new ventilation system which hasn't worked in about twenty years from the look of it. There will be a new face for the door going in and there will be all new wall coverings and new subfloor and flooring.  I am so happy to know that Mom and Dad will have a bathroom that they can enter safely. He has replaced a lot of the old plumbing too which is great. Because of course that was the source of the problem in the first place. the only thing that worries me is that the electrical is quite old and while it met the requirements of the 1970s it surely does not meet code now... but there is nothing we can do about that... without tearing the whole thing apart... kitchen, bedrooms, living room, etc... and like I said I was more likely to take a stick of dynamite to it than do that.  But alls well that ends well... and hopefully in a few days the reno will be complete and it should outlast my parents... who after all, are well up in their 70s. 

So if only I can get the few things done around my house to finish our reno... I will be a very happy gal.... if a little forgetful.  I'm off to go check on the proceedings at the parent's place and maybe just maybe I might get a little time for some spinning today... I'm plying some alpaca for that logwood dyeing.... oh yeah and picking rhubarb leaves to stew up some oxalic acid.