On the Farm | Life Goes On

May has been the busiest month yet, even busier than lambing season in April...and that's saying a lot.  There are so many things that need doing during spring.

The sheepies have been enjoying the tender grass in the orchard and now the rich stuff in the lower pasture.  We've been blessed with the perfect amount of sunshine and rain, and the pastures are all doing so well.

As you may have noticed, they've all been sheared, too.

My sheep were very well behaved this year.  In fact, Hank says they were better than his own sheep.  Yes, this is me gloating...but just a bit. *grin*

I'll be sharing the sheep shearing video sometime soon-ish...I hope.

Miss Picabo the llama went to her new home and is doing very well there.

In the horse trailer - I love how easy llamas are to load.

Here she is with her new pasture mate Savannah...

Checking out her new home...

I'm so thankful to have found a good home for her where she will be well cared for.  And I'm very thankful to only have two llamas to feed of this coming winter.  That'll save me some hay!

Picabo's new home is also the farm where I bought my five extra meat lambs.  They're Katahdins, which is a hair breed instead of a wool breed like mine are.  Not what I'd want for breeding purposes, but they'll do for meat.  I think they're pretty cute, too. ;)

The horses have enjoyed being out on pasture, and I'm happy to be conserving the last of my grass hay.

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I had the opportunity to help shear alpacas at a friend's ranch last weekend.  Way too much fun!  I took a lot of pictures so I'll be sharing more about that in a separate post at some point.

I love riding with my dad to the dump and part of the charm is riding in our farm truck, the one I'm sitting on in my header picture.  I love old Ford trucks.  On our way back home my dad pulled of to the side, I slid over, he got back in on the passenger side, and explained to me how the clutch and the stick work.  Yep, my first time driving manual. 

*grin*

Going up our gravel driveway, dad had me step on the brake and the clutch, stopping the car.  Now I'm pretty sure he was setting me up, because we were going up a slight incline.  When I tried to get going again, the truck died.  I got it going again, hit the gas and popped the clutch.  Ooooh yeah!  Power!!

*bigger grin*

Once I'd parked the truck in our driveway, my dad says, "Okay, now go inside, get your camera, and go take a picture of what you did to the road.  You can put it on your blog."  Hehe...

Yep, he set me up.

This two inch deep rut?  It's mine.

I can't wait to drive the truck again - I think I'm going to really love driving manually.

I'm currently focusing my time on fence fixing, mainly tightening the fence so the animals won't push it over.

Also, I'm bringing home a new addition to my menagerie next Sunday!

Can you guess what "it" is?  Hint: I've never owned this kind of animal before.

That's all for now folks!

Adventures in Wool Washing

Rather than letting all of that lovely freshly sheared wool just sit around, I decided to jump right in and wash some.   Besides, my fingers are just itching to be spinning again!

I decided to start with Sweet Pea's fleece and, after sweeping the driveway clean, spread it out.  As I said in my previous post, I skirted all of the fleeces right after shearing.  However, I took this opportunity to pick out the sections that had the least amount of vegetable mater (hay, straw, small twigs, burrs, etc.) mixed in.

The kitty thought I'd spread this wonderful, fluffy stuff out for his benefit...

cute

cute

 

 kitty

Okay, nuff of the cute, cute kitty...
Not that I dislike the cute, cute kitty, but despite his utter cuteness, this post is not about him.
 It's about washing wool.
To continue...

Sweet Pea is a Romney/Suffolk crossbred.

vegetable matter - hay

The Romney is a long-wool breed which originated in England.  They are also suitable for meat, which makes them quite versatile.   Sweet Pea's other half, Suffolk, is another breed which originated in England.  It is the most common breed in the United States - they're the classic black faced, white fleeced sheep - and is a meat breed.  They have more edible meat and less fat than most other breeds.
So, for my purposes, a Romney/Suffolk cross is excellent - good fleece and good meat.


I separated the fleece into two piles...

clean (above) and dirty (below)

And by clean, I mean less dirty than the dirty;)

The dirty I put back in the bag (not sure what I'm going to do with it yet).
The clean I shook out thoroughly (to get all of the hay out that I could), and brought inside.

I did some research online, and found these instructions for using your washing machine to wash wool.
This, sounded interesting.
And much, much easier than doing it in the sink by hand.
Might as well give this a go, eh?

Filling the washing machine with hot water...

Make sure to turn the machine off after it has filled.
{As it says in the instructions I've linked to, it's extremely important that you don't let the machine agitate the wool.  This will cause the wool to felt.   You also do not want the water to pour in on top of the wool.  This could also cause felting.}

After filling with water, I added detergent and, per the instructions, allowed the machine to agitate a bit to dissolve the detergent.

Next, I put the wool in...

I put it in tips down, so the dirty tips would be totally submerged, and used a plastic kitchen utensil to push the wool underwater.  I found the broom to be too unwieldy and long, and the spoon I used worked better.

After letting it soak for about 2 hours, I turned to the spin setting and let the water drain...

I then pushed the wool away from the side the water pours in and refilled the machine, using warm water this time instead of hot for the rinse...

Then I let it drain and spin again.
I repeated the rinse twice, until the water was clear.

And then I let it spin once more before taking it downstairs to dry by the fireplace...

I use a window screen and two (doll sized;) chairs for drying the wool.
The screen ensures that air is reaching the wool from both sides, so I don't have to flip it.

The spin cycle on the machine cuts off about half of the drying time, which is awesome.

Yes, there is still some hay and stuff mixed in with the wool.  This will be picked out when I card the wool.
There are also still some dirty tips on the wool.  I'm assuming they're stained.

I'm seriously considering putting coats on my sheep this year, at least during the winter, to cut down on dirt and vegetable matter in my fleeces.

And there you have washing wool using a washing machine!
Would I do it this way again?  Absolutely!
It was very easy, didn't hurt the wool, didn't hurt the machine, and I was able to wash more wool at a time this way.   I definitely recommend this method for washing wool.

The next step, will be carding the wool.

Happy Trails, y'all!

P.S.
For those of you who aren't interested in sheep and wool, and I do have some other posts in the works...
Literary Hero Wallpaper
Movie Reviews
Outfit Posts
and a few more ideas.
So, there is hope;)