Dick and Jane's farm... A reprive from my felting fiasco

I drove down to the valley for the goat club meeting yesterday.

I love driving through the "flatland" in the Spring. It's very green and most of the roads are long and straight. The wildflowers were starting to bloom which makes the road side look even nicer. This is Sloughhouse Rd. It's a short cut that I always take to avoid heavier traffic on the major roads. It's filled with cows, old houses, farms and horses. If I were to move down from the foothills it would probably be out here somewhere.
The meeting was in Sheldon, a community that is a part of Elk Grove.
Jane's farm is on the main highway through town and she raises Alpine goats. After our potluck-meeting I walked out to visit with some of the residents.
"Hello" I said and one rather important goat walked over to me.

This goat was not about to let a stranger just walk up, lean over the fence and take pictures.

It had that "And just what is it you want, stranger." look on its face.

 

This look said, "Are you a goat person?"

I assured this goat that I was.

Jane said that they have five does that are almost ready to kid, so they are all a little on edge.

Five of the goats did look a little like they were walking with their back legs further apart than some of the others.

I remember the feeling. That one on the left above made me feel uncomfortable. 

Poor thing. I hope all goes well... and soon. 

It's such a waiting game and you are so ... heavy... unwieldy... off balance and... expectant in those last days.  Oh, yes, how I remember.

Jane will call me when the kidding begins. I will take more photos and have a post about all of the new babies. It will be an overload of cuteness.

"Bye. See you in a few weeks." I said,

"I will be the Farmlady with the camera. Don't forget."

They just looked at me.

Then the pig, named Piggy, came over to say goodbye.

Jane took this pig in as a favor to a friend. I think it's old. 

It's definitely a bit scary. Look at that tusk and those teeth. 

Now that's what I call a "guard dog". 

No respectable coyote would mess with this pig.

Me neither.

Gourd Workshop....with a bag lunch.

Yesterday I spent all day at a gourd workshop. This was done for our gourd group by a woman named Miriam Joy Sagen from Prescott, Arizona. She is a gourd artist that has perfected a technique using melted Crayola crayons and Ouikwood, an epoxy putty that comes in a stick.
I should have taken more photos but this is the best I could do considering I only had two hands...and they were busy learnin' and workin'.

We worked on a gourd, or (some of us) the bottom of one. We learned how to sponge color on a surface properly and transfer a pattern to the gourd surface. Then I learned, for the first time, how to pull color with a paint brush. I would guess it's a watercolor technique.

I have NEVER learned to paint with acrylics. I just throw the paint on my art work and hope for the best...or use little tiny dots to outline and decorate my work. Yesterday I learned that there are ways, using water, to spread and soften your colors with a slanted, flat tip brush. Who knew?
I had many an awkward moment with this brush. But I did it and I learned something,
Then we started using the Quikwood. I love this stuff. I had used it before on my gourd puppet faces. Doing the tree with this wood putty was really fun.
The pattern was just a guide. We were able to "branch out" any way we wanted to.

Quikwood is this fast-curing wood epoxy putty that you can use for a million things like rebuilding stripped screw holes and repairing furniture and molding.etc. It comes in a tube. You have to cut pieces of it and blend the two parts of it so it will harden. After you knead it, you have about 15 to 25 minutes to use it. Within an hour it is hard as a rock. Then you can sand and paint it.

We learned how to make leaves with melted Crayolas. This was a learning curve for me too. You have to melt the crayons in a small low temperature melting pot and use a special wax tool to drip the wax onto the gourd. The trick is how you do this and how you spread the wax. This took time. I found that I improved as I got the knack. I had to pick off many of the little "leaves" because I messed up. That was one nice thing about the crayons. If you made a mistake you just used a utility knife and pop off the crayon. It dries fast. The crayon comes right off,  so you can redo it. The flowers near the trunk are just longer versions of the leaf.

The flowers are just dots of colored crayon too. You just don't spread the dot.

I love the face. One of the ladies in our club brought this face mold, so I used the Quikwood and made a face in the trunk of the tree. We continued to make rocks and paint them with acrylics and used that sponging technique to make them look like rocks. I erased the lines from the pattern transfer and then did some refining on the rocks and leaves.

This is the finished gourd. I need to spray it with a clear protective coat of varnish and put a hanger on the back. What do you think? It was very satisfying to learn all of this and complete a piece of art.

Here are some other versions of  "the tree".

Miriam showed us some other techniques,

We ate cheesecake and Chocolate, pecan, orange cake. After all, we had to keep our energy level up.

A good time was had by all. Mariam Joy's class was $40. It was worth it. She is an excellent artist and a very good teacher.

She showed us some of her work, and some :"Easter eggs" in a basket.

These are little gourds that she decorated, all done with the crayon technique. Pretty aren't they?

We had a great time and this has inspired me to work with Quikwood again. It's amazing stuff.

Tomorrow I will show you how NOT to do Nuno felting, It will be about making a lemon into lemonade and blowing a whole afternoon of felting.

Chicken With Attitude

We ate a turkey last night for dinner. So I made some stock from the neck, liver, etc... you know... the "giblets".

Made some mashed potatoes, a little "box stuffing" and some veggies.
This kind of dinner should require company. It's a lot of work, but the Prospector had this frozen turkey and wanted to eat it. We called our neighbor to come for dinner but he couldn't make it... so we had a big turkey dinner all by ourselves. We will have Turkey for quite a few nights and more. Soup maybe... sandwiches... etc. We will not waste any of it.
Yesterday the wind blew, the rain came and it was cold... really cold. Today the sun shines again.
The Prospector is still hurting from his encounter with a tree branch and a retaining wall so I'm on duty for much of the farm feeding.

This morning I considered having CHICKEN for dinner tonight instead of turkey.
I walked up to the chicken house.

 Gave them the potato peels and some old tomatoes.  I noticed that two of the hens were missing. I change the outside water and went into the hen house to look for the hens. The first thing I saw was one of the big hens in one of the small nests.

All squished in there like she thought she was a banty. She never gets up in these small boxes.
The big community nest only had one hen inside of it.

ONE HEN... It wasn't like the big box was crowded or anything.
The hen stuffed into the little box might have been having a bad day, so maybe she decided to do her thing in the little box... alone. We all have days like this.
I understood. But I wanted a picture.
I ran for the camera (of course) and came back in to take her portrait. I would have named it HEN IN DENIAL or something.
That's when all hell broke loose.
She obviously didn't want her picture taken while she was laying an egg.
She turned and started making a god awful noise.

And then she stuck her head out of the box and..."Whoa, chicken mama, back away from the human."

She was not a happy hen.
I actually took this photo from half way across the hen house and cropped it.
I wasn't about to get close to her. She was, as the old saying goes, "mad as a wet hen".
(Now I know what that expression means.)
She came at me like a hen with PMS. and was making a high pitched, nasty sound.
I just wanted a picture of her in that little box... but you would have thought I wanted her for dinner. As I was backing away from her, I looked over and saw Squeakie.

 She was watching all of this. I think she was placing bets on the outcome.... or, she was too afraid to leave.
Napoleon, the rooster, and the other hens were not getting anywhere near the doorway but they were listening to the commotion.
I backed out of the hen house and left.
As I walked down to the driveway, Annibel greeted me.

She had that wise, "Well, what's going on" look. The cat expression that says,
 "Did you kill one for me? I like the little ones best."

We walked back to the house.
I'm trying to be more chicken friendly around here but....
That chicken better lay an egg today.
She is a marked hen.

Wind-words

The weather changed drastically overnight. We have had beautiful sunny warm weather for days and today it's cold, rainy and very windy.
The goats don't like bad weather... especially wind. They get strange and  move around a lot.  I went out front to take some pictures of the storm moving through our river valley. It's always a beautiful thing to experience, a gift for our mild winter... rain for the spring wildflowers....
And I thought about the folks in West Liberty, KY again. I said another silent prayer for the people of that town .
 The clouds that I see are dark, filled with rain and moving fast. I want them to let loose of their moisture. There is no fear of these clouds. They are life giving.
But in a town in Kentucky, the same size as ours, gone in the rubble of a Tornado, they fear clouds and wait for the ones they call "bad"...and the sirens.

Then, my thoughts were interrupted... I heard the goats making this yelling and crying sound.
I ran back into the house and out the back door.
"What's wrong?" I asked, as I went to the fence.
Yes, I always talk to my animals.
They were both standing in the doorway looking at me.

There was Brownie, my one horned darling. Giving me a half grin and looking like he had not a care in the world.
"Brownie. What was all that noise about. I thought you were being attacked."
He just looked at me and continued to munch on his mouth full of hay.
"Well?", I asked.
He just grinned.
"Murphy! Come over here, please."

"Hi, Farmlady."
"What's going on out here? It sounded like you were being attacked."
"No, we are fine. But we don't like this wind."
"Does it scare you?... It does, doesn't it? "
" Well, we don't understand why we can't see the wind. There is this sound  that comes and everything moves... the trees, the leaves and everything goes from one place to another. Why is this, Farmlady?"
" Wind is very complicated Murph'. It's about air pressure and things that happen way up in the sky. But, it won't hurt you. You are safe here in your house. I promise."
" I still don't like it."
"You know what? There is a really huge wind called a Tornado. We don't have them here but in the Midwest and in the East and South East they have wind that comes out of the sky and circles down with such force that it damages houses, people and animals. We don't have storms like that here. We are very lucky."
"Are you sure, Farmlady?"
"Yes Murph', I'm sure."

He came up to the fence... and we touched noses.
"It's really OK." I whispered.
He went back into the goathouse.
Brownie came out and looked at me.

The backdoor screen slammed shut in the wind. It startled Brownie.

He panicked and turned around to look as the wind picked up. The sky was clearing and the sun was shinning but the wind was blowing hard.
Brownie turned and looked at me again.

"Maybe the sky is falling, Farmlady."
"No, Brownie. The sky fell in Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois a few days ago. It's not going to fall here. It's just a strong wind."
"Well, I don't like it." and he walked back into the goathouse with Murphy.
I heard voices coming from the goats inside their house. I think I heard Murphy say something like,
"Dwi ddim yn hoffi gwynt."
Then I heard Brownie say, "I don't like the wind either, Murph' " 
They will probably stay in their house all day today.

Fears that become Reality

I want to say a prayer. I'm learning that this is an ongoing habit that helps me maintain an understanding of the things that I don't understand.
This prayer is for all of the folks that live in Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, and anywhere that these Tornadoes are touching down bringing death and destruction to the lives of people in the Midwest and the East.
I pray for the little two year old that lost her whole family and was found in an Indiana field.
I pray for the 65 year old woman who was still saying her hail Marys as she was being interviewed.
For the emergency responders who are trying so hard to find people.
For the people who carry their animals and are picking through the ruins of their houses to find small pieces of their lives.
 I pray for a stunned town that is trying to face all the cameras and news people, standing in front of their homes that aren't there anymore, with what seems like bravery beyond reason.
This is such a tragic thing.
\A blogging friend has writing a post that I would like to share with you.
Please go to:
http://workingtheearth.blogspot.com/2012/03/question-ing.html

Something is different about these storms.
Prayers are in order....
It's one thing we can do... whether anyone is listening or not.

Rainy day... Sunny day. Rainy day... Sunny day. Welcome to our Winter.

I had a great day with a friend yesterday. We even went "out" to lunch. This is what she wanted to do. I don't blame her. She has been cooped up for a few long months and when the doctor told her to start walking... lunch was of the first order.
 "J" has a temporary handicap sign to hang on the rear-view mirror and so we were able to park in a "handicap" zone, really close to the restaurant. This has its advantages in the rain.
So I took "J" to lunch. She WALKED.... no wheelchair, no walker... nothing but her willpower and a big black Velcro boot. I held on to her but she did really well.
When we got back to her house I know she was tired, but she took me upstairs.
This is her beautiful staircase.

 "J" has been sleeping downstairs since the accident because this beautiful staircase was not wheelchair accessable, as you can see.  But she climbed it, slowly, yesterday.
This is the upstairs landing...

This is a beautiful antique buffet at the top of the landing.
 In front of it is a very cute cat abode for one of "J"s four cats.

 To the right of this cat house is the door leading to the balcony where she slipped on some ice and broke her ankle last November. The door is locked for the winter now.
One of the cats was watching us from under a table.

This is the upstairs guard cat?
 Oh my! Scary isn't he?
 We  worked on some Ancestry.com relatives that "J" has been helping me find. She loves to research family history and she called me one day asking for some information about my family. She wanted something to do while she was in that wheel chair.
Thanks to "J", I now have found relatives, on my father's side that were born in Ireland in 1736. I find this fascinating. I have a lot of family that came from Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland. Amazing information.
 Of course there wasn't a lot of territory for folks to spread out into at the time, with safety, so I guess a lot of people came from these areas .
I also found out that a great, great grandmother was born in Ontario, Canada. I'm so excited about this. Her name was Matilda Ann Beckwith (A name I had never heard of before.) Her son, Daruis Henry Williams (born in Illinois) moved to Kansas and married Annie E. Cottingham (from Kansas) in 1880. They had a child named Arthur Deloise Williams (my grandfather). My grandfather married Maude Ethel Herald, moved to Southern California from Oklahoma, and my father was born in Eaglerock, CA.
Have you ever traced your ancestry? It's so exciting and interesting. You have to check each person to see if the tree is valid, if the information is true, but so far we have had very little trouble finding these relatives.
I can't wait to find out about John McKinney and Elizabeth Jane who came here to Virginia from Ireland. Now, I want to find the European connections. It's like a gift that you find after years of wondering who these people were and where they came from. "J" has found a relative that came over on the Mayflower. How amazing is that.
 I would especially like to know about  the women... who chose to marry, move to different places, leave their parent families, start their own families in a new environment and die far from their place of birth... the questions of how they lived, what their lives were like, how many child they had, which children died young and why. It's all there in the census, at least back to the 1850's or so, when the census started. But there are other places to discover information, like death records, enlistment records, genealogy libraries etc. There are lots of ways to find out about your family. It's like meeting these people for the first time and having a conversation with them. You want to know more. I'm hoping for some surprises and things that I didn't know. I can't wait to continue this on my own.
A few years ago I found out I had a distant cousin living in the Northwest. Our grandfathers were brothers. But, we never knew each other. The family didn't visit. It seems that the brothers moved in two different directions as young men. Maybe Clarissa, my cousin, and I can get some more of this figured out.
Well... This is something to work on and learn about.
"J" is doing really well and the recovery seems to be going in a good direction. We had a good time yesterday, despite the rain. It was a nice visit.
 We had two days of rain and now the sun is shinning again.This morning I went out and planted Hollyhock and gladiolus bulbs.

 This afternoon The Prospector and I sat on the porch for awhile. The Prospector hurt himself a few weeks ago. He did some 30 yr. old stuff with his 67 yr. old body and is paying for it dearly. He hurt his back and left leg. So he has been taking it really easy. He finally went to the doctor and they took xrays, gave him some pain meds and told him to rest. So he is...

He's not happy about it, but he has slowed down. He can't do much of anything.
 Carl is happy.

He sits with the Prospector and watches over him. (Notice the paw on the slipper.)
The hip and back are getting better but it will take time.
I'm doing double duty for a while but that's OK. At least it wasn't a broken back or a slipped disc.
 It will heal and then he needs to remember how old he is and be more careful.
Right, my love?
The sun felt good. I looked at my morning's work. The garden is doing nicely. It's been such a mild winter here. I feel bad even saying that with all the tornadoes back east, but we have not had much of a winter and I would like more rain before summer sets in.

This is how the front garden looks right now. Beautiful.

With tulips coming up next.
The parsley never died this year. It's still going strong.

Well... got to go and feed the goats and chickens now.
Have a nice weekend...

“"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes..." ~Lewis Carroll ~

I was asked by many of my followers about the shoes that I posted yesterday. So here is some information on them.

My daughter-in- law bought them for me as a thank you gift for helping out when she was recuperating from her operation.
 No, I didn't need a gift.
Helping my family was enough.
Losing my "transmission" was a bit unsettling, but I survived.
So, Robbin bought them and ... I LOVE THEM!!
Thank you sweetie. They are charming.

They match my decor.
My orthopedic inserts fit into them perfectly.

They are wide enough for my very wide feet and they are so comfortable that I want to wear them all the time.

They have good rubber soles that wrap up around the sides and work well on my non-paved roads and trails.
The Velcro straps are convenient and easy.
The brand is Keen. Here is a link:
http://www.onlineshoes.com/womens-keen-shoes-list_ct1,br38,tt2
I'm going downtown to see a friend later. I'm going to help her get out of her wheel chair and start walking. She has her doctor's permission to start standing on her feet again.
This is huge, because she has had a time of it since she slipped on her icy  balcony and fell.
She is doing really well. I'm so proud of her. She never let this get her down. 
I will wear my new shoes and visit her in style.

By the way...Have you seen the latest issue of Where Women Create? I love this magazine.

 There is an article on Magnolia Pearl's Airstream Trailer. OMG! It's so over the top beautiful.
And... usually,  most of the articles are about younger women that have all kinds of energy and I want to say
Enough already. Where are the older talented creative women... and how about some men once in a while."
Well guess what? They must have heard me.
There are two articles this month about... you guessed it...
 A lady named Fay Wood who lives in an old church and makes amazing art. She has been an artist since the 60's.
There is also an article about a MAN, Ryne Hazen, who lives in Utah and is a photographer.
Check it out. They may have to change their magazine's title. Yes!

Wordless Wednesday: A gift of shoes.

Honey with the Angels.

My Mom's cat, Honey, has gone to be with my Mother and sit on her lap.

They will be together again.

Mom will be waiting.

Thank you my son, Robbin and my little Beans for taking care of Honey until it was time for her to leave.