A Day of Snow

Wow, this has been a really busy week. On Tuesday night we went to Robyn’s house to learn how to butcher (is that a nicer word than slaughter ?) two chickens. When you buy baby chicks, you don’t necessarily know what their sex is. There are actually professional “sex-ers” that can tell what the sex is of the little ones but apparently Robyn didn’t have that done to hers cause three of what she thought were hens were roosters. Darcy’s life was spared and came to live at White Violet Center and is doing wonderfully with his new harem. Since Robyn lives in the city, the other two roosters needed to take a trip to her freezer. She had sent us video links that we were required to watch before coming to her house. I did that and it all seemed to make sense but the actual killing didn’t go as smoothly as we all would have liked. I thanked each rooster for his service on earth before she took their lives and some valuable lessons were learned. First and foremost, your knives should be really sharp. I won’t go into any of the gory details on the whole process. If you want any specifics cause you have chicken butchering on this week’s to-do list, shoot me an e-mail. It was an educational day for sure.
Wednesday was CSA day (just one more week to go !) and my turn to hand out the bags to customers as they stopped in. Everything went super smooth and I was done an hour early. Wahoo !
Thursday night was our staff Christmas party. We started off with a number of different games. We played the card game “Blink” in groups of three and the winner from each group played each other in the playoff game to crown the champion. What a hoot that was ! It’s such a fast paced game and we were all hooting and hollering at the last three people…..I think they were all holding their breath trying to discard all of the cards in their hand. After all of the games and frivolity, we ate lots of yummy food. Sister Ruth brought apple pies, made from White Violet apples…so yummy ! Then we had the gift exchange and I got a beautiful piece of pottery made by a local artist. It was a super fun night with all of the White Violet staff.
On Friday I worked all day, wet felting bars of soap for orders that have come in. Sister Mo has been doing some awesome marketing of our wares cause she took orders for a total of 43 bars of soap. Holy Cow ! One lady wanted regular soap and home-made soap so I made a trip Thursday afternoon to pick up some Earth Drop soap, which is made in Bloomington, IN (I think). They make some amazing scents like Minty Swirl, Gently Rosemary, Sweet Olive, etc. We work in natural colors because they don’t dye any of the fiber here but when you mix different fibers, you get some beautiful combinations. I don’t consider myself a very artsy person, nor am I crafty but I can do this really well and I enjoy it. I started in at 9 Friday morning and worked till 3 (took time off for lunch) but didn’t get everything done. So I went in this morning and finished up. When I looked outside this morning I thought the weatherman goofed again with his prediction for 5-7 inches of snow but once I got outside, I could see that we had gotten a lot of snow. I tromped over to the center and got done with my project. I put the bars on a sweater drying rack so the air can get under the bars to get them dry. Sister Mo will wrap them in pretty ribbon and get them ready to be picked up. Another woman ordered 12 of the nesting cages, which are the suet cake holders packed full of alpaca fiber for the birds to use in building their nests. So cute and an inexpensive gift for someone !

This is my little work area, near the big sink in the back of White Violet Center. After two days of felting soap, I have the cleanest hands in Terre Haute (and have also used the most hand lotion in Terra Haute).
While I worked away out back, the annual Christmas open house was going on out front, in the center. It was just like Santa’s workshop…working behind the scenes. I have close to 50 bars done so Sister Mo can pack the order. She’s going to pick up some more soap and some more suet cages, cause there’s still 10 days till Christmas ! We have really gotten wiped out of a lot of things in the store. It’s been a busy Christmas season for alpaca items.
Oh, I forgot to tell you about going with Tracy to pick up a new alpaca last Sunday. She and I took the center’s mini van and drove to Effingham, Illinois to meet an alpaca owner at a Cracker Barrel. The deal went down in the RV parking area of Cracker Barrel. There were multiple alpaca farms there with horse trailers to pick up or trade animals with this woman. I bet customers were surprised to see alpacas all over the place in that end of the parking lot when they pulled in for blueberry pancakes that morning. Probably had to do a double take.
White Violet traded a couple of breedings from their sires for a young female alpaca, named Esperanza. Oh, what a cutie she is ! She is so sweet. She rode the whole way home, standing up (usually they cush (sit) while riding) but she was curious and looked out the window, poked her head up through the barrier to say hello to Tracy, etc. Once we arrived and she saw the horses, at the equestrian center, she started humming….she was excited to see other animals. Then we got her out and introduced her to the herd, through the fence. Everyone came over to sniff her and say hello. Then Tracy took her into the pasture and let her loose.

Within 15 minutes she was eating hay with everyone and was fitting right in. Yesterday Bree put a halter on her and she came up to the center to greet the guests coming to the open house. They all loved her and she was photographed and filmed for the 6:00 news. What a sweetie she is and a nice addition to the herd.
So that brings us to today….I finished up the soap and have been relaxing since then and enjoying the beauty of the snow. It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas around here…












Until next week….May the peace of the season fill your hearts with joy !

Saturday

Since the summer CSA program ended, life has been much less hectic here on the farm. We only have 20 folks in the winter CSA so it’s quicker to pack the bags on Wednesday and there’s a lot less product to pick in the garden or high tunnels. Many of the items in the winter program are greens…radishes (the greens are edible too), purple top turnips and Japanese turnips (these are very mild), mixed lettuce, kale, swiss chard and spinach. In a few weeks we’ll have green onions, broccoli and broccoli rabe. We had several days early this week where the overnight temps were around 19 degrees and we thought we’d lose the lettuce greens that were in the outside beds. Luckily they seem to have survived. I brought one of the Japanese turnips home the other day. I sliced it up, sauteed it in butter with fresh garlic (from the garden) and it was delicious. It had a really mild taste whereas the purple top turnips have a little bite to them. The winter CSA runs until Dec. 17.
Weatherman is calling for severe storms tomorrow and strong winds. It was my job to open the two high tunnels today and vent the kale bed so it was no surprise when I went back tonight to close them up that the row covers were partially blown off. Because the heat in the high tunnels creates condensation on the inside of the plastic roof, it’s important to vent the tunnel to dry out that moisture. With the raised beds, where the kale is growing we had to partially take the plastic off the hoops overtop of the bed so the kale doesn’t cook from the sun shining through the plastic. Everything is all closed up and buttoned down for any winds that come along. The night time temps are supposed to be ok for the next few nights so we don’t have to worry about freezing temps.
On the cool mornings we spend time in the fiber room, skirting the alpaca blankets. The goal is to get all of them done before the next shearing in the spring. I’m actually getting into a groove doing the skirting and liking it. The level of enjoyment depends on how short or uneven the fiber is and how dirty it is. A black blanket (what the main body of fiber is called) we skirted recently was so dirty and  had flakes of what appeared to be dandruff in it and it was horrible to get that out of it. We use little brushes like you’d brush your dog with to fluff up the fiber and get the “vegetable matter” out of it. Usually while the other interns skirt, I would card the fiber that I had skirted before but I needed a break from that. I have enough batts done to make the baseball cap I want to make. The cap mold has been ordered so it should be here for me to use on the 23rd. There is a wet felting class where everyone will work on a hat, felted soap (we take two pieces of felted material and a bar of soap is felted into the center of it…kind of like a washcloth with built-in soap) and if there’s time, possibly a vase. Should be a fun and educational day.
Peanut is doing well. My phone is acting up and won’t let me send pictures to my e-mail so I don’t have any recent pictures to post. She is up over 16# and not being hand fed too often. Her cast should come off in two weeks and she’ll be ready to go. I had to try to feed her tonight and the two new kittens in the barn came around and rubbed all over her while I was trying to feed her and she didn’t like that. She only drank about a 1/2 ounce but she is getting plenty from mom so all is well.
All of us interns met with the sister who is the General Superior (top person here). Sister Denise is a great lady and easy to talk to. We were interested in learning more about the Sisters of Providence recent decision to allow seismic testing and possible drilling for oil on their land. She explained to us that it was an extremely difficult decision and one that they (all of the sisters) deliberated over for many months and sought out the advice of a local ecology professor before they decided to proceed. If it weren’t for the fact that their funding and the sustainability of continuing with their missions and programming was in jeopardy, they would have easily said no. They were approached by an Indiana oil company, Country Mark about the possibility of drilling. Country Mark is a co-op of farmers and has an exceptional record of no spills or accidents and truly were concerned that the sisters were comfortable with the process and accepted all the stipulations that the sisters put into the lease agreement. Currently they are in the “thumping” mode, where the truck is doing a seismic test on the roadways to get an image of the formations underground. There is a 50/50 chance that they will find oil. There is no fracing involved. It’s more of a sucking out of the oil because this oil formation is part of an underground coral reef. Indiana was under water millions of years ago and apparently a coral reef exists in this region. Isn’t that cool ? I’ve never heard of that but it makes sense that there could be a petrified one down there. All of the discussions and information has been shared with the community and neighbors in an effort to be totally transparent about everything. Sister Denise was sorry that they had forgotten to invite the interns to the information meetings but shared articles with us to bring us up to speed. We had concerns because of the Land Ethic that was developed in 2012 by the Sisters and this seemed to be a total contradiction to that. Many times in life there are no easy answers and when it comes down to a matter of survival for this convent, I think they did what was necessary to continue to serve the people in this area and around the world with their missions. If they could not continue with all that they do, many people would suffer. If they find a sizable cache of oil, they hope to look at updating their facilities to be more sustainable and possibly make some changes as far as their fossil fuel needs (they have 200 cars in their fleet that the sisters use). Let’s hope that there is a good outcome for all….Mother Earth and the Sisters of Providence.

What is your Earth Mission ?

I looked at our blog today and realized it’s been several weeks since I’ve put up a post. Usually I try to post something on the weekends but my weekends have been really busy lately. About two weeks ago I attended the Alpaca 101 workshop that was held here at White Violet Center. There was a nice size group and we learned a lot about alpacas, including how to give shots, trimming hooves and body composition. The vet came and gave Peanut a plasma transfusion. It didn’t take very long and Peanut behaved as well as you’d think a baby would when they get stuck with a really big needle. All went well though.
The newest baby cria had blood drawn to have her IGG checked. I haven’t heard the results of that so I’m thinking they must have been OK. It was an interesting workshop with one person driving up from Kentucky to attend. She and her husband just purchased two alpacas and she is trying to learn all she can about them.
I rented a car and went back home to see Linda and spent a few days with her. We drove up and spent an evening with mom. When we got back to Chambersburg I helped get the RV winterized. Right before we arrived home in August, our bathroom faucet starting leaking underneath, inside the cabinet, and I tore it apart to see if the o-ring was bad or something was out of sorts. All seemed to be fine so B called Thor this week and apparently they are having issues with that particular faucet and told her to call the manufacturer and they would probably send her a new one. The rig is only two years old….guess they don’t make faucets like they used to.
So I was home from last Thursday till this Wednesday…got back in time to help with this week’s CSA. On Thursday all of the interns and most of the White Violet staff went to a conference put on by “Our Green Valley”, an organization of businesses and like minded people concerned with sustainability in the Wabash Valley area. The keynote speaker was Betsy Damon and she was outstanding.

She has devoted her life’s work to working with water; whether it be in her artwork or in communities all over the world. Positive change to try and restore water to its natural state. She says that water is not meant to be encased and confined in concrete spillways, etc. but a free flowing entity that works with nature to restore balance. She has created wetlands and bioswales that take polluted water and cleanses it by putting it through natural means. I think it was pretty cool that I just happened to have my “Water is Life” t-shirt on the day of the conference because that was what the very first slide said in her presentation.

She has worked on some fascinating projects around the world and though they may seem prestigious, she pretty much lived in poverty while pursuing her passion. That takes true courage and focus to do something at great personal cost to yourself. I’m reading a book that my daughter bought for me at the Mother Earth News Fair and it’s called ECOpreneuring and it talks about something called.. “Earth Mission”. What have we chosen as our life’s work while on this earth. I think we know what Betsy’s Earth Mission is….water. Here is the video that she started her presentation with….it is trying to make the point that we are connected to water. Since our heart is 75% water and our brains are 78% water (when you have those mornings where your brain just seems really soggy….maybe you went over the 78%) and our cells are made up of water, we are connected to the earth in more ways than we tend to think about.

I went to two other sessions at the conference. One was on Energy Programs in Indiana, where they are doing home and business energy audits and offering some pretty great rebates. The other session was on Waste Management Streams and mainly geared towards a manufacturing process to eliminate waste and save money for the company and also minimize the amount of waste products. It was really interesting.
The temps are back around 50 after a week of really chilly temps and raw winds. Trying to catch up on things this weekend. Work on my project for here and I have to go guard the chickens tonight and when I finish that I have to go give Peanut a bottle. Last night she only took about a 1/2 ounce but she is gaining weight. She’s up to 14# now. Wahoo !

Chicken and Alpaca Watch

As usual the week has flown by. This was our last week for the summer CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) folks. They picked up the last bag of goodies on Wednesday. We have one week of no CSA and then the Fall/Winter one starts up the following week.
At the beginning of the week I had the awesome experience of watching a cria being born. This little guy’s mom went into labor Monday morning, while we were working on finishing the high tunnel. Mo let me leave to go watch the birth but wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t have my camera with me to take pictures or take a video. It was pretty quick overall. You could see his nose and front feet sticking out of the birth canal and mom walked around like that as the labor progressed. Then she laid down for a little bit and seemed to be really focused. Then she stood up and walked around and started to push and little by little he started to come out. I thought that once the front shoulders would come out that he’d drop the rest of the way but that’s not the way it happened. Probably a good thing cause it might hurt them to fall that far to the ground. He was hanging with just his back feet to come out when he finally slipped the rest of the way out and gently fell on the ground. Tracy was nearby (she’d slowly crept up on mom) and she got to him and pulled the placenta coating off of him and held him up by his back legs to try and clear some fluid out of his lungs. It was chilly and damp on Monday so Tracy dried him off really good with towels and then took mom and cria into the barn. This is another first time mom but she did a great job with him. He’s a gorgeous peach color and boy is he spunky and strong. Such a cutie !
Update on the other new ones…Remember this one. See how her left leg is bowed in. The tendons are coming along but because she was a preemie, it will take some time for them to fully strengthen.

I think they named this little guy Dusk. He’s a rascal and full of spunk. He ran into the fence yesterday when he was running full tilt in the pasture. He’s ok…just a goof ball.
I’ve been given the Llama and Alpaca Neonatal Care book to read this weekend and I’m on alpaca watch. We have two that are overdue and one that is due by the end of the month so I need to know what behavior to watch for. Their anatomy is much more complex than I would have thought but it helps to understand the things that can go wrong with a pregnancy by reading the book. The big thing is to recognize (and possibly correct) something before it becomes a big problem.
Speaking of a big problem….we have a fox that is after our chickens. Hence me being on chicken watch. I might have mentioned this in the last post but last weekend, a fox got a bunch of our chickens. We are down to eight right now, from originally having 25 (some of those died this summer but we lost about 12 last weekend). Bree and I were asked to go out and check them at 6:30 and 7:30. Their door is set to close at 7:30 and we’re trying to figure out if some got caught outside when the door went down and the fox got them or what. Thursday night I watched some videos, on You Tube to figure out how foxes get into chicken coops.
 Not only can they get through a small opening but they climb fences like a person climbs a ladder….up and over in no time flat. After watching and reading about fox attacks on chickens, I was worried if we’ll be able to stop this fox before he wipes out our flock (or what’s left of it).
So, I went out at 6:30 last night and checked on them and all was fine. I had put laundry in when I got off work so I went back to the dorm to fold my clothes and figured I’d come back out to check them one last time and put them to bed. Got the clothes folded and walked back to the pasture. I called my sister on the way to the pasture to thank her for the awesome care package she sent me. She made me a beautiful shawl to keep me warm and lots of other goodies. I got to the pasture at 6:55 and stood just outside the gate that goes into the pasture, near the chicken coop.  The chickens were to the left of me under the apple trees. It was dusk and I was playing Candy Crush on my phone at around 7:10 when the chickens let out a hell of a commotion and came running towards and past me (remember I’m outside the gate). I instantly thought of the fox and looked to the left of me at the fence to see if the fox was coming over or under the fence in the direction we thought the fox is coming from. Out of my right eye, I see a blur of red and turn to see a fox coming straight for the chickens in front of me but it was coming from the direction of the orchard.

(The fox came from the bottom of this picture and I’m standing down at the end of the white tape fence, outside the gate). I screamed a bunch of profanities, (cause I’d be damned if that fox was gonna kill the chickens on my watch, let alone me standing right there) and started to shove the gate to get through to help the chickens. I forgot there are these latches you have to pull up on but I scream again and wave my arms in the air, hoping to scare the fox, who’s right on the chickens’ heels. I grabbed the chain that wraps around the gate and flung the gate open and just then the fox turns on a dime and runs back towards the top of the orchard. Heart pounding I do a head count and make sure that he hadn’t gotten any of the chickens. The fox ran towards the barns at the upper end (not in the direction we thought the fox was coming from all this time) and then I lost sight of him. I kept scanning the area and look straight up towards our gardens and here he sits, watching me to see if I’m going to stay or leave the chickens alone. Man, I was really ticked off now. The chickens were scared out of their little minds and huddled together in the corner of the pasture for about 15 minutes. I stood watch over them until 7:30 when they all got inside their coop, safe for the night. I got back to my dorm and e-mailed Sister Mo and asked her if they should stay in the coop all weekend, cause I was worried that as soon as they got let out this morning that fox would have breakfast. (Most people think that foxes only hunt at night but it’s not true….go to backyardchickens.com and you’ll read about plenty of attacks that occur in the daytime. If they are hungry and are feeding kits (baby foxes), they will hunt anytime. At 11:00. p.m I heard from Robyn that the timer needed to be unplugged so they would stay inside this weekend until they can figure out what to do. So at 11, I’m thinking about the long, dark walk out to the pasture and I don’t have a flashlight. I remember seeing a lantern in the bathroom so I go get that and it’s pretty bright so off I go to unhook the door timer. I called Linda, back in PA to talk to me while I made the trek out there. I wasn’t scared to go out there but just worried that the fox might be around and try to sneak into the coop when I opened the door. I got it done and made my way back home and to my bed.
Sorry this is such a long post….lots going on and I find myself too exhausted during the week to post anything so you get a novel to read each weekend to catch you up.
The high tunnel is done….We put the sides up on Monday and they finished up the ends yesterday. Both the ends and sides can be rolled up during warm weather. These “Z” strips, that snap into channels are what holds the plastic into place on the sides. There is a double channel and the ends of the roof section is fastened in the top channel and the sides snap into the lower channel. David has a machine that he pulls behind the tractor that creates the raised beds. The plants you see on the far left are broccoli and then we have beets, turnips, carrots, lettuce and spinach planted. Wire panels across the ends will keep the deer out. I read a neat trick the other day for keeping deer out of your garden. Deer can’t judge depth so if you string up two offset lines of string or something like the tape from an old VCR cartridge, they won’t enter the space. The VCR tape vibrates in the wind and keeps them away. So save all the weird blood stuff and scents that you scatter around. Just mess with their depth perception and you’re all set.
 
OK, I think that is all the excitement I have to share for one week. Hope your week is productive and safe. We have 25 college kids coming next week to spend their fall break with us. Should make for an interesting week….

National Alpaca Open House

Last Sunday was the Open House event to learn about alpacas and what we do with the fiber. The day was celebrated all across the country at alpaca farms. Perhaps you saw an ad for a farm near you that was hosting the open house.
We had sisters set up at different stations working on fiber. Here one of the sisters is using a tabletop loom to make a scarf. It was really easy to use (I think even I could do it). She had the scarf done by the end of the Open House (it ran from 1 – 4). Lots of little kids enjoyed learning how to do it.

Here Sister Ruth is doing a wall hanging with fiber. She has a picture sitting off to the right of her foam and she is combining two alpaca faces to create the picture of two different alpacas on her felted backing. By using a felting needle, with short jabbing motions, the fiber is pressed onto the backing and bound together. She is really artistic and has a wonderful eye for drawing and has made a lot of different items that are for sale in the center. She is the one who taught me how to dry felt the ornaments.

Ann is spinning fiber into yarn. She asked this little boy if he wanted to learn how to do it and he said “maybe when I get bigger”. She says that it takes quite a bit of coordination to get the hang of keeping the wheel going at the right speed and using your hands to pull the yarn as you go. On Tuesday nights the spinners meet in the center and I’m going to go this coming Tuesday to see if I can learn. I hope they have someone there who is really patient to teach me. I think it’s one of those things that if you can rub your belly and pat your head, you’ll be able to do it. I’ll let you know how I make out.

Sister Jean was running a big loom. It’s portable but much more complicated looking than the table top one. It reminded me of a pipe organ with all the different foot pedals. Each pedal raises a different set of arms so you can create intricate patterns. She was also working on a scarf but she can make much bigger items on this loom. In the back room, at the center, they have a giant loom that is probably 5-6 x the size of this one. Candace, who is the manager of the garden office, runs that one so perhaps when she returns from maternity leave I’ll get to see that one in action.
It rained the evening before our open house and the day started off really cool and damp so Sister Mo decided to have the activities inside the center. It didn’t seem to affect the crowd size though. We had a really good turnout with a steady flow of people all day. Some folks drove from several hours away to come and see the alpacas and fiber items. I worked the tomato stand and sold quarts of our wonderful tomatoes. We sold a little over 14 quarts which helped us get rid of some. They are still going pretty strong. We picked over 300# yesterday and there are still quite a few green ones. They are getting smaller in size and the slugs are starting to get ahead of us for doing damage but we’re holding our own. Yesterday we delivered two totes to both dining halls (these dining rooms serve the sisters). They made eggplant parmesan in the dining halls the other day, with our eggplant, and it was wonderful.
Tomorrow is one of the big fund raisers that the White Violet Center does each year. It’s the Harvest Dinner and much of the food comes from our gardens. I know the soup is Pumpkin Bisque (with our pumpkins) but once I hear the whole menu, I’ll update the blog with it. We’ve been sending over herbs and different items to the chef who is preparing the meal. He works at Indiana State University, here in Terre Haute, and I will be working with him tomorrow once he arrives here to start work on the meal. Today, Sister Mo, me and Bree (another intern) will decorate the tables in the dining room so they will be ready.
Not much else going on here. We are getting a little bit of rain. It poured yesterday for a little bit and again overnight. We sure need it….has been really dry the whole time I’ve been here. Temps this week were in the 80’s most of the time and it was really humid. This morning I awoke and couldn’t even see out my window cause it’s all fogged up with moisture. I had to go out to set some seedlings outside the greenhouse and it is really muggy out. It’s freezing in my room so I usually have a sweatshirt or hoodie on and if I don’t check my phone to see what the temp is outside, I usually am overdressed when I go out. I had Linda send me my heating pad so I can sit on it when it gets really cold in my room. Warms me all over….That’s the hard thing with retrofitting a building with AC that never had it before. It’s so hard for them to regulate the temps from one floor to the next. The first floor temps are very comfortable and most of the second floor (where the intern rooms are) tend to be ok but it’s our west wing area that you could hang meat in….dang it’s cold.
We started harvesting turnips this week. This coming Wednesday will be the last pick-up of food for the summer CSA folks. We’ll have a week off (from packing bags and picking for the CSA – not to lounge around and eat bon bons all week – no such luck) and then the fall/winter CSA program starts. We’ve been busy starting lettuce, beets, carrots, turnips, broccoli and other veggies for the winter group. All of these seeds get planted in the high tunnels so they will stay protected from the snow and harsh temperatures. The plastic on the roof and sides allows the sun to heat the interior of the space so the plants can grow. The plastic on the sides is mounted on a roller so you can raise or lower the sides. As the temperatures drop, we’ll raise the sides so the tunnel will be completely enclosed to keep the heat in. Right now they are part way open so they are not so hot to work inside of.
Well that’s all from the farm. Be sure to support your local farmers….Buy fresh, Buy local !

LiveJournal Tags: White Violet Center for Eco Justice,CSA,Harvest Dinner,high tunnel

Fall is in the air….

Fall is in the Indiana air and the leaves are turning. Yesterday, in the tomato patch, it was downright chilly but not quite to the point of frost. I could see my breath as I picked tomatoes and they felt like they had been kept in a walk in refrigerator all night. They are slowing down though….only picked 274# yesterday.

I keep forgetting to tell you about the neat way that the convent creates their heat for HVAC purposes and hot water. They have a tractor trailer that picks up wood chips, that local landscapers and tree cutters have dropped off. There is a collection center across the street from Sisters of Providence and the tree trimmers just dump their waste there and the truck goes over and fills up and brings it back to campus. There is a metal shed type of building where the truck backs up and dumps the load. Inside are these conveyor tracks that very slowly pulls the wood in (they take all the wood left off and put it through a wood grinder to make sure it’s uniform in size). My understanding is that it goes into a furnace that heats the rooms and water for the whole complex. There are two huge brick chimneys coming out of the building where all this happens and the building is pretty large. Reminds me of the exterior wood stoves that homes have that can do the same thing….heat the hot water that is piped through it and also send heat to your home. This is just on a gigantic scale. I’ve been told that one tractor trailer load lasts for a typical day and 1.5 – 2 in the winter.

Here are some of things we harvested this week in the garden:

Look at all that celery….it was like loading a small tree into each bag. And it was so fragrant…Yum !

Beautiful Carmen and Bell peppers.

 

 

 

Bagged Swiss Chard…looks sort of like rhubarb but with beautiful stalks of pink, yellow, whitish.

 

 

 

On Thursday we had a potluck event for the CSA members. I finished work at 3:30 and then went to work with Sister Mo so she could teach me how to card the fiber I’ve been working on. This is the next step after skirting it. You take the tufts of fiber that are long enough and it’s laid on that ledge area so it spans the width of the carder. On the far right side is a crank that makes the drums turn and draws in the fiber. The “undesirables” are picked up on the small drum and the acceptable ones are wound around the large drum. When it gets covered to the point where you can’t see the belt seam and it seems full, the “batt” is pulled off the drum. You break the batt, with a large knitting needle type of tool, right at the belt seam. You just run the needle under the batt and pull up on it, separating it from the drum. As you turn the handle you pull gently to have the batt come off in one piece. You’re shooting for it to weigh (in its final weight) 1.0 – 1.2 oz. I had to run mine through twice to get all fibers running the same direction and looking nice and it came out at 1.1 oz…perfect ! The weight is crucial because if you use this to felt a hat, the layers have to weigh the same so it’s not lopsided when you put it together. That is what I’ll be learning next….how to make a felted hat. (This morning I finally finished skirting all the fiber on my table)….hallelujah ! So I worked on the carding till 5, went back to the dorm and showered and made my dish to pass and off to the potluck I went. Long day, beautiful night, great chats with the CSA members who came.

Friday, the new high tunnel got its’ roof installed. There was about 10-12 of us out there helping get the plastic on it. Ropes were thrown over the top of the roof and tied to the plastic. The way they did that was to wrap the plastic end around a rock or clump of dirt and then tie the rope around it. The wind came up as we started to do it and I asked Sister Mo to say a little prayer for us. She asked Saint Joseph to give us some calm so we could get this done and wouldn’t you know it, once we retrieved the end flap that had folded up over the peak of the roof, it got real calm and we were able to finish it up. We only wound up with one hole in it that was easily patched. Next week David will finish up the side and ends so we can get it planted. It’s huge inside and will hold lots of plants.

Tomorrow is Alpaca Farm Days all over the country and ours is from 1 – 4. I will bounce between the kids activity area and the tomato selling table, helping out. Should be a fun day if the weather holds out. We haven’t had much rain since I’ve been here but they are calling for about a 60% chance tomorrow. Hopefully it will rain early or hold off till afterwards.

A Felting We Will Go...

Another week done....tomatoes are still prolific. We had a U-Pick night on Thursday that I worked and sadly we only had about eight groups/families come out for it. We had gotten some much needed rain Thursday morning so it may have scared some of the CSA folks off, thinking that it would be muddy in the tomato patch but it really wasn't that bad. Not like early in the week when the drip irrigation system sprang a leak or got left on....it looked like a rice paddy that day. We were walking through several inches of water in some places. Glad I had my work boots on that day. It was pretty sloppy.

I got Friday off because I had worked last Saturday for the farmer's market so I spent the day working on fiber. I'm working on Chauncay's blanket. This fiber is from the neck and leg areas so it's not the prime stuff. It's 2nds and 3rds and needs to be skirted. The 3rds have to be sorted out and the 2nds are used to do felting with.

I'm looking for fiber that is 2" long so thumb length;otherwise it goes in the can of 3rds. There is quite a bit of stretch to alpaca fiber due to the crimp so if you pull it, you'll get a little more length out it than if you didn't pull on it. Seems this whole bag of fiber is borderline in the necessary length so I'm tugging at each tuff to see if it qualifies for the 2nds bag. I also have to check for "vegetable matter" (poop, hay, foreign objects) and pull off any frizzy hairs. See how it tapers down to a point....that's the part where it was attached to the alpaca. Thank goodness for that little "handle" to gather up tufts of it to check for length. The pile on the table probably covers a 2' x 4' area...it seems really daunting and seems like the pile never gets any smaller. After I get all of this done, then Sister Mo will show me how to card it and then it can be felted. On Friday, Sister Ruth showed me how to do dry felting (she rescued me from the skirting process because they need to stock up on some items for the upcoming Alpaca Open House). I am making ornaments that can be hung on a tree or put on a keychain or whatever. There is a machine that does felting but we do it by hand. You use a felting needle that is about 4" long and has tiny little barbs on the tip of it. The fiber that has gone through the carder is used and you just take little tufts of it and place it in a mold of sorts. They look like cookie cutters but they had these made just for doing this. We place the form that we are using on top of a piece of foam. By poking the loose fiber with the needle (short strokes that don't go into the foam padding), it starts to bind the fibers together till you finally get a densely matted object. You keep turning the form over and poking each side till the object is uniform in density. If you get a weak area (like the neck on my one alpaca needed a little shoring up), you just take a little tuft of fiber and poke it into the weak area. It's really quite fun. I'm trying to help them get a bunch made for the Open House. I brought all the supplies back to my room and I've made 6 since yesterday afternoon. I work on it a little while, do some reading and then go back to it. Sister Mo does wet felting, which is used for hats, slippers and other stuff. I will learn that at some point. Sister Ruth, who taught me to do the dry felting is really artistic. She does wall hangings with the fiber, beautiful drawings on note cards and other fancy stuff. Since I don't consider myself to be an artsy person, this is something I can do and hope that there are other things I'm able to get the hang of.

Meanwhile back in the garden: In the older high tunnel, we've planted lettuce, carrots, beets and spinach for the fall CSA program. The new high tunnel is still under construction. That will be used to plant items for the winter CSA program. Fresh, local veggies all year round....Yum ! Guess that's all the news from the farm. Cooler temps are here. It was 43 degrees when I went for my walk this morning. 70 during the day. Oh yeah, I've got a new to me computer ordered. It should be here by the end of next week. My computer is doing the same thing it did before....black screen of death. It finally started for me yesterday so I could work on my project and do this post. It has to stay open 24/7 now till the new one gets here. The new one will be a Dell Business Edition. My computer guy says that the business models are built so much better to take hard use. He's got a 6 month warranty on it so if I don't like it for any reason, I can return it to him. It's a 2011 model with Windows 7 and Excel and Word installed. He said it will be fast so hoping he is right. $280 so nothing to lose at this point. I hated the thought of paying big bucks for a new laptop. Seems the price keeps going up with all the new fandangled gadgets on them. That's it from Indiana....

Windows Live Tags: felting, fiber, CSA, White Violet Center

A Wrap on My Week....

I spent part of Labor Day working with Bree, feeding the caring for the alpacas. They get feed, hay and fresh water each day. Alpacas create  just a couple of spots in their pasture area where they poop so it's easy to clean up after them (they poop out little pellets). It's important to clean it up so that they don't pick up diseases. Erma Bombeck always said that the grass is always greener over the septic tank...well that's sort of close. Here it's ...The Grass is Always Greener Under the Alpaca Poop". When you have a big pasture, as some of ours our, you look for the tallest grass to find their bathroom spots. It was fun working with them...they are quite the curious creatures and they sure love the feed that they get. One came into the shed, when he heard me scooping it up, and wanted to stick his head right in the can to get some. I had to shoo him out so I could finish getting it ready for them.
With the long weekend the tomatoes were sure ripe and ready to be picked on Tuesday. We picked almost 400 pounds ! We pick into red totes and once the product is washed or prepared for CSA or market, they go into blue totes. They are washed with straight vinegar each time they are used to kill any diseases or fungus that has come in from the field. Wednesday was CSA day and I took the orders to our "South" location and handed them out to the members as they came in. When we set up the room to pack bags, here is the set up.

Ann looks at the list of CSA members , hands us a member's bag and tells us what extra items someone might get.

Starting with the heaviest items, we start filling the cloth bags. This week, these totes had onions and apples. Notice that some things are in red totes when they should be in blue. We had so many tomatoes in blue ones that we ran out of them so had to use red ones.

We work our way around the room, and the lightest items are at the end. We also put the items that not everyone is going to get, which this week was ground cherries, eggplant, swiss chard and peppers.

That's the process ! We have 62 CSA members. Some are 1/2 shares so they don't get all of the items. We usually have about 10-12 dozen eggs each week so those get distributed in some manner too. Sometimes I don't know how Ann keeps track of everything. It gets really confusing sometimes to figure out who gets what. So back to my story about being at our South pick-up: I got to talking to one of our CSA members, told him I'm a fulltime RVer and turns out he is shopping for an RV. He would like to go full-time but can't right now. He and his wife do shows (they are artists) and they bought a Smart Car so they can tow it when they buy their motorhome. They want something about 25' in length so we talked a while about that. Then somehow we got to talking about Ithaca, NY. I told him I lived there for a bit and that my son was born there. Turns out he was just there four days ago....went to the bird sanctuary on Sapsucker Woods Rd which is where I used to live. Wow, small, small world. It was fun talking to him...he found an object laying in the parking lot that he wants to incorporate into a piece called "The River" that he's working on. He uses items he has found on the river while boating or kayaking. Love these chance encounters to chat with people !

Oh, here's another neat thing that happened just yesterday. A guy named Norbert came by with this trailer to show us. It was a race car trailer and it has two entrances into it, in addition to the ramp door in the back. The side flaps go up so apparently someone used it as a concession sales trailer. It's going to be used as a mobile market for fresh produce. It will go into neighborhoods in Terra Haute, where low income folks or retirees live who may not have a car to get to the market and sell fresh produce to them. Our interns (me included) will take turns working with Norbert in nearby areas. Sorry I don't have a picture of the inside of the trailer. I was in awe of the whole thing that I forgot I had my phone with me till after he had closed it up. The outer walls of the trailer are lined with commercial storage racks, held in place by tie down straps hooked to the walls. You can see the AC unit on the roof so it can be kept cool

LiveJournal Tags: White Violet Center for Eco Justice,Terra Haute Farmer's Market,Wabash Valley Mobile Market

. There are two different refrigerated cases in the front, left corner so things like fresh cheese or whatever could be displayed there. In talking to Robyn, at White Violet Center, there is something being created called The Hub that will be a central place where farmers can bring and sell their produce so they don't have to try and find an outlet for it. This unit will hit the streets next month, I believe, to get the word out. Offerings will be light this year but once farmers hear about it, they can increase the amount of crops they grow for next year. The woman in the picture is Tracy, our alpaca manager.

Well, that's about it. Tomorrow I need to water the chickens and collect the eggs. We have basil in the food dehydrator and the trays will need flipped in the morning. I'm going to start working on my project, which involved crunching some numbers and doing some research. Hope everyone has a great weekend !

Hot Hot Hot

The forecast for this week was for temps in the mid 90's and high humidity. So far the weatherman has been right. Yesterday, I learned how to make soil blocks. You take a device that you compact a potting soil mixture into the bottom of so that when you push the plunger it  pushes out five blocks of dirt, ready to plant a seed in. It takes the place of little seed starter pods that you buy. The potting soil has to be just the right consistency....not too wet and not too dry for it to work correctly with the seed. Get it too wet and when it dries, it gets hard as a rock. Too dry and it won't germinate the seed. We started some broccoli and cauliflower plants for the winter CSA program. We did this in the greenhouse where it was REALLY hot. Glad we didn't have to do too much in there.
Yesterday and today we picked tomatoes. They are going crazy in this heat. Today's weight was around 285# and yesterday's was a little less. Wow ! On Thursday the CSA members can come to a "U Pick night" to get as many as they want. After the amount they'll get tomorrow, they may not want any more. We did deliver Roma tomatoes and regular ones to both dining units today so that will make a dent in our massive quantity on hand. In the last two days we've also picked okra (red and the usual green), green beans, cucumbers, ground cherries, apples, berries, parsley and cilantro. We spent the tail end of today cleaning the cilantro...Yuck..I can't stand the smell of that plant. I can't even put my finger on what it smells like to me but it's so strong.
Yesterday while we were in the tomato patch, two male alpacas were fighting like crazy in the pasture near us. One brother was screaming at the other brother, spitting, throwing his neck into him, chasing him, trying to bite him, etc. I don't know what got into them but they must have carried on like this for 15-20 minutes. Ann said that they fight like this a lot. They actually split them up for a while but they both got so mopey that they put them back together again. The other two males in the pasture with them, just kept a wide birth while the show went on as if to say, "There they go again...."
Tomorrow will be the hottest day of the week, with temps of 95 and a heat index of 105. Our day now starts at 7:30 so we can beat the heat a little bit and finish up earlier. Tomorrow is CSA day so the afternoon will be spent indoors packaging the fruits and veggies for pick-up from 4:30 - 5:30. Probably will have the farmers market to work this Saturday, since we didn't go last week. Working out in the bean patch at mid-day made for hot work....someone turned on the spigot running down my back. It was sort a like Chinese water torture of the drippy kind.
We also got a bed ready for fall lettuce. Since lettuce needs cooler temps to germinate, we put shade cloth over the rows, which will get the soil to cool down 8 or so degrees from the surrounding soil. Hopefully the temps will cool off a bit next week to aid in cooling it down to where it needs to be by the time we plant the seed.
I'm starting to formulate what my project will be. All of the interns need to do a project while they are here. Mine is going to be tied to Sisters of Providence' land ethic...(go here to read it http://spsmw.org/sp/about-us/green-projects/land-ethic/ ) and how it relates to the food plots and sustainability here. I hope it will shape up into a usable document for the sisters to have moving forward.
Bree's friend, Andrew is volunteering here with us this week. He is interested in sustainable agriculture and wanted to check out what is done at White Violet Center. It's so nice to see young people, without a background in farming, showing an interest in agriculture. It gives me hope that our food system can be turned around if enough people get involved.
That's all from Indiana. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week !

The Start of My Internship - Getting Settled In

We left Chambersburg Sunday morning around 7:30 a.m., headed for Terra Haute, Indiana. It was a much quicker drive than we had anticipated....we arrived around 5:30 p.m. that same day. We're so used to taking longer, driving the motorhome, that driving the car makes much shorter work of a trip like this. Since White Violet Center wasn't expecting me until Tuesday, I shot off an e-mail Sunday night that we had arrived in town and were spending the night at a Day's Inn nearby. It turned out that Monday was a better day for me to arrive since Robyn had several appointments on Tuesday that would have conflicted with getting my orientation done.
I did some paperwork, Robyn gave Linda and I a tour of the facilities. I got my TB test and I'll go back tomorrow afternoon to have it read (it isn't doing anything...it actually disappeared from my arm). My room wasn't ready for me to move into in Owens Hall so they let us stay in one of the guest houses. What a gorgeous house it is and it was made from scrap materials. The hardwood floors are made from the wood in the bottom of tractor trailer floors. Odds and ends pieced together to make a beautiful cottage and it sits near a small lake. The house to the right of us is of straw bale construction so the walls are really thick but it makes for an excellent insulator. There was another cottage to the left of us but I'm not sure of any of the specifics on that one. We had a very pleasant evening in the house.
I spent yesterday afternoon helping to pick tomatoes cleaning dirt from potatoes that had been dug. This morning I started out picking green beans and purple ones too but got called away about 10:30 to go do my room orientation with Sister Martha. Linda and I moved all of my stuff into my room. My room is roughly 10' x 17'. As you might be able to see in the picture I have a TV, twin size bed, desk, big metal armoire with lots of storage space inside, a dresser, a nice recliner and another shelving unit.



Just down the hall is a large kitchen with everything I could possible need to cook with. This kitchen is only for the interns use so since there's three of us here...we each get a shelf in the refrigerator for our food and there is ample cupboard space for dry goods, although for right now I've got my stored in the armoire unit in my room.
There is super fast WiFi here, so it will be easy to keep up with blogging and surfing the internet. The campus is really huge and very beautiful, with lots of walking and meditation paths.
We finished up moving me into my room, around lunchtime. Right after lunch Linda left to start home. This afternoon I picked pears and cleaned tomatoes and potatoes in preparation for CSA pickups tomorrow. There are about 70 members in their CSA program with three locations where they can get their weekly allotment of veggies and fruit. From what everyone says, Wednesdays are crazy days here.


Fresh Basil....some was picked and dried. 



There are two other interns here right now...Bree and Rusty. I went with Bree last night to tend to the alpacas. She splits her week between gardening and the alpacas. We checked how much hay and fresh water they had. Bree hooked up the sprinkler for them so they could cool off. Boy, did they like that ! The dominant alpacas would spit and push the others away. Sometimes one would lay down on top of the sprinkler so the others wouldn't get any of the water. They were really cute to watch and each one really seems to have its own personality.
Everyone is super nice and helpful. Sister Maureen (Sister Mo) is really cool...she's the director of White Violet Center. Linda helped her this morning while she was waiting for my room to be ready (the wait for my room was due to it needing a deep clean and the floor needed to be waxed). Linda got to work with some of the skeins of yarn that had arrived from the processor. They send the fiber to an outside processor to be turned into clean yarn.
Well, you're up to date on my two days here. More later...
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