Indiana Revisited

I brought something home from my six month internship that I hope will get resolved in the next week. At some point during the latter part of my six months at White Violet Center, I noticed a spot on my left shoulder that seemed similar to a basal cell carcinoma that I had removed in 2007, before we hit the road for our new gypsy life. When I talked to Linda at one point, I told her to try to remind me to show it to her when I would see her again in February. Since it was in a spot where I couldn’t see it straight on, I could only feel it and it seemed scaly, but with a little thickness to it.
When Linda did come to get me and things weren’t so crazy, I showed it to her. We decided to take a picture of it and monitor whether it changed or not. We knew, that as busy as our work schedule was, we weren’t able to get our annual check-ups until we got back home in September. From what I could feel, it had the scaly feel of the spot I had in ‘07 so I didn’t think much about it. We worked the upper portion of Texas from Mid-March until the beginning of May, moving every week or less to a new campground. When we finished that assignment, we had planned to stop and visit friends in Alamosa, CO on our way to Breckenridge for our next job. I had tried to schedule an appointment with a doctor in Alamosa, when we knew that we’d be heading that way, but the doctor was booked up and I couldn’t get in. While we were visiting our friends in Alamosa on May 9th, we were driving around town, taking pictures of Flat Stanley with local attractions. Flat Stanley is a paper cut-out of a little boy that was sent to Linda by her grandson, in Norfolk, VA for a class project he was doing. We took Flat Stanley to the train display in town, the display of the Great Sand Dunes and other things we thought would be cute to photograph him with. As we drove down one of the streets, on the way back to our rig, we went by a Community Clinic and Linda said “hey, a clinic…let’s see if they can take a look at your spot”. I went in and there was no one at all in the waiting room. The doctor came out and I showed him my spot and told him I thought it was probably basal cell, like I had before and told him briefly my history with basal cell. He said he didn’t think it was basal cell but looked more like melanoma. I think my heart stopped for a minute, then rose to my throat, because I knew that melanoma was a much nastier cancer to deal with than basal cell. Basal cell typically doesn’t reoccur, once it’s removed, and it doesn’t spread in your body. Needless to say, I was a little scared.
At this point I think it important to know my history of sun exposure. I grew up on a dairy farm and most of my summers were spent sitting on a tractor seat, raking hay in the fields or working with my brother to unload the hay wagons. I don’t recall that we used sunscreen but I do remember getting burned many times as a kid. Later on, when I was no longer working in the fields, I did like to go to the beach on summer vacation and lay in the sun. I’m sure this history of sun exposure is what has lead me to this outcome. Melanoma is the 2nd fastest growing cancer for women, with lung cancer being number 1. It’s number one for men and a cancer that is really getting out of hand.
Back at the doctor’s office, Dr. Ed removed the spot with a 6 mm punch and sent it away to be analyzed. Knowing that he thought it was melanoma, made the next week a long one for the diagnosis to come back. On the 15th we learned that they thought it was melanoma but they had sent it on to the Univ. of California for more analysis. More waiting…..This past Friday, the 23rd we got the pathology report and it is melanoma…Clark Level 4. When we got the initial report on the 15th, the doctor who called us with the news said that we needed to make a decision on where we wanted to go for surgery (they will need to make a wider excision to make sure they get all the cancer out of my arm) so we started researching facilities near us and called our friend Cindy, who also has melanoma. She was a great source of information and strength for us, as we were pretty scared at this point.
I know this has been a long story about the whole process but where we are at today is that we have an appointment tomorrow at the University of Colorado Cancer Center. They are one of 41 premiere cancer centers in the country and they also specialize in melanoma. Tomorrow’s visit will be to generate a treatment plan. We’re hoping that we can get the surgery scheduled for early next week. In the meantime, our work continues but we’re really up in the air about what happens over the coming months until we know how extensive the melanoma is. If they cut it out and get everything, we’ll hit the ground running and keep on keepin’ on. If there’s something more extensive, that involves more treatment, we will head back to PA to get those treatments done.
For all my sun loving friends out there, please use sunscreen but more importantly check your skin for spots that don’t look normal. Over 80,000 people will be diagnosed with melanoma this year. Go here to get the signs of what abnormal spots look like. Finding those spots and getting treatment can mean the difference between life and death. I debated about whether to share my health scare on our blog, since I’m a pretty private person and don’t put my health stuff out there for all to see. But I also feel that if my story can help one other person to take better precautions in the sun or to get a funky mole checked out, then it’s worth it. I’ll post what we find out at the doctor tomorrow and what the coming weeks entail. In the meantime, I’m asking for a positive collective conscientiousness for a good outcome. Whether that means prayer, good vibes, well wishes or whatever in your book….send them my way.

Life Reimagined

Wow, I just stumbled upon something that I had completely forgotten about. Back in September, shortly after Linda dropped me off at White Violet Center for my internship, I got an e-mail from our financial advisor. He had been contacted, through his Cambridge Financial Planners group, by a woman who wanted to do an article on a couple who had given up their house and a “normal life” for an RV lifestyle. Ross immediately thought of us and in his e-mail asked if we’d mind being interviewed. We said it was fine so he made the connection. Although I knew the writer was doing it for AARP, I thought it was for a new magazine they were publishing but I was mistaken. Apparently it was for a new on-line site that AARP has developed, called Life Reimagined.
Long story short…..a woman called me while I was out in Terra Haute, at the Sisters of Providence and asked lots of questions. Back in December or so, we had gotten a call to verify some of the info, in the article, which apparently they didn’t write down the answers to because I picked up a child I didn’t know I had and “B” lost one (easy to do on paper I guess). I had found the website a few months ago and bookmarked it and just now while I was going through my bookmarks looking for something else, I saw the site and went to it. To my surprise I found our article, which was put out there in February. Here it is, if you’d like to read it….http://lifereimagined.aarp.org/stories/5691-At-Home-on-the-Highway

LiveJournal Tags: AARP,Life Reimagined,Cambridge Financial Planners,White Violet Center for Eco Justice,Sisters of Providence

Pittsburg, Texas

We moved yesterday from Tyler and are now staying at the Barefoot Bay Marina and Resort in Pittsburg. Our site is next to Lake Sandlin, which is a cute little lake. The temps today are in the 70’s but the cool breeze makes it seem a little on the chilly side. I will take it over the snow and sleet our families are having back home. Hard to believe it’s the end of March by the way the weather is acting back east. We spent last week training a new team for our company and had a great time getting to know them. They are super excited about the opportunity ahead of them to travel the country, while working with campgrounds, providing the important service of creating guest guides for the campgrounds. Deb and Gavin picked up all of the info really quickly and Deb is going to be an awesome sales person. We took them out for their graduation dinner, to a place called Clear Springs Seafood and the food was amazing. I had fried shrimp and it was cooked perfectly. Linda had catfish and it was also very good. An appetizer that we ordered was called “Stingers” and it was a jalapeno (it wasn’t hot) and it was stuffed with shrimp and catfish, lightly breaded and fried. They gave us home-made ranch dressing to dip it in. It was really, really good. The prices and service were great and it’s certainly a restaurant I’d go to again. We look forward to working with Deb and Gavin in the coming year to grow their business and get them off to a great start.
Last week we got together with Cindy, who I volunteered with at White Violet Center and had lunch with her. She is in Texas visiting family before returning to Minnesota where she is a minister. We had a great time catching up about her last month at White Violet. I was sorry to hear that there is another alpaca who is dealing with what appears to be the meningeal worm issue. So sad to hear about that and hope that it turns out well for her. It is the same alpaca that laid down and couldn’t get up easily, on my last day at WVC.
This coming week we’ll be working in the northeast corner of Texas….in the Texarkana area. It’s neat to travel to all of our member campgrounds and talk to them about their marketing needs and what changes they’ve made or are making to their campgrounds. I really enjoy chatting with them. One of the ones I went to this past week does a lot of wedding receptions in a large, cedar barn they have at the back of the property. What a gorgeous facility ! White lights strung across the rafters and chandeliers hanging from the beams. It was a truly magical place to hold a reception and with that country charm. So neat to see the creativity of these entrepreneurs and the things they do to set themselves apart from others. Linda is going in with me too, which has been really fun. She does the paperwork and jumps in to help with the marketing pitch. We make a great tag team !
Hope everyone has a great week. Don’t get suckered into any April Fool’s day pranks on Tuesday….stay sharp !

LiveJournal Tags: White Violet Center for Eco Justice,Clear Springs Seafood,Barefoot Bay Marina and Resort,Texarkana,April Fool's Day

Busy Time For Us

Once Linda picked me up we started the trip to Texas. I didn't realize it until I did some research but we would be in close proximity to the Crater of Diamonds State Park. This is the only diamond mine in the US that is open to the public where you can go and dig for diamonds...real diamonds. This was something I really wanted to see so off we went...There is a 37 acre field where you can dig, sift, screen, etc to your heart's content. Every so often they plow the field to bring more diamonds to the surface.
This area was home to a massive volcano ages ago that brought the crystal beauties to the surface. You can find clear white, yellow and brown.


The diamonds aren't all that elusive either (although we didn't find any). More than 700 diamonds are found each year and someone had even found one the week before we were there. They have a gorgeous RV park and splash water park there which makes for an awesome family getaway. So if you ever get to Murfreesboro, Arkansas, be sure to go check it out.
Our next stop was Austin, Texas. I needed to do some training with another one of our teams so we joined up with them west of Austin for a few days. Last Friday we left there and went to Montgomery, TX for our annual company meeting. It's like a family reunion as we get to spend time with folks we usually only see once a year. Lots of hugs and laughs from Monday to Thursday. When we arrived, we called a local RV mobile tech because our outside shower was leaking and our inverter was not supplying power to the rig while we were traveling. We couldn't run the water pump, receptacles or anything that usually would run off the inverter. Power was going TO the inverter but wasn't going to the rig. Turns out one of the 12v breakers, under the front steps, was shot. This isn't the type of breaker as in the electrical panel but one that can usually be reset if it trips due to low load when the batteries are low. Junior replaced the outside shower and breaker but it didn't fix the problem. Turns out the solenoid that tells the battery disconnect to turn on and off was not working so the batteries were not charging. We had to stay an extra day till Junior could order the part but on Friday, around 2, we hit the road for Rockdale, TX.
While I was doing my internship at White Violet Center, you may recall that I did my project on aquaponics. One of the farms that is big into aquaponics is located in nearby Cameron, TX and had a farm tour scheduled for yesterday so we signed up. Sand Creek Farm participates in a CSA program but they have four high tunnels and in three of them they do aquaponics. They grow many vegetables outdoors in the ground but they grow a lot of specialized things indoors, where they grow super fast and virtually free from pests. He grows a whole lot of Asian greens that I had never heard of before and he said they grow really well in an aquaponic environment. Onions, that typically take 100 days to grow in the ground...he grows them in 8 weeks. The seeds are started in a vermiculite/coconut coir mixture in little net pots (bottoms have a lot of openings in them to let water in). The pots sit in cut outs in the foam board, that is floating on top of the water in the troughs. You can see the fish tank in the background behind Ben i this picture on the right. He has silver sheets of rigid insulation around the tank and on top of it to keep heat in during this cold snap that Texas is having. The basic concept of aquaponics is that the fish poop, which provides the nutrients that the plants need. The fish poo water is pumped into the troughs where the vegetables grow and the plants extract all the waste products, creating clean water that is returned to the fish tank. Cool, huh ? It's a symbiotic relationship of raising healthy fish and vegetables in a closed loop system. In our country over 60% of our fish come from China, which has sometimes had unscrupulous practices when it comes to food production. Wouldn't it be cool if we could get enough aquaponic farmers in this country so that we could provide our own sources of fish. Ben uses Perch and Tilapia in his tanks but there are many other types that can be used, depending on what temperatures you hold to have in your system. In cold climates, trout would be a good source because they are a cold water fish.
During our tour, we also got to see his cheese room, where he produces Havarti and Gouda cheese. Look at those beautiful wheels of cheese ! The cows that he milks used to be wild, free range type of cows and he would have to round them up and lasso them to bring them in to milk them. They are now accustomed to being milked so it's not a rodeo every time he needs them to come to the barn at milking time. I can't even imagine how wild a time that must have been. He also makes yogurt and had a batch in the oven when we were there. It was a really neat farm and there were 42 people on our tour. It was raining lightly while we were touring and once we got home, it really started to pour and continued through the night.














Linda eating Red Russian Kale that Ben picked out of the garden. She loved it !








As I finish up this post, we are rolling down the highway towards Waco. We should arrive in Keene around 1:30.  Time enough to get set up, get some lunch and settle in for NASCAR. Tomorrow morning we start our training at home office. We're excited to learn new things and work to develop the northern region of Texas. We feel great things are just over the horizon. Nothing's gonna stop us from going full steam ahead !

Linda Arrived !

It wasn’t a quick fix to get the steps on the rig so they would retract. Nothing, that $425 won’t fix. The motor that runs the steps going in and out was shot. It didn’t have very much power so it had to be replaced. They ordered the new motor on Monday and it came in on Tuesday morning. Linda also noticed that there are several cracks in the fiberglass and the RV guys said sometimes that happens in the cold winter weather. What’s with that ?!? Not happy at all about that and today I looked and there are even more from her drive out here. Not acceptable for a rig that is 28 months old ! I will be contacting Thor about that.
Linda got on the road about 11 a.m. on Tuesday and kept on driving until she arrived here a little after 10 p.m. It was so great to see her. We got the rig settled in the back parking lot and Boomer is staying over in the White Violet Center, in Tracy’s office. She has a dog bed in there and he’s happy as a clam. We go over and spend a lot of time with him in the evening and work on fiber projects.
On Tuesday, Linda jumped right into learning all sorts of stuff. She’s learned how to skirt fiber, how to felt soap, how to wind the yarn I spin and put it into a ball of yarn or make it into a skein. She’s made some felted items, using the cookie cutter molds and is getting three batts of fiber ready (which means she knows how to card fiber too) so Sister Moe can show her how to wet felt a hat.

Felting Soap

Winding Yarn

Winding a skein of yarn

She is a fast learner and says she is having lots of fun. Today we went to the barn and helped Tracy do chores. She learned how to scoop alpaca poop and feed them. I have my last morning alpaca duty tomorrow so she will work with me all morning and then we’re going on a field trip out to the guy’s farm who bought a bunch of White Violet’s alpacas. It’s time to trim their toes and give them their deworming shot. BTW we got the preliminary necropsy report and Mariah did have the meningeal worm. She also had pneumonia and something going on with her spleen. Now they know what they are dealing with as they head into springtime weather and the possibility of lots of slugs this summer. It’s scary that four alpacas here were affected by this and Tracy has heard of several other area farms who have had the same thing with some of their alpacas.

Linda’s trying to learn lots more by the end of the week and then we leave here on Saturday. Coming down the home stretch….5 more work days to go and then we’ll be hitting the road again !

The Circle of Life

Today was my last evening shift of checking on the alpacas before I leave White Violet, on the 22nd. Sadly, Mariah has not improved and Tracy has decided that it would be best for Mariah to be put down since she can’t live the way an alpaca should be able to live. The vet will come on Monday and put her to sleep and then she will be taken to Purdue so a necropsy can be performed to find out the cause of her illness. Today her body temperature has been low and you can tell that she doesn’t feel well. She isn’t eating or drinking and is pretty lethargic; just laying in her stall and not moving around at all. Tonight I put her on a heated dog pad to try and make her more comfortable and it did raise her body temp a tiny bit from early this afternoon when I checked it. I hope that she leaves this life on her own terms before Monday and will find Schroeder in a grassy field somewhere over the rainbow bridge where they can run and play. She needs to be at peace after being sick for a while now.
This afternoon was the nuno felting workshop. It was a lot of fun. To get started, lay a long piece of bubble wrap (bubbles facing up) on a table. The first step is to take a piece of silk and lay out the fringe pieces on each end, letting about 1.5” overlap onto the silk.





I chose black silk and purple for my accent color. Next, you take your fiber in wispy little sections and cover the silk, extending over the sides of the fabric and onto the fringe (all of the elements need to felt together so that is why you overlap onto the fringe). You want to make sure the whole thing is covered but you can’t lay it on too thick or it won’t felt together.



Then the accent color is laid on; again in wispy streaks on the fiber, making sure to go out onto the fringe to make it all cohesive. Using warm water and a tiny bit of Dawn, in a squirt bottle (see in the foreground), wet down the project using zig zag motions up and down the table.





Lay another piece of bubble wrap (bubbles facing towards the fabric) on top. Wet the top of the bubble wrap and rub gently to start the felting process. Remove the bubble wrap and fold in your sides to make a nice straight edge. Rub a little bit more to help felt it. Gently fold it all up and flip it over. Cover the blank side of the silk with wispy pieces of fiber, not worrying about the edges since you covered those on the front side. Put your accent colors on again to cover the backside.
Wet the top of the fabric and place the bubble wrap over it and wet that down. Start to rub the surface and check again to see how your edges look.
Now you take a rolling pin or a piece of swimming pool noodle and roll your project onto it. After about 150 rolls inside a towel (to catch all the water that comes running out from inside), it’s almost done. Twenty throws onto the table and then you head to the sink to rinse the soap out of your newly felted scarf. Some tying of the fringe and steaming to finish it off and you’ve got the finished product.

It’s hard to see the coloring on mine (on the left) but you can see how pretty Cindy’s turned out. Cindy is a Methodist minister, from Minnesota, who is here until March. She works with the alpacas and wants to go back to Minnesota and create a farm where non-violent offenders, who are released from prison, can learn new skills and become productive citizens again upon their release from jail. She’s learning to spin yarn with me and wants to learn how to weave too.
The scarf is so lightweight, only weighing around an ounce and it makes a gorgeous, wispy accent piece to wear. Our instructor makes material and creates jackets, using nuno felting, and sells them for $900. Scarfs, like we made today, sell for $60. It was another neat craft to learn about and I’m glad I got to attend the workshop since it filled up so quickly. They have enough people on a waiting list to run another workshop soon. Debby, the instructor, currently has 98 alpacas on her farm and she dyes a lot of her fiber and uses it in all of her projects. Wow, that would be a lot of alpacas to care for, shear and deal with the fiber (keep in mind you get two bags of fiber each time you shear. A blanket fleece and the 2nds so that’s almost 200 bags each spring when she shears.)
Cindy and I continue to spin and this week we learned how to ply two balls of yarn together. Here’s Cindy taking a skein and making it into a ball of yarn so it can be plied. I can’t wait to make something out of the yarn I’ve spun. The initial yarn, when you learn to spin, is chunky and often referred to as “art yarn” since we were inexperienced when we did it. Once you refine your spinning skills, you can get the strand pretty thin and much more consistent. I find it very therapeutic to spin but don’t think I’d ever buy a spinning wheel due to the price and space they take up. I’m still hoping to get a loom at some point but want to work with it some more to decide the size that would be best for us.
Time for bed…so anxious for Linda to get here with the rig so I can see her. It’s been 4 long months since I last saw her ! She was going to leave Sunday morning but this afternoon she couldn’t get the steps to retract so she has to take the rig back to the RV shop Monday morning and hope it’s a quick fix so she can get on the road. Hopefully she’ll still get here on Tuesday….please pray that she has safe travels from Pennsylvania to Indiana.

Spinning

Last week I learned how to spin so I’ve been working on trying to get the technique down. Although Candace told us not to look at the yarn we’re producing (Cindy is learning with me too), Candace said that it looks good. Here is a picture of the loom room. My spinning wheel is the one on the left. We moved the spinning wheels into this room because we needed to get them out of the way for an Alpaca 101 class that they held yesterday. They had a great turnout for the class…one of the attendees came from five hours away. So, I continue to work on my spinning technique so I can create my first skein of yarn.
I finished weaving another scarf. Here is where we trim the fringe and lay our items to dry, after washing them. This area is in the same room as the looms.

This is a commercial loom that someone donated to the center although I’ve never seen anyone work on it. The building where all of these looms are located is in the back of the White Violet Center and it used to be the laundry for the sisters. All of the items would come here to be washed in a commercial laundry area. All of the equipment was ripped out and the sisters are now responsible for doing their own laundry. There are two laundry areas on each floor in the building where I live, as do many of the sisters. One of the sisters must be responsible for putting out fresh towels in the rest rooms cause if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, there’s a fresh towel there. I swear there’s a towel fairy that works hand in hand with the tooth fairy, making evening rounds. 

“Seconds” of fiber, from the skirting process that are located in the fiber room.




The skirting table and the bare shelves where “blankets” of fleece are usually kept. We have all of White Violet’s blankets done. We’re now working on some fiber that was donated to the center. We spend a lot of time on snowy days, sitting around this table skirting fiber.

The brick building, on the right, is the White Violet Center. You can see the smoke stacks of the big furnaces for the complex in the background and the steeple of the church in the left corner.

Sister Ruth was hired to do a portrait of a family’s pet donkey. This was done by felting fiber onto a wet felted base material. She did an awesome job making it look just like the photo that they sent.

I’ve entered two photos into the National Alpaca photo contest. Once all of the entries are in (deadline is 2/18), then I believe the photos all go up on the web for folks to vote on them and the ones with the most votes, from each category, will be printed and sent to Harrisburg, PA (how appropriate that the contest will be back home) to be on display at the National Conference this year and a judge will pick the winner in each category. Wish me luck !!
Not much else going on. I’m on “close” duty this week so in another hour I’ll be going out to check the alpacas water, hay, minerals and condition of the animals. We check to make sure they are all set for the night and Mariah will need to have her physical therapy where we hoist her up with the sling and pulley and exercise her back legs while the weight is off them. She didn’t do so well with it this morning, not wanting to stand at all or put weight on her legs. Hopefully she’ll do better this afternoon.
I think it was last week that I had a really profound and powerful moment, as I was sitting in my room. I was working on the pink scarf on the loom and looked over at my bed. When I packed stuff to come here, I packed an afghan that my grandmother had given me many years ago that means a lot to me. I brought it in case it was cold in my room. On top of that blanket I also have a small lap blanket that my mom made recently because I was freezing a few months ago when the weather started to get colder and I couldn’t get warm. I also have the shawl, that you’ll recall my sister made for me that I wear around my shoulders when it gets chilly. I saw all of these things that great women in my family have made for me and it really struck me (it’s making me cry just to write about it). As hard as my grandmother and my mother tried to teach me, as a kid growing up, how to crochet or do “crafty types of things”, I could never “get it”. Back then my fine motor skills were way better than they are now. I seem to be all thumbs and have no coordination at all now and I’m not sure what that is all about. But I have learned to weave and I’m learning to spin and I’ve learned to felt and I felt a really strong connection to these wonderful women in my life that have done this stuff for so long. Pardon my pun but I felt like a fiber had connected all of us with a commonality that I’d never felt before. It was a strong epiphany for me in that moment and something I will always cherish about what the people here have taught me and given to me.
I hope your week is a powerful one and one full of inspiration and love ! May you find a connection to something new or rekindle a connection to something forgotten. Make the most of the week in front of you.

Merry Christmas from Indiana….

It’s Christmas eve and it’s very quiet in the convent. The other two interns left on Friday to spend time with their families. Linda was hoping to come out here right after Christmas to spend some time with me but couldn’t find anyone to watch Boomer. It’s tough enough to be apart for the holidays but now she is sick with something that resembles the flu. She has body aches, a high temperature, and a sore throat but decided to go to her son’s house anyway so she can spend time with them over Christmas. It would really suck to be home for the first time in the seven years, that we’ve been on the road full-timing, and not be able to spend it with family. Should make her feel better.
I work with Ann in the morning, on alpaca duty, so it will help her get out of here sooner. I’m on alpaca close all week (takes me about an hour each afternoon at 3 p.m.) and watering the new seedlings in the greenhouse. Somehow all of these critters and plants don’t understand that it’s a holiday for people….they just know that they need to eat and be taken care of and those activities don’t take a day off. Tomorrow, after I do the close routine, I’ll go to Sister Maureen’s house to have dinner with her and Sister PB.
Last week we moved thirteen alpacas to their new home, about 30 minutes from here. It wasn’t too bad to halter that many animals and load them up. Two of the thirteen were put in the mini van for the ride to their new home and the rest were loaded into a horse trailer. There is a large lake near their new pasture. When we got them into the new area, they took off for the fence and just stood there looking at the frozen lake. I don’t think they’ve ever seen a body of water like that before. I don’t know if it was either the smell or sight of it that intrigued them so much but they thought it was the coolest thing. There are several more crias to be moved but they won’t go until they’ve been weaned from their moms. Peanut is one of the crias that will go to a new owner. That will be a sad day….I’m hoping that it will be after I’ve left in February.
Yesterday I finished skirting the last blanket of fleeces from our alpacas. Wahoo ! Sister Mo thinks that this is the earliest that they’ve ever finished with the skirting. Now we will start in on some of the fiber that another alpaca farmer gave us from his farm. The goal always is to get each year’s fiber processed before it’s time to shear again. The fiber that has been skirted can now be shipped to the New England Alpaca Fiber Pool to get processed into hats, gloves, scarves, boot inserts, etc. for our store in the White Violet Center. I’m still hoping to learn how to spin and weave before I leave here in eight weeks. There are some workshops coming up in January and February that I should be able to take that will teach me those things.
I’m putting the finishing touches on my project for my internship. Each intern is required to do a project while they are here. My project is on how the dining units can benefit more from the produce raised in the gardens here as it ties into the land ethic that the sisters have created. It’s a twenty page report that I’ve been working on for the last three months so it will be great to see that done and turned in.
It was really cold here this morning. With the wind chill, it was –5 degrees. Once the sun comes out, the temps in the greenhouse really heat up. When I went to water the seedlings at 3, it was 80 degrees in there. Everything is covered in the high tunnel….nice and comfy. The thing that we have to watch is that when the sun comes out, it can create a lot of condensation on the roof of the high tunnel.

If it gets too drippy in there, the plants will start to rot so that is when we need to open the sides or ends to ventilate it and get the condensation out of there. We haven’t had to do that in quite a while because it’s either been really cloudy or cold. We keep an eye on it though.
Guess that’s all that’s going on here. We’ve missed some of the recent snow and ice storms, which is fine by me. Hoping everyone has a blessed Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Until next year, be safe and have fun with friends and family this holiday season.

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 !

Kicking off a new week….

Although our schedules have changed to 9-3 (down from 8-4), now we have evening and weekend tasks to do that makes up for the reduction in our schedule. They feel that the new schedule will more reflect what it’s really like to work on a farm with daily duties and closing up the different areas. This week (Sunday – Saturday) I am responsible for closing the alpacas. That means that I have to go around to the five different alpaca pastures and check that they are ok on water and hay at the end of the day. It’s also watching the animals’ behavior to make sure that none are getting sick or have gotten injured. Mariah, the one who is sickest with the meningeal worm type conditions (we’re still not convinced that is what they have) has to be brought in from the pasture and put in a stall and given grain, hay and water. We’ve started giving Peanut milk supplement again because her weight had plateaued. We can now give the bottle to her standing up which is so much easier than trying to get the little wiggle worm onto our lap. We weighed her yesterday and she’s 19.4 pounds.
Yesterday was my first day of daytime alpaca duty and I worked with Tracy in barn 1. All of the alpacas are due for their deworming medication, which is done by injection. You run your hand down their front shoulder blade and there is a valley there. You pull up on the skin and make a tent and inject the medicine inside that tent. On one of the shots, I must have went in one side of the tent and out the other, right into my left index fingertip. I hadn’t injected any of the medicine yet so was just a poke but it drew blood and was drippy. I joked with Tracy that now I could have all the slugs I wanted to eat cause I was protected. (This shot is the one that is supposed to protect them from the meningeal worm disease that comes from slugs). That was wound #1 for the day. Later on while trying to get a piece of thorn bush off one of the alpacas, I got kicked in the knee and in the elbow. Dang, they are quick. I need to practice my wax on – wax off…Karate kid quickness cause you don’t even see their kick coming. Whap ! Thank goodness it doesn’t hurt…it just gets your attention. Now that I’ve experienced it, I’m all ready to trim their hooves. There’s a whole lot of kicking that can go on with that procedure. We have a bunch of them that need that done soon.

Veggies are growing great. Look at them go in the new high tunnel ! We planted more seeds in pots in the greenhouse yesterday. Swiss chard and kale…Over the weekend the micro greens, peas and lettuce mix came up. It was really nice this weekend. Temps in the greenhouse were up to 90 cause it was so warm outside. Today it’s supposed to hit 57 and tomorrow it will be in the 60’s. We’ll enjoy in while we can cause Thursday it’s gonna snow and this weekend it won’t make it out of the 20’s. Freaky weather !




Here are the vegetable areas of the garden mulched with straw for the winter. This helps to keep the soil moist so it doesn’t get rock hard over the winter and will be easier to prep and plant in the spring.

This is one set of the new bee hives we got from the guy who works on campus. On the warm days, the bees can be seen outside the hive, probably doing their housekeeping chores…cleaning the inside of the hive.
Guess that brings you up to date. Getting ready to go in to start my shift for the day. Hope everyone has a Terrific Tuesday !

Happy Thanksgiving from the farm….

  Blessings to everyone for a great Thanksgiving with family and friends. I will be having dinner with the sisters in Providence Hall (the other dining room where the sisters live) across the street. I’m sure it will be a great meal. Every meal till Monday will be over there so they don’t have to have two staffs here over the holiday.
Peanut has her cast off ! She went to the vet on Tuesday and he         x-rayed it. Everything looked great so off it came. She is confined to quarters for a week so she doesn’t get out in the pasture and go crazy trying to run and hurt herself. I saw her Tuesday night and she was walking stiff legged but the vet said within 2-3 days she’ll be bending it and walking pretty normal. Can’t wait to see her get turned loose in the pasture once she’s let out of the barn….look out other crias. She was giving them a run for their money WITH the cast on; she’ll be a force to be reckoned with without the cast.
It was really cold yesterday morning. 15 degrees outside but with wind chill it was 1 degree…..Luckily we only had to do some watering in the greenhouse so we weren’t outside for long. We packed the CSA on Tuesday (instead of Wednesday) in case were traveling for the holiday and they could have their food sooner. This week they got Japanese turnips, from the high tunnel. These are so mild and yummy. We also dug up the purple topped ones too. Just in one week they were frozen into the ground and we had to use a fork to get them out. We use a lettuce knife (I call it a machete) to cut the tops off while we’re out in the field. I had to use the handle end to remove the huge clumps of dirt, that were frozen to the turnips. With the spaghetti and butternut squash we had in storage, they had a pretty heavy bag of food for this week’s pick-up.
We have a really serious health issue going on with four of the alpacas that are in pasture 2. Last week, Tracy noticed that several of them were really wobbly in their hind quarters and their gait was off. She called the vet and once he arrived we moved the herd around so he could watch them walk. Two of them seemed to short step with their hind legs and when they turned quickly, they’d fall down and have a hard time getting back up. He checked their temperatures and tested their hind legs. With all four, it seemed to be their rear left leg that was impacted. The vet checked the pastures, for toxic plants, because we think it’s really weird that four have come down with something at the same time. Their symptoms mimic what happens if they are infected with the meningeal worm. It’s a worm that is carried in white tail deer. The life cycle of the meningeal worm requires terrestrial snails or slugs to serve as intermediate hosts. White-tailed deer become infected with P. tenius by eating snails or slugs that contain the infective stage of the larvae. The larvae migrate through the deer's gut and eventually move into the central nervous system where they mature into adults, produce eggs, and the life cycle begins again when they excrete the eggs in their feces. However, when P. tenius-infected snails and slugs are ingested by aberrant hosts, such as small ruminants, the larvae migrate into the brain and/or spinal cord and cause various neurological problems.
In an abnormal host, the larvae do not mature into adults, but rather wander through the central nervous system causing inflammation and swelling which damages sensitive nervous tissue producing a variety of neurologic symptoms. Experimental evidence suggests that it takes approximately 10 to 14 days for the parasite to reach the brain and/or spinal cord after the animal eats the infected snail or slug. It’s a very serious disease that can be fatal for alpacas. Mariah seems to be affected the most. They’ve put her in a pen in the barn so they can keep an eye on her. She is able to get up on her own and all the animals, in that pasture, are being treated with medication. They get monthly worm medicine so we’re not sure if they got a bad batch or what happened but they’re aggressively treating it to try and reverse the affects and save the alpacas. I’m hoping that they caught it in time so they don’t lose any of the alpacas.
We’ve started some flats of seeds in the greenhouse. We have 13 of peas (we’ll harvest pea shoots from them), 10 of micro greens and 10 of lettuce mix. They get checked daily to see if they need to be watered. Depending on the outside temps, if it gets warm enough we have to vent the high tunnels. It’s been too cold lately to open them; there’s a fine line between keeping the heat in and building up too much condensation in them that they have to be watched.  
Oh, I promised a picture of my hat. Once I finished it up on Monday, I’ve been wearing it and it really keeps my head warm in all the cold weather we’ve been having. I got a bunch of positive comments from the sisters in the dining room the other day. They thought I did a really good job on it. I’m happy with it. I might try to find a small mold, from which I can make a little alpaca, and dry felt it onto the front of it. Will look for that this weekend. Lots to do on my four day weekend. Football, reading, eating, felting, working (I start to do the close of alpaca pastures starting on Sunday night) and resting…..Hope you all have equally fun weekends as well.