Home again

Dave and I arrived home to find the gate lying on the ground and the ram pasture empty. Rats! Escaped animals always meant forging through the poison ivy, circling the pasture fences and when we finally found the sheep, patiently encouraging them through the woods and around the perimeter of the pastures until they reached a gate.

At least this time we were only missing the three rams, not 50 ewes and half a hundred lambs. Dave walked south and I walked north up through the woods, just like we have done many times over the years. But the big difference this time was that we both had our cell phones. I had just trudged through the first poison ivy patch when my phone rang.

“I’ve got ‘em.” Dave said. “We’re heading north toward the gate to the home pasture.”

I ran back to the house. If I stood smack in the middle of the drive way, the rams might turn left when they came out of the woods, onto the path to the home pasture, instead of continuing on up the driveway.

They ambled into view, placidly turned left and continued into the home pasture where they immediately began grazing. Perhaps they were just as glad to be home as we were to have them home.

Lines of communication

Our regional electric cooperative hires a forester to help protect the power lines from tree damage, thus cutting off the flow of electricity. I think it’s a great idea. I always assumed that it was just some guy who decided to rip up the trees along a power line, without regard to the effects. I was glad to hear that a professional forester was in charge.

Our area of the cooperative was due for cleanup this summer. Dave talked with the forester, walked through our woods from the road to the house with her and discussed the best ways to do things. They could either trim branches, remove branches or cut down trees that directly affected the power line. Trimming branches meant they’d have to come back in a few years to trim branches again. Removing branches gave them a slightly longer time span before repeating the process. Cutting down the individual trees made the most sense from the point of view of the power company. Since none of the trees they would cut were landscape trees and most were box elder, a soft maple that isn’t a particularly nice wood for carpentry or carving, removing the trees seemed the best path to us too.

They began with one truck and a small grove of trees in the middle of our hayfield. It would be a relief to have those trees out of the way. I always dreaded driving the tractor-baler- hay wagon procession around the clump. I frequently lost bales to the low hanging branches and dreaded the day I would lose one of our employees. And furthermore, it was hard to judge how close I should be to the trees to meet up with the proper row of cut hay on the other side of the grove.

Next day we were vaccinating lambs in the barn. I heard the growl of machinery all morning, but was still stunned to see an white and yellow cherry picker bucket up at the top of one of the trees behind our house. As I watched, the man in the bucket raised his chain saw one handed over his head, made a slice, and grabbed the branch with the other hand to guide it’s path to the forest floor. The bucket lowered slightly and he repeated the gesture. It was mesmerizing.

After six or ten branches, he lowered his bucket to the ground. That was when I noticed the other vehicles in our woods. There were two cherry pickers, a chopper and at least one miscellaneous truck. This was not the one man with a chainsaw carefully pruning the trees in our woods that I had imagined. This was a crew creating a superhighway through our property.

What were they doing? Why? I walked down into the trees, trying to control my anxiety. It’s okay, I told myself, Dave okayed this, I thought. Would they stop cutting before they reached our plum tree, the one that had never produced fruit in thirty years, but still every year I hoped for white flowers and small purple plums? I was almost too full of emotion to speak.

I knew that the trees were a problem for the power line, but couldn’t they have talked to us about laying underground lines down our driveway before they ravaged the woods? If you have big machinery, you use big machinery. My vision of the single man with a chain saw was due to my lack of imagination, not their attempt to mislead me. They couldn’t imagine taking down a tree with a single man and a chainsaw. I couldn’t imagine driving four large vehicles through our woods.


To the background roar of the chopper and two chainsaws, I talked to a man in a yellow hard hat with a clip board. He put me at ease. First, they were chopping the branches and spreading the mulch on the forest floor - a really good idea. Not only would it decompose back into the forest, building up the topsoil and returning the nutrients to the earth, but it covered up the old strands of barbed wire fence that had lain on the ground since long before we bought the property. Second, they were stacking the logs they cut so that we could burn them in the wood stoves next winter. Box elder isn’t one of the long burning, high energy woods, but it would be great for spring and fall when we didn’t need quite as much heat. Finally, I realized that they had built their superhighway through the scruffiest part of our woods. Only the violets bloomed there in the spring, none of the other wild flowers that I had found or carefully transplanted to bring back the ecological richness and diversity to a woods that had been lumbered over one hundred years ago and then grazed by cattle for many years. My wild ginger, bluebells, trilliums, wood anemone and rue anemone, Dutchmen’s britches and showy orchis were safe.

I had thought I knew what was happening to our woods and they thought we knew. It was no one’s fault that even though we were talking, we really weren’t communicating. It was a good lesson for me on how what one hopes doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with reality, and also on watching and listening a little longer before I say something. The woods will recover. The apple trees in our yard are no longer overshadowed by the box elder trees in the woods behind them. The extra light in that section of the woods may bring new spring flowers. We have some wood cut for winter and it is only the beginning of June. The actual outcome is exactly what I would have imagined, if the lines of communication had included telepathy.

In my peony bed

a shriveled phlox
in my peony bed
herbicide drift

This is a lawn

We have an unusual lawn. We use a human powered push mower to cut it, so our yard isn’t very big, but it is lovely and functional. The forget-me-not seeds blew off the tables at our daughter Laurel’s wedding seven years ago. The lamium grew beyond the edges of our shade garden. The dandelions volunteered from the hayfield to add yellow accents.

The dandelions will be dug. The lamium and forget-me-nots will be mowed. As will the grass. As the summer progresses, a few more forget-me-nots will bloom and the lamium will creep further into the lawn. But I don’t care; I’ve never had such a beautiful lawn!

After we mow it, the lawn works fine for walking on, for picnics, for kub and whip darts and blowing bubbles. What more can you ask of a lawn?

Fields of dandelions

I never expected that the result of twenty-seven years of carefully tending our farm would be a field full of dandelions. Somewhere, we went wrong. We aren’t alone with the problem, I’ve heard others bemoaning their dandelions, but we are on the extreme edge. One of the problems of limiting spraying with herbicides and keeping our fields in alfalfa as long as possible is that weeds do have a chance to become established. The dandelions are way beyond established, they are close to dominant.

This spring we decided that we had to dig the fields and replant the alfalfa. With our dandelion situation, we didn’t see any way to only replant half of our acreage. The blooming dandelions on the unplanted field would easily re-infect the clean fields.

Unfortunately, you can’t replant alfalfa in a field in which alfalfa has been growing. It is auto toxic, meaning that the old alfalfa plants left a toxin in the soil that inhibits alfalfa seed. It makes no sense to me, but may account for past crop failures. So we will plant something else this year and alfalfa next year. Our first choice as a crop for this summer was oats. We used to feed oats to our sheep, but we can’t buy them any more – hardly anybody plants oats because they can make so much more money on soybeans and corn.

We have a tractor, a haybine for cutting hay, a baler for baling hay, a disc for lightly scraping the fields and a rotary mower for cutting pastures. We’ve never bought equipment for seeding or harvesting grains. We don’t intend to. Our land is hilly and our fields are small. It isn’t good land for growing grains. June rains wash the seedlings and the topsoil down the hills. The big new planters and combines are too big for our steep hills and sharp curves.

So we have to find someone else to plant and harvest our grains. They will take most of the crop in trade for their work. No one would plant oats for us, but a neighbor offered to plant Roundup Ready soybeans. These genetically modified soybeans can be sprayed with the herbicide Roundup and not be hurt. The soybeans have the advantage of allowing us to spray the hell out of the dandelions on our land and still get a crop this year.

It has the disadvantage of going against everything we’ve been trying to do on our farm. Yes, Roundup is one of the less horrendous herbicides, even useable on organic crops, but I am not happy with the research I’ve read lately about how using Roundup changes the soil and decreases yields over time. If we use it just this once, and then not for ten years perhaps we will be doing as little damage as possible for the best outcome. I just wish there was a clear cut, unambiguous solution to the problem of fields of dandelions.

A flash of color

photo by Alice Ellison

I saw a flash of yellow in the woods. Of course, it moved too fast for me to locate it again, but once I started looking, there was color everywhere.

A scarlet tanager paused on a branch high above and then was gone. A hummingbird hovered over a purple ground ivy flower – guess that noxious weed is good for something. A pair of shocking orange and black orioles argued over the oranges Dave set out for them.

Now, when our eyes are tired of the subdued tones of winter, just as the leaves are beginning to open, we are so grateful for variety; everything is intense. The colors of summer can never be as brilliant as these spring displays. Or perhaps it is the juxtaposition of black and color, the sharp demarcation between wing and back feathers that delights our eyes. Whatever it is, that flash of color in the woods is like water to the thirsty, or food to the hungry. That flash of color sings in our hearts like the birds or the spring peepers – joy, joy, joy.

From Sheep to Shawl

My newest book has been released!

Fiber people occasionally have contests during which a group of women (usually) begin with a sheep and end up with a beautiful shawl. A shearer shears the sheep; spinners spin the wool into yarn; weavers weave the yarn into fabric, and by the end of the day, the group has produced a beautiful woven shawl - from sheep to shawl in one day.

My book was twelve years in the making. It tells the stories of sheep, of shepherds, of spinners and weavers and knitters and felters and crocheters, of fiber people in general. The book is a slice through the life of a fiber person, a peek into my brain as I move through life.

I only entered one sheep to shawl contest, back when I was a beginning spinner and mostly only knew beginning spinners. Our shawl was dreadful - lumpy and heavy. The folks we were competing against spun and wove a beautiful lace piece. The day was spoiled for me by the competition (and I guess by the fact that we lost.) In general, I love the fact that fiber folks support each other, help each other learn, the exact opposite of competing to see who is best. But still the concept of "sheep to shawl", encapsulating the entire process in a single day, is attractive.

And so I present From Sheep to Shawl: stories and patterns for fiber lovers, encapsulating the entire process in a book.

For more information or to order the book, contact the publisher, Athena Gracyk at www.wanderingminstrelpress.com