Wool Washing Day

This weekend the weather was sunny and warm. I had been contemplating the conundrum of washing wool, since we don't have a predictable supply of hot water. We have an on demand electric water heater, but once I happened to look at the meter box when it was operating, and I was astonished at how fast the meter wheel was spinning. Since then, I have been thinking of alternative ways to heat the large amounts of water that are required for washing the quantity of wool that I currently am shepherding.

My solution: the hot tub! Our wood fired hot tub holds mucho aqua and I can get it all hot with a pile of wood scraps and shavings from the shop. However, I wouldn't be very popular around here if I filled the actual hot tub with wool.. Instead I perched our portable utility sink next to the tub, and put a screen on the other side, then bucketed the hot water into the sink, washed a fleece while stoking the fire and keeping the tub water hot. I let the wool drip for awhile on the screen, then packed a bucket full of wool up to the washing machine and ran it through the spin cycle to extract the remaining water. It dried fast in the warm sun.

The Little Studio that Could

When I was a child one of my favorite stories was The Little Engine that Could. I remember quite clearly the picture of the sweat pouring off the brow of the little engine as she struggled up the mountain pass chanting to herself, "I think I can, I think I can". Last winter I began to envision my own studio space, and that chant came to my mind. There's an old shed on our property, "I think I can make it habitable". I walled off a 10' square section, with scraps of plywood from our building projects, stuffed it with insulation salvaged from a house due for demolition. A nice opening window and door came from our pile of salvaged building supplies. I built shelves from extra lumber we had on hand, an old desk became a work table, and as my engine chugged to the top of the mountain, suddenly I had a comfortable space of my own. The spinning wheel that my dad made for me in 1974 now has a home and I am whirling the wheel in pure bliss whenever I get a spare minute.

Of course there's still more finishing to do, but who can concentrate on carpentry when there is wool to be processed??

Mom's Shearing Poem

My mom creates poems about her life. They come to her late at night, or in the early hours of the morning, blooming in to her creative mind and out in to the world.

April 16, 2009

Harvest

Our festival begins this weekend,

The annual shearing of the sheep.

We spinners wait like vultures,

Eyeing what each of us can keep.

It is a time of gathering, flock and family,

All eager for the changes in store;

The sheep will frolic, light and clean,

The wool folk buried in new fleece galore.

Enticing in its beauty, the fleeces beckon us

Our fingers test its tensile strength,

Our eyes its sheen and crimp.

We users of this harvest must remember

What a gift it is to plunge hands in a fleece;

The shepherd works to keep the flock healthy and safe,

So we like spiders making webs, might carry into our separate corners,

This sacred fiber meal.

by Sally White

Shearing down on the Farm

Last week my Mom phoned and said, "We're shearing tomorrow, can you come down?" I've been looking forward to shearing day. It's a spring ritual, the greening grass, the flowering orchard, the sheep white in the fields, free of their heavy coats. I caught the early morning ferry, and endured 7 hours on the freeway zooming south in my little honda with no back seat, my aging black lab dog shadow, Claws, snoozing on a blanket, half in the trunk, half out.

Friday morning it rained. My brother and I had lured the sheep into the barn the night before and they were dry. The shearers arrived at noon towing their specialized 'shearing wagon'. It was a contraption that had seen many years of service over several generations of shearers. After getting all the sheep lined up, the three shearers went to work. The sheep went up the ramp into the trailer with their woolly coats on, and emerged sheared clean (that's where the term, 'fleeced' comes from!). The lambs got their woolly little behinds clipped. The rain stopped and the sun came out. Mom and I manned the skirting table and selected the finest fleeces to be packed away in boxes for our woolly endeavors for the coming year.











That afternoon and evening the farm resonated with baaing, as lambs tried to locate their mothers who sounded the same but looked entirely different. Perhaps like a young child who doesn't recognize his father after the beard goes away. But this is a body beard!!

I spent a lovely Saturday with Mom, and got some photos of her in her garden.











Claws and I drove home Sunday, the car smelled quite sheepy, with 23 fleeces squirreled away in the trunk and under Claws, who snoozed in cushy comfort. We also brought home some plants from Mom's flower garden, and happy spring memories.

Now I am in wool heaven. I will be washing, teasing, carding and spinning... and somewhere in there I will get my vegetable garden planted!!