Almost there

Our young helper in the tractor

We have passed several milestones in this last week both on the land and some personal ones too. We managed to get the baling almost finished at our neighbour's place. There is still some hay left to cut but they are in awkward places and so were not cut with the majority of it. Our young helper came and she helped Ian by rolling the bales together for collection while I prepared our greenhouse for the felting course that happened this weekend. She was tired when we took her back home, but she did work hard. She even got to ride in the tractor and bale some hay. All good training.

Practising baling, slowly of course.

An oven in a greenhouse! Doesn't everyone have one?

Collecting leaves ready for the following days dyeing

We had to rush to get the hay under cover though. It meant unstacking the bales that were in the trailers and re-stacking those ones under plastic. We then had to get the bales from the field and stack them before getting a second load. We finished off in the rain but at least the bales weren't soaked. Our young helper thought I was very strong, but this is the third round of collecting bales and my muscles have grown in the process. If it had been the first round, maybe not so much. I still love the fact I can clamber around on our tractor trailer when putting on the tarpaulin, I hope I can still do that in years to come. I maybe have to take up some form of exercise over the winter to keep up my strength. Hahaha! We have around 350 bales of hay or more, so about 50 more than we need, which at least means we should have some left over to see us into next year if hay season is late or for any other reason we need more.

Chilled out alpacas.

Sofie, ace mouse catcher.

The roadworks around us are still continuing. They have made some improvements to a bad corner and put in culverts where the road often floods, so at least that is progress. The road also dries out quicker, which is another improvement. We are still hoping they improve the camber of the road though, so we don't go sliding off into the ditches in the winter. Not sure how much further they have to go; they certainly have still got to repair the collapsed section of the road that fell into the river a while back. Apparently after a chat with the foreman today, the collapsed road is another project but we might get some better access to the land and our fields, just maybe not yet. We have a phone number anyway. We also found out why they hadn't contacted us beforehand. Apparently this is just road maintenance and not full roadworks. To them, it's just a little job, to us a major work. A matter of perspective really.

We had to move the spades and forks
further down the greenhouse to put
the oven in

Mr. P. now often spends time longingly gazing in the direction
of the females.

Ian is still continuing to take the male alpacas for mating with the females, although these are more checks to see if they are pregnant. As I have mentioned before, it is generally accepted that females will spit off the males if they are. We suspect that Vanessa is pregnant, or at least we hope so. It is difficult to tell with her, as she is so feisty and doesn't seem to like Mr. P. anyway. She seems more adamant though that he's not coming anywhere near and so that is an encouraging sign, not for poor Mr. P. though who gets covered in green spit. The others may also be pregnant, but some are more compliant and so we have the other problem of there not being a definite sign of a "spit off". We will be more certain when we have a scan done by a vet around November time. Once that is finished that will be it for the year and that could be as early as next week.

A very cheeky George.

Galina explaining to the participants.

We had our only felting course this year at the weekend. There were a multitude of reasons for not running two this year and my recent employment for an EU project is one of them. It was good to welcome our tutor Galina back for her fourth year and she brought her friend along as well again. Galina always feels like it is a holiday for her. Her friend made me some fabulous slippers using some of Herkules' and Freddies' fleece. She used the template I used to make some slippers earlier on in the year, but made some slip ones this time. Great for the morning when clambering out of bed. 

Preparing the fleece for felting my slippers

The slippers I made are on the right and my new slip on
ones on the left.

Galina giving me a telling off and telling me on the first day,
no experiments. Do what I'm supposed to do. She was only
joking, we had a good laugh afterwards.

Preparing a t-shirt for the dyeing process.

The weather was surprisingly good this year. Last year we baked in the greenhouse, this year, it was warm enough to work in and not as much rain as forecast. In fact, we had just about enough rain water to do all the dyeing and felting without having to bring it in from our apartment. We just needed to bring in drinking water. It is good to use the rain water for dyeing as there is too much iron in our apartment water and it affects the results of the dyeing process.

Preparing a pre-felt for adding to the dyed silk shawls. A
pre-felt is a piece of felt that is not fully felted but enough
to cut up into shapes to add to a felting project.

A salad made by Ian from the flowers and leaves I had
collected from our garden.

I organised the food again this year and everyone was welcome to join us. I do not provide food for the participants exactly, it is up to them if they bring their own or contribute something to the meal. In previous years we have used the hotel to provide food but it was more stressful and far too expensive. This way we use food from our own garden and freezer with the addition of some local cheese from our friend, cakes from the local bakery and some sausages from the local butcher. Of course with potatoes, eggs and my own home-made bread the food goes a long way and there is plenty to share. 

Bread fresh from the oven.

Ready for lunch.

Giving instructions on baking bread and scones.

Preparing food was even easier this year as the daughter of our friend who makes the cheese came to help, so brought the cheeses with her (she is the same one who helped us bale the hay earlier in the week). I love the fact that as soon as she had put her bags into the caravan, she went into the greenhouse and started washing up. I didn't even have to tell her, she just knew it would need doing. In fact she was so good we asked if she would help again next year. I do hope she can. It did mean I got to do some felting myself this year

Boiling potatoes.

Local goats cheese.

Lunchtime. A lovely view!

Looking the other way at lunchtime and you can see the
grapes ripening

The wind was from the south this year, which meant we
could leave the doors open and not risk our fleece flying
everywhere. It was also a little overcast most of the time
which meant it was cooler. 

The other milestone was hearing that the final academic article that I needed to go towards my PhD was accepted. I found out on Friday lunchtime and my ecstatic reaction surprised everyone. I am not usually one for enthusiastic outbursts but I was surprised there was no further work to be done on it, apart from a very few editing issues or clarifications before publication. We clinked tea and coffee cups in celebration together. I also heard that the costs for this open access publication will be met too, Yay! I was half expecting to have to pay for it, so rather pleased I'm not, as it amounts to nearly a month's wages and this was one of the cheaper ones. I've seen some astronomical costs for open access papers. It does mean you read it though - if you want to that is (link here).

Wetting the fleece and starting the felting process.

Nooo! Don't go. The storks gathered to leave as we were
eating lunch.

Once the fleece is wet, tables were moved outside to work on.

A shawl with pre-felt leaves being added

Monday meant dealing with the aftermath of washing. Five washing loads were done, albeit in a 4.5kg washing machine and not a big one. Some of it may seem bizarre, such as bubble wrap. My neighbours at the apartment must have wondered why I was washing plastic when they saw it hanging on the line, but it means it is ready for use again. Some of it was catching up with clothes washing. One load a week is our usual, two at the most but I hadn't had the chance to get that done for over a week, so that had mounted up too. There was also bedding from two lots of guests. Still it is nearly all done and the rain held off to get most of it dried. The rest of the wet washing is hanging up in our greenhouse. Sitting around waiting for the washing machine to do the washing meant that I had time to get the final amendments to the paper ready for publication. So a productive end to the week.

Rolling, rolling rolling.

The finished shawl and bubble wrap drying.

Dyed t-shirts and pillow case.

Galina with her sample scarf, a piece of cotton fabric she
dyed for me while I was busy and a participant's t-shirt
dress that was dyed with the leaves from our land.

Carefully felting

Felted bookcover in the process

Galina and participant working together.

My finished shawl, or is it? I haven't decided yet. I think I
might work some more on it.

Two rather well fed pussy cats.

Another shawl made by one of the participants.

Feeding Brencis.

A little chat with Brencis.

Wearing our garments.

Always the way, too many things to hold
onto and finding it difficult to sort it out.

Showing off our garments to the boys, not sure if they were that
impressed but they did like the dandelion leaves.

I was given the shawl a long while ago
but didn't like the colour. Will have to work
out what to do with the dyed material that
goes quite nicely with it.

The boys.

I look so small 😂

End of the course!