It feels impossible to me that we've had this carder for 10 years this coming November, and that this house has been under construction 20 years come November as well!! It is amazing to my how fast time goes when you are busy doing other things.

Next month I will have been out of work for 4 years and in the first 26 months of that 4 years I was to have 2 surgeries on my shoulder and then break my leg/ankle in 5 places 4  months before I was to return to work. And then to have 2 surgeries on that. This coming April will be 2 years since my second ankle surgery. Hopefully I won't be going under the knife again anytime soon.

10 years. That just blows my mind! The carder has been sitting downstairs, under cover, just waiting for me to bring it out. Yesterday and today I got a good cleaning and oiling. There was mouse poop and moth casings on and in the machine. There was LOTS of fiber left in the machine from where we purchased it. That has been removed as much as possible and all of what was left has been vacuumed out. Now I just need to roll it to the other side of the building and put it to work.

Here is the blog post I made originally in 2011.

 

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Yesterday Jerry and I met up with Donna Herrick (more about her and her farm in the next post), to visit Battenkill Fibers in Greenwich, NY to check out and purchase this machine. Of course, I had my camera with me, but I did not get any pictures of the mill, the carder at the mill or in the truck. Where it is 'resting' right now will not be photographed. So, I took the picture and description from their website and gave the address with it. I am so looking forward to 'playing' with this. I need to set up its permanent home before I can plug it in. In the meantime I am reskirting fleeces and lining them up for their turn in the carding machine. There is a gorgeous Border Leicester cross soaking right now.

Here's our beautiful 1950's-vintage 16" Davis and Furber card with custom roving coiler (see front left corner of photo). A hard worker, just like her big sister - only smaller. Perfect for processing the fleeces from individual sheep or alpacas. This allows our customers to brand and market the resulting yarn from each unique animal.    (Taken from http://www.battenkillfibers.com/visit/tour.asp)




Here you can peruse the entire website of Battenkill Fibers. http://www.battenkillfibers.com/
 
This is a page I'll be visiting for a while. http://www.battenkillfibers.com/news.asp 
 
TTFN

I hope to start running some sacrificial fiber through this carder in the next few days (weeks?) A lot depends on how distracted I get in my decluttering journey. 

When we moved here from our last house we did not move everything with us. We went from a 40' x 40' 3 story Gambrel that we built to a 24' x 24' almost 3 story camp. The two bedrooms upstairs were in the rafters of the house. You had to tip your whole upper body in order to get around the end of the bed. The basement was filled with a wood stove, hot water tank, water pump  and a few of our boxes. The camp was called a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, but there was no closets in the house. Now you can't call a room a bedroom with out a closet. Construction started on the new house, around the old house, in November of 2001. When we sold the last house we built, right around the same time construction started on this one, the basement and the garage was filled with boxes. 

Between work, the farm, shearing and haying, there has not been much time left to work on getting rid of stuff that moved from the first house we lived in together for 13 years to all the stuff we've accumulated here in 21 years. But, Lord willing!, this is the year we reclaim every room in our house and the garage. 

As much as I love the mills we use for processing fiber, it is time for me to do it myself!! I am sharing most of our adventure on our Face Book pages, but I am hoping to resurrect my blogs as well this year. As nice as it is to be able to drop a line or two, and maybe a picture, on Face Book, it has gotten very hard to work with as far as farmers and especially with animals sales.  So, I plan to come back to where I started and just share a link to the blog on FB. Here I don't have to worry about politics and PETA. 

Come back soon and see if I can get it up and running and start getting my own fiber processed! In the meantime, get out our fleece blog when you get a chance. I need to get that updated soon as well. We have LOTS of great fiber combinations in roving that Zeilinger Wool Company in MI and Sallie's Fen Fiber Mill her in NH have been making for us!!

TTFN! 

Trying to make myself accountable for the mess in our house and outside.

Jerry does have some room down stairs.

Washed fiber waiting to be processed.

Fiber, fiber every where you look!

I need to spend a week or more down here organizing and cleaning, again!!

Mannequins

Some of this went to the dump today!

My super carder.

1/14/2021 UGH! 

 

 It is hard to believe that the mess was this bad!! It is so easy not to see something when you have seen it almost every day!! Things have improved greatly in the six weeks since this was first posted. I will take pictures and do a 2 month update in a couple of weeks. It makes me feel that much more motivated to continue on now that I've taken the time to re-read this post!!

UGH! It's been a while since I've been here!

 We've been very busy here around the farm, out shearing, out in the hay field, and in the gardens. Despite Covid, we've been busy. The nice thing about farming is you have plenty to do without having to see people. Don't get me wrong, I like people, I just like farming better.

 Right now it is 68 degrees and I am taking a body break from cleaning out one of the gardens of all the dead plants. I've been meaning to, but other things distract me. :)

 I will take, and post some farm pictures later this week. Before we start putting everyone back together. Saturday will be 4 weeks since we started breeding. Yes, we are two months later than normal, but the lambs will be ready to go on other people's pastures when they leave here at 8 weeks. And, thankfully, ALL of our lambs are SOLD!!

I am out of here!! See y'all soon.