Monday, June 11, 2012

High Park fire, Colorado

Just an update on the fire near Fort Collins. It is now burning 36,900 acres, all uncontained. The only fall out that we are having is the air is all smoky and we are getting the ash fall out. Here is a picture at 6pm overlooking our livestock shelters. It is a sunny day, but the sun is orange behind all the smoke, and it is dark and gloomy. These pictures I took on June 14TH overlooking the town of Nunn. While doing chores this morning, I found some ash that had blown into the barn from the winds. I used my index finger for scale. We are 25miles northeast of Fort Collins, so this ash traveled far. Someone emailed me and they had this saying attached to their email, which I thought was appropriate. "In God We Trust" but NOT a single politician! More later...........................................................

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Wool Festival, and High Park Fire

Yesterday Dennis and I enjoyed the day by going to the annual Wool Festival in Estes Park Colorado. The temps down on the plains(where we live) were in the upper 90's(98 at our front gate) so it was nice to go 2000 feet higher elevation to the cooler temps in the 70's. It was a beautiful clear day. Here is a picture of me looking at some of the vendors products. The felted hats, scarves and lacy shawls seemed to be the real crowd drawers. Along with the beautifully and artfully hand dyed yarns. I got several good ideas for projects that I want to tackle, and really got me motivated to exercise my artistic side. I really had to restain myself, and only made two purchases. The 3 felted pieces to the right of the picture are a future felted flower that will embellish a tote bag that I felted. You can see the oyster shell button that will serve as the center of the flower. To the left of the picture is a 30 inch tail spun yarn, that I just loved the color of. I have taken a spinning class and learned how to do this back when I lived in Arizona. This will embellish as a hat band, a knitted, then fulled, rolled brim hat that I intend to make. I received the pattern from a gal from Wisconsin. So, I went away from the market with not having spent a lot of money, but my enthusiasm and to- do list are priceless! Some of the animals that are all fiber bearing that we encountered. This is a pen of Jacobs sheep and their lambs. This is a Jacobs ram, with 4 horns, and I do believe they can get up to 6 horns. Here is a gal grooming her Lincoln sheep for the show ring. HIGH PARK FIRE When we left the animal enclosures and first stepped outside, it felt like something out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". As people were standing around taking pictures and gazing off to the east. A huge billowing cloud had been forming, unbeknownst to us up in Estes, it was the start of the High Park Fire that was burning 25 miles northwest of Fort Collins. So far as of this morning, 8000 acres have been burned, with temps in the 90's and humidity level or 5-10% and wind, the conditions for fire were right. We live 50 miles east of this fire and can see the smoke and smell the fire. Brings back memories of all the camp outs we have had over the years, the only thing missing are the s'mores. The predicted winds for this afternoon are to be in the 40's. We are praying that all two legged and four leggeds are OK up there. More later......................................................................

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

family gatherings, and June

Well, not all June, some from the end of May. Starting off we have had record breaking temps in the 90's for June thus far. Memorial Day was spent with Ryans family, the previous day we spent with Tera and Brady celebrating Tera's birthday down in Denver. Here is a table runner that I made for Tera.The animal print to the border really made this runner "pop"! Here is Grandma holding little Kaitlin. She is not too happy at the moment, but I am beaming! But Lily was her usual jovial self!Here she is showing me a toy . BARN DOINGS I am still milking my 4 Nubians does going on 13 months now. I have all this extra milk so acquired two little boer cross goats to bottle. Dangerous I know. Have not named them, but they are so cute. And a good use for the extra milk. A new use for baling twine? Living out in the country and feeding ruminants, we have a wealth of baling twine off of all the hay that we feed. We had left this twine up in the sheep shelter, where we had a heat lamp hanging this winter. Well the industrialous barn swallows decided that it would be a perfect place to set up housekeeping. Here is a picture of their nest being held up with just baling twine and a thin strand of wire. So, I went on Google and looked up how to make barn swallow nests, and built a few platforms for them in the remaining two shelters. So far no one has used them. We just love the antics of the barn swallows. Their diving and dipping into the ponds for water is truly entertaining for us. With all the warmer than normal weather that we have been enjoying this early in June, I have an algae bloom in my pond. The pond is worth its weight in gold however, with all the birds that it attracts. I get a close up view of those Meadowlarks. My pond mentor reassures me that once the water lilies get bigger, it will shade the pond and there will be less algae.The plants in the black ring are water hyacinths, they also help in algae control by picking up the nutrients with their roots. We are looking foward to the wool festival in Estes Park this coming weekend. Then my Alaskan cruise the 16th of June. Alaska is somewhat similar to Colorado in weather, you really don't know if you should dress for summer or winter, so need to take along clothes to cover you for both. Packing in a carry on will pose to be a challange. Otherwise, just doing stuff around the farm, and keeping up with my library group. The last book I read was "Back Roads" by Tawni O'dell. Yikes, dysfunction and mental illness in that family. I am still not liking the new blog format, I stll can't figure out where spell check is, so bear with me all the words that are spelled incorrectly, and my paragraphs don't seem to stay. More later..............................................................................