Sheep Shearer comes to Wakefield

We have the greatest sheep shearer.  She's the only woman shearer in Quebec, and drives up, down and around to farms all over. She travels with her own border collie, who worked in tandem with Chloe to gather round the sheep. Then she plugged in the shearer and away she went. It takes her about a minute to shave each sheep. She holds them in place with her legs and the sheep stay calm as can be during the whole coif.

She shears each sheep the same way. She's an athlete. This is a sport.

This one has the shorn wool flipped up over its head. 

Then she flings the wool into a big pile

What to do with all of that wool. You'd think that it's a commodity, but it's not, really. It's gross- filthy and full of bugs. I washed a cleanish white coat, and was going to use it to stuff a cushion. I filled a big bucket and used shampoo and rinsed it 3 times. My friend Jill used some wool for felting and made this nifty pot holder, which she gave me.

Cinnamon Sunday

It was a beautiful weekend, and a perfect weekend to hay, as it takes 3 days to cut, rake and then bale. Here is the cutting:

  


Tim was visiting for the weekend, and I made cinnamon rolls using Jim Lahey's famous No Knead Bread Recipe partnered with The Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Roll Recipe (click on the links to check those out). Did this because Jim Lahey's bread recipe is so much easier (mix 4 ingredients, wait overnight and you're in business) and the result is delicious.

These are very sloppy and are one reason why I will never have my own cooking show.

Our Border Collie, Chloe, drove the sheep into the orchard field.

We cleaned out the cupboard and fed it to the pig.

Can of jackfruit, some old granola bars, stale Wherther's candies, melting chocolate, bread crumbs, strawberry ice cream in a broth of Caesar cocktail

"Can't talk. Eating." 

The pig lives in this barn in the field over from ours

We saw 10 new baby ducks! How did I not photograph this? I was in awe.

We walked to the neighbours to admire their new foal. He has one blue eye and one brown one, and is gentle and lovely, now 3 months old.

We found the one black eyed Susan that came up on the hillside, I've been trying to get these growing for a while, no dice.

Picked borscht ingredients

And marvelled at how we have a million green tomatoes but not a single red one, and it's the end of August.

And we picked sweet peas for my mother, which are also very late this year, but still taste very nice.

And that is how we spent this Sunday.

Nasturtiums!

I love nasturtiums. They grow in the most un-fertile dirt, look beautiful, and you can eat the flowers in a salad- they taste like mustard. They choke out the weeds, which on our farm is a huge plus. I nearly called this blog Wakefield Weeder, since weeding obsesses so much of my time.  

Nasturtiums are so easy to grow, they are annuals, and then at the end of the season, from the flowers (in August/September) come beautiful little brain-shaped seeds

Which can be collected, and then spread  to dry on a piece of newspaper somewhere warm and dry over the winter. 

Nasturtium seeds

I collected and dried these late last September, and then planted them this spring. They all came up, no problem.

Dried seeds

Caesar Sundays at Kaffe 1870

I love Caesar Sundays at Kaffe 1870, Wakefield.  Here are pair of perfect Caesars by Tom the 1870 mixologist, bookending Leigh's honey blue cheese dip. She makes an awesome dill pickle dip too, which I have tried to replicate at home in the Cuisinart, it involves pickles, dill, sour cream, and I put in a little onion soup mix. Hers is better.

A spoonful of horseradish is the secret ingredient

I love this place, and everyone responsible for making it so awesome. Paul and Andree's Friday 50-50 lottery to help the community. And Danny, who is bartender + sunshine. The wall with all of the town's dog pictures, framed, including one we gave them of our dog. 

I've always admired Lucinda, she looks so smart and gentle. And the live music: recently we saw the awesome Hydrothermal Vents from Montreal. The staff music shuffle selections are pretty great too. This Sunday, as we were leaving we heard the Lemonheads "It's a shame about Ray." 

Kaffe 1870's motto: "Good food, good drinks, pretty good times."

I love Wakefield.

Red Currant Jelly

I was up at the cottage, and it was pretty cool and cloudy out, it has been a funny summer weather wise.

I had picked about a litre (3 1/2 cups) of red currants at the farm, so decided that it was a good day to make jelly. The Joy of Cooking says that no pectin is needed for currants, since they have their own. So, I put them in a pot, with a tiny bit of water - Joy of Cooking says that you don't have to remove the stems.

Then I mashed them up a bit with a potato masher and boiled them down for 10-15 minutes to get out the juice. And then just used a regular old strainer instead of a cheese cloth which cut down on the mess. It makes a less clear jelly, but so what. I pressed through all of the juice, and had 2 cups, to which I added 2 cups of sugar, and boiled for 30 minutes. That's what Joy says, 3/4 to 1 cup of regular granulated sugar per cup of juice.

The jelly is ready when you can spoon a little puddle onto a plate and put it in the freezer, and after 2-3 minutes it is gelled when you run a finger through. This is actually called the freezer test. Like I said- took about 30 minutes of boiling on medium high, lid off.

Then I poured them into the jars that I could find, and they set in the fridge. Tart, tasty and no pectin necessary. Can keep in the fridge for a few months.

Portraits I have painted

These are from the beginning, when I started taking lessons a few years ago. Disclaimer: I know these are cac. Portraits are difficult for me; to get a likeness is one thing, and then the millions of colors that go into skin tone is another. 

My first portrait.  I had no clue where to even start. In class, Chui said sketch with burnt umber thinned with turpentine to make the overall oval-ish shape of the head (including the top of the skull/hair), and then the eyes are just higher than midway of the overall oval. Then the nose, midway between the eyes and the chin.  Relate the ears to the level of the eyes. I learned that the top lip is darker than the bottom lip because of the shadows, and that alizarin crimson with white and orange is a good lip color.  Chui put the highlights in her hair, at the top of her head, a very light, cold, bluish-reddish brown.  It's fun to get to know the models a bit; at the breaks this model said that sitting for us was cutting into her social life, since there was this guy that wanted to ask her out on a date and it always was on portrait night. We agreed that it was  good to be mysterious. For all of these models, my portraits do not identify them, they look like cousins of the sitters.

Next there was this young blond gal, weird hostile expression, unrelaxed posture. That's the way I painted her, not the way she actually looked. And I gave her a five o'clock shadow by accident. Blue in the skin tone is way too cold. Mauve, ocher and browns are better shadow colors.

In the next session, I tried to fix things somewhat. I learned that if you make things light, it brings things forward, like that great chickeny sinew she has coming out of her neck. Accident. Onward.

It's important to relate the level of the chin to the level of the shoulder. Which I did not do in this next one, mine's the one in the foreground. So she looks like she's a military recruit. Chui's is the one on the far right, and in it the model is relaxed, lissome, lovely. 

This next guy was a very nice person, the neighbor of someone. Chui was away, and so we just all got together anyway. I had just learned that my dog was sick, and he was so nice about it to me. Sitting up close to the portrait, I kept thinking my colors were bright enough, but then I'd step back and everything was chalky. I was sitting next to Denise, who is a very good portraitist, and she said "Just go for it!" color wise, and so I put cadmium red on the ears and in the corners of the eyes the way I saw it; it was sort of freeing. This however looks suspiciously like my brother. I don't know why that happens, but it does. One starts to paint self and relatives by accident. 

And this one is Denise's, millions of times better.

Anna, was a lot of fun to paint. She was a florist at a grocery store, and one of my classmates was shopping, saw her, and outright asked her to sit for our portrait group.   She said, "Sure! Sounds like fun!" She wore a fun dress. She was sweet, after class went around and took photos of each of the portraits. This is one of the first sessions with her.

Then this, I liked her expression back then. I shouldn't have touched it. Chui taught me that the color of the hand has a lot of violet in it, which was exactly right. I was surprised. He also told me to put a nice shadow under her bottom lip, with some ocher yellow in it. The skin color is cadmium red mixed with white, with a touch of cadmium yellow, a very pure color. 

And then I went and ruined her face. I don't even really know where I screwed up. I shortened her face and other things. I now realize that when you like the way things look, leave them alone. She looks sort of mean, now. Better is the enemy of good.

I sat as the model for my class, and learned a lot in doing so. I am not going to post the portraits here, but at the time I was holding my dog (by request from my classmates) and this is a detail of little Sadie painted by Chui. I learned that everyone's expressions vary quite a bit while posing (mine not the dog's), and to try to paint the models to look neutral and attractive. To choose the time when eyes when they are brightest, not to capture a downward mouth scowl or shadows that are too harsh. To try to paint someone at their natural best.

You can see how Sadie's snout and paws are lighter and this brings them forward, the come out of the painting.

This next gal was very self involved, would cancel at the last minute, and then went and cut her hair off midway through, which kind of screwed all of us up. She was very flighty and unapologetic, a ballet teacher of 5 year old kids. She was a pretty girl though, and sat very still, fixed her eyes on one spot and didn't move them; good qualities in a model. This is midway through, her skin is very chalky. 

With a little more work but still all sorts of problems

For her, I will sand off the paint and then paint over with acrylic gesso. Then the canvas can be re used.

This model is from Shanghai, an acquaintance of a group member. Chui advised me to divide up the shadowy dark part from the light part of his face. Then he corrected: he made the nose area dark using crimson, as this really was the darkest part of the model's face. I watched in awe. Crimson. I wouldn't have thought to do that. 

Then at the next lesson, Chui had me correct and refine the portrait, darken the eyes, reshape the head. Though I feel I like my previous less professional, more wonky version of the portrait, somehow.

This one is of J's mother, it was difficult to put color in place of black and white but I had Chui teaching me. Under the chin is red, blue and gold ocher.  I used a flyer from Holt Renfrew with a model who had similar coloring to try to get the tones right. 

And a sheep portrait. Does this count? The sheep had a human expression, I thought, though I didn't capture it especially well.

I painted this of my mother reading to me when I was young, heavily coached by Chui. He just knows how to add that milky colored highlight to the hair. He knows everything.

And that is the photo diary of every portrait that I've ever done.

Animal Farm

Here are some of our Highland cattle, with some dark and stormy clouds in the sky. We have about 20 cows now. The thing about cows is they are a pain. Lots of grass in the fields for them to eat, but at a point, they need to break a fence and go through it. And they are too hairy for the electric fences to stop or even bother them. So there is a lot of fence mending that goes on around here.



The calves are pretty lovely looking. Not always easy to deliver though, we had to take a crash course in this via a veterinary website power point. We sat in Kaffe 1870 and went through the whole thing over a couple of pints. Key pointers: never use a tractor, ever.  Always make sure that the calf first has both front feet out, ready to dive out of the mother -- then pull, using human arm strength only.  We have lost at least 2 mothers during the birthing process. 

The chickens are pretty easy; the laying hens are surprisingly bright, and they are great garburators- old bread, cereal, semi rotten tomatoes. In fact one of my favorite things is rolling the fallen tomatoes to them, they pick them up with their beaks and run around. Their eggs taste pretty great too. They lay a dozen a day.

And then their chicks- adorable. It is very important not to mistake a chick egg for an eating egg, cracking an egg with a chick embryo into a frying pan is vile beyond description. 

Sheep- they're not bad. No fence breaking. We had a ram one year brought in for breeding. Normally the farm buys the ram, and then breeds him and then sells him back to the livestock dealer when the ram has serviced all of the sheep. So we got Rambo, and all the sheep seemed to fancy him, but then the next morning he was found four legs up, dead in the pen. No idea what happened. Probably took a heart attack.

And then there's our pig, Chocho. She's fattened up quite a bit since this photo was taken a few months ago. She eats everything. Last weekend I boiled up the stalks  from 3 heads of broccoli in a big pot, and then threw in an old banana, some stale Twizzelers (strawberry), and some leftover cream of wheat. We looked at the pot and declared that in the history of food, these flavors had never before been combined. Chocho ate all of it. In the evening I had two old bottles of salad dressing, which I poured that over her kibble. She ate that also.  

This is our dog Chloe. Here she is watching TV. Her idea of TV anyway, she's watching the roosters before we take them to auction.She is a great dog, so bright. Once, we were walking up on a hill, and far below us, spotted a lamb that got out. I asked Chloe to go and put her back in the pen, and she understood, ran down the hill, and nudged the lamb back in. She is an obedient, kind and good beast. Waits at the door with her two front paws on the threshold until she's invited into the house. 

And here she is as her charming dog self. I love this dog. I cook for this dog- she gets the cracked eggs fried sunny side up. Unfortunately, this gave her a taste for eggs, which she has gone on to steal from our ducks and geese. We noticed 2 things: that Chloe was getting thick through the middle, and that the geese were not breeding. 

Here's one of the geese, taking five in the barn near the tractor. No eggs around her, they were probably already eaten by Chloe.

And almost finally, here is a photo of the Donkey Cat Dog trio, part of the Bremen Town Musicians.

That is our guard donkey, named Donkey, Stoney, one of our cats, and Sadie, my little CKC spaniel. Stoney is always trying to seduce Sadie.

One year we lost 9 sheep to the coyotes, and then our neighbour told us to get a donkey. Since Donkey came into our lives, no sheep loss. Donkey brays and runs around, rounds them up and protects them. He is also so gentle, lets little kids sit on him, and  lets our neighbor file down his hooves with no fuss. 

This is Kidney, he is a great cat and an excellent mouser. He is MIA, I think he has defected to another farm, as was once found him many many miles from us, in the next town actually. Our farm manager found him, and had to drive him home. And now he's gone again.  I don't believe that Kidney was eaten by a coyote, but admit that it is a possibility in our parts. I think one day he will return to us. 

Chloe and Kidney

Kidney

"I gotta get outta here."

And, the horses, Montana and Jake. We can't ride Jake since he has a bum knee, but Monty is alright. Threw me once though- went galloping down that field and then came to a screeching halt, ducked and I went flying over her head. Jake is lying down in this shot. But he's alive, I assure you.

Fall

Winter