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Dear Ellen,

Today is a short day at the farm (we are heading back early for a send off party for a friend enroute to Afghanistan), but we still managed to pack a lot onto the menu.  (Not the least of which was a very yummy stew — 3 varieties of dried beans, quinoa, fennel stalks, rutabaga, savoy cabbage, carrots, onion, leeks and chicken stock plus a half dozen handsful of fresh herbs (sage, thyme and fennel feathers). Cars were washed, a new bird feeder hung and all the feeders and suet cages refilled, yarn wound, woods tromped and web site troubleshot.  I do hope that my forensic tracking identified the correct source of the obnoxious invasion from this week.

I am finding a great deal of pleasure in watching the bird feeders.  This clever red-bellied woodpecker has been frequenting them, but he also is quite self reliant.   Do you see the nut wedged into the bark of the tree?  He put it there and then he pecked it open so he could get the meat out of it.  He’s also partial to sun flower seeds and suet.

Several of our neighbors are into deer farming.  The deer are sold as venison and some of the males are kept to sell their shed antlers to the Chinese as aphrodisiacs.  It is odd to see them in fields like steers, but really not very different in concept.

Dale is continuing to enable my spinning.  Here is a very lovely solid maple and mahogany lazy kate that he built for me.  I haven’t tried it for plying yet, but did put this bobbin on to see if the tensioning mechanism seemed likely to work.  It does.

And here is a close up of the spinning on the kate — a very lovely Bluefaced Leister (70%) and Tussah Silk (30%) blend.  It spins very nicely and finely — except when I have stayed up too late spinning.  He bought it for me at the same time he bought the wheel.   Yes, enabler.  I need to go show my appreciation now.

Love, Jan