Adventures on the Farm

One Sunday in mid-May, my choir friend Peggy approached me after church. She told me that they had started shearing their alpacas - a necessity for the hot summer months ahead. She had a pile of "seconds" (shorter fleece from the neck, belly, legs, etc.), she said, just piled up out in the yard where they had been shearing. And, since there was still so much cleanup and rebuilding work to be done, she wasn't going to have time to deal with any of it.

"Do you want it? Come get it."

I jumped at the chance. I've been working with needle felting, making earrings to sell at craft shows and a small animal or two (scroll down to my "I've never felted this way before" post from 12/27/11 for an example).  The very next day I grabbed a box of black trash bags, jumped in the minivan, and headed north across the river.

The little town on the way to the farm looked like a totally different place - there were still blue tarps on roofs everywhere, but the snarls of debris were gone, buildings had been razed and removed, and telephone poles and electrical wires were back in place. When I got to the farm, the changes were impressive. No more huge piles of debris and brush, and there was even a logging truck onsite to log out some of the huge trees that had fallen. Peggy, Ben, and next-door-neighbor and choir friend Trish had been busy, indeed.

Peggy was out behind the farmhouse, with a lovely little brown alpaca tied to the fence for shearing. (The shearing room had been in one of the barns that had been hit by the tornado.)

I was duly introduced to Braillie, who has cataracts and can't see. And who didn't particularly want to be tied to that fence. While Peg and I were talking, she pulled her lead rope free and started to do the equivalent of an alpaca tip-toe away from us. Peg followed her, talked to her, and tried to lead her back to the fence.

Braillie

Braillie did not... want... to go...

so... down she went!


(Still close enough to be tied, haHAA!)









Once Braillie was secured, Peg took me on a quick meet-and-greet.

miss Lacy

Waiting on deck for shearing: miss Lacy.
She was making a soft little humming noise in her throat. :)

Paca Butt! *snrk*

Jester

This is Jester, one of the farm's "guard llamas". The little alpaca aren't able to protect themselves from predators, but the big bad llamas can take care of coyote and such.

Kayne

Got a great look going, there - sortof alpaca-mullet-poodle   ;)

Capone

Another guard llama. The llamas are much bigger, and they don't have the fluffy "bangs" on their foreheads like the alpaca do. Their fleece is nice - softer than wool - but not as soft as alpaca.

"Dudes - check it out!  We got PEOPLE lookin at us!"

Once the herd saw us, it didn't take long for them to come investigate. Soon, we were surrounded by gentle, curious, newly-shorn (and silly-looking!) little faces.

Beethoven and Auftershock

Texas T

Benny!

(I still giggle when I look at this picture of Benny. Every. Single. Time.)

Little Black Dress

LBD, again

Baby! So young, he doesn't have a name yet. <3

I have a separate bag of fluff from this gorgeous little caramel-colored baby. Young animals' fleece is extra, extra soft. :)

The Pile.

 Once we'd done the meet-and-greet, it was onward for the Business of the Day... the fleece pile!

We started stuffing it into bags, trying to roughly separate it by color.

Going home with me.

Bags of the stuff... and we barely made a dent in the pile!











(I did go back, one more time, after they had finished shearing all of the alpaca. Filled another bag with cream-color, a small bag of gray, and a huge bag of "grab it and stuff it in".)

So now... it's time to cogitate a bit, consider the workings of the world, and figure out what the next step might be. Hint: it might involve mesh lingerie bags, lots of hot water, Dawn dish soap, and a timer.

Oh yeah. I've got myself a project, here.

It started with a big, ugly wind...

Tornado at Borden, IN. Photo by Josh Abelove.

On March 2nd 2012, a series of tornadoes ripped through the countryside of Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky. The toll was was heartbreaking, and among those affected were some church-choir friends of mine and my husband's. Their farm was hit - thankfully, neither they nor their family were injured. Their homes were battered but still standing, but their barns were destroyed, fences and trees downed, and their herd of alpaca and llamas were scattered.

The following Saturday, my husband and I went with a church group to help with some cleanup. We found their small town almost leveled, with a snarl of debris piled high to either side of the road leading through town. Blue tarps were draped over almost every remaining roof, heavy equipment was everywhere, and on several street corners stood canvas pavilions stocked with water, food, and cleanup supplies. It looked like a war zone.

As we drove slowly through the heavy, carefully-moving traffic, I saw that the Tide "Loads of Hope" laundry station was in full swing, and trucks were pulled up to one of the local churches to unload case after case of apple juice, water, and other supplies. The smell of smoke hung faintly in the air, from burn piles on surrounding farms. Chaos reigned - but a closer look showed that Order was slowly beginning to make headway against it.

At the farm, the herd had been rounded up into some temporary pasturage. One llama had been lost to the storm; miraculously, all the other animals had survived and gathered at the fence to watch us as we walked to our work stations. My husband was on a crew to start (safely) dismantling a barn, and I found my way to the back hay field, to take my place in a line of volunteers who were combing every inch of the field for debris. If  a llama shouldn't be eating it, we did our best to find it and pick it up. Any photographs or other important-looking items were to be set aside, so that maybe they could be returned to whoever lost them.

The barn where my husband went to help.

 It was a long, exhausting day - but we knew that we could go back to our warm, dry homes and go on with our normal lives at the end of it. Our friends, however, had a long, long road ahead of them to get back to anything remotely resembling normal.

















A total of 80 volunteers showed up at the farm, the day we were there. Earlier that week, a surprise busload of 50 - complete strangers from a national ministry - had just appeared to help.




Members of our church brought food and served lunch for everyone, and the Little Caesar's Pizza shop in town showed up with stacks of fresh, hot pizza. When we hit the hayfield again after lunch, a lady and her two children stepped over the back fence to bring us water, Gatorade, and granola bars.

It's a day I won't be forgetting any time soon.








And what in the world does this disaster have to do with creativity? If you and I have already "met" online or in Real Life, you already know the answer.

 If not... To Be Continued. :-)

History

Somehow today, I find myself needing to think about History. One of the reasons I started this particular blog was to continue the search for a new creative spark... mine has been seriously sputtering the past few years, and maybe if I use this as an outlet, I can fan the flames a little and find a fresh direction.

When I started playing with herbal crafts in the 1990's, it was purely out of self-defense. I was working in a corporate atmosphere, in software support and training for large advertising agencies. I was stressed at my support post, stressed with travel, and bored mindless with the rounds of software testing and documentation editing in between. I loved training, but usually had to travel to do it. I was more than good at most parts of my job - but to be honest, my negative attitude just trashed all the good things I was doing. The physical surroundings of the job were not helping either – a move from a historic old building and an office with windows to a tiny cubicle in a noisy, modern, dark-purple warehouse/office just simply wasn’t working for me.

So, I started looking to the garden and the herbs for natural ways to combat the stress. Aromatherapy, flaxseed eye pillows, herbs for relaxation in the bath, LOTS of chamomile tea. I started sharing these things with my stressed-out coworkers, then started having little classes for them in my dining room. It was a blast. I found that local ministry groups and craft shops were hosting classes, and taught a few around town.

In the fall of 1995 I did my first craft show - and I was hooked! I started making more items, and finally resigned my software job (with Tom's absolute blessing) in 1996. I followed that with a short stint at a sewing machine shop, then back to the software job on a contract basis for six more months, and finally I had REALLY had enough. I registered The Finch House as a business in 1997, and quit Corporate America for good.

One Saturday in April of 97, the Kentucky Derby Festival Balloon Race floated over our house. While Tom and I stood on the front lawn and watched, a woman came by, walking her little pug. She stopped, and we started talking as though we had known each other for years.

She finally looked at me and said, “My friend Kevin Thieneman has a part-time retail opening at his nursery.”

“Wait,” says I. “Thieneman’s? THE Thieneman’s? My Favorite-Place-In-The-WORLD kind of Thieneman’s?”

“Yes,” she answered. “And I think you should apply. And I think I’m going to bug you till you DO.”

Nuff said. I applied Monday, started work on Wednesday. Stayed there 12 years, even opening a garden shop there in 2000. I closed the shop and resigned my job in July of 2009, but my relationship with them remains good and, to be honest, a big part of my heart still lives there.

So now, the question is… What next?