Sheep and Wool Festival: Adel, IA

The rain clouds parted for a few hours last weekend so the Adel Sheep and Wool Festival could proceed amid raindrops in steamy sunshine. The festival is a unlikely mix of livestock and fiber people. The common denominator, of course, is sheep.

You can distinguish the sheep/goat/alpaca raisers by their outfits: muck boots and jeans. The fiber fans are decidedly more colorful, some wearing hand-loomed garments.

As always, the dog trials were a hoot to watch. The "field" was a puddle-filled, mud-fest with a Border Collie expertly moving three sodden Dorset ewes around in a figure-8, a gate run, then into a corral. The test of wills between dog and ewes is filled with tension and comedy. The ewes create a united front of wet wool and angry attitudes, stomping a front leg in indignation. The dog takes a step closer and the sheep run like ninnies. So much for the show of toughness.

Some dogs exhibit amazing control, dropping on command, and lunging fast in large outruns at a "Way to Me" command. Others are tongue-hanging, crazy-eyed, trigger-happy zealots that shoot the sheep all over the field like pool balls on a billiard table.

I bought a really cool, hand-loomed scarf from an alpaca raiser from Maxwell, IA (C&M Acres). The scarf is made from the fiber from Black Label Johnnie and Alydar (a black- and a white-fleeced alpaca, respectively). Both are pictured on the scarf label. What a cool way to market fiber products--by the alpaca the fiber was shorn from.

Country Woman Essay

Raising kids in the country. This was my topic in a recent essay published in Country Woman magazine. Here's an excerpt:

"Our sons are in college now, living in small rooms in big cities. But I like to think the lessons they learned growing up in the country resonate with them every day. That they learned patience by calming an ­anxious horse; gentleness by bottle-feeding a motherless lamb; and the importance of speed and precision by cadging an egg out from under a broody hen."

To read the whole thing, click here.

Spring is Back!

After one monster of a winter, spring has finally returned. The 4-foot snow drifts are melting, melting. And in their absence are bulbs already pushing up out of the ground. Snowdrops are blooming right now in our shade garden. And the daffodils are 5 inches tall, budded and ready to pop. A couple warm days of sun and our yard is going to be ablaze in sunny blooms. A big sigh of relief!

I've been thinking about daffodils a lot. Wishing for them. And writing about them too. Read about the 10 Top Daffodils for the Midwest in Midwest Living magazine. And although you can't plant bulbs right now, you can buy little pots of 'Tete-a-Tete' and other small narcissus in garden centers. There's nothing more cheering!

It's Apple Time

In the September issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine, I did an interview with a Seattle family who created a gorgeous (and fruitful) garden fence using espalier apple trees. Espalier is a way of pruning and training a tree to grow sideways and in this garden the trees are planted like they are holding hands around the yard. This pruning method is often used in formal gardens as a decorative way to grow fruit. (In fact, espaliered apples are used in Monet’s garden in Giverny as a low-growing fence.) But it’s also an efficient way to raise apples and pears because of the small amount of space the trees take.

A Puppy For Archer

Archer, our Jack Russell terrier got a new friend last week. Tess, a smooth-coated Irish Jack has stolen all our hearts because she’s so darn adorable—even when she’s chewing the buttons off your shirt with her carpet tack teeth.

When Archer’s friend and nemesis Snap (our first Jack Russell) died last year, he was on his own in the house. Without Snap to befriend and torture, he turned his attention to me. Archer dropped a ball onto my computer keyboard at least 10 times a day. If I threw it, he’d run madly after it, hurling his burly body through the air, crashing into walls, threading through table legs, balling up all the throw rugs. Once he’d nailed the ball, he’d run laps around the house, growling and twisting his wedge head back and forth like a madman. Then he’d come barreling at me, ball in mouth and slam it back down on my keyboard.

Time for a puppy.

Now instead of attempting to lure me into a game of catch every 15 minutes, Archer plays with Tess. Yelping with pain when she bites his ears, Archer runs around the house with Tess in hot pursuit, her stumpy legs pumping. She looks like a crazed wind-up guinea pig. They roll across the floor under my feet an angry two-headed beast—snarling, yipping, and biting—while I write.

New puppy. Good solution. I’m getting so much work done now.

Zucchini Boats

I was in my garden with my hands on my hips surveying my late tomato crop (a cool summer means they aren’t ripening very fast). And while I was bemoaning my lack of ripe tomatoes, I spied a large green object on the ground. “Watermelon!” I thought. Then I realized that we didn’t plant watermelon this year. A closer look revealed that it was a giant zucchini—the size of a small canoe.

I leaned in to pick it (wrestle it was more like it) and I saw several others. I hauled out four whoppers. Too big to sauté (I like smaller, less seedy and fibrous squash), I decided to make zucchini bread. But my recipe calls for just 2 cups per loaf, which hardly makes a dent in my massive squash stockpile.

They are sitting like vegetable missiles on my counter taunting me. I’m open to suggestions of how to use them.

A Good Summer Read

Before summer slips away...

If you love books and dogs, you should pick up the novel Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. Of course, Oprah beat me to recommending it (she’s a good judge of good books—and a dog lover too). It’s beautifully written with lyrical descriptions of nature, dogs and country spaces.

This book is especially interesting to me (as owner of five dogs) because of its plot line discussion of creating a new dog breed (albeit a fictional breed). And the descriptions of canine intelligence and dog-as-companion are written with so much heart.

Don’t be intimidated by its size (I could use my hardbound edition as a doorstop). Some passages were so beautiful, I turned back a couple of pages to reread them before forging forward.