Agricultural Fairs

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130528 Weaving (1)

 

The Heath Fair is coming up and I decided to enter a few things in it this year.  The overshot coverlet is one of them.  When I was a kid I would enter the fair every year.  I loved going there and seeing my things on display and winning ribbons.  They have premiums as well and the amount has not changed since I was 10 years old.  First – $3.00, Second – $2.00, Third – $1.00.  It has never been about the money – it’s about the ribbon.  Heath is still one of the best agricultural fairs going in my opinion.  It is very small, it has all the best fair food, they have a horse draw (which is my favorite event – especially with my camera), and they have a good, but not overwhelming competition going for all of their crafts, canning and livestock.  I also enjoy visiting people I’ve know for a lifetime but only see now at the fair.

The interesting thing about the fair is that everything that is entered has to be made in the time between the end of the last fair and the beginning of this one.  When it comes to canning and pickling that puts a bit of a time crunch on the maker.  I made the pickles last week, it will be the only canned good that will go in.  The weaving obviously has been completed and I entered a small hooked rug.  The other thing I entered is “Category: # 18  “Best Confection or Baked Good made with Maple Syrup”.  I have NO idea what I’m making and that may be the one thing that falls by the wayside.  You see, with entering things in the fair you have to register well in advance – no registration, no entry.  Fortunately they do online registration now so I just picked some categories and entered.

The day after registering for the Heath Fair my weaving instructor sent out an email asking her students to consider entering some of their weaving in the Big E because weaving was a category that was in danger of being dropped due to a lack of participation.  This fair is HUGE.  It is the Eastern States Exposition, goes on for days and the competition is stiff, especially in livestock.  I was unsure if the quality of my weaving would even be up to standards for this fair, I didn’t want to be embarrassed.  I got an “are you KIDDING?!” when I expressed my doubts so I entered two items.  If you’re an entrant you receive two entrance tickets and a parking pass – can’t go wrong with that – parking alone can be a deterrent for me.

The thing is I entered a piece that isn’t even on the loom yet.  I warped it last weekend only to find out that I had threaded it wrong, after unweaving about 5 inches I discovered I hadn’t counted my warp threads correctly so I had to really start all over again.  Bummer.  Guess what I will be doing this weekend.  I see it as the ultimate challenge – a 72″ overshot scarf in tencel and wool done from beginning to end in 3 weeks (maybe a little less).

Challenge accepted.

Sandwiched and Still Sane (Sort of)

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130512 Rug Hooking (2)I’m currently part of what is referred to as the “Sandwich Generation”.  My father is in assisted living and I have one of my daughters unemployed living at home, a boomerang.

People think assisted living is pretty awesome, and it is for the most part.  I wasn’t truly aware of how much “assisting” I would have to do, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not that challenging.  The expense is exorbitant and increases exponentially a couple of times a year.  That is not something I was expecting although it’s what is happening with healthcare and I suppose this could be very loosely considered healthcare.  There’s a nurse on duty every day but for the most part people enter assisted living because they can no longer live alone.

I really am starting to think the “Squeeze” generation is a more appropriate term.  Every 6 months the expenses go up another 10 to 20% and we are long past what my father’s income is. Being self employed gives you the luxury (or fear) of knowing just where you stand financially.  It also allows you to see into the future a little ways.  I don’t have to worry about job security but I’m also well aware that my income will probably stay where it is for the foreseeable future.

In the back of our minds (and coming to the forefront) is the idea that Dad may have to live with me in the near future.  It’ll be more like me living with him because he will have to live in Rowe.  The logistics of this are challenging in part due to the isolation of this little town.  This is a difficult situation with someone who is limited in their mobility, it’s not like he willingly goes for rides or even leaves his house.  Everyone needs some sort of  human interaction and there just isn’t a lot available.  I’m working on a solution, but the anxiety sometimes gets the best of me.

This is when I weave, knit, hook, something.  This is what keeps me sane in an insane world, my world.  As long as my hands are busy I can think about ways to make it all work.  Or I can just lose myself in the rhythm of weaving or knitting or hooking – and feel the fiber running through my fingers.  There is nothing that calms my spirit more.

Faded Glory

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Football Players 1

 

The attic at Fort Pelham Farm is a repository of family history.  I hesitate to say treasures because those are truly in the eyes of the beholder.  There are layers of items by generation.  Nothing makes sense other than in one corner it’s the Monroe stuff, another corner belongs to the Alix side, you get the picture.  The attic space is expansive so there is quite the trove.  I sometimes feel like I’m on an archeological dig when I’m up there but I always seem to find something of interest. Many times I don’t know how interesting it is until much, much later.

The faded photograph at the top of this post is an example of just that.  The scan actually gave me more to see than is actually on the original – I love modern technology.  I played with it (a lot) in photoshop and ended up with this image.  It’s amazing what you can do with a little patience (and no fear).

 

YMCA Sepia

 

Now this photograph came from the Martin/Monroe corner of the attic so I had an idea of who some of the players might be in the photograph.  Much to my surprise it turns out that the four Martin brothers are in it (this is my mother’s father’s line).  They are on the far right in the first and second rows.  I have many other photographs of them and was able to identify them by comparison.  I love this photograph – the roll of the canvas background that is by their feet, the funky “grass” or fur that is under them.  I love the fact that they are the ones with the dogs.  I love how it shows how important the YMCA was to the family as well as team sports.  The shin guards and padded clothing speaks to the roughness of the sport yet shows nothing of the caution that we see today.  The team manager (I can only assume) is decked out in his finest to have his portrait taken with his team.

This photograph was taken around 1905.  Their adult lives just beginning.

I haven’t looked at this photograph in a few years.  In doing so now I think I might have to go back up to the attic and see what else I can unearth.

Day Off

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130805 The LakeThere are days you have to leave everything behind and relax.  No canning, no splitting wood, no lawn mowing or weed whacking.

It was a perfect day.  When I loaded this photograph my first reaction was wow, is that blue.  You know, it really WAS that blue.

And there is nothing the dogs love more than us spending the entire day throwing a tennis ball.

 

 

Let the Madness Begin

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8460v

 

I made a couple of quarts of dill pickles the other night and was commenting to my sister about what hot work canning is.  I do most of my canning in August when everything seems to come in at the same time in the garden.  This weekend I will probably can some new potatoes.  I’d like to do some salsa but that never seems to make it into a jar once the prep is done, it’s too good fresh.

Peaches are just starting to come in so I may do up some of them as well.  Diced this year, yes a lot of work but worth it in January.  Most of the time I just halve them and pack a jar in light syrup but I’m the only one who ends up eating them and a pint of peach halves is too much for me.  Diced ones I can just throw into my cottage cheese – nothing yummier.

Pesto, tomatoes of every kind, beans, pickles, relishes, these are all the things that I expect to have to eat each winter so the pressure is on now to get it done.

At the end of last winter I cooked a smoked turkey that I had bought from Pekarskis.  There were not a lot of people who were there to eat it and there is a lot of meat on an 18 pound turkey (it was a lovely free range bird as well).  I cut all of the meat off of it, made a stock of the bones and canned it in pints.  There were about 15 I recall.  This canned turkey has been one of the best experiments in canning ever.  I use it in jambalaya or black beans and rice and it is spectacular.  Not only does it taste wonderful with a great texture it is the ultimate convenience food.  This was my first foray into canning meat but will not be my last.

I think anyone who is considering canning should make that leap into a pressure canner.  Yes they are expensive but canning with a hot water bath limits you to high acid or sugared fruits.  I know once I got over the initial fear of the thing my canning options were exponentially expanded, it seems like there is nothing I can’t can now.  Pressure canning is faster and safer and helps you diversify your larder.  There is nothing better that wondering what’s for dinner, opening your canning closet and seeing choices.

Off of the Loom

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Sunday I finished weaving the throw in the morning, tied the fringe and washed it to full the wool.  I threw it over the empty loom to dry.  When I arrived in Rowe yesterday I immediately took it out to the garden to take a couple of photographs.  I’m only sorry you can’t feel how lovely this is.  There is nothing like wool.  I love the color play and it truly was a great experiment in color.

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I learned a lot in this project – there were problems I had to figure out myself.  Those are the solutions you remember, they may not have been the best solutions but the finished project worked and I will do things differently the next time I warp.

It’s getting to the point now where I have so many things I want to weave I don’t know what to do next.  I think I will do another overshot project, maybe with mixed fibers this time.  Who knows, maybe I’ll be learning about a whole new set of problems.

Water Dog

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130727 Water DogI knew Chester had water dog potential when I saw his huge, webbed feet.  He had a bit of a rough start but everyone has to start somewhere.

I’ve been taking him to Percy’s Point on Pelham Lake once a week to fetch his tennis ball in the water there.  It’s a great spot, no distractions.  It slopes gently into the lake and it’s easy for him to return with his ball.  This is a game he has truly learned to love.

This past weekend we took the next step and brought him boating with us.  We found one of our favorite beaches in a cove on Harriman Reservoir, getting there early enough to secure it.

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The only other thing we needed was a tennis ball.  If Chester has a ball there is nothing that will distract him from the game, other dogs, kids, nothing.

We had him fetch for a good hour and a half which he did joyfully.  His swimming has improved tremendously and he will fetch a ball thrown quite a ways without hesitation.  It’s just what you want in a water dog – of course if we brought the other dogs they would have shown him the ropes.

Buddy and Sophie at the lake

Lost and Searching

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140515 Alix Family

Ernest and Rose Alma Alix with Elmer @1912

 

I have been the designated “keeper of all images”  for both my family and Bill’s.  I think this happened because of my background in photography, all things related just came into my house.  I’ve rescued family photographs from trips to the dump in family moves.  Boxes and boxes of photographs were brought to me when Bill’s grandfather died and we cleaned out his home of 60 plus years.  And then there are all of the photographs from multiple generations of my family on both my mother’s and father’s side.

Over the years I’ve sorted and scanned most of them.  They are in folders by families in chronological order.  It sounds fussy but if you are a photographer you get it, especially one who enjoys the history of the craft.  All of the photographs were sorted by type (ie. paper, process), then by clothing and known approximate dates.  What I found was once I scanned them I had a much easier time putting them in order.  You could look at a group of thumbnails and see how people changed, how they aged.  Although I didn’t have exact dates for many of them you can see how the people moved through time.  Being able to see a few photographs side by side also is invaluable when it comes to unknowns.  If you have a family tree at your disposal it’s fairly easy to figure out who’s who.  You become quite intimate with the people in your family who are no longer with you.   You can make up stories in your head about them from the snippets of things you heard growing up and the way they look in the images you have.  You begin to build your story.

The photograph shown here is one of my favorites.  The little boy is my paternal grandfather with his parents.  I love how much he looks like his mother, how he leans into her with her arm around him, hand on his shoulder.  The beauty of scanning your photographs is the capability to look at the details closely.  Her hand is the hand of someone who used them hard.  Life in the early 1900’s was not easy for a farmer’s wife.  They were not well off by any stretch and I know how hard she worked from the stories.  I love that they are wearing their Sunday best.  It’s nice to see that their clothes aren’t threadbare like so many other relatives photos show.

The Alixes put great importance on being photographed.  I have boxes of studio photographs from generation after generation.  These were all taken by people who really didn’t have a lot of money, but it was important to them.  There aren’t a lot of candid shots.  I believe someone may have had a box Brownie around the late 1920’s and you see a little more of their day to day life.  Another way of getting the flavor of what their lives were about.

The Alix photographs are what I grew up with.  I would sit with my grandmother going through the box and she would tell me who people were, where they were, what they were doing.  They are seared into my memory.  For the past few days I’ve been thinking about a particular photograph that I want to write about and for the life of me I can not find it.  I have a gap in my digital files that are all of my father growing up.  There are probably over 50 photographs.  I can see them all in my mind but I can’t put my hands on them – digital or original.  It’s driving me crazy.

In my mind I thought I was magnificently organized when it came to this and I’ve found that there’s a gaping hole.  I’ve searched box after box in the last day to no avail.  They’re around somewhere, I just haven’t located the spot.  So I will continue to search and as I’m looking I will be thinking of all of those stories that surround those images – should be good fodder for future posts.

A Rough Couple of Days

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130726 Chester SleepingIt’s difficult for a dog that wants to be a mean, protective guard dog to be afraid of everything.  That’s my theory on Chester’s exhaustion this morning (other than the fact that he’s lazy).  We went to Rowe on Wednesday afternoon and the first disconcerting thing to happen was a neighbor and her daughters walked their two horses by the house on the road.  Chester lost his mind (from afar).  All of the hair was standing up on his back, he barked his scariest howling bark (which we now recognize as his I’m really scared bark).  They finally disappeared down the road (well, they were out of his sight because he wouldn’t go close enough to the road to see where they went).  Whew!  Into the house he went, didn’t go out again.

Thursday morning at around 5:00 I heard a bear coming up through the woods – I’m assuming it was a female talking to her cub(s).  Chester was on the end of the bed – all perked up, hair standing on end.  He never made a sound, just listened.  The bear came across the road and through the side yard under my window talking the whole time.  Finally she went over the bank into the back forty.  I stayed in bed for another hour or so then got up, got my coffee and went outside with the dogs.  Chester, hair standing on end, ran crazily towards the back forty on what I’m assuming was the bear trail.  He was doing his best sniffing but you could tell just by his stance that he was a little freaked out.  He immediately came into the house when I did.

I have to tell you that having a dog that weighs over 50 pounds may deceive you into thinking that they will protect you.  For my money the Schnauzers are much better protection.  They weigh much less and are not afraid of anything.  In fact I really have to be very aware of what they see as a threat because they think they are much bigger than they are.  Sophie thought nothing of attacking Chester when we first got him, Chester on the other hand is afraid of cats – won’t come within 100 feet of one. I like to think this speaks to his intelligence but others just think he’s chicken.