Still Too Hot for Fiber

While today is more comfortable than yesterday – at least so far – it is still far too hot for fiber! Since yesterday’s post was one big complaint, I won’t complain (much) today. I’ll simply go on to other topics.

Alpacas for Sale
At Upper Alpacas, we have some wonderful alpacas for sale. I encourage you to visit our sales list page to view the animals currently available. We’ve got great bloodlines available in black, white, and several colors in between. Our breeding goal is handspinning quality fleece in natural colors, and we have achieved our goal with several very soft alpacas.

Special Offers
Through July 31 2006, we will offer 14% off of any package of two or more females from Upper Alpacas. Bred, unproven, open - take your pick of any two or more.

Or, if you prefer, instead of the percentage off of any package of two or more females, take one of our herdsires (Sindre or Del) as part of your package! This is a great opportunity to get a good herdsire for your females for free and would make a wonderful starter herd or addition to your existing herd. And, if you choose the herdsire option, we will include a free companion male with excellent fiber.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

Yesterday was probably the most humid hot day I’ve experienced in twenty years in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve experienced plenty of hotter days, but I don’t think any were close to yesterday’s humidity.

This morning was worse.

People joke about our heat and make fun of comments about “dry” heat not being as hot as humid heat. Reality is that the summer heat index in our area is almost always LOWER than the air temperature. Not so yesterday. Not so this morning – overcast, no wind, temperature of 78 degrees, heat index of 98 degrees.

Normally, when it gets hot here, it is even hotter east of the Cascades and the warm air starts rising over the desert. (Yes, Eastern Oregon is a desert – it’s directly north of Nevada.) When the warm air rises over the desert, low pressure is created at ground level and air from west of the Cascades starts rushing up the river valleys and over the passes to fill the low pressure. Anybody who has ever been in Ellensburg, WA or Hood River, OR on a hot day can tell you about the strength of the breeze.

We are located in what can be described as either a broad canyon or a narrow valley along the North Umpqua River. As a consequence, we normally get quite a bit of wind on hot days – hot, dry, wind because our normal humidity is very low on hot summer days. The wind is not always a nice cooling breeze – sometimes it feels more like air blowing out of a furnace. Still, if you have enough to drink so you sweat well, it helps keep you cool.

Yesterday, humidity was I don’t know how high. Highs were in the mid 90's. The air was dead still. There was absolutely no breeze.

Last night, the air didn’t cool off. When we have 100 degree days here, the overnight low is often in the high 50's or low 60's. I think last night’s low was almost 80. We opened all the windows, but the house really didn’t cool off much.

Today has been hot and sunny. The high was something like 105 (41C). Fortunately, the humidity dropped when the clouds burned off, or things would have been worse. We even got a little canyon breeze.

I’ve been outside to hose down the alpacas five times already today, and I expect to hose them down at least once more.

There has been no fiber progress today – it’s just too hot!

Landscaping Kill and Removal Project becomes a Digression on Sustainable Agriculture

I'm removing several large arborvitae that have been repeatedly topped to form a hedge. The arbs are in bad shape and heavily overgrown with Himalayan Blackberry and English Ivy. I used mostly mechanical means to remove the arbs -- I cut them up for kindling and firewood.

Himalayan Blackberry is nasty stuff. Most of the wild blackberry in this area is a hybrid between the native Pacific Blackberry and the Himalayan Blackberry. It's aggressive, thorny, and invasive. The berries are good and for the past couple years, I've picked the berries from the arbs. Now that we want to renovate the area, however, I want the blackberries out of there. Using heavy leather gloves, I cut all the cane back and removed it for burning. Since then, I've been spraying and grubbing to remove the rest of the blackberry.

English Ivy is officially listed as a noxious weed in Oregon. Let me repeat that for the incredulous. English Ivy is on the official list of noxious weeds in the State of Oregon. After having dealt with English Ivy in this area, I am inclined to believe the listing is correct. It is invasive and very, very, hard to get rid of. I guess our climate is perfect for it.

When I cut the arbs down, I pulled up as much of the ivy as I could. I'm now in the process of repeatedly spraying and grubbing the ivy to complete the removal.

I am using Round-up -- actually a generic glyphosate that costs half as much -- mixed with a spray tracer dye to let me see exactly what I have sprayed. I highly recommend spray tracer type dyes for spot spraying because they make it so much easier to see what you're doing.

While I have the spray out, I'm also killing some quackgrass, bindweed, and other persistent perennial weeds in places where they are easy to spray without damaging desirable plants.

Mechanical means are my preferred weed control, but my time, energy, and patience are limited. Glyphosate is my preferred chemical means because of the low environmental persistence. Glyphosate has a non-trivial acute toxicity, but unlike many common herbicides, it breaks down fairly quickly in the environment. Another advantage is it must be absorbed by the foliage to be effective -- it doesn't travel much in the ground.

Spot spraying is my preferred herbicide technique. I don't have anything against using herbicides. My objection is to overusing or abusing herbicides. Spot spraying minimizes the use of herbicide by targeting the chemicals to exactly the plants one is attempting to remove.

I guess -- and this post is getting rather long-winded and philosophical -- that my focus is more on sustainable agriculture than on organic agriculture. I do not believe organic agriculture is necessarily sustainable. Similarly, I do not believe the judicious, limited, and targeted use of pesticides automatically renders agriculture unsustainable. I do not believe organic food is automatically "safe" or "healthy", nor do I believe pesticides are automatically "unsafe" or less healthy. I've seen too much.

In my opinion, dumping 2-4-D and Triclopyr on the lawn to prevent a few dandelions is gross abuse of herbicide and ought to be criminal. However, I have no problem spot spraying this same mixture to control poison oak. I use a lot less pesticide to control all the poison oak on my four acre property than many people use on their 1500 square foot urban lawns. I would probably end up in the hospital if I attempted to grub out all the poison oak on my property. The health risk of grubbing out the oak is probably greater than that from spraying brush killer on it. It's all a matter of quantity, degree, intensity, and options. I don't believe pesticide is always a bad option.

Please don't ask me to define sustainable agriculture. I can't do so, and I don't know of anybody who can. Of course, this might make for a very interesting side discussion ...

Yes, I am a hypocrite and probably ought to be a criminal because I sell weed and feed products five days a week as part of my day job.

Pronk!

We finally managed to get video of Cailin pronking. Unfortunately, we have yet to get good video of Cailin pronking. The video is filmed through the fence from too far away. The video is fun. Cailin is cute. Cinematic quality, it is not.

Click here for the broadband version.
Click here for the dial-up version.

Summer Doldrums -- Yes I'm still here

Hello blogland. I am still here. It's the summer doldrums. Well, not really doldrums, but blog doldrums since I'm actually fairly busy outside and away from the computer and I'm not doing much worth blogging about. I expect this condition to continue until the yard is in perfect condition (we have 4 acres), the garden is weedless, the lavender is processed, and the 2006 clip is carded.

I guess I can blog about carding the fiber, but do you really want an entry every time I pull a weed? Other than the baby zucchini, the garden is mostly in the weed and wait stage. The major landscape projects are still in the kill and remove phase.

No crias are expected until early September, so I can't start the whole endless cria watch gimick until early August ...

Yup, it's the summer blog topic doldrums. Please, post a comment so I have something to write about.

Fleeces for Sale

There is no interesting fiber progress to report today, but I do have more fleeces to offer for sale. As usual, if you are interested in these fleeces, please visit our catalog, or click directly to the fleece sale page.

Cailin continues to grow like a weed. We have got to get out the camera and take more pictures. She weighed in at 42 pounds today -- double her birth weight.

Ipo Nani 2006 Half Blanket
Fleece F057, 14 ounces for $32. Good crimp. Fairly clean. Nice taupe fawn with good softness and slight color variation that will create color depth and richness when spun -- not enough color variation for a heathered effect. Will work well in combination with brown and red-brown fiber in a barberpole yarn or patterned garment. This fleece does contain pockets of coarse fiber that must be skirted out, but it shouldn't be a major skirting challenge. Soft enough for next to the skin garments and should pass the skin test with most people -- note the 97+% comfort factor. Should sell in the $35-40 range after skirting. I'm currently retaining the other half of this blanket for my own use.

Fiber Statistics:
Average Fiber Diameter: 22.1 microns
Coefficient of Variation: 16.8 (Std Dev 3.7)
Comfort Factor (percent of fibers under 30 microns): 97.3%
Staple Length: 70.0 mm
Curvature: 49.0 Dg/mm

Ipo Nani 2006 Seconds
Fleece F058, 7.8 ounces unskirted for $12.00. As per the above fleece with slightly less staple length and not quite so soft -- and the all the usual greater variability of staple length and softness found in neck fiber. I won't have any problem spinning this fleece, but some spinners will find the short staple difficult to work with. This fiber will probably be priced in the $15 dollar range after skirting -- or possibly sold as yarn.