Adventures in Salmon Leather

Adventures in Salmon Leather

Last month I was presenting at the Textile Society of America's Biennial Symposium, and I took a pre-symposium workshop.  I did this because I was there alone, and walking into a symposium of over 400 people is daunting to me.  I have discovered that starting in a working group or class ahead of a conference helps me make a few new friends to have lunch with or sit with on the bus, etc.  It was also a really interesting workshop!

This is the hoped for outcome.

Headed  by artist Rebecca Graham, we had a cadre of artists teaching us - three First Nations artists form differing tribes and traditions, as well as a Scotsman, Peter Ananin, a natural tanner, who carries on the fish leather tradition in Scotland. Rebecca had obtained a great number of skins from a friend who is a commercial chef who saves the skins in the freezer after she has filleted the fish for her meals. She showed us how to scrape off the bits of meat and the scales using nothing more that a spoon.  She discussed the methods of tanning, and June and Charlie Pardue from Alaska's Alutiiq and Gwich'in tribes respectively added their methods.   Peter uses  tree bark for his tannin, 

Charlie uses willow, and we discussed other "found in nature" sources.  For the purpose of teaching consistency, Rebecca used powdered tannins from Maiwa. Aworkshop that is just 6 hours cannot allow you to actually tan the skin, so we did the "cooking show" version of tanning - Rebecca showed the process, but had some pre-soaked skins rady for use to do the final processing on.  The skins must soak in the tannins between 2 to 5 days, so this made a lot of sense.  At the end of the day, we all took home two pieces of salmon leather (the third strongest in the world after shark and something else) that we had worked ourselves.  

Peter's hot pan of tree bark tea.

Rebecca's tannin choice.

The skin, after removing the scales and bits of meat.

The tanned  skin - now leather. 

 So now I am going to try it without the aid of teachers and guides.  I must start by getting my tannin solution, so I am boiling up nearly two pounds of acorns in my old crock pot.  I rinsed them once to remove residual dirt and they have been boiling and getting drained and reboiled . 

Nice dark tannin solution ready to be poured off.

The next step is to defrost the skin from last week's dinner that I asked my ever so patient husband to help me cut from the side of salmon that I bought.  I will grab my notes and get back to you with photos in a week or so!

Addendum:  Photos of Peter's pants from a hide of a roe deer that he  tanned, and stitched, and even made the buttons for.  And yes, I got his permission before shooting a photo of the fly of the trousers!

What Drowning Looks Like: know the signs

A few years ago, on a day trip with friends, we were at a swimming hole in the Hudson Valley, and my youngest son - about 3 or 4 at the time, stepped off the rocky shelf, and dropped down into the deep water.  There were four adults standing next to him, but I was the only one with eyes specifically on him at that moment.  He did not know how to swim yet, and he did not cry out - he just slipped under.  I dove in (fully dressed, as a parent will do) and grabbed his hand, pulling him up before he had been able to swallow more than a mouthful of water.  I shudder to think of what might have happened had my attention been diverted from him.  Please read the following article to learn what drowning really looks like.  It may save a life.

Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

Nearly summer

     My youngest son is nearly done with finals, and thus school for the year.  I always breathe a sigh of relief because it means I do not have to get up until 7 a.m. if I do not want to.  (I will still probably get up at 6, but I do not HAVE to!)
      Summer also means more  time at the farm - for me and the kids.  More time to make new friends  like this:

  And to learn new skills like this:

And for me to  get close ups of snake skin for research, and to test how well tomatoes do when planted in the manure pile!

I hope your summer is filled with new friends, new skills,  and lots of tomatoes!

Sometimes you need to find the silver lining...

Nearly three weeks ago there was a big storm in the state of CT. At first thought to be a tornado, it was later determined to be a macro burst.  The small town of Brookfield, where I grew up,  and where I still have family and friends, was hit hard.  Trees down, houses and cars crushed, and massive damage to the infrastructure.  My mom's house, the one I grew up in, lost a huge number of trees - five were completely uprooted, and twelve to fifteen were snapped  with pieces landing across the yard, or through the roof. 

The English walnut

The top of a tree my grandmother gave us when we moved in, 51 years ago

Part of the tree that went through the roof and into my mother's bedroom 

There was some real power to the winds.

So  we spent some time with chain saws and started the clean up process. 

The start of the pile of branches at the edge of the road where the town said to pile debris for pick up. Today the professional crew with the trucks and the excavator and the BIG chain saw will be there to take down or trim the broken trees, move the trunks, dig out and break up the root balls, etc.  The lawn will need some landscaping after the heavy equipment is removed, but that's easy.

     

  When half of the 100 foot pine trees came down, we were left with a view I have not seen since I was a little girl. We can see the sunset in the evening, and on clear mornings,  a little white church, about three towns and four mountains to the west.  Always look for the silver lining!

Winter Surprises

    As far as farming goes, we are still newbies.  Every year some challenge pops up that we did not anticipate, and this year is no different. We suffered a couple of heart breaking losses - our ewe, Maxine,  disappeared in early winter (that's a whole other story, you've probably heard)  and earlier in the fall, we had to put down our beautiful  Arwen. 
    After a plethora of lambs last year, we decided not to breed all our ewes this year, just a select few.  Well, Nature, and a randy ram lamb had other ideas.  We do not wean our lambs by separating them at the time we think they should leave their dams, but let the dams tell the babies when time is up.  It is less stressful for them both, we think.   Anyway, apparently one little guy became sexually active a touch early, and lo and behold, we had a ewe we had not bred, now pregnant. 
    This past Tuesday, Rosie gave birth to quadruplets. A brown ram, a white ewe, then a pair of black lambs, one ewe, one ram. Our son decided to name them Romeo,

Juliet,

 Rosalind,

 and Tybalt.

  This does not bode well.  Juliet was a breech birth, needing my husband's help to enter the world. She was lovely, and large, but started failing after several hours.  

    We took her into the house, as she had cold mouth, and was not sucking, and her body temp was way too low.  We got some fluids into her with a stomach tube, flushed out the other end, and spent a day and a half, trying to help her regulate her temp and live.  Alas, this was not to be.  Sometimes, Nature just does it's own thing.
    It is part of farming, and the boys understand, but it is so much better when they make it!

Rosie cuddling her little ones. 

Visiting Old Friends

     Now you might think, with a title like that, that this is about  meeting up with people I have not seen in a while.  You are right, to a degree.  This past year has been filled with visits and talks with old friends; students who graduated years ago, teachers from my own school days, people I grew up with.  However, I am referring to friends I have made through books. This is the time of year I pull out some of my well-loved books and revisit the friends there.
       I just finished Daddy-Long_Legs, written in 1912 by Jean Webster, and Judy Abbott is just as lovely and sweet today as she was when I first read it at age 12.  I love revisiting books I have known since childhood because we often read just "the story" as a child and then as an adult, we appreciate the witticisms, the social commentary, and the allegory that was over our heads when we first turned their pages.  The Chronicles of Narnia is my perfect example.
       I hope you, too,  have some time to visit some old friends in between the caroling and the snow ball fights!
      

To breed or not to breed, that is the question

   This year we may be light on lambs, or swimming in them.  We usually put breeding groups together at the end of November, beginning of December.  This year as we were plotting who should go with whom to  try for which genetic traits, which possible fleece colour outcomes, we stopped and too a good hard look at a couple of our girls - they seemed a big too large for this time of year.  My son described one of our older ewes as looking a bit like an eggplant, and indeed, she does.  We now suspect (and it is just that as we cannot afford ultrasounds for sheep) that possibly four or five of our girls might be pregnant. 
    How does this happen when we keep the rams and the ewes in separate enclosures, you ask?  Well...we may have left the ram lambs in with the ewe lambs a bit too long...maybe.  Rather than forcing weaning, we have always let the ewes wean the lambs.  They do a pretty good job of letting the babies know when enough is enough.  However, we may not have gotten the message.  Finn rams are sexually mature at 4 - 8 months.  It is very possible we had an early bloomer or two, and now may have lambs in February!  These  will be wonderful as a spinner's flock, to increase the prolificacy of a flock, but we will not be able to register them as we have no idea who the sire is. 
    sigh.  It has been that kind of a sheep year, so why not have one more lesson learned before the year's end?  Soooo,  yesterday we put the one white ewe with the best fleece together with our older white ram, and we are hoping for a May lambing from her.  We may put our light brown ewe together with a young light brown piebald ram to try to continue that colour in the flock.  Beyond that - we may be done.   Keep ya posted about the others!