Today is town voting day in Westmoreland, as in many other New England communities. Our town votes on Tuesday and holds town meeting Wednesday evening. We have a race for selectman this year and each candidate got a lot of backing from townspeople in the days and weeks before today. It’s a great social occasion, sliding down out of the hills into town, through the mud, which is deepening by the day, to vote at the town hall, maybe buy a raffle ticket for the quilt offered by the Ladie’s Aid, and just chatting before and after voting with friends and neighbors. Top to bottom: Bruce Smith with Evelyn Hunter, Bob Moore, Peter Heed, our moderator and Fran Clapp of Ladie’s Aid.

I can feel it in my bones, sure as anything ever was, mud season is just starting to stretch his legs and yawn, realizing the days are warming and it’s time to do his work. This is our road this morning, pre-mud. Followup in a few weeks. Logging operations are suspended until the earth dries up, later in the summer or even next winter depending on the rainfall. The town closes the roads to heavy trucks this week in anticipation of the mud. What some call spring we call Mud Season. But on a sweeter note the maple trees are tapped, some 400 taps, and the sweet sap is flowing!

I went to the barn this morning and the first thing I do is scan the sheep and the scene to make sure all is well; everyone alert, their coats intact, nothing seemingly in disaray. You know leaving a flock of animals unattended for 12 hours can prove problematic at times. This morning I instantly spoted this area of blood in the snow. My heart skipped a bit…with no real reason, blood just does this! The flock was quite chipper and happy. So as I fed them and cleaned I kept thinking what could have caused it. Did an owl swoop in on a bluejay? No feathers. The area itself was not broken down as if a sheep had laid there…no blood on any hind ends or noses. No one coughing or sneezing. hmmmm. I took the dogs for a walk and on the way back there were a few sheep eating snow. We have a nice crust now after the rain storm this past week. I went back in and watched as some ate the snow. Low and behold Wetherby, for one, had bleeding gums. Akin to a dog chewing on a rawhide bone, I decided this was not life threatening and even perhaps good gum therapy. Certainly one thing I know for sure, there is nothing that I can do about it! After Wetherby ate some of the snow he went right back to the hay rack to eat. On with the day!

Quite often I want to create a color from the Earthues dyes, but until I am sure I have acheived it, I find dyeing small swatches the best way to do the tests. Just take a quart sized canning jar and place enough water in it to cover the goods to be dyed. Place the jar in a canning pot or stainless pot (used soloely for dyeing) as shown on the stove with enough water in the pot to allow the water in the canning jar to heat up; like a double boiler of sorts. Because I mostly dye wool, I use natural colored wool strips as shown to the right of the dye pot. If you work with silk or cotton, do the same with the fabric. Mordant them first and let set at least a few days after, wet and cool. Then measure the dyes, based on your weight of goods. It is tricky when the goods weigh an ounce or less, but working in gram weight helps as does a good eye for fractions. Then just simmer at the temp required and you will have swatches to refer to if you like the recipe. You can do up to 4 colors at once in four separate jars. I was looking for the color of a dye sample I have from a 5-step gradation, the sample in back of the swatches. It matches the one sample pretty closely. I used Madder at 8% and Logwood Purple at 2% and if I reduce the Logwood Purple just a smidge, I’ll have that color!