We started the week drying and picking herbs. We have an abundance of mint. I cut it all back and shared what I had.
My mom grows the best oregano.
Ready for the dehydrator.
We also dried tarragon from my friend Sunny.
Remember 2 years ago we had a bunch of praying mantis egg pods we put around the property? We thought it didn't work since we never found any around. We found the empty pods but no mantis. This week we have been finding them all over the place.
This one was in the mint I cut back.
Next up I headed over to my friend Sunny's home. We meet every Monday. She is my mentor and majored in Home Economics . She knows the "how to's" and the "why" behind them.
Today we were washing Wilbur, my CVM Rommeldale, ram lamb's wool. He was sheared about a month ago. He didn't wear a coat to protect his wool so it was pretty dirty. We wash our wool before carding and spinning. This is half of his wool. (I shared with my sister who also spins)
We laid it out on a "skirting" table to gently shake it and pick out any large debris. I think it looks so cool like this.
We split up the wool and put in laundry bags.
We filled the sink with super hot water (we checked this with a thermometer and it was at 130-135*)
We used two squirts of Dawn liquid detergent. Why? Because of all the lanolin in sheep's wool it tends to be rather greasy. Dawn does what it says and cuts the grease.
We don't want to agitate the wool or be rough with it because that will felt it. We pressed the bag into the water with a wooden spoon.
All the dirt begins to come out.
We repeated this several times until the water was close to clear.
Outside spin the bags around to as much water out as we could.
Then we spread it out on racks to dry for the next few days. Summer is a great time to do this. I will card it later and spin mostly in the fall and winter.
My first wool from my first lamb!
That's it. I did have time to water my garden before heading to work.
peace
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