Posts Tagged → wool
It’s Farm Show 2023! You should be here
“Man does not live on bread alone. Occasionally there must be a beverage.” Similarly, a blog wholly devoted to politics these days is just going to be no fun at all, to write or to read. Far too much drama afoot. So here is the beverage… Pennsylvania Farm Show 2023.
Pennsylvania’s Farm Show at the enormous humungous gigantic Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg has been a mainstay since the 1800s. Pennsylvania is still a rural and agricultural state, and so 4H is still active, and so there tons of really cute little kids leading equally young and cute goats, sheep, miniature horses, heifers, rabbits, ducks, chickens, roosters, pigs, and so on either to or from some showing. If you catch the kids and their critters coming from a competitive showing, you will often see the award ribbons prominently displayed on the animals’ heads, like on ears or mane. The little kids walk along with their pets like total bosses, many of them wearing grown up cowboy boots and western style clothing.
If there is a crisis among American youth because they are spoiled, lazy, lacking direction etc, it is not to be found among the 4H kids. Many of them have been getting up at 4:30AM daily since they were seven or eight years old, to feed and water their prize critter, before going to school. By the time 4H kids reach their teens, they have developed the maturity of a responsible parent with a professional job. And it is evident in their faces and the confident way they carry themselves.
Want your kid to be wholesome and normal some day? Make them work on a farm.
While the show opens Saturday, Sunday is probably the biggest day. Parking was a 30 minute long slow crawl into the main lot. Once inside, I neglected to take a picture of the food court, which was jam packed from end to end with long lines of people for the fresh milkshakes, especially. Other fresh and wholesome foods are also available, and it is clear that showgoers really enjoy the large selection of good tasting home style food. And they are willing to stand in line a bloody long time for it.
As one might imagine, the Farm Show has a lot of farming related stuff, including Pennsylvania made maple syrup and hickory syrup, Herlocher’s mustard, Utz’s pretzels, a zillion types of canned and smoked meats and cheeses, pickles, vegetables, and of course the grand butter sculpture. And of course farm animals and the wagons they pull.
Tractors old and new, recreational vehicles, 1800s style wagons, clothing, knives, hats, boots, belts…. I myself bought two new bridle leather belts. One says “Country Boy” and the other says “John Deere” and has a picture of a tractor. How embarrassing to admit that the belt proprietor asked me to fit the belts around my waist, so he could measure how much to cut off the end, and in my case, nothing needed to be cut off.
We also purchased another five CutCo knives, to add to the six we already own. On the one hand, we are really happy with the quality of the CutCo knives we already have, and as a custom knife fiend myself, I admire high quality knives. CutCo knives are definitely very high quality. On the other hand, I feel kind of silly buying something from a sales rep at a show. It just seems like super high retail idiot. But it’s the way to buy these particular products.
We also purchased alpaca wool dryer balls and knitting wool yarn for a favorite family member who enjoys knitting, or crocheting, or whatever the hell annoying thing it is people do with wool yarn. The farmer lady selling the wool gets it from brushing her pet alpacas, adding up the wool, washing it, carding it, and using a spinning wheel to turn the raw wool into yarn. She also dyes the wool before spinning it into yarn. Or maybe she dyes the entire alpaca before brushing the hair off of it.
Her dryer balls are about the same price as the best available in big box stores and high end special order websites. Having used her balls two times since Sunday, I can report back that they bounce hard. You may read into this whatever you wish, but I am telling you only the truth. Her clothes dryer balls really work, and I suppose it’s a brave new world we occupy that has this phenomenon.
Go visit the Pennsylvania Farm Show. If you have never been to it, you should go full bore tourist and come to Harrisburg and see it. You can spend about two days here and see about as much of farm life without actually having to wash the cow crap off your boots as you would normally want to see. In truth, if you spend any time around the many farm animals present, especially in the later days of the show, and especially especially if you hang out in the (for real) Goat Snuggling Corner, then you will inevitably step in a big pile of horse, goat, or cow crap. But then you will have gone and done something real and tangible with your life, and learned something new.
So come to Harrisburg and step in a pile of horse crap and drink a delicious fresh milkshake and watch farmers do their farm thing. You will have a hell of a lot of fun, guaranteed. Best and most wholesome fun your family will have in a very long time.
Even if America’s useless politicians are not patriotic, most American citizens still are, and flags sell well
Yes, it is true, you can snuggle the cutest baby goats at the Steinmetz Family Farm nook at the Farm Show. And a photographer could make a living just taking pictures of happy little goats nestled in the cradling arms of really happy kids. It is quite wonderful
What farm show anywhere would be caught dead without some antique John Deere tractors? I myself drive a “Green Machine.” The old ones are works of art.
Beth Lutz of Painted Spring Farm in York County, PA, explains her weaving loom to the Princess of Patience at the 2023 PA Farm Show
Dyed alpaca wool and clothes dryer wool balls from Painted Spring Farm in York County, PA
Pennsylvania has capitalized on traditional “Dutch” quilt styles that you can still find for sale along many rural roads in the summer. These styles are also prominently displayed on barns across Pennsylvania.
Jen Boltz runs a wagon for some friends in a competition. There is a whole subeconomy of these traditional 1800s wagons and the huge gentle draft horses that pull them.
Hunters Sharing the Harvest sets the Holiday Season tone
Pennsylvania is a long time big time hunting state, with such a great and famously known outdoors sports tradition that the iconic red and black “buffalo check plaid” wool coat made by Woolrich, Filson, and other long established wool clothing manufacturers was dubbed the “Pennsylvania Tuxedo” back in the 1920s.
Today our clothing may have improved since then, or may not have improved, depending upon whether you like your hunting pants to be flammable, or not, and I do not (which means I prefer wool in all outdoor clothing), but one thing remains steady: Pennsylvanians rightly love to hunt.
And just as much as we love to hunt, we are also generous with the fruits of our time afield. We have a long tradition of sharing the fruits of our hunting labors.
Well do I recall as a kid waking up in late November or early December to find some fresh venison left on our doorstep by one or two of our neighbors, all of whom had big farms and all of whom were big time hunters.
Back then in that area, kids brought fresh venison jerky to school to share and trade with other kids during and right after deer season; everyone had their own proprietary jerky recipe that they liked and were proud of. Sharing venison is a real longstanding Pennsylvania tradition.
Back in 1991, local hunter John Plowman had a vision to harness that generous spirit among Pennsylvania hunters and use it to provide for the needy. He started Hunters Sharing the Harvest, which today annually supplies well over a hundred thousand of pounds of fresh, free range, wholesome, lean, natural, organic meat to Pennsylvanians in need. That translates into about 667,000 annual “meals” for individuals and families in need.
Yesterday my son “harvested” his first Pennsylvania deer (see photo below), a young spike buck that junior hunters are allowed to take, as the rest of us are limited to bucks with at least three points to a side of the antler rack. As we had incredible good fortune yesterday, and took other deer, my son decided to donate his deer to Hunters Sharing the Harvest. My boy is enjoying the act of charity and contributing towards the basic welfare of his community.
Both Deimler (Cumberland County) and Sensenig (Dauphin County) are deer processors close by our home, so either one would be the logical place to drop off the young buck. But Deimler has the advantage of being right down the road from Johnson’s Furs, where we have our furs tanned and where we buy our trapping supplies, so that is where the critter has been dropped off. Mutli-tasking, ya know?
And that is the neatest thing about this Hunters Sharing the Harvest option: We get to share our cake, and eat it, too, in the charitable spirit of the Holiday Season.
Kudos to Filson clothing
Filson is a clothing manufacturer in Seattle, making pretty much the most basic American clothing styles for the past 130 years.
Little has changed in their styles or fabrics. Boring? Maybe.
Flannel and wool shirts, wool and canvas coats and pants, wool long underwear, leather boots with wool insulation, tote and carry bags and purses, every item is made in America of virgin wool or different weights of canvas.
One short phrase describes Filson products: Brutally tough.
Or, “Last a lifetime.”
In an era of cheap Chinese crap and Asian sweatshop “designer” clothes, Filson stands alone, or probably alone. I am a consumer of top-quality outdoor clothing, and I cannot think of another manufacturer who makes anything like Filson’s clothing line.
Oh, sure, there are plastic and Gore Tex outdoor clothes galore. Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, Mountain Hard Wear, and others make some pretty good ones, which our family wears. Fleece coats, mountaineering parkas, super-sophisticated PhD plastic fiber clothes for the outdoor lifestyle. Some are married to goose down, which is genuinely warm.
But all of these synthetics catch on fire and turn the wearer into a large, running, screaming torch when exposed to flame. Or at the least they wilt, melt, smell very bad, and cease being useful when exposed to a camp fire hot enough to dry your damp undies and wet socks. In other words, the newfangled modern synthetics may weigh next to nothing and stop wind faster than a speeding bullet and locomotive, but they lack certain basic physical properties necessary to truly enjoy or survive the outdoors.
Wool and waxed heavy cotton canvas are nearly fireproof and can withstand tremendous force before tearing. Wool keeps the wearer warm even when wet. Yes, it is heavy compared to synthetics, but it is a lot quieter, actually it is silent, whereas even the best of synthetic fleece hunting clothes will leave a telltale “zip” sound when dragged across a sharp branch.
Filson forms a big part of my winter clothing selection. Mackinaw vests and coats of different colors and patterns form the core of the selection, and the double mackinaw coat in “Pennsylvania Tuxedo” red-and-black buffalo check plaid has kept me toasty warm in sub-zero temperatures day after day. This past week I wore the double mackinaw coat while flintlock hunting, and I never got cold. It was sub-zero every day.
Other wool clothes I wear are heavy camouflage Columbia hunting pants, Bass Pro Redhead heavy wool socks, Danner wool socks, knee-high SmartWool ski and hunting socks, and SmartWool long underwear. Yes, once in a while I break out the Eddie Bauer and Woolrich Adirondock plaid pants, jackets, and so on. They are real testaments to a world long gone, which dinosaurs like me cling to in misty eyed memories.
David Petzal is the gun writer for Field and Stream Magazine, and among many other witticisms and pithy one-liners, years ago he noted that all synthetic long underwear makes you smell like someone slaughtered a cow after a day, but wool long underwear can be worn for days without you or them being cleaned, and yet you don’t smell…too badly.
That’s the thing. Wool is natural. Like leather and fur, it is natural and fits the human body perfectly. We can sweat into wool for days on a hunt, and it just doesn’t smell bad. Oh, it may not smell fresh, but compared to the polypropylene synthetics, it does.
My Filson Mackinaw coat accompanies me on all my Adirondack wilderness hunts, serving as a blanket at night when the temperature inside the tent dips to 18 degrees. And yet after many years of being worn through thorn patches and rugged mountain brush, it shows zero signs of wear. That says it all.
Other favorites include the now discontinued styles of Tin Cloth logging jacket and Double Tin field coat, both of which I wear when hunting for small game in January and February, when thorns are a big part of the day. Some of these discontinued tin cloth coats have become collector’s items. Each one will last you your entire lifetime, and if you wax it at the end of the season, it will serve your kids, too.
So, kudos to Filson for making Best-quality, “old fashioned” clothing for a tech-happy generation. www.filson.com
Seasonal weather changes are natural, welcome
Seasonal changes are natural tick-tocks on the world’s clock.
Following a natural cycle keeps us in tune with nature, even if the conditions aren’t always to our liking.
Cold arrived today.
Driving north on Friday, I photographed the “polar vortex” front as it closed in on central Pennsylvania. It was a dramatic sight, indeed, and heralded the coming of winter.
Right away, I spoke out loud to myself about the need to buy new knobby tires for the truck. A long, cold, snowy winter is ahead, and I need to be as prepared as possible. Winter isn’t too challenging, if I’ve prepared for it.
Tonight we got our first wood fire going, after cleaning out the wood stove and adding new fire bricks. About a cord of last year’s split oak remains before we begin burning the oak that Viv, Isaac and I split this past spring. By the time we burn through the left over wood, the new wood should be completely dry. We will burn between three and four-and-a-half cords this winter at home.
Wood is a natural, sustainable, renewable heat source whose carbon is part of the planet’s natural cycle. We plant a lot of trees, and they absorb carbon to grow big. It’s a closed loop, which is appealing.
Living life according to the planet’s rhythms is natural and healthy. Will you get cold? Sure. That’s part of living. And if you think it’s cold here, check out Minnesota or Wisconsin or Idaho. Not to mention Alaska.
Just put on long undies and get some Filson wool jackets and vests. You might end up enjoying the cold weather. I certainly do.