My paid employment is in a public library, hence the librarian part of the blog title. If you've read my other posts about the library, you know that it's not all smooth sailing these days. My library system has become management heavy - and when you have too many managers, they tend to trip over themselves trying to find something to fill their days. And sometimes that something is you. We currently have 2 full time managers in our building for 3.6 full time librarians. The circulation staff is almost the same: 2 managers for 3.8 full time staff (although they also manage the shelvers, of which there are 4 or 5, who work 14 hours/week each).
One of the edicts they passed about a year ago: no staff are to, under any circumstances, go to the back room of the library to look for a recently returned item for a patron. WTF? Really? We are allowed to check the shelves in the public area, but not to check the carts/shelves in back waiting to go out. When this was announced we were told that disciplinary action could be taken if we disregarded the policy. We were to tell patrons that we would be happy to request the item and they could come back in a day or two to get it. WTF?!? Really?!?! And they wonder why people bad-mouth public employees?
Here's the deal. I am a professional Librarian, with a capital L, with an advanced degree in Librarianship. While not as strenuous a degree as, say, engineering, law, or medicine, it is still a professional degree. I am a smart, capable adult. If an item was returned to us yesterday or today, I know that it is most likely in the back room because we are rarely caught up with re-shelving. Our back room is very well organized and I am smart enough to gauge how long it will take me to get there & look through the particular returns for an item. In most cases it will take just as long to walk out & search the public shelves - when I know the item is not there. From the beginning I have disregarded this policy. I will not stand in front of a student who needs a copy of Fahrenheit 451 for school and tell them they can come back in a couple of days, when I can put it in their hands in less than 3 minutes. I will not tell the senior citizen, who visits the library weekly, that they can have it next week but not this week. And should I ever be disciplined for this, I will take it public & library administration will get to explain themselves to the local media.
The other side of this is that there are occasions when the item can't be found. It isn't on the shelves where the computerized catalog thinks it should be, and because of its return date I'm pretty confident it's not in the back room. In those cases, I must offer to request the item and have it delivered in a couple of days, or to call another branch to check their shelves and arrange for it to be held for the patron to pick up. I am a professional. I know how to do these things, and in which order, and what makes sense in a given situation. And that's what I do. Being a public employee is often hard, and often stressful. The public tend to want what they want, now. I have to say no to members of the public often enough that I refuse to say no when I can just as easily say yes.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
It's almost the end of quilting season
I started this post several weeks ago, but got interrupted before I entered more than the title. In truth, quilting season finishes about April 1 when spring farm work heats up, daylight savings time makes the evenings longer, and I have usually finished some projects and don't want to start another one that I'll have to put aside over the summer.
This year I made a duvet cover for our daughter and son-in-law from a magazine pattern we found. They chose a collection of beautiful batiks that formed the borders, and I appliqued vines on a central background. I haven't done a lot of applique work. But I've really enjoyed what I have done, and I looked forward to adding to my experience. I think the cover turned out really well; it looks great on their bed, so check it out if you go visit. I made one pillow sham out of leftover bits and have the pieces cut for another that I should go stitch up for them...but I'm busy writing just now.
I chose a backing and machine quilted a lap/twin size pinwheel pattern quilt in 1930's reproduction prints for which I'd finished the top a year or two ago. It's cute & I plan to put it in our back bedroom for the summer, where it fits with the antique & just-plain-old furniture we have there.
I settled on a backing for the Storm at Sea quilt for our guest bedroom & sent that out for quilting. I wasn't thrilled with the quilting done by the shop I chose (it was okay but not wonderful), so I met with another machine quilter & liked her and the examples of her work very much. So I left the quilt for our master bedroom with her. Once I get it back (June) and attach the binding, I'll take some pictures. It's made from some new fabrics that I found, leftovers from other projects, and bits from my fabric stash; a lovely scrappy quilt in a pattern from the Flynn Quilt Frame Company. I continued to collect MN author signatures for a quilt I hope to complete next year & I will have to start auditioning fabric for it soon. I made repairs on my daughter's going-to-college quilt and started repairs on my son's going-to-college quilt (I might be able to get that done over the summer). I spent time ironing scraps so I could roll them up to store (and not have them get all wrinkled again); and created a plan for cutting them into usable shapes for scrap quilts; I even got a bunch cut up. Theoretically, when I am relaxing in the evenings and don't want to read, I could be cutting scraps and have a ready-made stockpile of pieces available to throw together into a quilt.
And of course some hours were spent just browsing through patterns and thinking/dreaming about which I'd like to try. I get my hands on pretty much every new quilting book that my library buys and look through them, making copies of patterns I like, or putting the book on a wish list. There are so many traditional patterns that I really like & haven't tackled yet. I think a Log Cabin wall hanging would look really nice on our living room wall...
I had hoped to improve my machine quilting last winter - enough that I could do something fancier than straight lines with a little confidence. But I'm still on straight lines, and hiring machine quilting for larger quilts and for those quilts I really care about. I've got a bunch of practice squares glued together to start in on next fall, and maybe next winter I'll have a breakthrough, but I'm not holding my breath. Could it be my sewing machine? Maybe I need a new one? Can one have too many sewing machines?
All in all, I'm satisfied with my quilting season, and looking forward to next year. A wall quilt, the signature quilt, and something appliqued are in my plans.
This year I made a duvet cover for our daughter and son-in-law from a magazine pattern we found. They chose a collection of beautiful batiks that formed the borders, and I appliqued vines on a central background. I haven't done a lot of applique work. But I've really enjoyed what I have done, and I looked forward to adding to my experience. I think the cover turned out really well; it looks great on their bed, so check it out if you go visit. I made one pillow sham out of leftover bits and have the pieces cut for another that I should go stitch up for them...but I'm busy writing just now.
I chose a backing and machine quilted a lap/twin size pinwheel pattern quilt in 1930's reproduction prints for which I'd finished the top a year or two ago. It's cute & I plan to put it in our back bedroom for the summer, where it fits with the antique & just-plain-old furniture we have there.
I settled on a backing for the Storm at Sea quilt for our guest bedroom & sent that out for quilting. I wasn't thrilled with the quilting done by the shop I chose (it was okay but not wonderful), so I met with another machine quilter & liked her and the examples of her work very much. So I left the quilt for our master bedroom with her. Once I get it back (June) and attach the binding, I'll take some pictures. It's made from some new fabrics that I found, leftovers from other projects, and bits from my fabric stash; a lovely scrappy quilt in a pattern from the Flynn Quilt Frame Company. I continued to collect MN author signatures for a quilt I hope to complete next year & I will have to start auditioning fabric for it soon. I made repairs on my daughter's going-to-college quilt and started repairs on my son's going-to-college quilt (I might be able to get that done over the summer). I spent time ironing scraps so I could roll them up to store (and not have them get all wrinkled again); and created a plan for cutting them into usable shapes for scrap quilts; I even got a bunch cut up. Theoretically, when I am relaxing in the evenings and don't want to read, I could be cutting scraps and have a ready-made stockpile of pieces available to throw together into a quilt.And of course some hours were spent just browsing through patterns and thinking/dreaming about which I'd like to try. I get my hands on pretty much every new quilting book that my library buys and look through them, making copies of patterns I like, or putting the book on a wish list. There are so many traditional patterns that I really like & haven't tackled yet. I think a Log Cabin wall hanging would look really nice on our living room wall...
I had hoped to improve my machine quilting last winter - enough that I could do something fancier than straight lines with a little confidence. But I'm still on straight lines, and hiring machine quilting for larger quilts and for those quilts I really care about. I've got a bunch of practice squares glued together to start in on next fall, and maybe next winter I'll have a breakthrough, but I'm not holding my breath. Could it be my sewing machine? Maybe I need a new one? Can one have too many sewing machines?
All in all, I'm satisfied with my quilting season, and looking forward to next year. A wall quilt, the signature quilt, and something appliqued are in my plans.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
If you walk out into the orchard now (when it's not raining) you'll hear a buzz. The early apples - Zestar! and Ginger Gold - are in full bloom, the other apples are in various stages of bloom, and the bees that recently arrived from their winter home in California are busy flying through the orchard. It's a bit windier than they like it, and thunderstorms have been rolling in and out for the past several days, but the bees are still busy.
Because last year the blossoms froze and the trees didn't produce many apples, this year the trees are putting out a super bloom. Thousands of blossoms are popping out; the trees attempt to compensate for last year's disappointment. So this year Farmer Bill will have to thin the apples. Thinning can be done chemically or by hand, and he'll do both. Zestar! are notorious for not setting well, so chemical thinning, a tricky process at best, can take out too many blossoms. Farmer Bill will take a crew out to the orchard after the Zestar! apples have set and thin those rows by hand. To get optimum size and flavor, apples should hang by themselves, at least a fist's distance from the next nearest apple. Too many apples too close together means the apples stay small and can't get the sunlight they need to create their red color.
As soon as the apples start to form, we'll start scouting for Plum Curculio. This pest of apples is one of the earliest; the adults mate about now and the females dig under the skin of developing apples to lay their eggs. Most of the apples with PC eggs will drop early, but those that survive to maturity will have scars and won't be salable as first quality.
We've already started scouting for other pests. About April 1 we put a data logger in the orchard. It records the temperature every 15 minutes, and has an attachment that records leaf wetness. The temperatures help us track degree days. A combination of the leaf wetness hours and the temperature helps us track when apple scab spores will be most active and viable. Apple scab is the major fungal problem facing apple growers. In wet, humid areas like Minnesota it's especially problematic. By tracking the temperature & wetness Farmer Bill can estimate when it's time to spray a fungicide to best attack the greatest number of spores. He's done so well with this the last several years that he only has to spray twice, early in the year before the apples have even formed, to have virtually no apple scab in his orchard. [I say only twice because conventional growers with scab problems will spray 5 or more times a year. Organic growers have to spray every 10 days - or after a significant rain event - all summer long. Good IPM management has its perks - fewer chemicals used to best advantage.]
The other pests we scout for in the orchard now are Codling Moth, Oblique-Banded Leaf Rollers, Red-Banded Leaf Rollers, Lesser Apple Worm, Spotted Tentiform Leaf Miners, and Dogwood Borers. All of them are problems to one degree or another in most Minnesota orchards. In July we'll add Apple Maggots, yet another nasty pest of apples.
The scouting takes time and materials. We hang traps with liners covered in sticky stuff & put pheromone lures inside them; except for Plum Curculio, for which there isn't an effective lure. Once a week, more often at times, I go out into the orchard & check all the traps, pull the data logger to retrieve the newest data, and create a report. We're currently working with the MN Department of Agriculture, who take our data and data from several other orchards across the state to put together a weekly report. The report is sent to orchards on an email list, and available online for anyone to see. Those who don't have the resources or inclination to do their own scouting can use the report to help them time their pest control.
And since Straight River Farm is also using Mating Disruption to fight codling moth, we put out a few extra traps to be sure we don't have a codling moth problem. Mating Disruption works like this: we hang codling moth pheromone twist ties throughout the orchard. There is so much scent of female codling moth all over the orchard that the males can't find an actual female. Thus, no mating is done, the females don't dig into our apples to lay their eggs, the eggs don't hatch, and there are no larvae to worm their way through the apples (pun intended). And this is done for something less than the cost of chemical spraying that would otherwise be necessary. Pretty cool. It's been very successful the previous 2 years in our orchard, so we're hoping it will be again this year. But, just in case, we have multiple traps around the orchard and check them regularly.
It's a long haul from blossom to apple for an orchardist. But aren't we lucky that there are farmers like Bill who make the long haul?
We've already started scouting for other pests. About April 1 we put a data logger in the orchard. It records the temperature every 15 minutes, and has an attachment that records leaf wetness. The temperatures help us track degree days. A combination of the leaf wetness hours and the temperature helps us track when apple scab spores will be most active and viable. Apple scab is the major fungal problem facing apple growers. In wet, humid areas like Minnesota it's especially problematic. By tracking the temperature & wetness Farmer Bill can estimate when it's time to spray a fungicide to best attack the greatest number of spores. He's done so well with this the last several years that he only has to spray twice, early in the year before the apples have even formed, to have virtually no apple scab in his orchard. [I say only twice because conventional growers with scab problems will spray 5 or more times a year. Organic growers have to spray every 10 days - or after a significant rain event - all summer long. Good IPM management has its perks - fewer chemicals used to best advantage.]
The other pests we scout for in the orchard now are Codling Moth, Oblique-Banded Leaf Rollers, Red-Banded Leaf Rollers, Lesser Apple Worm, Spotted Tentiform Leaf Miners, and Dogwood Borers. All of them are problems to one degree or another in most Minnesota orchards. In July we'll add Apple Maggots, yet another nasty pest of apples.
The scouting takes time and materials. We hang traps with liners covered in sticky stuff & put pheromone lures inside them; except for Plum Curculio, for which there isn't an effective lure. Once a week, more often at times, I go out into the orchard & check all the traps, pull the data logger to retrieve the newest data, and create a report. We're currently working with the MN Department of Agriculture, who take our data and data from several other orchards across the state to put together a weekly report. The report is sent to orchards on an email list, and available online for anyone to see. Those who don't have the resources or inclination to do their own scouting can use the report to help them time their pest control.
And since Straight River Farm is also using Mating Disruption to fight codling moth, we put out a few extra traps to be sure we don't have a codling moth problem. Mating Disruption works like this: we hang codling moth pheromone twist ties throughout the orchard. There is so much scent of female codling moth all over the orchard that the males can't find an actual female. Thus, no mating is done, the females don't dig into our apples to lay their eggs, the eggs don't hatch, and there are no larvae to worm their way through the apples (pun intended). And this is done for something less than the cost of chemical spraying that would otherwise be necessary. Pretty cool. It's been very successful the previous 2 years in our orchard, so we're hoping it will be again this year. But, just in case, we have multiple traps around the orchard and check them regularly.
It's a long haul from blossom to apple for an orchardist. But aren't we lucky that there are farmers like Bill who make the long haul?
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