After the doe roundup and lunch I dug up some bamboo from the orchard. It was planted by the previous owners and is crowding out one of our best apple trees. So periodically I dig some up and transplant it. Today I transplanted 5 plants into the pheasant pen and 5 more up on the hillside. It will hopefully provide some privacy from our neighbors that look out over our back yard. I also sometimes cut the bamboo stalks and use them for supporting heavy fruit tree branches and use it as poles for our beans. I’ve been reading on the internet today about making spinning fiber from bamboo. I can’t find specifics on it, and most manufacturers use lye and similar chemicals. I did find a reference to processing it like flax by retting it. I may try it sometime. I have a flax spinning wheel I inherited form my great great grandmother from northern Sweden. I would love to try to spin flax on it sometime and may be able to spin bamboo fiber with it as well. I, of course, have too many plans and not enough time. So this idea will be on the back burner for a while, I imagine.
–Al
<mailto:alshowalter@comcast.net>
2008-02-14 15:48:37 GMT
–Donna
2008-02-15 01:19:25 GMT
