Winter on a vegetable farm is a good time to tackle the mending pile, especially when a few years have passed without tackling the mending pile. This year might have been another non-tackle year except that the farm pooch is having trouble with his paws in the snow.
He oh-so-sadly holds up one paw after another and periodically lies down to chew the snowballs off his fuzzy feet. I did a little paw and snow research on the computer and found an easy pattern for dog booties.
My fellow and I sorted through the enormous pile of cloth that has collected in our closet over the years: shirts and pants and sheets too holey to mend, fabric from my mother who was a sewer, tiny baby and toddler clothes too worn to pass along from our daughter's childhood. We needed a pretty large piece to sew dog booties, and most of our scraps were too small.
“How about this?” my fellow asked, holding up a swath of bright yellow.
“I was hoping for something kind of dark, so it'll blend in with his black hair,” I answered. “So he doesn't look so silly. He's supposed to be a tough farm dog, not a farm dog with booties.”
My fellow laughed. “What about sled dogs?” he said
“Oh, yeah,” I answered. I had just read a book about sled dogs, and told my fellow about how they need booties to run fast in the snow. Stopping to chew the snow off their paws won't help them win the Iditarod. “Sled dogs are really tough.”
“Just like you, right?” I added, talking to the farm dog, who was lolling on the rug in front of the wood stove. He yawned and stretched and moved to the couch.
Unfortunately, the fabric pile refused to produce anything suitable for dog booties, since the fabric was supposed to be quick-drying. “Fleece, or merino wool, the pattern said,” I told my fellow.
“Here's some merino wool. Look, it's black!” He held up a pair of long johns, merino wool, black, and almost completely shredded from hard use.
“That would be perfect,” I said, “If there was anything left to it.”
“Why are we keeping it then?”
“It's beautiful wool,” I said. “Organic. I don't want to just throw it away.”
“Maybe we can use it for insulation in the end wall of the greenhouse?”
“Yeah, we're saving it for insulation in the greenhouse,” I agreed happily. “Plus now that we have this fabric all over the place, we can do some mending.”
Over the course of a few days, we patched seven pairs of work pants, three sheets, one mattress protector, two cloth bags, and three shirts.
I felt very productive and also a little squrirrelly, as was the farm pooch, who is young enough that lying on the rug and couch for too long translates into a lot of energy, which will either be dispelled by nosing around and chewing on things he shouldn't or by taking a walk.
“Let's take a walk,” I said, as the dog did some shredding of his own in the big pile of cloth.
We suited up, including the dog's neon vest, so hunters don't mistake him for anything but a dog, and so we can see him more easily when he does his young dog job of running fast and far.
“But where are his booties?” I said, as the pooch blasted around in the snow, and then abruptly dropped onto the ground to chew on his paws.
“Yes, where are your booties?” my sympathetic fellow asked, kneeling in the snow to help the dog get the tiny snowballs out of his feet. The pooch bounced up and blasted off again.
“I guess he's not having that much trouble,” I said. “Maybe we shouldn't even bother with booties.”
“Yeah,” agreed my fellow. “Plus it keeps him nice and busy. He loves a good chewing job.”
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 4 - Feb 10, 2025