Blog

 

Free Shipping over $35

My First Lace Yarn!

I am so excited, I finally finished my first really laceweight yarn!  I will put a couple of pictures up in the photo galleries if you want to take a peek at it.  It took me several weeks (of not doing much else!) - when I spin, I just fill my bobbins all the way, because if I'm going to do all that work, I want a bunch of yarn to show for it.  Also, I'm planning to make a shawl with it, so I wanted enough that I can guarantee no knots or splices for the whole thing.  Well, I am assured of that - my skein is 1380 yards!

Summertime!

Summer is here!  We are in the mid-80's pretty consistently, the humidity is through the roof, it's summer for sure.  Most things around here are business as usual for summer on a farm - except for one big change.  Caleb has a new job!!  He finally took the plunge, and switched to a part-time job so he could be on the farm more.  Unfortunately, his job for the last 10 years would not agree to let him go part-time, so he switched to a company that runs several urgent care clinics in the valley.

Planting Season

This last weekend was our blackberry winter, the last cold snap of th spring that usually hits right when the blackberries are blooming.  We got down in the mid-30's a couple of nights, with frost in the low areas, but the garden looks fine.  It's been so warm, we already planted tomatoes and peppers, since blackberry winter often stays above freezing, and we lucked out.  We had a WWOOFer for about 3 weeks, until last Tuesday, so the gardens and hoop house are in good shape.

Almost Done

in

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind!  We have had our fastest kidding season ever this spring, with all but one of 27 goats done already, starting from the 29th of March.  We have 43 babies (I believe), with only 2 lost so far - one who apparently breathed fluid during birth and never recovered, and a second who I think was sat on fatally, probably by a pregnant sheep - poor guy just didn't stand a chance against that :(. 

...And More...

in

Just a quick note to say - we have goat babies!  Katydid, my milk goat, started off the goat season with twin boys on Wednesday, and Buttercup followed today - with more twin boys.  We're still 5 days out from the official due-date start (a window of about 6 weeks), so these are a bit early.  All 4 little guys, while definitely small, are healthy and were up and nursing quickly.  Both moms, first-timers, are doing great as well, very attentive and nurturing.  Both of them had the babies clean and dry before even passing their placenta!  

They're Here!

in

Yum!

in

This will be a really quick post (I'm typing one-handed while nursing), but if a picture is worth a thousand words then this is a ~1050-word essay :)  This is why we garden organically - not just so that our children can eat organic produce, but because (despite our best efforts) they will eat an organic garden :)

The Week of Rendering

in

Every winter, we try to get some pig fat, and render the lard for my year's-worth of cooking.  Last year, I didn't really pay attention, but I probably rendered 1-2 dozen jars of lard, and put them in the freezer.  I use that almost exclusively for cooking (there's a few things that just have to be sauteed in butter, but otherwise it's lard for us), so I go through quite a bit in a year.  About 2 weeks ago, I realized that we were about out of cold weather to be cooking down large pots of fat, so I told Caleb to see about getting some.

Spring Already?!

Wow!  It's only the end of February, and it really seems like spring is here.  It was 75* yesterday - although today is supposed to be only 44*, with a low of 24* - and then a low back up to 52* in just another couple of days!  This time of year gets a lot of gardeners here in trouble - it's so tempting to plant everything when it's this beautiful so early, and then it freezes a week later.  And a week after that... and maybe one more in early May!

We're Still Here!

I  definitely set a record that time, for length of time without a sign of life on a blog - but we're all still here, chugging along, life's just been in overdrive for a while!

My last post was early November, so a quick roundup of happenings since: