Ending a Year and a Decade...

I thought long and hard about this year end post. How do you look through hundreds of pictures and pick ones that are significant to a whole decade? How do you mark 10 years of a journey and a year that was so memorable with an end that was a dream come true? You don't! 

This year was a record year for the farm. We can only go up from here! Hard work, listening to what people want and working at it was our reward. So thank you to all that support us, help us and are that voice of encouragement! As we go into a new year and decade we look forward to the possibilities ahead not only on the farm but in our lives.

This year we said farewell to a lot of good friends who passed on. It was hard to say goodbye to those that have crossed our paths and touched out hearts.

We also had family come into our lives that was my dream! So farewell 2019, the past decade and we look towards the future with excitement.

Thank You all from Tim and Dawn!

Happy New Year!

The good and the bad on the bee front

Today in Connecticut we had close to 60 degree days, so it was time to get outside and take a look at the hives! As I suspected Hive 3 was a die out. There were small clusters of bees which looked like they stupidly clustered, exhausted food in those areas and died. The bottom box was full of honey while the center medium was empty but the top medium was also full of honey. I hate when bees are just stupid.

These were the small clusters of bees I found, many of them throughout.

Hive 4 was buzzing about with bees. This was a hive that went into fall with what I thought was weak but I guess not. 

Frames pulled out of Hive 3 looked like this which were moved over to Hive 4 in hopes they do well and get through winter. Starvation is one their number one causes of death as well as mites. These hive were aggressively treated in the fall and I saw no visible signs upon inspection.

Rest well Hive 4 until Spring!

Why didn't I think of this before?

Now that the holidays are behind us, it was back to work as usual around here catching up on some much needed tasks. Today's much needed task was Alpaca worming! As I was thinking about it and the dread that comes over catching each one of them was daunting. I decided to make it easier and I can't believe I never thought of this before!

I measured out the worming meds and placed it on some grain...

I then made a ball around the wormer and...

fed one to each alpaca without getting kicked or thrown about! It is always wonderful when we make life just a little easier for ourselves! 

Winter Solstice Blessings

As we end Autumn, begin Winter and begin our journey back to light we look at our blessings. Today, on this first day of Winter, our chickens gave us an egg after a long break. We look towards hope and the promise of life. Happy Yule everyone! 

First snow is scary stuff!

Our first snow is underway and for the Spring chicks it was scary stuff. They would not step in it, they jumped from thing to thing in the coop until they got to the ramp. At first I wasn't sure what was wrong with them but then I figured it out.

This poor Buff Orphington hen absolutely would not step on the snow and then she looked back at it as if it was lava in the coop! It was quite comical to watch as they maneuvered it. When we wake up tomorrow we are supposed to have at least a 1/2 a foot, this should get interesting.

They are also finding interesting ways to keep warm! As we move into winter, these young chicks are on a learning curve!

Egg Strike!

This time of year is a little rough for the farmer that believes in the natural process of things. Chickens molt in the fall, use their energy to bring in feathers and keep warm. What that means is they drop their egg production to use the energy in other places. Farms that produce mass production egg farms, keep their chickens on heat and lots of light, disrupting their natural of things. We don't do that to our chickens so that equates to a drop in egg production.

 We are lucky to get one egg a day from 47 hens these days!

I did try to have a conversation with them today about these matters, no luck!

New England Fiber Festival 2019

OMG! Where do I start?! What an amazing weekend we had at the New England Fiber Festival! We set a record sales weekend and can't thank people enough for buying from us, especially returning customers! My friend Naomi and I that share the booth both did well and set sale records!

Some of our "stuff"...

We brought 2 bins full of needle felting kits and had just a few left by end of day on Sunday!

The other side of our booth which by Sunday was almost empty!

We just loved these two Alpaca girls. I caught them people watching and as I was watching them I could just imagine what they were saying to each other! Hahahaha

I made my way over to the historical area of course!

Our sweet little 3 month old English Angora doe did amazing this weekend. It was like she was made for this! She had her picture taken countless times and was always so calm when people were looking at her, talking to her or just plain looking at her, she wasn't phased!

One of our sweet neighbors! This year we were smart and put our wire rack up against them so there would be no stealing of the table cloth! She was a beautiful sweet lamb along with her three sisters.

So we packed the truck and headed home. This will be the last trip for this old girl. She's done us well. Thanks to Tim and Naomi for driving me. I just can't drive that trip anymore, too much anxiety over it. What an amazing weekend it was!

Just a week to go!

Just one week to go until the New England Fiber Festival! We are packing bins and checking what we need to bring.

Yarns, yarns and more yarns have been spun in preparation for the show!

Some last minute Star Santa ornaments are almost ready to come off the felting board...

and we're picking out which of this years baby angoras will be coming along! You can find us in Mallory building. I will be there with the wonderful Naomi Allen who will have Hooked Rugs and supplies! Come and see us!

The honey harvest is in!

When you see that little bottle of honey you are about to purchase, you have no idea the process that it goes through to get it into that bottle! After a hot and grooling summer in the bee suit with the bees working themselves to death, ,making sure they are okay, fed and healthy, the next step is harvesting. We only have a two frame extractor that hand cranks. It can take some time to spin down numerous frames. Lets not even mention the amount that gets all over the kitchen! There is nothing like walking through your kitchen and your slipper staying where it is as you walk out of it~!

Our bees gifted us with countless frames that look like this! Capped and full of honey, some of them so heavy it was hard to lift them!

First things first is de-capping the waxy coating the bees put over the honey when it's just right and ready! This is a hot knife that melts it away quickly and allows you to cut through the wax. Known as a de-capping knife.

The extractor has a trap door at the bottom that allows you to elevate it and drip into a strainer startled over a bottling bucket that we place below. This strainer has two levels of straining in it. It strains just the wax but does allow some beneficial pollen to pass through making the honey taste amazing and also allowing all the beneficial good stuff in the honey to stay.

Once it's strained into the bottling bucket, the bottling begins! Then the labels are applied and we now have honey available! One pound jars are $10, 1/2 pound jars are $5 and we will also have the plastic bear jars available for $5.00 as well! Now to wash the kitchen floor!!!

Honey Harvest and Winter Prep

Today we fired up the smoker, pulled all the tools and supplies we needed...

loaded up the quad and headed to the hives.

As we began to inspect the hives we realized that hive #5 didn't make it but had a lot of honey still in it. Last time I inspected it, it was iffy if the hive had a queen. As we opened the other hives, we saw frame after frame in the honey Supers that looked like this, just loaded with honey.

Just another frame chock full of honey!

After the honey was removed, mite treatments were applied for the winter prep. The feeders were filled...

and the hives are ready for winter. We will be wrapping them this year as well. Next is cleaning up the bee yard! 

Welcome October from Maddie and Pru!

Welcome October from Maddie (on the left) and Pru (on the right)! October is our favorite month around here! A time to go back inward, sit by the fire, spin, knit, watch football and most of all no heat! The turning of the leaves and the sense of peace that the fall brings in New England is priceless.

The girls got their fall haircut last week so they are not wishing for the cooler weather to come too fast! We just love these girls! We took them in a few years back with no history of how old they are or if they are even related. Their ear tags had been removed so there is no way to tell. Maddie is more outgoing while Pru is aloof. They produced some nice mohair this time around that I am looking forward to working with. 

These inseparable girls on the hill. I think they are telling Tim to get these logs out of here!

A Rainbow of an idea

Have you ever had an idea that you just had to put into something real? Well I did in tbis one of a kind rainbow yarn! It was a concept that I had and wasn't even sure it would work, so I set out to dye 7 batts of alpaca the 7 colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Then i got busy...

I spun each color in order of the rainbow, putting on about a foot and a half at a time. Each color in order until I filled the spool.

I then plyed it with white alpaca and the results were rather great! As it was coming along the colors were beginning to remind me of the fruit gum we had as kids. My concept was real.

The finised product and I must say it was out of my comfort zone with color but not the concept. This year has been the year of the rainbow for me, who doesn't wish for the promise of what a rainbow holds? 

All 7 colors in a row! 

We're going Eco Friendlier!

We're going eco-friendlier by switching over to new packaging! These new bags will contain our dryer balls and eventually our felting kits too! They are paper bags with a biodegradable window that is earth friendlier than plastic. They are reuseable too!

Alpaca Dryer Balls!

                                                 

Making Alpaca Dryer Balls is not only time intensive, hard on the hands but also takes a lot of raw material to make them. The cost of the dryer balls is more than worth the time, the materials and the effectiveness they have on your clothes. Dryer balls are a chemical free way to dry clothes, remove static cling and leave your clothes super soft. When I make them I wash our second cut alpaca and allow to partly dry. I weigh up about 2 ounces of the fiber. This is the part of the animal we can't spin but it becomes very useful for this project. 

Using Dawn Dishwashing Detergent I place a small amount in a bowl and add the hotest water I can tolerate to the bowl. 

I then dunk it into the hot water and work it into a ball, squeezing and rotating in my hand. Often I will put just a small drop of detergent directly onto the fiber as I am woking it into a ball. This really helps tame the fibers and get them to work with you.

Our shearers in the past have made felted sheets that I have had laying around forever so I cut some up, wrapped them around the ball of already worked fiber. This is then dunked into the bowl of hot water and aggitated and squeezed over and over until it begins to cover. You get a nice squishy ball this way. I place it into a sock, tying it off and adding more as I go. This is then placed into the wash with several others and then into the dryer.

When done they are these lovely natural colors of our alpacas! We have had so many request to bring back our alpaca balls, have had numerous request for them at shows so they will be ready to go soon! Stay tuned for our new eco friendly packaging change we are making too!