Happy Irish Day inspired fiber!

 All week I have been working on some Irish, or should I say Kelly green dyed wool, inspired for our Irish heritage...

 It has Kelly green dyed "babydoll", white alpaca, and the grey is from my friend Mickey's Black Faced sheep.

 I've been carding these batts all week. I may just throw it on the wheel later or list it, not sure yet. It is like a beautiful pillow!

Still carding away on this beautiful day where I celebrate my Irish roots!

Another lamb born...

Well as fast as lambing season started around here we are done! With just two ewes bred and each one giving birth to a single black ram lamb. I was off to a wildlife meeting last night when "Daisy" our lamb from last year was pacing and acting panicked. I went in to see what was upsetting her and her mom, "Ophelia" had just given birth to this little guy.

All is well, mom and baby are bonded so well that after I got home last night and went to check on them, "Ophelia" dropped her head and rammed me! She was not all to happy with me holding her baby! I have never seen a ewe behave like that. "Daisy" has her nose of of joint because her mom has another. All in a day at the farm!

Core Spun Art Yarn fun!

I have been having so much fun with my new wheel. If you missed the post, Tim bought me a new Ashford Country Spinner II for the holidays. My friend Pam Blasco (available on my side bar if you want to order one!), who is a dealer got me a second spool for it and I ran over on Tuesday, picked it up and went right to work on this Art Yarn I had envisioned. It actually took 5 trips on the wheel. It was spun three times and back spun two times. The last three trips was plying on the rainbow metallic thread. The colored locks are a combo of kid mohair, wensleydale, corriedale and whatever else I had dyed. I just used so much color! The white is some "babydoll" wool which wrapped very nicely around the core which was a yarn I had made a long time ago that I was not proud of! Well it's back to the wheel for some more spinning fun!

Oh my goodness, how do you say love?

 To say that an animal does not know love is one of the most incorrect statements made by man kind. A mothers bond is everything, it is life, it is love...

 Lily has bonded with this little boy so much, he is never out of her sight, never far from her touch.

Our signs of spring on the farm are life and love and peace...

Look what we found this morning!

 Well this morning we woke up to do the feeding chores and Tim found this little guy just born. His mom "Lily" had just shown signs of a milk bag yesterday and showed no signs of labor. She did that last year so now I know her pattern.

We got the towels, dried him off and checked mom for milk. Her colostrum was right there so we set him in the direction and he took to nursing like a sport!

We are keeping an eye on everything up at the house via the "lamb cam". This lets mom get to the business of taking care of her baby without the stress of people being around. She can bond with her happy healthy baby boy!

Poor "Big Red"!

 Sometimes it's just not easy being a rooster! The spurs that grow out from the side of their legs are commonly known as spurs. They can grow to be quite long. Here are "Big Reds" after about an inch has been cut off of them. I just couldn't get thru them anymore with a pair of dog clippers. We will have to break out the big clippers for tomorrow.

Sadly for him, they had become so overgrown that he had injured himself on them. I noticed him for the past several days extending his leg. Today he was limping so I decided to grab him and take a look. He had a dime size gash in his upper leg. I packed it with triple anti-biotic and started him on meds. It's so sad to see this big tough guy hurting! He'll be on the mend in no time!

Lamb watch!

It's official, we are on lamb watch! "Lily" on the left and "Ophelia" on the right are due pretty soon for their lambs. It looks like they both may be only caring one baby each but we have been surprised before! Hoping for another white ewe but we will hope for easy births and healthy lambs!

It's finally finshed!!! My new wheel!

Tim bought me a new Ashford Country Spinning Wheel II for Christmas from my friend Pam who is a dealer. I have been waiting for it to be stained...

How to Make Felted Soaps: Part Two

This post is over due because of the blizzard, but that is behind us now, not to much longer until Spring! So onto how to make felted soaps...go back to the previous post where I list the supplies you will need. First select some wool and fiber, use wool as your base.

Begin wrapping the wool around the bar of soap as tight as possible. I was working with heart shapes here which was a little bit difficult...

Honeybee and Alpaca Rescue from their Snow Prison!

When you have a storm of epic proportion like Blizzard "Charlotte", you really have to deal with priorities. Each day you face and do what you are physically able to do. This morning I would set out to free my bees. I was so worried about them. Their hives buried in the snow and I was afraid it was very bleak. 

 I dug and dug and checked for life. Even banging on the side of the hives to irritate them and get them to come out...and then, there was life! I was so happy to see them!

Next task was to dig a trench in the 3 foot of snow to free the Alpacas from the hill where they rode out the storm. Tim has been able to trudge through the snow to get hay to them but they would not even attempt the snow.

 I was helped by my two wonderful companions, Jesse and Autumn who tried in vain to get them to follow them...

My dug path was at least 100 feet long and looking back I was pretty impressed with what me and the dogs had done. I can't take all the credit for it, they blazed and I dug!

 I just had to take this picture when I got to the other side of the gate. If you remember the previous post where the snow was up to the gate...

and then, the last shovel full! I was done! Victory was mine!

The "boys" finally decided to come down when they heard the grain bucket, using the trail dug for them. Even awnry old "Royal", pictured there on the right, was a bit thankful!

The Epic Blizzard of 2013!

We have been just a little busy here with 3 feet of snow! When we awoke on Saturday morning we went to the front door, ah nope...

 so we tried the back door, no there too! So back to the front door, the priority for us was to get to the animals!

Timmy's car was under there somewhere! That is him in the foreground...

 Tim's truck suddenly had a larger cab and is under there as well!

This is our road, or what used to be the road. I used a small groove in the snow to get thru so I could get to the barn.

Jesse and Autumn thought this new tunnel was really cool! hey ran up and down it many times!

My Greenhouse and chicken coop was holding up a lot of snow but it's construction is sound so I wasn't too worried.

 After all that shoveling I had had it! However I found that snow is very comfortable, my back felt great!

This was the path dug and you can see how high the snow is beyond that gate. That is our next task is getting to the Alpacas. 

 Many breaks were taken and we found that snow makes a wonderful cooler for beer!

Boys and their toys! This was Tim's first time out with the Quad and plow and the snow was just too high for the plow. It was great for taking layers off, maybe next storm!

Felting Soap:Part One

 This post is going to be in two parts. I will post the next part in a day or two so you can get the things you need to do this wonderful craft! They are ideal for gift giving and adds fun to the bathroom!
So to start you will need some soap. In my case I had some old soaps hanging around in the shape of hearts and rectangles.

 The next thing you will need is an old stocking. A knee high is good but you can cut an old one as well.

Some very hot water. I fill my sink as well as work over a hot running stream of water, hot enough to stand.

And last but not least a Felting Needle for embellishing and to fix some of the straggly fiber that does not come together. You can get these on line, at the craft stores or my good friend Pam from Dream Come True Farm in Oxford, CT is a great source. She sells the Ashford's which by far are the very best in felting needles. A link to her blog is on the right column of this blog.
And of course some roving and fiber which I forgot to picture here! I will be back in a day or two to show you how I make these fabulous novelty soaps!

Getting ready for Maple Sugarin'

I just love this time of year! It's sugarin' time! We have been busy getting the equipment cleaned and sterilized. Here we are boiling the spiles...

 and cleaning the hoses and hooks...

the buckets have been scrubbed and cleaned. They get stinky in the basement all year. We will begin to tap tomorrow and get sugarin' season underway!

Very cool finds...

So I was browsing in a store last week, one of those hit or miss stores and I came across this very cool find for just $4.00 each! As I continued to look I found this forged stork pair of embroidery scissors as well.

This pair was my favorite, very old fashioned looking. If you message me and want to know where I got them I'd be glad to inbox you and share my find! I have already put them to good use!





                                                                                                                                      

Egg Laying in January~wow!

So do chickens get bored in the winter? It's too cold to come out of the coop, today it snowed and yucked from the sky. so they took to laying eggs. Out of 25 chickens, I got 22 eggs today! Girls slow down! Needless to say folks, we have eggs!

Candy Boards and A New Year...

Well it's a New Year and I am approaching it with great caution and respect. Today, Rob the young man I am mentoring for his Senior Project as well as his Grandfather, who is an aspiring Beekeeper set out to make Candy Boards to feed the bees. We started with a proven recipe...

we poured the sugar into the boiling water and went to work making them as they learned how important it is to feed the bees through the winter...

I had many more pictures but Blogger did not want to upload them tonight. So we prepared the Candy Boards and installed them. I went up later, low and behold the bees went to eating the Candy, Honey B Healthy and Pollen Patties. So this is their time to rest, eat and await Spring to thrive once again.