The ewes get to eat indoors the day after shearing.

Shearing in March went off without a        [....read more]]]> Just before shearing last year, I gave up on this blog Farm Journal.  Getting photos into posts was such a pain in the neck that posting just wasn’t fun at all.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who noticed because the good folks at WordPress have streamlined the process.  I’m giving it another try…

The ewes get to eat indoors the day after shearing.

Shearing in March went off without a hitch.  Thanks to all who came to help out, we zipped right through the woolies and then enjoyed some good food and down time together.

In early April, our first batch of meat birds arrived and then, after 2 lambless years, we welcomed lambs to the farm.  We’d really missed all that cuteness.

Candice bonding with her newborn lambs.

Our ewes did a great job and gave us tons of cuteness but one of the lambs suffered a broken leg at 3 days old and ended up in the house with us for 4 weeks.  By the end of the first week, Margaret (she got a name when she visited my spinning group) was leaping out of her playpen…cast and all. There was no containing her!  Eventually, we let her have the run of the house (wearing a diaper) and she would go into her playpen when we went to bed.  She learned to eat hay in our living room…I don’t recommend that!  Skye tolerated her and Gemma was happy to have a playmate…the cats mostly avoided her.

Little Margaret's big day out...no more cast! YAY!

Today she’s part of the flock but she’s the first to greet us at the gate and is quite the character.

The critter count was growing… piglets arrived in May.  We parked them in the shearing pen where they had lots of bedding to root in and could learn about fences.

The piglets get acquainted with their nipple waterer.

Throughout the Spring months more meat birds arrived in batches of 50 and 75.  We’ve become big fans of the slower growing old-style birds that thrive on pasture.

In June we were running everyday to stay ahead of the grass.  There was so much of it that we were moving the sheep every couple of days sometimes.

After the winter, there's always fence to be fixed and we're managing to stay just ahead of the sheep!

We could almost see the lambs growing if they stood in one place long enough!

We had fun at the Maine Fiber Frolic weekend…always great to see old friends and meet new ones!  The piglets outgrew their pen and moved into the woods where they have tons of space to roam and root and wallow and play.

Once they were well muddied up, they investigated their new digs.

We joined a budding Farmers Market right here in Bristol so for the rest of the summer, I was easy to find every Saturday morning.  It turned out to be lots of fun and I think it was a good beginning. Hopefully, it will grow and become a fixture here in our town. Put up some strawberry-balsamic-black pepper jam.

Skye in one of his favorite places.

July began on a sad note.  We lost Skye to prostate cancer.  There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think of him and miss him.  We still expect to see him rounding the corner of the barn after his walk around the farm.  Although Border Collies aren’t supposed to be guardians, he always checked our boundaries and we wonder now whether his absense will make a difference here.  We’re grateful that Gemma got to know him at least for a little while.

We had a bit of a dry spell mid-summer but it turned right around and the grass came back pretty well. Put up some tomato puree and bread & butter pickles.

Ewes and their lambs loving the grass.

The grass is growing like crazy and the lambs look great!

By September, some of our lambs and all of the pigs were ready for the butcher.  Emily came to shear some of the lambs on a stormy day.  Thank goodness for the generator and an adventurous crew.  I don’t think the sheep noticed the power outage!

A number of our lambs and a couple of our adult ewes and rams went to new homes as breeding stock, too, so they’ll be making lambs and beautiful fiber for someone else.

Shearing lambs by headlamp during a power outage. Emily is such a trooper!

Farmers Market was winding down but SOAR and NY Sheep & Wool Festival (Rhinebeck) were coming right up.  The start of October was a little crazy with Jim at SOAR and me at NY but we managed and had a good time, too!

Our first customers at Rhinebeck. Happy spindlers!

And then our attention was turned to breeding time.  Which rams would get lucky?  Which ewes would be with which ram?  All the ewes were checked for body condition and internal parasites. Then they got pedicures and nice clean coats. Bartok and Cole met the girls in mid-November and by Christmas, it was all over but the waiting.  We finished our Good Eats page…phew!

The holidays were quiet and very enjoyable with our boys and grand-dogs visiting.  It was so low key that I forgot to take photos…but maybe Jim posted some on Facebook.  Santa brought us an iPad which I’m really liking.  I’ve already moved a couple of magazine subscriptions over to it. Saving some trees is nice but really, not having that paper coming into the house is wonderful!

It took winter a long time to get going but it’s here now and we actually have some snow on the ground. Coasting along now waiting for shearing and the arrival of lambs.  This is a good time for playing with fibery things.

...and to all, a "Good night!"

  Our cable internet has been half-frazzled for more than a week. Time Warner says, “Not our problem!”. Luckily for us we have enough bandwidth to keep the email coming and going along with some v.e.r.y S..L..O..W browsing of the W W W.

My best advice for the holidays is to sit        [....read more]]]> Christmas Eve at Hatchtown Farm –

...and to all, a "Good night!"

 
Our cable internet has been half-frazzled for more than a week. Time Warner says, “Not our problem!”. Luckily for us we have enough bandwidth to keep the email coming and going along with some v.e.r.y S..L..O..W browsing of the W W W.

My best advice for the holidays is to sit down …JUST for a MINUTE — you can spare a minute. …close your eyes, take a deep breath and REMEMBER …past holiday seasons, your grandparents, your Mom, your Dad, that first two-wheeler with a ribbon tied to the handlebars. Take another breath; let it out slowly. You’re welcome.

Facebook friend Helen York (a/k/a Aunt Rhodie, previous purveyor of fine yarns and Xmas wreaths) reminded us: ..the old legend says that just as Christmas eve turns into Christmas day, you can go out in the barn and for that one minute you can understand the language of the beasts…

Love to all!

Twelve lords a-leaping,
Eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The spindle and the thingy date back to the mid-90′s. In both cases I had been commissioned by a customer to turn something unique — a        [....read more]]]> I thought fiber folks might be interested in seeing pictures of a couple of rare “One of Two-of-a-Kind” Hatchtown tools:

• a square-shafted low whorl spindle and
• nøstepinde-sort-of-thingy that is both a Wraps Per Inch gauge AND a 6″ ruler.

The spindle and the thingy date back to the mid-90′s. In both cases I had been commissioned by a customer to turn something unique — a special order. I have trouble remembering what it was like to have spare time enough to consider accepting special orders! LOL

Explanation: “One of Two-of-a-Kind”
– Any time I’m making ONE of something my instinct is to make a SECOND to keep as a physical record of my efforts. Having two widgets “in process” also protects me in the event my gouge slips spoiling the work on the lathe. Furthermore, even though I always tried to exactly follow the customer’s design constraints and guidelines, my having two “versions” left it to the customer to decide which was closest to their mental image. You know, the customer is always right!

A Square-Shafted Low Whorl

Length: 13 3/8" -- Whorl Diam: 3 1/4" -- Weight: 1.35 oz

As I remember it, the thinking was that the square shaft top would provide maximum grip ensuring a strong twist initiating super fast spindle spin. The customer, a gentleman handspinner, preferred half-hitching and was not concerned that the generously sized shaft top would set the yarn too far off of center generating wobble.

Square working end

Nøsty-Thingy — Six Inch Ruler AND a Wraps per Inch Gauge

As remember it, the customer in this instance was a knitter who wanted an elegant ruler to measure the width of the folded up section of the watch caps she was knitting. She had come up with the idea that the tool might look like a Nøstepinde. That a couple of the ruler’s sections could measure wraps per inch was my contribution.

a 2" gap for measuring bulky yarn's "Wraps Per Inch"

Testing …Testing Can you hear me now.