Winter Gear

I'm four fifths of the way through my five days off work for the holidays and starting to panic about not having time to finish all the things I wanted (needed) to get done. 

Some people have the impression that things slow down on the farm in the winter. The work doesn't, we just change gears. Each season has its own jobs, demands, workflow and pace. 

In the winter, I dye fleeces and yarns, because in spring we are too busy with lambing, kidding and planting and in the summer, it's too doggone hot to heat up the house with simmering dye kettles. Yesterday, I dyed turquioise all day, maybe trying to fill the need for a sunny sky that has been long absent. So, with that in mind, I started with yellow today. I'll run the yellow, orange, red, brown spectrum today. 

The new porches, under the new metal roof on the house, are nice dry places for drying fleece. But everytime I go out, it's a reminder that we need to put up porch rails, and I want to screen in one of them before summer. Front, back, we're still debating. At least painting can wait until its warmer.

We mostly have the critters in dry shelters now, though the bred angora does are not sharing well. We'll add another hoop house to their pen today, giving added shelter and a extra space for when kidding starts in March.

Hay is under cover and supply seems to be holding out well. I need to catch up on registrations for the Jacob sheep and dairy goats. That's a winter chore that I haven't tackled yet this year. 

I like to get ahead on my rug weaving in the winter, too. Weaving rugs is much more fun in the winter, when wool is warm and comforting, rather than in the summer when its hot. Two nice new mohair rugs done this week and I'll tackle finishing the beast of an all-farm rug today.

I've been spinning through Mo's alpaca fleece most of the year, off-and-on. I want to get it done. The bag is almost empty now, and I did get the warp on the loom this week for the blanket I'm weaving from the the fleece. Almost through the first 20" of natural, then I'll weave 6" of turquiose and recreate that band on the other end. 

Winter is the time of year when we are most optimistic about our gardens. The plans, research and dreams take up our evening conversations, but much of the stuctural work is done in the winter, too. Yesterday my folks came over and my dad helped put up the framework for our hoop house cold frame. We'll plastic it on the next sunny day... which I hope is soon. We are going to start greens, maybe cabbages right now. The baby plants under lights in February. In the summer, we'll strip off the plastic and use the hoop to grow green beans.

Lena and I tight fenced a little area in front to do a flower garden. I'm thinking herbs and dye plants, along with strawberries, but we are also looking at flowers just for pretty. We both want climbing roses for the front porch and are researching fragrant, disease resistant, drought and shade tolerant hardy climbing roses. She likes the peach and yellow, I like dusty purple.

But right now, I need to take mohair out of the dyebath and go fix the angora does shelter before the next round of rain.

Maybe I'll even find time this season to do some more blog updates. If you want to follow what's happening here on Havencroft farm, like the Common Threads Facebook page. I update that off my phone on the run. Happy winter!

Tech! - grr - and maybe I did need a new ram

It's been a beautiful summer here, enough rain to make the garden grow well and the lambs, kids, alpacas, angoras, Jacob Sheep and dairy goats are doing well. Lena and I have moved shelters to the best summer spots and fences for better grazing. In the garden I have hundreds of green tomatoes on the vine, have frozen a couple gallons of black berries, am watching the potatoes and garlic almost ready to harvest and enjoying the moderate temperatures. It has not broken 100 degrees yet this summer.

Early on in the summer, I was shopping for a new Jacob Sheep ram to breed our Canoe Lake Sonic Boom daughters to, but I decided that we could wait another year. Just like I've decided that my dairy goats are for giving milk, not for making more dairy goats, I have the sheep for their wool. Lambs are nice, but I don't have to breed the girls every year to get wool. I was ram shopping on the new Jacob Sheep facebook group - a modern way to find new bloodlines to keep our heritage breed vibrant.

I love to tell people in my work at the Ozark Folk Center State Park that we use and keep the traditional methods of making things by hand, but we also use and enjoy modern conveniences of internet and vehicles. We cherish our history and our unique culture. History and culture didn't stop in the past - we are living and creating both today.

My broom maker partner, Shawn Hoefer, was twice named champion craft broom maker at the Arcola, Illinios Broom Corn Festival. He and my daughter Lena (second place broom maker at the Arcola festival!) make and sell more than 4,000 hand-tied, hand-dyed, hand-carved brooms per year. Broom making is Shawn's vocation. And his other vocation is tech. Broomsquire by day; Geek by night. He designs awesome web sites for more than 30 clients. He swears he really needs all those tablets, computers and handheld devices to make sure his sites display correctly cross platform.

I, on the other hand, am a manager and interpreter by day. I have an awesome, creative job working with lots of people who I really enjoy. And, as you know from this blog, I am a shepherd, dairy farmer, fiber artists, cheesemaker, gardener and cook with the other 118 hours in a week that I'm not at work. I use a computer at work and I depend heavily on my handheld for many, many things. But I am not a geek.

Shawn offered to update the ram in my little Acer Aspire One about a year ago. I said I didn't need it. I like my little computer. I would be perfectly happy to keep using this same computer for the rest of my life. But over this year, it became so slow that it wouldn't accept software updates. So I'd open it and couldn't use it. (That's why I've gotten away from writing blog posts). So it sat in the pouch on my chair.

Finally, about two weeks ago I gave it to Shawn to try and get the updates installed. He fussed with it, cussed it and ordered a new ram chip, which he installed last night. I guess I did need a new ram, just not the wooly kind. My computer does seem to be faster, though now it doesn't want to save my pictures where I want them. Probably something to do with the updates. Several people have told me that my photo system is too old school and not supported any longer... but I like it and know it and it works fine for me!!! Or it did... that is one of the things that I wish we could figure out how to add to the tech world. I have a perfectly good 90 year old loom that I use daily, why do I have to quit using my beloved handheld device after less than 4 years?

So, I seem to have a working computer at home now, and should be able to go back to sharing updates with you from Havencroft Farm. I'm a little better a putting updates on our Common Threads page on Facebook as I can do those from my handheld.
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And now I'm headed out to milk and weed the blueberries. When I come back in after chores, I'll see if I can't find a way to get pictures to post here.

Vlogging, or how to shear a sheep

Today we are trying something new on here on Havencroft Farm, I am going to show you how easy it is to shear a sheep, one of my first steps in making the high quality yarn you can buy at Common Threads.

This past week, I was lucky enough to be able to spend an hour with Stephanie Crampton Buckley, one of the founders of Arkansas Women Bloggers and owner of The Women Bloggers. She went through my connections - my blog, my Facebook account and my etsy store and gave me some advice for a tune up.

One of her suggestions was start vlogging (video blogging) some of our How-to's. Shawn was feeling well enough today to come outside and film this "How we shear our sheep" here on our farm; this is our first attempt.

My etsy store, Common Threads, has been doing ok this winter, but I'd like to increase my reach. I have been advertising on Facebook, and on etsy. I saw a spike in hits after the great article in the Three Rivers Edition of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette by Emily van Zandt and photographed by Rusty Hubbard. But, I'm still looking for ways to spread the word about the wonderful yarns and rugs that my sheep and goats grow the wool and mohair for.

Also, Stephanie said, as a craft person, I just had to do Pinterest. I haven't felt like I had the time for one more thing, but she showed me how to make it easy to at least update my boards and keep things fresh. So, I did some of that last night.

She suggested that I come up with 5 words or phrases that describe what I am/do to focus my efforts and then to use one of them in the first paragraph of everything for SEO  (that's "search engine optimization" mom). I've come up with YARN, FARM, WOOL RUG and I'm looking for the other two. Wool rug might not stay, but yarn and farm definitely do. What suggestions do you have for words? What words would you use to search and find out about our products.

And then, she pointed out that how-to's get the top hits. If you look on my stats for this blog, the two top articles are "How to build a sheep feeder," and "Hoop houses for sheep shelters".

So, as you saw above, I started Vlogging today. And I combined it with sheep shearing, which is one of the major foci of my life right now here on the farm. Keep tuned for more how-to video blogs. Maybe we'll start a Common Threads YouTube channel.

Spring arrives on the Farm

Spring arrived this week. It was nothing gradual, Spring came on Wednesday, like a person walking in through the door.

Suddenly, I did chores without my Carhartts for the first time in months. I didn't need my gloves to hold the frosty metal grain bucket handles, because they weren't frosty.

Yellow, purple and blue poking up in the front pasture.

I could get in my car and drive to work, without having to scrape the frost off the window.

The front pasture suddenly turned purple and yellow and blue.

Suddenly, I just had to make a gallon of peppermint sun tea.

Hundreds of robins flocked to City Park as I drove by on my way to work.  I saw cardinals as I did morning chores.

All of a sudden, on Wednesday, Spring arrived.
                                                               

Harley's little doeling

Then, on Thursday, my little yearling Lamancha diary goat Harley had her first kid. This little girl will be going to live with Linda P. when she is a bit older.
Suddenly, I had to remember to santize the milk pail for the first time since November. And the dishes left on the counter became part of my morning routine, along with milking. On Tuesday, goat milk will go back to being the mainstay of my diet. Ah, Spring.

 And then my favorite little yearling ewe presented us with her first little ewe lamb. Hocus Pocus is a sweet, friendly darling of a sheep. I think her wee little Incantation will be as sweet as she is adorable. She has a tight little curly coat and I love rubbing my cheek over her soft side.

Suddenly, Spring arrived on the farm this week. I hope your week was delightful.

Harley's little doeling a few hours later, all cleaned up.

Hocus Pocus and her little ewe, Incantation

Incantation's better side. Boomer is her daddy.