Happy Mother's Day on the farm

The baby chickies are now in the chicken tractor, with their
new perches and a draft shield.

The momma and baby sheep are grazing the front yard,
though with the lack of rain the grass won't last long.
Elizabeth and her triplets are in front. Pequena is
guarding from the shade of the maple.

And I got a riding lawnmower - and a bouquet. Being able to
mow the pastures will help with reclaiming them.

 It's been a good mother's day. We finished the chicken tractor and got the chickies moved out of the bath tub and into their new home. They are growing so well. Their little wings are half feathered already.
I remembered why I like chickens while watching the little ones gobble down every moth that comes to their light. They aren't up to eating June bugs yet, but give them a week...

We did our weekly check of the sheep and goats this morning. The girls are feeding the lambs well and several are starting to get thin, so we'll add some corn back into their ration.

The pastures are getting sparse, with no rain in at least a month. We have found some fresh cut hay though.

And, as a special present, Shawn bought me a riding mower to cut the pasture grass. The sheep won't mow the "roughs" but if I mow the grass after it gets long a tough, then they love the tender grass below.

What a good mother's day!

Chicken tractor, day two

Chicken wire now all laced over the top and door
framed in.

After a wonderful float with the current Road Scholar group down the White River, we resumed working on the chicken tractor.

The baby chickies arrived happy and healthy and are temporarily ensconced in the bathtub. We put them in a box so we could shower last night.

Robin and Summer  came over to help for the afternoon  and after I finished lacing on the outer chicken wire, the guys got to work on the back wall and the door and frame. Shawn says he now knows why chicken tractors are so expensive!

Now it's off to work and hopefully we'll finish the tractor tonight.

Thanks, Shawn and Robin for all your work and to Summer for a great dinner! My chickie project is a wonderful birthday present. I appreciate all everybody is putting into it.

25 Silver laced Wyandotte Chickies. For at least the last
40 years, chickie feeders and waterers came in galvanized
steel or white plastic with red bottoms. Now, with the
popularity of backyard chickens, you can get colors!
Mine are purple.

Back added door built and ready to cover with chicken wire.

The baby chickies have shipped

Saturday morning I had a message on my cellphone that our baby Silver Laced Wyandottes had hatched and were on their way to the post office. They should be here this morning. I called our post office at 6:15 a.m. and they said the truck doesn't arrive until 7:00.

I was expecting them tomorrow, and so agreed to be one of the river guides on the Road Scholar trip down the White River this morning. Not sure how it will all come together, but it will work out.

We haven't finished the chicken tractor yet, either. We 've had days set out to do it, and friends offering to come help and Robin and Summer gave us the wheels for it, but I always seem to forget how intense opening month is at the Ozark Folk Center. I've been putting in 50-60 hour weeks at work. Morning and evening chores and milking are still the bookends of my day and they keep me grounded. The garden is growing well. I've been able to keep it watered and keep the weeds directly away from the planted plants.

I've got a good stack of rugs woven and I've figured out some new felting techniques (including trying to felt one in the driveway - less than a stunning success.) I volunteer Sunday afternoons at the Arkansas Craft Guild Gallery and thanks to Becki Dahlstedt, the gallery is doing great. So, it's not like I've been slacking... it's just that the chicken tractor isn't finished.

But, my plan is to set the wee chickies up in the bathtub on newspapers with their heat lamp and food and water. Then we'll float the river and get the Road Scholars safely to their picnic lunch. And then, Robin and Summer are coming down the mountain from Fox and we'll all finish the chicken tractor and have a great dinner of....

Fruit Soup - you might call it a smoothie

My mom always believed in breakfast. She still does. And my dad makes the best pancakes in the world. But at least since I started school, I think I've always been in a hurry.

So, pretty much every morning since I can remember, I drink my breakfast. When I was younger, it was Carnation Instant Breakfast. As I got older, I'd throw things that were healthy - yogurt, fruit, wheat grass juice, oats - into the blender and drink it down. When I had kids, my breakfast needed a name. We call it Fruit Soup.

Fruit soup for breakfast on the deck outside my office
at the Ozark Folk Center.

My current favorite fruit soup blend is:

about 3 cups fresh goat's milk kefir
2 apples, quartered
1 cup rolled oats
1 frozen peach (there are no fresh ones right now)
1 cup cold herbal tea (usually Tension Tamer from the night before)

If I can get my hands on any berries, I throw them in, either in place of the peaches or added to the mix.
Blend all this on high for several minutes. Drink half of it for breakfast and leave the other half in the blender for tomorrow. Put the blender bowl in the fridge. Whip it up the next morning for a few minutes before you drink it.

Now "smoothies" are all the rage. A friend just shared her new smoothie recipe with me. My thought was, "that's nothing new, it's just fruit soup." Luckily, I didn't say it out loud.

Have a great morning!

My Communication Bead

Last year for my birthday my dear friend Sage Holland gave me a beautiful bead that depicts a white crane on a tropical background of color. The first time I wore it, several people asked me if it was a heron and I realized where the bead fit into my storyline.

Bead by Sage Holland

My daughter Lena has a star-crossed relationship with birds. When she was born, I had a scarlet headed conure. The parrot was jealous of the new little human. The baby would cry, the parrot would shriek and after about 6 weeks, I traded the bird for a python. I had Sheba for about seven years before she moved on to a new home with a breeder.

When Lena started walking, we had a duck that had hatched out and bonded with people. His name was Lucky Duck. The duck decided he was higher on the pecking order than the shaky little human and so he would attack Lena when ever she went outside. It took a while to find a new home for Lucky, because he kept coming back.

Lena was about 6 or 7 when we went canoeing on Pueblo reservoir with my parents. We paddled in and out of coves. We saw lots of fish and wildlife. We pulled into a little inlet, looking for a place for a picnic lunch and my mom said, "Shhh, look there's a heron." We all admired the beautiful bird who was fishing in the shallows. All of us that is, except for the little girl in the middle of the canoe, who looked at the huge bird with the very long pointed beak and was terrified into silence. She was sure that if she made any little noise the horrible creature would come shrieking over and attack us.

I think that we found another cove to eat lunch in that day, I don't really remember. In fact I barely remembered the canoe trip at all, until, as an adult, Lena told me her version of the story. Since then, "Shh, there's a heron" has become family code for  "We might not be communicating here, let's back up and figure out what we meant."

With a lot of changes going on at work, people are out-of-balance and worried. That often makes them quick to react when they perceive something as dangerous. I'm wearing my bead quite a bit lately and trying to watch out for perceptions of monsters. I'm finding ways at work to share the concept of "Shh, there's a heron."

My weaver's desk

One of the student's in my cheesemaking class yesterday pointed out that it looked funny for me to be standing in front of them in a long skirt and apron at the same time I was trying to access information from google on my android. We had a great discussion about how it all works together in art, craft and life - blending the old and the new in all that I do. I love the big pockets of my aprons and the easy flow of my long skirts. And I love my car, refrigeration and the internet!

The best of all worlds - my loom and my laptop.

Growing my garden, organically

I just came in from planting the blackberries and Jerusalem artichokes that Leesa brought me from her home in Alabama. She also brought me some black raspberries. I thought I'd take a quick lunch and rest my back.  I grabbed the box of strawberries out of the fridge to go with my kefir. These are store-bought strawberries. Phooey! They are just about tasteless. I have three different types of strawberries in my garden, so hopefully I'll have some real berries soon. There is little that I like better than berries, berries that taste like berries!

Today I'm also planting sweet basil and Black Prince tomatoes and poke and stevia. A pretty eclectic mix. My sweet potato slips are growing so fast on the window sill that I can almost see them stretch. They'll be ready to go into the ground in early May. The Yukon Gold and Red potatoes are doing great in the garden as are the peas, onions, beets, rhubarb, chard and strawberries. We just picked all the flowers off the baby blueberries to make them put their energy into growing bigger and stronger this year.

I'm not planting a big garden this year, but I am hungering for real food, so I am being a little more serious about it. Last year almost everything I planted in the spring drowned in the very wet May we had. So, this year, I'm doing raised gardens. During the walkway construction at work, they brought in pallets with wire hoops holding rock for the seat walls. These hoops are now in the process of becoming my raised beds. I'm putting them in areas where it is easy to water them and where they will get the drainage that I think the plant needs and the amount of sun it seems to want.

My garden is growing organically, by working with the plants and our land. It is a process and I'm willing to accept that it is going to take time. Maybe the rest of my life.

My garden in progress 4-8-12. Wire framed raised beds, hugel kulture pile in process, rainbow chard, center left.

At the moment, my garden looks kinda like a junkyard with wire hoops and piles of lumber and dirt mixed in with both planted greenery and enthusiastic weeds. But, it's my garden, for my purposes at my home and I don't really have to worry too much what it looks like. And, I know the direction that I am going with it. I really do want it to be pretty, some year soon, but I don't want to push, plan, chart and organize it. I want it to grow, healthy, wholesome, tasty and naturally. And yet, I do find myself trying to explain and interpret it to anybody who comes over. I don't want to apologize for it, because I know how really cool it is, but it does look like a junkyard.

One of the big pushes right now at work is to collect, develop and publish a master plan for the Ozark Folk Center Heritage Herb Garden. The whole plan exists in many documents, posters and ideas that Tina Marie Wilcox has, and has had for many years, but it needs to be collated, communicated and published so that everybody in the park not only knows the direction she is headed with the gardens, but can share the whole wonderful concept with our visitors. This master plan is necessary, for the stage that the OFC garden is in right now and to carry it on into the future. I hope to help with it and learn from the development of this master plan. Maybe, in 25 years, my garden might be worth creating a plan for?

Meanwhile, I'll just write blog posts to share what I'm doing in search for tasty strawberries. I'm going back to my garden. Have a happy day!

Gobi yarn

Every once in a while there is a fleece that I just cannot wait to play with. As soon as we are done shearing it, that fleece goes right next to my spinning wheel and I hurry to get any other yarns off the bobbins.

Funny little Gobi. She's really not as thin as she looks in
this picture, she was just tucked up from being sheared.

This year Gobi's fleece was that special. Gobi is Boo's little ewe lamb, born last July. She's twin to Rambo, who sold to a new home on Saturday. She's a funny looking little thing, halfway between a lamb and a yearling. Because she was born at such a strange time, she didn't have any "classmates" to play with, so she never really learned all the sheepie games.

Gobi yarn on the bobbin

But I've always loved her coloring, I have a special fondness for the darker fleeces. My friend Mickie Ramirez, whose Broken O Ranch is in Fort Collins, Colorado, always knew she could call me when she had an especially dark lamb that needed a new flock. Two of our foundation sires, Caruso and Hotpants came from her flock. Mickie makes the most fantastic hats from her jacob fleeces.

Back to Gobi, so far, I've spun two 100 yard skeins of yarn from her fleece and they've washed up as soft and wonderous as I thought they would. I have at least enough fleece to spin another two. So, this little (about 35 lbs.), funny, off-season lamb grew almost enough wool in half a year to make a shawl. I'll only need to add one skein of some one else's wool to that shawl... perhaps her brother's? Or maybe a mohair highlight yarn. What color(s) would look good with this black and white yarn?

Shearing Days - or was it Lambing Days - Open House?

Our Shearing Day Open House yesterday could have been called Lambing Day - but it's easier to schedule shearing. When I checked the ewes right before daylight, I thought Demi was in labor, but it' not the first time I've thought that this month. At 7:00 when I went out to feed, I found these two little boys.

Demi's twin boys - Demi always does have to be different.
The little spotted one is "Hagrid" and we are keeping him for
at least his first fleece. You've never seen such curls. The
other one is really white.

Diane Smith and her new ram
"Rambo"

 Diane Smith and Sue Legg were the first to arrive at Shearing Days. We had been corresponding about possible new sheep for their starter flock of Jacob sheep. They fell in love with Dapper Dan X Basil's little boy. He has a gorgeous pair of horns and a superb fleece that I kept for myself.
They named him "Rambo" and he headed home to meet his new ewes.

Several people asked me for pictures of the shearing/milking stand we use. Obviously, it is home-made. In fact, my kids, Lena and Juna made this one for me. You can find lots of plans for goat milking stands and sheep shearing stands if you google them. Just adapt what you find to fit your flock. We have to work around some pretty good sized horn sets. We sheared Sultan in this stand yesterday and his horns are more that 4-foot across.

Another shot of the shearing stand.

It was a good day, we sheared Rambo, Gypsum, Nibbles and Sultan. We sold a few fleeces, a ram and Shawn got an order for a 7-foot triloom. We visited with lots of folks who read about our event in the Stone County Leader Weekender.

Basil had been trying to give birth to her little girl and boy
all day and about 2 p.m. I decided it was time to help her
out. The little ones were tangled up inside mama, trying
to come out about like they are here.  But with a little help,
They are out and fine and health. Basil is doing ok.

The biggest group of people arrived right after I decided that Basil had been pushing too long with nothing to show for her labor. Shawn did the tour, while Lena and I helped Basil sort out the tangle of lambs. Basil's little girl and boy are doing fine.

After almost everybody was done visiting, we turned the ewes and their lambs out on the rye grass in the middle pasture for the first time. It was noisy chaos for a bit, but then little babies went to sleep in the grass and mommas went to work mowing.

Our last visitors of the day were dear friends Troy and Linda Odom who took time away from getting Aunt Linda's Apothecary Shop set up to come see the newest babies. All in all, it was a wonderful day here on the farm.

In the afternoon, everybody got turned out to mow the
middle pasture.

Wow, I feel honored!

I often have a love/hate relationship with writing. I can do it well, but deadlines and expectations really stress me out. For that reason, and many others, I love writing this blog.

Here, I write when I feel inspired, I write when I have the time. I write my blog for my parents and to keep other friends and family somewhat up to date with my busy life. I write to share the great things that are going on at the farm, in my workshop and sometimes at work.

Last fall, I heard about Arkansas Women Bloggers from Stephanie Buckley and I went right home and checked out the group. I really enjoyed reading through some of the blogs and getting to glimpse bit of life from other real women sharing their real lives. I put in my application to join and got accepted.

Other than work email and writing this blog and googling research questions, I don't spend much time on the web. I only look at facebook when I need to get in touch with someone, or to share out info. Pinterest still baffles me. So, I was amazed and honored when Julie Kohl of Arkansas Women Bloggers got in touch with me and asked if I would be interested in being their featured Blogger of the Month for April. Wow, my blog about sheep and gardens and sheep and some craft stuff and more sheep - really?

She said "really" and so, I wrote my first post for AWB this morning. Many of you will get a kick out of this irony - the topic of the month for April is -  "Spring Cleaning - Tell us about all the ways you keep your “house” – not just your home – in order!"

Jeannie's new lamb

Cowslip's very large ewe lamb right after birth.

Now she's a whole day old and ready to rule the world!

Finally!
The ewes bred to Dapper Dan have started lambing.

Yesterday, Jeannie's sweet lilac ewe, Cowslip had a huge ewe lamb. This new girl is bigger than Frannie's twins.

Now that she's a day old, she's testing her limits to see how far away from mommy she can go. Tomorrow she might even join the evening Lam-pede. They grow up so fast.

She's really beautiful.

Jeannie - what are you going to name her?

Edible Spring Greens

When we moved to Arkansas, money was tight. We were blessed to have neighbors who showed us how to find food on our land. Rip Bonds taught me how to find, harvest and cook poke sallet. Marion Spear showed us how to harvest and enjoy catbriar shoot and to make spring rolls with wild greens.

My fav edible greens book in a patch of chickweed and
henbit in our front yard. We carry this wonderful book at the
Homespun Gift Shop at the Ozark Folk Center.

In the years since, I've continued to expand my knowledge of harvesting, cooking and eating wild greens. This Missouri web site is an incredible reference http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/how/cooking/wild-edibles-missouri and most of these green are native to our area of the Ozarks.

I have the Peterson's Guide to Wild Edibles and several other guides to digging, cutting and harvesting foods. Last year I discovered Edible Wild Plants by John Kallas. It is my current favorite greens guide and the one that I recommend to my students in my spring greens cooking class. There are still a few spaces left in that class on April 7 and there is room in the Spring Herb Workshop on the same day. The field trip the day before is booked full, but the workshop is an incredible overview of greens knowledge.

Today we had chickweed, henbit and dock with rice, garlic and cheddar cheese for lunch. I stirred fried the greens lightly with the garlic and served them over the rice and cheese. My family thought they were good, except I should have trimmed all the stems out and only cooked the leaves. Even as tender as the stems are right now, they were a less than stellar part of the delicious dish.

Happy Spring

 Yesterday it rained, all beautiful day. It was a rich, green, soul-feeding rain; a rain that swells the leaves on the trees, the creeks in the hills and fills you up with spring. Flowers are bursting out everywhere, from sweet little secret flowers on the forest floor

 to showy dogwoods, redbuds, lilacs, plums, honeysuckle and so much more on the hillsides.

Have I mentioned that I love Spring!!!

Happy Spring 

Boomer's spring suit

It rained all night last night. Mostly a steady, plant feeding, green-feeling rain. There were occasional downpours and very few lulls. Still it is raining steady and I'm wondering if there will be a break for me to do chores this morning. I may just have to wear a rain coat and convince the goats they won't melt on the run to the milk barn.

Boomer's not to sure about the stand.

Yesterday, before it rained, we got a lot of shearing done. The old boys are so big, it takes two of us to get them on the stand. We wanted to shear Dapper Dan while Shawn was here to help move him through the flock. As good as he is, he's still a ram who loves his ladies - and many of them are very fond of him. I also wanted to see what Boomer's fleece was like.

Wow, it looks like a carnival!

Boomer was a gentleman on the stand. He still loves to be petted and scratched, so shearing was no problem for him. His fleece is nice, it would be good to spin, but I have several very fine soft spinning fleeces this year, so I would put it in the bedroom rug catagory - a rug that you would want to walk on with your bare feet. The colors are a wonderful true black and shiny white. A very nice fleece.

Dan-man, Mi-mou and Bones also had good fleeces this year, a bit coarser than some years, but far cleaner than any since we moved here to town. We are getting the cockleburr issue dealt with.

The ewes we bred to Boomer are due the end of May and they are starting to show a bit of belly. We have all of them except Finesse, sheared. Greta has a  very nice spinning fleece. Any of these fleeces that I haven't managed to use in the next two weeks will be for sale at our Shearing Days Open House on March 31.

Boomer's new clothes - very comfortable for summer.

We'll also have rugs from our sheep for sale, goat's milk soap and maybe some handspun yarn and Lena's knitting needles. I'll have goat cheese and some herb blends for tasting. Mint tea will be here to keep you from getting thirsty. And we'll be shearing sheep and angora goats throughout the day, weather permitting.

Over the next week, I'll list the lambs we currently have for sale and you are welcome to reserve yours at Shearing Days. You can also visit with the ewes still expecting and see if you might be interested in one of their lambs.

Boomer's first fleece. I'm thinking of putting it into the
green warp I have on the little loom tonight to weave
a Boomer rug.

We'll do drawings for some knitting books and audio books on cd and have lots of fun. If you have any questions about the Shearing Days Open House, email me or leave a comment here.

The rain seems a bit quieter - I'm heading out to do chores!

Mr. Bones ready to donate his mostly white fleece to the cause.

Dan-man says, "Just get it over with!"

Peas on St. Patty's Day

Back in my oldest memories is the line "Plant peas on St. Patty's day." I'm not Irish, my background is German and English, so it makes perfect sense to me to celebrate a holiday by planting a food that will be a spring staple from the garden.

Everything grows well in Arkansas, but having to weed the
blueberries on March 18 seems a bit extreme.

This summer I seem to be playing with garden forms. I'm still building the hugelkulture pile with logs from Foxbriar, punky unusable sticks from broom stick hunting, trimmings from trees, soil from drainage trenches we are digging and compost from the kitchen. I'm making a keyhole garden outside the backdoor where I can dump most of my compostables. And I decided to try planting potato cages. I have no idea whether or not these will work, so don't follow the process, unless you want to experiment on your own. I will take pictures and keep following their progress here this summer.

All the blueberries are now weeded and re-mulched.

I'm still a Sunday gardener, so I can't get more done than I can create in a Sunday afternoon, but it sure feels good to play in the dirt. I do have time to weed, water and work with things when I go out and harvest for dinner each night.

Gardening is good!

It was a rock cage, now it is a potato cage.
 It's about 4-ft. in diameter.

Set where the old mulch pile was and then lined with belly
fleece, to keep the dirt in and the bugs out. Filled with
about 6 inches of dirt from the drainage ditches I am
trying to create.

Yukon Gold seed potatoes from North Arkansas Farm Supply.
I cut them so that there was one active eye per chunk.
This is three pounds.

Cut potatoes and scattered on top of dirt.

Another six inches of dirt on top of the potatoes. As they
continue to grow, we'll add another six inches of dirt
and then another six inches. I've heard that you can add
up to 18 more inches of dirt to encourage more potatoes.
We'll see if it works.

Then I planted sugar snap peas, also from Co-op,
all around the outside of the potato cage.
 I planted them one inch apart and covered
them over about one inch with ver.y wet ditch dirt

The rainbow chard bed kept us in greens all winter.
 Looks like dinner tonight.

Passing it on

Today was the dyeing day segment of my three-day sheep to shawl class. We start with spinning and shearing and fiber types and more spinning.

Having great fun with COLORS!

Then on the second day we teach spinning and dyeing (with acid dyes, koolaid and natural dyes) and spinning and carding and more spinning and fiber blending and finish up with spinning.

Tomorrow we'll start with spinning, then weaving on the triangle loom and we'll finish up with some spinning. It's my hope that every student in the class has a great time and is at the very least comfortable with the drop spindle when they finish class.

Several of my students weren't able to make this class due to health issues, but the ones who are here are having a great time. Lena is team teaching with me and that's helping me to keep up with class and a bit of work at the same time.

Teaching classes is one way I enjoy passing on my love of fiber arts and fiber animals. This winter, I had another opportunity to share that passion with a young person. Kolt is the son of our assistant superintendent at the Ozark Folk Center. He really seems to enjoy helping us do chores - everything from hauling hay to worming, trimming feet and shearing. With his parents approval and understanding of the work it was going to mean for them, I gave Kolt his choice of two wether goats or sheep for Christmas. He decided his preference is for the sheep. He gets to pick the two he wants during this lambing season.

Kolt finally has a lamb!

You know how the fates seem to have a perverse sense of humor sometimes? Well, here we are, half-way through lambing and every baby born has been a girl. Until Franny's twins. Finally Kolt has his first lamb! And Demi, Cowslip and Basil are due this week, so he might finally get a pick of some lambs. I'll let you know what he names his choices.

52 things to do with an old shirt #5 - Crochet a Quart Cozy

I've decided the best way to cut shirts for crocheting is to
spiral up the shirt from the bottom, after cutting off the hem.
I'm saving the hems, etc., for stuffing material. Just keep going
around the shirt, cutting about a 1/2 inch wide strip and rolling
it into a ball.

A sized P crochet hook works best for crocheting most
tshirt rags. Shawn carves and sells these on his
website at laffing-horse.com

 I love to drink water. And my favorite water bottle is a quart glass jar. They feel right in my hand, hold enough water or coffee that I don't have to fill them all the time, and I can see that the jar is clean.

But they do break and in the summer, condensation builds up on the outside of the glass. And they can be a challenge to carry when you hands are full.

So, I designed and created the Quart Cozy.
Cut a t-shirt or turtle neck into a 1/2-inch wide strip. I spiral cut around the body and work my way up the shirt from the bottom. I do it in one long piece, so that I don't have any joins. This is a good project to do in front of the tv at night when you are tired.

To crochet your own Quart Cozy, use a size P crochet hook. Shawn makes these great wooden ones. You can find more on his web site at Laffing-horse.com.

Make your center loop with a draw tight. Crochet 12 single crochets into the center loop and then draw it closed.

A finished Quart Cozy soaks up condensation, gives me a
handle to carry my water bottle and cushions the jar.

Chain three, turn your work and single crochet in the top of the next sc, chain one, sc in the next sc, ch one on around. Slip stitch in the beginning chain.

Now, staying on the same side of your work, chain 2 and sc around the post of the sc in the base. sc around the post of each sc and slip stitch into the beginning chain. Chain 2, turn your work, sc in the top of each sc around the cozy. Continue to 8 rows. Turn, chain 1.
Slip stitch in the top of each sc.

Chain 15, sc in the opposite side of the cozy to form the handle. Slip stitch back across the handle. Anchor well with another slip stitch. Weave the end into the body of the cozy.

Wash with your regular laundry.

Three bags full

Demi in full poof.

It was a beautiful March day to work sheep and shear the ones that are due next.

Demi, Basil and Cowslip are due right about March 15. They are waddling about, stretching their legs over udders that are starting to tighten and easing their big bellies up and down the hill.

Demi is half Icelandic and half Corriedale.  Her multi-layer, multi-color fleece makes the most fantastic rugs. She just keeps getting more silver-tipped as she ages.

Basil's fleece is usually one of my favorite spinning fleeces, but this year, I think it will make a great rug.

Cowslip's fleece, too, all poufy and fluffy as always, is a little coarser than usual this year. It will be a fantastic, big, soft rug.

Shearing Demi

Too much Demi wool for one pillow case.

Clean and cool and ready to scratch and have babies,
in that order!

Basil says to "get on with it!"

 These fleeces and many more will be available at our farm open house, Shearing Day, on March 31 from 10 to 4. We'll also have fiber wethers and angora goats, and Jacob sheep ewe lambs available to reserve.

Cowslip, born in '03, says she'll just nap through shearing.

Putting Home back on

We checked eyes, udders and feet in both the Jacob flocks and the angora flock this morning. The routine seemed awkward. I know my old girls, but I've been away so much. The babies aren't familiar. I "know"(logical deduction-wise) which lambs go with which ewe - but I don't just "know" it. I'm not part of my flock right now.

The wonderful flower show crew.

Maybe I'm just tired. This is my first day off work since sometime in the middle of February. I just spent a week at a really fantastic conference in Austin, Texas and received accolades for my own presentations that still have me glowing. I attended several great workshops and did some networking that I think will bring benefits to my park, the Ozark Folk Center.
I got to see Tina and the garden ladies at the Arkansas Flower and Garden show in Little Rock before I left for Austin and shared a wonderful dinner with them and their friends.
Quilt Retreat went really well and yesterday's Pizza making class was good fun.
I've worked up two new recycled shirt ideas and eaten incredible Schoepf's  barbeque twice in the last week...
I'll try to catch ya'll up before I get busy :-)
But now, I'm going to go shear Demi, Cowslip and Basil. They are the next ewes due to lamb, and I really need to spend time with my flock and get grounded in being home.

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