Nov

So Time Got Away From Me

Honestly, I haven’t really had time to keep up with what’s been going on. Things have been changing at such a rapid pace I can’t even begin to explain it. There are super new exciting things on the horizon I can’t wait to talk about, and of course, there are goats…there are always goats. So instead of endless words – I’ll get to those later – here are some pictures and we’ll get caught up on all the other stuff soon.

We had a surprise nest of chicks hatch.

There has been cuddly goats…

I spun a bunch of yarn….

We had a ton of plums I turned into jam…

I knit the magnamity cardi which I love.

These pockets are amazing!

And then there is this…which is super duper exciting. I’ll post full pictures asap and the full story but right now…just a hint of what’s to come.

203 days ago Short URL 5 Comments

Chicken/Craft/farm/Goats/knit/Knitting/Memories/photography/Picture/Pictures/Spin/spinning

May

Dudes, I am way behind and have been a terrible blogger. Things have been going on and frankly, I’m pooped most days. About a month ago we had our sheep shorn. After a week of really hot weather we had a great young guy come in and shave out sheep so they’d be cool and comfortable.

Herman (our big ram) was first and I’m pretty sure that this is probably the first time he’s ever been shorn. He’s just over a year and his fleece was matted and gross to we just tossed it. Next year though we’ll have wonderful cinnamon fleece off this big fella.

Herman is by far the most chill sheep on the face of the earth. The Mr and I sometimes joke that he must be half goat because he enjoys our attention, comes up to get his chin scratched and will let you do just about anything you want to him. For a ram (and a primitive more wild breed) it’s pretty amazing not to have any of the craziness our ewes have or to have to watch your back all the time with him. Don’t get me wrong, we still keep a good set of eyes on him because he is a ram after all, but when he comes running up we are 99.9% sure it’s just to say hello. This will all change when the girls are back in season and he gets a bit more manly but for now he’s just as sweet as any goat we have.

Our shearer was amazing and fast. I am used to being along at my friend’s shearings and frankly…nothing could be more exhausting. My good friends Tom & Mette have 70 some icelandic sheep and just as many (if not more) alpacas and llamas. It is more than a one day event. Shearing an alpaca is not at all like shearing a sheep. It’s longer, it’s more physical, and it involves a tilt squeeze.

In all, the sheep were done in less than an hour and bald as the day they were born. They look so silly but at least now they are cool and we have that behind us.

We also had a surprise last weekend. One of our ewes who wasn’t supposed to be bred gave us a ram lamb. I know exactly when this happened because I was there. Herman broke our gate while I was feeding, jumped on this ewe and her sister once before I could get him back where he was supposed to be again. Apparently once was enough because Coco gave us a pretty little black lamb. He’s small but healthy and bouncy. I have no doubt that in another month he’ll be caught up with the other three lambs. Beefcake (pictured above) is huge. His mama gave us a beefy lamb last year too and I think this is her specialty. The other ram lamb (sausage) is an egg on legs. He isn’t getting tall but he is getting super wide. It’s a little ridiculous honestly. Ethel, our little girl is pretty and just as big as the boys. Not bad for two first time mama’s.

This is a photo of little Stew about an hour after he was born and discovered in the field. Coco never even looked pregnant but she’s been a pretty wonderful mom so far.

Sausage shows you how wide he is.

Herman really is a wonderful ram. He puts up with just about anything, even chicken rides.

387 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

farm/fiber/Icelandic Sheep/photography/Picture/Pictures/Sheep

May

We have had radom amazing sunny days here on the homestead. Days that are best spent in the company of goats.

413 days ago Short URL 6 Comments

Chicken/farm/Goats/La Mancha/photography/Picture/Pictures/Pygora

Apr

Strigose Cowl Now Available

My strigose cowl is now available! I can’t tell you how beautiful the tests turned out! I’ll just show you!

They turned out so amazingly! Also, I have a new design fresh off the blocking wires!

I have not been blogging so much these past three weeks which I apologize for. I’ve been crazy busy with work and the farm and all sorts of OTHER stuff. I have lots of pictures (goat pictures) to share this weekend and maybe even some news that I’ve been sitting on for a while.

See, things went down about a month ago that I wasn’t really willing or ready to talk about. Life changing news (and not the OMG THIS IS SO AWESOME! kind either). I took some time to look inward and harden my shell a little bit. I’m an odd mix of completely extroverted guarded person. I am free about my happiness and addresses, my embarrassing mistakes, my failures, and triumphs but this was beyond those things. This needed some time to just be and for the Mr and I to recover. It was a sort of phoenix moment and I finally feel as if the wind has picked up and started to blow away the ash of the old and what lays ahead of us, our rebirth, is exciting, terrifying, and brilliant. I know I am the luckiest woman in the world to have such an amazing family, such fantastic friends, the worlds best husband, two dogs that make me laugh and snuggle me when I need it, and a wonderful base of blog readers who don’t know me but leave such fantastically supportive comments.

I love you all.

419 days ago Short URL 4 Comments

Craft/farm/Goats/knit/Knitting/La Mancha/Pattern/photography/Picture/Pictures

Apr

My Bags Again

My grocery bags were featured on The Fat Squirrel Speaks (seriously, the whole vlog cracked me up) and I sold out again. If you are looking for more bags I’ve restocked the store and I’ll be adding a new graphic too (It’s green with a goose!). I just found those sacks in my pile of barn stuff and the Mr was amazing and cut them up for me to sew. You all know what I’ll be doing this weekend! I want to add (since this has already been brought up more than once) if you get your hands on a particular plastic feed bag (say Rabbit Chow) I would totally do a custom bag for you. It would cost the same you’d just have to ship it to me. So yeah. There’s that

435 days ago Short URL 5 Comments

farm

Apr

Look What I Made!

So there are things you learn when you have farm animals. Things that should be intuitive and obvious and really not.

1. You will get over any fear you ever had of poop.

This means you will not even think about poop in your daily life, you will just assume that you have some form of it on you and it’s not a big deal. It’s in your boots, it’s on your jeans, it’s probably under your nails (yeah a few of you just were grossed out) and it’s most definitely on your shirt. That mud your stepping in? Probably mostly poop. Maybe some pee for good measure. It’s just not a big thing after a while and you wash your jeans on Hot in the washer. You also don’t touch your face with your hands, you learn to use your sleeve or shoulder to scratch that itch.

2. Hay gets everywhere.

It’s ridiculous, this stuff is better than velcro. I started wearing overalls the other day (I know, totally not sexy at all) after my pants had fallen down around my knees for the umpteenth time (no belts don’t work for me because I have no actual hips to speak of) and you know what? I gave in. I decided I just didn’t want to deal with pulling up my jeans when I was feeding or running after the animals. I’ve had these overalls ready for almost 6 months and I figured, it’s almost gardening season, what better time to not worry about your pants falling down when your bent over your veggies? So I wore them and they are super handy. They are men’s overalls which meant some tailoring and I have a huge superfluous zipper in front, and I might not be able to wait till the last-minute when I have to pee, but other than that I dig em for around the barn. What I don’t dig? The moment I found that I had a bit of hay in my underwear. Yeah, that was probably too much information but it just goes to show hay gets EVERYWHERE.

3. You will have things that you can’t throw away but can’t recycle either.

Such as bailing twine (which is not twine but plastic) and feed bags. I think they have a recycle program for the feed bags at the farm store but I’m not sure how much of those bags are actually recycled. They are pretty heavy-duty poly plastic so maybe it works out perfect but I’m somehow a little doubtful of the process. It’s like when you find out that all that glass your recycling isn’t good enough to be recycled so it’s crushed and sent to the dump. Yeah, that makes me upset more than just about anything.

SO! I went on a soul-searching journey (for like 2 seconds) and wondered what I could do with my copious empty feed sacks. Then it hit me….I could repurpose them!

I bring to you the Feed Sack Grocery Bag! My bags are thoughtfully constructed so that they are sturdy, easy to carry, just the right size (have you ever seen those stupid too small grocery bags that won’t carry a gallon of milk?! DUMB!) and they are recycled from my very own feed bags. I have sewn them up in a way that they fold completely flat for easy storage and also? They can hold 40LBS of groceries without even a whimper.

Here my lovely assistant demonstrates how the bag isn’t even phased in the lease when it’s holding 20lbs of milk jugs filled with water. I tested it for a greater weight but seriously, who’s shoving 40lbs of groceries into one bag? I know I could easily lift it but I know a lot of other women who can’t. So I think 20lbs is a good weight for the average grocery goer.

Seeming was really important to me. I wanted to make sure that they would hold up and look nice. The feed sacks already have natural box seems so I emphasized those on the sides after I’d cut out and sewn up the bottom. They stand nicely on their own whether filled or empty.

Here it is on my composter which wasn’t the best stage I thought at first, but then, it is a recycled bag on a composter. It kinda goes right?

We are not limited to only chicken feed either! I have goat bags, turkey bags, and general livestock bags. There is something different about the texture of the goat bags. Maybe they are more highly recycled than the other two? They are a little more cloth like than the chicken crumbles.

If you would like your very own bag I have put some up for sale on my etsy shop. They are $3.50 a piece and all proceeds will be dumped back into the animals themselves

444 days ago Short URL 5 Comments

Chicken/Craft/farm/Goats/photography/Picture/Pictures/Sheep/Turkey

Mar

I want to thank you all for your awesome comments. Things have been a little crazy around here and I apologize for not writing back like I normally would. I plan to! I promise! Things are ok. Sometimes you just have to accept what the universe offers you and move on. That’s what we are doing. The universe basically told us (in not so subtle terms) that we were not living the life we were meant to and did something about it. Frankly, if the universe didn’t completely shake us up we probably would have been on that path for a very long (and miserable) ride. It’s something I think that you never realize about yourself while you are in the moment. You might ask yourself “Am I happy?” and if you are not clearly UNHAPPY then yes, you MUST be happy. That’s not always the case though. The lack of unhappiness does not denote happiness. We were just there. So now we are not and you know what? It’s ok.

So much has been happening. It’s like it was all planned out (if sheep and goats had the ability to plan anything that is). DD gave birth to amazing triplets that I adore so much. They are healthy and happy and bouncing around like puppies. They are the epitome of SWEETNESS. Then the other day (because we’ve been meaning to do it for 2 weeks) the Mr and I cleaned out the old turkey stall and threw down fresh straw. The sheep were getting close to their due date we knew so on a whim we put them in the barn to get them used to it.

Overnight it snowed 5 inches and in the morning the Mr went out to the barn to discover 2 little lambs. Pictures are terrible because it’s the BARN and has terrible barn lighting but yeah. 2 little healthy boys. Since they are boys they will both end up…well…as dinner. I know that probably made a few of you sad, but on a farm, boys get eaten, it’s a fact of life. Girls, girls are gold. The goats produce milk and the ewes produce wool (which is finer this year than any I’ve seen it from my sheep!). Boys? Boys get floods of testosterone and become idiots. So boys aren’t our thing.

And now there are some of you who are all “But Preita!!! You had baby boy goats! Surely you aren’t going to eat them!!!” No, rest asured we are not. They are going to be sold off to other people. Maybe as a future breeder, maybe as brush control, maybe as something else. But they won’t be staying here either in the barn or anywhere else.

So you know how much I love my goats? I love that I can go in to the stall and pick them up for a sweet cuddle and they lay their heads on my shoulder or kiss my nose. I love that they are content just to be snuggled and chill out. Lambs? Lambs are not like this. Lambs are quite the opposite. Lambs KNOW they are not supposed to be off the ground, they KNOW they are not supposed to be cuddled or snuggled or pet. It makes me a little sad because they are sweet little babies with curly little fleeces that make them look like poodles but yeah, I guess it helps with attachment issues. Maybe my goats KNOW they could never be dinner so they don’t mind? I don’t know. Lambs, while cute, are not goats.

We have been handling the goats a lot which is something we probably won’t do too much with the sheep. The kids on the other hand benefit from a lot of handling because two of them will be future milkers. A wild goat is a pain in the butt. Goats that are used to handling are easier to milk, lead, and groom. Above I’m holding our little girl out of DD. Since the Mr was the midwife and pulled 2 out of 3 goats from DD’s womb I gave him full honors of naming them all (something that was hard for me because I’m a control freak sometimes). Above is Twinkie which makes me giggle ridiculously. Especially since DD is short for Dumbledor (we did not name her) so when we register her it will be Dumbledor’s Twinkie. It’s silly but I love it.

So yeah. We are waiting on 1 more ewe and then we are done with babies for the year. Kind of makes me a little sad because I loved the process.

In other news I’ve decided to start work on an E-book on Ravelry turning some of my most popular shawls into rectangular wraps/scarves. It will be a lot of knitting but I hope to have the release by the end of summer. I don’t just want them to be plain rectangles where anyone with half a brain could have pulled them off so it will take a little more planning. Where the wrong side is just not as nice I plan on dealing with that so no one has to see it. So yeah. Off I go to the races!

My list includes;

Cherry Surprise

Rough Sea

High Desert

Pix

Weave It!

Coastal Waters

and Strigose

454 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

farm/fiber/Goats/handspun/Icelandic Sheep/knit/Knitting/La Mancha/Memories/Pattern/photography/Picture/Pictures/Sheep/Spin/spinning

Mar

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m not ready to blog about what happened the other day. Thank you all for your kind wishes and I know things will turn around soon. What I am ready to blog about is GOATS!

And then after the Ides of March kicked us in the teeth we had a miracle.

DD had her babies. Triplets! And if the Mr wasn’t home we might have lost at least 2 because 1 goat was breach and he had to help mama out.

Two twin girls and a big fat boy!

459 days ago Short URL 9 Comments

farm/Goats/La Mancha/love/Memories/photography/Picture/Pictures

Feb

Let’s Celebrate!

A few things have been going on in the last week which is why I’ve remained silent. Last Thursday I stepped down into the goat stall as I was getting ready to put everyone away for the night, and I rolled my ankle. Seriously, I heard that gross popping sound and I face planted into the straw. Thing was is that though I am usually awesome and paranoid about bringing my phone with me at all times I decided not to take off my muck boots and go back into the house to retrieve my phone not 5 minutes before. So there I was, laying on my face in agony with the almost certainty that I’d broken my ankle. My husband wasn’t due home for another 2 hours and it is a long way back from the barn to the house when you are a cripple.

So I sat there for a moment and took a deep breath of the musky straw of the goat stall and remembered that I am not the ‘wait to be saved’ type. I go onto my knees – my poor unreliable angry knees – and crawled out of the stall trying not to hit my foot to hard on the floor below because every tap was agony. I used bits of straw and fallen hay as knee pads as I crawled on my hands and knees down the cement hallway toward the door. The whole time – and this is probably stupid – I was physically saying to myself “I can do this.” over and over again. Every shuffle of the knee and hand was “I can do this.” Oddly though I still wasn’t crying.

Pretty pathetic right? Yeah, well, I knew once I got to the door of the barn I had 20 feet of mud to the fence and a bunch of goats who wanted their grain more than anything so I decided I’d test it. I pulled myself to my feet and with the aid of one of the Mr’s many 2×4′s I took my first tentative step. It hurt like hell but I could move. So I did. I used that 2×4 as a bastardized cane and moved as quickly as I could through the barnyard and through the yard and into the house where I had enough thought to grab and icepack before falling onto the couch and reclining as far as I could to elevate the offending joint. I went fast because I knew that I was working on adrenaline and that it would probably wear off at any moment. And it did. Just about the moment I heard my husband’s voice on the other end of the phone.

So yeah. We had a lovely little ER trip to our local hospital where I was checked in by a woman too bored with me to stop looking at houses and who got snippy with me about my -completely abnormal for me - high blood pressure. HA! You know, the only people who make a big deal out of that are people who’ve never been hurt so bad they needed to go to the ER before. Unless you’ve felt that fear and pain you can shut your sweet ass up. My blood pressure was high because I was in pain, because I was terrified I wasn’t going to make it out of the barn by myself, because I had already broken this ankle when I was 13 and have two screws in it, and I was terrified that I would be out of commission for 8 weeks.

People, I have stuff to do. I’m too busy to be a cripple for that long.

So 4 hours later I was greeted with the news that it was NOT broken. People, I felt like I had just won the lottery at that point. Everything else didn’t matter, I was as good as gold.

So yeah. My wonderful husband took amazing care of me for the next 3 solid days. I hobbled on crutches and scooted around the house on a rolly chair and did my best to keep completely off it for that time. The swelling went down and the bruising came - omg it is SO bruised! – and I’m able to walk around pretty confidently now with aid of a brace.

To celebrate let’s have a contest! Comment here with your worst injury and I’ll pick 5 random people (with help of the random number generator) to win 3 patterns of mine of their choice. You have until Monday the 27th before I’ll pick my winners.

And though this has nothing to do with the post here are some goats.

485 days ago Short URL 18 Comments

Craft/farm/Goats/knit/Knitting/La Mancha/Pattern/photography/Picture/Pictures/Pygora/Spin/spinning

contest

Feb

Hugs & Kisses

The Mr and I don’t celebrate Valentines day, it’s not that we are against it it’s just that we never really have. Valentines day seems to be a day for people who date. Romance to me isn’t a box of chocolates and a stuffed bear, it’s cleaning the cat box with out me pointing out it needs to be done, it’s taking out the trash or doing something I need done with out a second thought. It’s every day love. If you don’t have that I don’t feel there is a diamond big enough to close the gap for the rest of the other 364 days in the year.

That said, just because we don’t celebrate like a couple of competing teenagers doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it in other ways…

Do you know how hard it was to find a Valentines Day headband? Impossible I say

So we inprovised.

Can I tell you how much I love the dollar store? Yeah, I do.

This picture cracks me up. The turkey looks SO cranky compared to happy go lucky Dude.

Charlie is usually my diva and best posing goat but he was more interested in chewing on everyone else.

I’ll tell you, no one is a better goat wrangler than the Mr. he’s good about keeping them from chewing on headbands, moving them in to the light just the right way and keeping them entertained. These photos would be so much harder to take without his help.

Even Tank got into it for 5 seconds…

492 days ago Short URL 12 Comments

farm/Goats/Memories/photography/Picture/Pictures

Mr Poopers Day Out

Category Archives: farm