Farmama

The One Straw Revolution

Here's an excerpt from my latest favorite book.....it made me smile so I wanted to share!

"I do not particularly like the word "work". Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life."

Masonobu Fukuoka (from his book "The One Straw Revolution")

If only it were that easy!

While the farm is sleeping.....

the farmers are.....

enjoying fresh plywood on the skate ramp! (you can see how happy Isaac is to have the skate ramp fixed!)......

still climbing plenty of trees.....

eating yummy fresh baked bread (with lots of butter!).....

 

and spinning roving into yarn beside a warm fire!

 

That's how we spent our day today.....at least some of the things that we did! This is the best time of year! (although I say that when every new season rolls around!) I hope you are enjoying this season too!

Ila's Stella Pixie

Here's Ila's new hat fresh off the needles. Hand spun wool from our Nellie sheep that I dyed with brazilwood sawdust. You can see that my hand spinning is not perfect....a little lumpy bumpy but I like it that way......gives it character....right?

 

 

The pattern is "the Stella Pixie Hat" from the book Vintage Baby Knits.  It's a little snug but I think she will be able to wear it through the winter, and the best part is that it has a button, so she can't take it off!
  Ila is quite curious about Benny! His sounds and smells (not to mention his behavior!) are indeed very interesting to say the least!

 
Lucky for you....you can't smell him through the computer!!

 

Hard Workin' Farm boys

My farmer boys are big enough to clean out the barn now! Tom scooped all the heavy stuff out with the tractor, and then the boys came along with their wheel barrows and got all the rest of it! They did such a fantastic job.....the barn has never looked so clean! And I love their barn frocks (a long sleeved shirt....with their faces sticking out the head hole!) Creative boys I tell you!

 

Here are the goats trying to have a peek at the boys cleaning!

A wooly weekend

This was a weekend of wool....wonderful wool! I almost finished skirting my fleeces from shearing day back in May....only a few more to go! I put each fleece into a plastic bag (which made me realize that I need to sew up some burlap sacks for this purpose) and now the fleeces are ready to be scoured. After some thought I decided that I will buy a drum carder and card the wool myself this year. I so love getting it back from the mill all ready to spin.....but it's more sustainable if I clean and card the wool myself, instead of shipping it to the mill in Michigan.

 

 

Gertie Sheep is getting older so her black wool is changing to gray. I'm excited to have gray to spin!
 

 

Here's some roving fresh out of the dye pot.  I used brazilwood again which is evidently ph sensitive. By adding a little white vinegar to the dye pot the wool came out light brown instead of purple.

At the end of our day we took a ride down the road to pick up our billy goat. He lives at my friends farm which is a little bigger than our little farm. Come on and take a drive with us......

 

Can you spot the billy goats above?

Here they come!

Meet Bennie Black!

He will stay the winter at our farm with his wives. In the spring he will go back to my friend's farm to eat grass. I can't tell you how excited he was to see his wives! Did you know that billy goats pee on their face to attract the females? No offense Benny.....but you smell bad! Tom walked over to our neighbors tonight, and he could smell Benny from there! It's the kind of smell that almost burns your nose! Oh well......it will be exciting in five months to have goat kids running and jumping around!.....(not to mention fresh milk and kefir and cheese for us!)

Asher's Hat

This morning I finished knitting Asher's winter hat. Usually I can whip up a hat in a day or two but this one took some time..... not because it was hard....I just had a lot of interruptions. (I'm so glad that this sweet boy of mine is as patient as he is!) When I was showing him hat patterns on Ravelry we came across this one and it was "the one."  You can find the free pattern at this lovely blog.

 

The smile on his face when he put on his new hat was priceless! I love the appreciation the boys have for their mama mades!

 
The wool is from our sweet Matilda, hand spun by me and dyed with Greener Shades (a heavy metal free non-toxic dye.) I wrote a post on the dyeing process of this wool here if you are interested.

It was another warm sunny day today (70 degrees F.) so we checked on the honey bees to see what they were up to. There were a few of them out flying around....just a little slower these days (I can relate!)

 

Can you spy that lone honey bee at the bottom center of the photo?

Here's something yummy fresh out of the dye pot. I used brazilwood (with no mordant) in hopes of obtaining an orange color for Isaac's sweater. He wasn't too pleased at the thought of a purple sweater, but it will make something nice for Ila....and so I'm off to spin it up! I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Birthday Child

To me there's hardly anything as precious as the smile on the face of a birthday child! It's not an everyday kinda smile, it's different, and it shines all day long! Today was Yuri's 6th birthday, and we spent the day at our friends farm planting garlic. The boys were so excited to get to hang out and explore this farm and hillside. They ran free discovering all kinds of treasures mother nature had to offer them, and it filled my soul to see such goodness! Days like today make me realize how blessed we are to be surrounded by endless beauty and love! 

   The farm boys were delighted when they discovered that the bald eagles have returned from the high country. This is where they will spend their winter, and in the spring they will raise their eaglets in that big nest! Below is the pond where the eagles will fish and hunt to sustain themselves through the long winter.

While the boys ran free and played, the grown-ups planted garlic into the freshly tilled earth. Here you can see the life inside this clove of garlic.....

and the the hands of a true hard working farmer! 

Can you smell that freshly tilled earth?

 

By the end of the day the children were covered in mud and dirt, and they were glowing from the suns life giving energy!

....especially the birthday child!!!!.......

He is as wild and free as the pack of dogs that he runs with!

 

I couldn't begin to tell you how much joy this boy has brought me! It's hard to believe that we've already gone six times around the golden sun together!

Baaa.....

(I want to thank everyone for the nice comments that you left me on that last post! Thank you truly!)

Today as we headed down the dirt road toward town we were delighted to see that the sheep have returned to our neighbors big farm. Every autumn these sheep are herded over and this is where they will stay for  winter.  The boys were excited to see them back and Ila was very excited to meet them for the first time. She even learned to say baaa....a true farm girl!....for she doesn't say many words....just "mama" and "hi" and now "baaaa!"

 

 

 

 

 

The guardian!


  "Baaaaaa!"

I hope everyone is having a nice week!

Yuri's New Sweater! (A modern day Pele's New Suit)

Once upon a time there was a little farmer boy named Yuri. He was friends with all the animals on his farm, but his favorite friend was a sheep named  Matilda. One day he asked his mama if she would make him a sweater from Matilda's  wool. Hmmmm....thought Mama..... "Since you help us out on the farm by bringing fresh straw to the chickens and, harvesting the turnips.... and since I love you....I will make you a sweater from Matilda's wool!" So on the first warm spring day Mama and Yuri headed out to the barn and sheared all the warm white wool off Matilda.

Mama wasn't raised a farm girl....and had never shorn a sheep before (so it took some time!) but Matilda was sweet and patient and let Mama clip away until her fleece finally fell from her body in one big sheep shape piece. Yuri was patient too, but soon grew very tired so he took a little nap on Mama's back....

  Yuri and Mama thanked Matilda for this lovely gift! They cut all the dirty parts off of it, put it in a box, and sent it off to the mill to be cleaned and carded. Yuri waited... and waited... and waited for the box to return from the mill, until one day..... it did! When he opened the box he saw Matilda's clean white wool in the form of beautiful roving! Now it was ready to be dyed, so he and Mama gathered a bushel of apricot leaves to make a dye.

Then Mama made a tea with the apricot leaves and let the white roving sit in it for a couple days. When she took it out it looked like this.....

......and Yuri liked it!

 Mama began spinning the roving into beautiful yellow yarn. It took a long time, but every chance she got she would spin......

and spin......

and spin....until she had many bobbins full of yellow yarn!

All the while....Matilda ate the delicious green grass in the meadow. By now her woolly coat was getting quite long again!

Soon Mama had enough yellow yarn to begin knitting Yuri's sweater. So she knit... and knit... and knit....every chance she got....

until one day Yuri woke up and saw that his yellow sweater was done! It brought such a smile to his face to see his sweater complete after all that waiting, and all that work!

 

Yuri put his new warm sweater on, gave Mama a hug, and ran out to the barn to show Matilda...... for it wasn't only Mama who put a lot of love into that sweater....surely it was Matilda too!

Cold & Snow!!

Oh my gato!.....It snowed!....and it's really really cold! I mean it feels like December! The good news is that it's supposed to be in the sixties in a couple days...phew! I'm not quite ready for winter time just yet! We had a foot of snow on the ground this morning! The boys were really excited about it...so I had them do all the feeding chores this morning. I opened the back door and took this photo....

Snow makes for good napping weather according to Ila....

and great knitting weather according to me.....

I am SO excited to have this special project ALMOST finished!