~ One year............

Today is our first "Blog-Anniversary"! Hard to believe one year has gone by since my first post. I can still remember posting "Welcome to our Peaceable Kingdom" and wondering if anyone would read it. I didn't dare hope for a comment :) THANK YOU to all of you who read the blog, take the time out of your busy schedules to leave comments and for all the wonderful tips and tidbits you have shared with me over the last year. I am so happy to have met all of you and learned about your lives and how you live. I can only hope that year #2 is as good as the first :)

It truly feels like spring in the Northeast today. The thermometer says 45 degrees....yoohoo :) This jet was the only thing in the sky all day.

This is always a good sign that spring has arrived. We have five seasons in Maine. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and MUD season. It's doesn't get to be a real mess unless it's 50 everyday for a week. Then the mud is a foot deep. With the gentle or sometimes not so gentle March winds and a slow-w-w-w-w melt, it dries up fairly quickly.

The ducks are quite happy. I couldn't get close enough to get a real good shot of them but they are definitely out of their "home territory" looking for a puddle. When they see me, they run for cover, and then struggle to climb the snowbank because they are in so much of a hurry. They are a riot to watch :) ** could someone please tell me how to post photos so viewers can click on them to enlarge them?**

"Ribbon"

"Lace"

These gals should have wide load signs on their backsides :) I expect they will both have at least twins or triplets. Delilah was not feeling very photogenic and refused to have her picture taken. She's not as large as these two but twins wouldn't surprise me. They are all very good Mom's and babies should be arriving any day now. I can hardly wait :)

All the pygoras are in full fleece. It is soooo soft and fluffy. Tomorrow is shearing day. Everyone will get a haircut, feet trimmed, vaccinations and de-worming. I'll be sure to post before and after photos.

~ Lamb, it's what's for dinner......

I happened to find this recipe on line - I'm always looking for new ways to cook what we raise, hoping my family will not get bored with meals. This recipe is definately a hit in my home.......my family has decided this is their new favorite leg of lamb recipe :)

Slow Cooker Leg of Lamb

Lamb Roast, 1 -3lb bone-in, leg of lamb roast

4 cups water, broth or stock

3 tblsp flour

2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

I tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chile powder

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 bay leaf

2 cloves garlic- minced

1 small sweet onion diced



1 14.5 oz can fire roasted tomatoes

2 tblsp red wine vinegar

Sea salt

Freshly ground pepper

Turn slow cooker to low heat. Blend flour into water, whisk in salt, pepper, and spices. Place lamb roast in slow cooker and pour water mixture over the top, add garlic, onion and bay leaf. Cover and let roast for 7-8 hours. When ready, turn off slow cooker.

Leaving lamb roast in slow cooker, carefully pour the cooking liquid into a deep sauce pan, add tomatoes and vinegar.

Over medium-high heat reduce cooking liquid, tomatoes and vinegar mixture by half. Salt & pepper to taste. Add lamb roast meat, it is so tender if falls off of the bone. Serve over brown rice.

Brown Rice

1 cup brown rice (I used organic brown rice)

2 1/2 cups chicken stock or water

1 tsp salt

Bring water to a boil in a heavy 3 quart sauce pan, lower heat to simmer, stir in rice, cover and cook for 40-50 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.

Enjoy!

~Wordless Wednesday......

Yellow Gold and babies.....

We used to call this sawdust. Now it's called "Yellow Gold". We have a big lumber mill about 4 miles from here. When we first moved here 12 years ago, we could get a pickup load of sawdust for $15 and someone at the mill would load it with a bucket loader. About five years ago it went to $20. I didn't mind paying that. It's fairly dry and great stuff. Last year, due to the economic situation and the rising price of fuel oil, many of the mills in Maine decided to invest the money and can now burn the sawdust to heat their mills. I don't blame - fuel oil was over $4.00 gallon 5 months ago. By doing so, we all received notices that sawdust would no longer be available. That hurt small farmers like me. If you can't afford a tractor trailer load, you needed to find a new source to bed your animals. Shavings are $6 a bag! I have 9 box stalls in my barn. Thankfully I don't raise horses anymore and most of my cows stay out in run-ins most of the year. We do use sawdust in the barn for the milk cow and calves. Luckily for me, we have a friend that works at the mill.........we barter milk and eggs for a pick up load of sawdust when he can get it. This past friday was sawdust day......our bin was almost empty and we use it very sparingly. I was sooooooo excited!!! It smells wonderful and this load should last us quite awhile. Will said he will try to bring another load asap. What would all of us do if we didn't have great friends? I'm thankful that's for sure.

"Gus" in the sunshine.

"Squirt McGert"

These two love to get a wheelbarrow load of fresh sawdust in their stall. They lower their heads and push it all around with their nose. It's so much fun to watch them. They really are growing like weeds and enjoy their time outside in the sunshine. I let them outback when we don't have ice. We had bare ground on the weekend but we had snow yesterday so everything is messy again. They don't mind :)

~Hope your enjoying the sunshine where you are ~

~ Making good use of everything you have......

We have found in order for our farm to be self sustaining, we must be diversified. We sell a multitude of products and by doing so, we have very little waste of anything. We compost and recycle and try to do our part to leave as small of a carbon footprint on the earth as possible.

When we set up our sheep breeding groups in the fall, rams are paired with ewes for specific reasons. Our goal first and foremost is to be produce healthy, strong multipurpose lambs. By using the same ewes and rams several times, I can generally predict what type of lamb the pairing will produce and for what purpose it will be used for. I am always so thankful and excited when each new lamb is born!

Finn and shetland/finn cross lambs are shorn when they are about 6 months old. Lambs are evaluated at that time and lambs that don't meet certain criteria or lambs that were born to a pairing specifically for meat will move to the "meat" pen. Shetlands aren't sheared until the spring of the following year. The same theory applies. These culled lambs thrive and live happy, healthy lives until they go into the freezer and are offered for sale.

When we make an appointment with the slaughterhouse to take lambs, we always ask for our hides back. This means a trip back to the slaughterhouse the following morning to pick the hides up immediately after slaughter.

This is one half of my basement. It's a wonderful place to process sheep hides and for storing winter vegetables. It's a 4 foot frost wall design so I have to stoop a little as I'm 5'. I'm going to get a rolling mechanics stool so I can sit and push myself around. I have milk crates set up on the other side with plywood on top with heavy plastic over the plywood. These serve as my drying tables. The house is 68 feet long so I have quite a good amount of space.

When I bring the hides home, I have to use a sharp knife to remove all the fat from the skin side and trim around the legs, head and butt section. I like a nice, shaped hide. Once the hides have been trimmed and cleaned, they need to be salted. I buy canning salt or use taxidermy salt. All skin surfaces of the hide must be covered with salt to aid in drying and to prevent rotting.

It usually takes about an hour or so to process each hide. I check them every day to make sure I covered them sufficiently with salt and that they are drying as they should be. It takes a couple of weeks or so to dry them sufficiently.

These hides have all been salted and are dry, ready to be sent off to the processor.

When they are completely dried, I roll them up, put them in paper lawn and leaf bags, box them up and send them off to be processed. We have our hides done at Buck's County Fur Products in Pennsylvania. It takes approximately 6-10 weeks to process and return to me. These hides will be fully machine washable and can be dried in the dryer. The difference between what I send them and what they return to me is amazing!

These are finished sheep hides that I had for sale at Common Ground Fair last year. I sell many of my hides to expectant parents. Wool is naturally fire retardant and wonderful for new babies to sleep on. One some of the hides I have the wool sheared to an 1" or 1 1/2" long, other's I leave the fiber it's original length. I have sold hides to men for their motorcycle seats, women for their window seats and college students for their beds. I think my greatest feeling of accomplishment is meeting a delightful baby whose parents bought a hide for them to sleep on before they were even born and they have used it everyday of their life :)

~ Harvesting a Kaleidescope of Colorful Yarns

Each year we shear our sheep, skirt (pick out hay and manure covered ends) our wool and send it to our processor. She takes the dirty wool, washes it, cards it (aligns the fibers up in one direction) on a large carding machine and then either returns it as roving (clean, aligned fiber ready for spinning) or as spun yarn. Our finn fiber comes back as roving or a nice weight, 2 ply yarn. The shetland and shetland/finn cross fiber comes back in roving or a lopi, single ply yarn. I dye a good portion of our 2 ply finn yarn for sale. This yarn is dyed with commercial dyes, made here in Maine. The lopi is left natural. I always leave several skeins of both types of yarn natural for a special dye project. I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely lady, Jane, several years ago who is extremely knowledgeable about dyeing wool with natural plant dyes. I had the pleasure of taking part in one of her Natural Dye Classes and was amazed with whats available on my own farmland that produces wonderful dyes for my wool.

For some time now Jane and I have been raising different plants in my garden, lovingly tending them until they are big enough to harvest the appropriate parts needed to produce the dye and dyeing our wool. She has also taught me different native plants that I can harvest to produce lovely dyes and how to use them. You can achieve different colors from one plant simply by using a different mordant. A mordant is a compound that causes the fiber to absorb the dye. Most often we use vinegar, alum (aluminium) copper, tin and vinegar. The basket in the top photo is our "harvest" from our 2008 garden along with a few native plants.


This color is from a plant called Madder. This is a perennial plant that grows quickly and needs room to spread out. It's usually a year or two before you can harvest from this plant. The roots are what is used to produce the dye. You can achieve many variations of this beautiful red/orange color by using a different mordants as well as different fibers.
This color was achieved by using leaves from the woad plant. Woad is a biennial, hardy to zone 3. It is a spreading type plant with flowers stalks that grow 2 t0 3 feet. Woad IS the source of blue dyers in cold climates. In mild climates, woad is evergreen. Otherwise, it freezes down to the ground. In the spring, woad flowers are as early as daffodils in the same beautiful yellow color.

This color was achieved by using the tops of Goldenrod. It grows prolifically in the northeast. The tops of four plants can dye 4 ounces of wool. One plant blooms 3 to 4 weeks and you can see fields of goldenrod blossoms from July to October.
This lovely yellow is produced by using the shoots of the Dyer's Broom shrub. This terrific shrub is hardy to zone 4. One plants needs about 4 square feet of space. It blooms early in the spring with tons of little yellow blossoms and continues to bloom throughout the summer. I love to give this shrub a "haircut" in the fall. No matter how much you cut it back, it thrives the following spring. It starts throwing out new shoots as early as the woad flowers start popping out.

Last year we also planted calendula and harvested the blossoms and put them in the freezer for a later dye project. We have several other dye plants that will need a few years to mature before we can begin to harvest them. It is such an adventure from beginning to end - never knowing exactly what colors you are going to get :) I've been looking through the herb catalog lately, getting ready to order a few more dye plants to add to our "dye garden". It's hard to image green growth looking at 6 feet of snow out my window but it will happen eventually :)

If the natural dyeing interests you, the book, " A Dyer's Garden by Rita Buchanan is one of my personal favorites.

I'm not sure what creation(s) this lovely "harvest" will be. I would like to find a project where I could use all these colors. I'll keep searching - a great idea may come along!

~Weaving, weather, companions,etc.

As they say here in Maine - " 'nuther storm comin' ". We aren't thrilled but we are ready and complaining doesn't do any good. The prediction as of noon was 10 to 14 inches of the wet, heavy kind. Not too bad.....If I don't post for a few days, it just means the power is out. Despite the added work and hassle it causes many, it really is a sight to behold on a sunny day.

I'm making progress on my new woven shawl. I am using this gray wool yarn from our sheep, Freida, for the warp. I overdyed three skeins of this gray searching for a rich, burgandy color. I used a dye called crimson and was very happy with the results. It is exactly what I was looking for. I think these two colors look wonderful together and will make a beautiful shawl.

The photo below is my warping board. For those that don't know, this is where I wind on the yarn in a specific pattern for whatever project I'm going to weave. I wound on the first course of gray yesterday. The burgandy is dry today so I can wind on the rest.

This is my rigid heddle loom. I dusted all the cobwebs off and it's already for the warp. I'm so excited to get started. The actual weaving is so enjoyable and I've placed the loom in front of my dining room windows, facing the barn, pastures and my Mom's house. I can observe the guineas as they go about their day as well. A lovely, sunny place to work.

As always, my constant companion and best buddy is by my side, making sure all is well and catching a few winks. Life just wouldn't be good without my Banjo.

Have a great sunday and stay safe and warm.