Wool Part 1

Over the month of January, we've had a number of fiber arts workshops. It's a lot of fun to get to work with the wool from our own sheep. Sadly, we're using wool from 2009 and since the shearer isn't scheduled until April, I doubt that the current sheep's wool will be very good (lots and lots of hay crumbles).

We started by skirting the wool, which involves picking out manure, brambles and hay. Then it gets washed which is honestly pretty gross.

We got to pick what colors to dye ours and I chose a variety of greens and yellows. It came out quite nice if you ask me, but I'm probably biased. After carding it, I'm going to spin it and knit it into a hat. More to come on my adventures with the spinning wheel!

Winter Eating

You would think that living on the farm would mean delicious, nutritious food all the time. Not so, sadly, at least for these winter months. Our hoop house, which was supposed to provide greens during the winter, bit the dust in a storm this past fall. Only the carrots and some baby spinach survived. Since we have 1,500,000 carrots in our root cellar already, we would have happily them in for some of the endive or broccoli rabe that we planted.

Theo and I are house sitting for two weeks and are taking advantage of an excuse to eat off the farm. So, I bring you the mesclun/ sprouts/ smoked salmon/ mango/ avocado/ grapefruit/ goat cheese salad of champions. Every nutritional component not delivered through turnips, parsnips, potatoes or carrots. Delicious!

Conference Time!

We're headed to Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York's conference for the weekend. Hopefully it'll be a fun, informative weekend. More to come on my return!

Snowy Owl

Can you spot the owl that is snowy? I can't either since this picture was taken on my phone. But it was really pretty in snowstorm #1452 of the winter.

Whoops

My editor-in-chief (my mom) informed me that one is not in the throws of winter, but in the throes of it. Top prize to whoever figures out what a throe is.

Its that time of year...

For seed catalogs! Even though we're in the throws of winter and it's snowed pretty much all week, continuing tomorrow, our heads are filled with varieties of tomatoes, which kale to plant and how many carrots we need. It's been pretty exciting to go through our crop planning sessions and see the whole plan for the vegetable operation materialize. We're gone for the month of February, but when we get back we'll begin seeding right away. I'm looking forward to our first harvest in June!

The Phantom of the Sheep

Here are my guesses. Either the sheep were putting on a production of Phantom of the Opera for the horses, cows and chickens or this sheep just lost the brown vs. white sheep snowball fight of 2011.