This is the year to concentrate on our gardens

If I can borrow the money from my husband's 401K, or find someone to loan me the money, we will have a high tunnel here this year. My goal for the high tunnel is to grow all the plants we need for salsa, as well as growing extras for canning tomatoes for other uses and lots of garlic and onions for general use. I am hoping for lots of peppers and carrots for our own use. I'd really like to grow corn, beans, squash, cukes (pickles), cabbage (sauerkraut), and herbs. But, all of those will be grown outside of the high tunnel. I'd like to grow enough to preserve food for us and our daughter, and maybe have enough to sell at market. This year's other growing goal is to grow LOTS of herbs and flowers and most of the plants necessary for dyeing wool. I'd like to make my own teas and have dried herbs available for cooking and soap making. Now that we are not on the road everyday for 6 straight weeks, we are home more and can start working towards these goals!! These are the ways my grandfather taught me to garden. I don't remember spending a lot of time in my grandmother's kitchen learning canning, preserving and cooking as I am such a tom boy who wanted to be outside all the time. And, I certainly didn't learn it from my own mother as she worked full time and could barely get a meal on the table. All 3 of us kids learned to cook early on for self preservation. I thank my Home Ec teacher for teaching me a lot about food and preserving it! I love the idea of a victory garden and may see if I can impliment their plans. I love the idea of cutting and dropping the plant in place to rot into the garden thereby fertilizing the ground below it. We generally send the sheep and the chickens into the garden to clean it up as we have plenty of manure to put on top of the garden at the end of the season. My grandfather taught me no till gardening and companion planting. Practices I am still using 60 years later. The modern victory garden The Original Victory Garden

Oven Drying: One Way to Save Victory Garden Surplus

Rosa Rugosa

We have lots of this rose all around our farm. The acidity in the soil will determine the color of the flowers. Those nearest the gardens rich in sheep, llama and chicken poop are one color, and those out in the field that haven't been fertilized with manure yet are another color. The colors range from pink to white. The rose hips are what is left behind after the flower blooms. The hips are high in Vitamin C and can be used for many different things. Hop on over and learn more from this blogger.

Two months later...

I know, I know. I've been distracted by baby lambs being born, shearing starting up and trying to get more product made for NH Sheep & Wool May 9 & 10th in Deerfield, NH. There are deer back in the back pasture and a porcupine that has grown to maturity. It is time to put out the solar game cameras that I bought last year!! I will be back. In the meantime I am going to share some of the plants we have around the farm and their benefits. I will also be sending you to other blogs to learn more from their expertise.

Time to start blogging again!

I am more than a little upset that when I did a Google search for our farm name, one that we have had since 1993, it is on page 2!! There is a farm in Maine that stole our name and would not change it, despite me asking numerous times. I post on FB daily, but apparently that is not enough. So, I am coming back to blogging. Pictures and more posts will be coming soon!

Life on the farm

One day I will be back on here.

Life is just incredibly busy here on the farm. We are doing better this year at farmer's market than we did last year. Some of that was because it was a primary voting year, but a LOT of that was the fact that it rained almost all of the market days. Twice it downpoured hard enough 1/2 of an hour before we closed that two of our tents were destroyed. Of course, it was the only two purple tents at markets. I was far too busy at our skirting clinic to take any pictures. I had hoped to do a second clinic, but we had to cancel due to the weather for the 2nd time this year!! I am hoping to try again for fall, unless I manage to get everything skirted myself. If I have time, I will take pictures of the fleeces as I skirt them and post them here. Off to the hay field, again!!

Sorry all!

I know I've been away from my blog a lot longer than I wanted to be. Life is just BUSY! And we did not lamb on purpose this year. Although, we did have a surprise Horned Dorset ram lamb born, and 6 weeks later the Finn ewe I bought bred gave us ONE ram lamb... I am teaching a group how to skirt fleeces at the end of April. Hopefully I will get some pictures and can post them here. I need to get some lamb pictures, when it is not raining, and post those here as well. The sad thing is it so much easier just to post a sentence or two on Facebook. Oh, well. I will be back!

New posts

At some point I will start posting regularyly here again. I have a show Saturday in New London at the Elementary School in the gymnasium and the following Friday night at the Bradford Fire Station from 5:30-8:30 (I hope!). I will take pictures and post items I have available for sale after the 8th. I want to start blogging more again. Facebook is nice as I can just post a line or two and be done. But, I think my account may have been hacked... So, I may be pulling away from FB and going old school!! TTFN.

Good information from a man who knows a LOT more about sheep than I do.

Sheep101 Don Drewry · about an hour ago · After raising sheep for 50+ years and giving advise on the for 25+ years. Here is a top 13 list of things to keep in mind, especially if your new to sheep. 1) Have a vet that considers you their client. Sooner or later you will regret not having one and most likely that will not be during business hours. The more "reasons" I read why people can't use a vet the less I believe them. 2) Assume every ram can be dangerous and don't normally work or feed inside of a pen with a ram. 3) We all think our sheep are special but they are really just sheep. This means if you can't get your sheep to stay in an electric fence or get lambs to grow well on a quality milk replacer it really is most likely something you are doing or not doing as sheep really will stay in electric fences and quality milk replacers are better not worse than the alternatives and this is routinely proven on many other farms than yours everyday. 4) If a sheep has access to even a blade of grass you need a worm management plan. 5) Keep on hand at least 2 dewormers from different classes and oxytetracycline and Bo-Se. When you encounter an issue very often one of those will buy you time to get a better treatment. 6) Colostrum Replacement powder really does work as well as frozen Colostrum and is way easier to use. This does not mean Colostrum Supplement is a smart buy. 7) FAMACHA scoring really is a good way to tell if a sheep probably has barberpole worms. The few times this isn't the cause aren't worth the delay in treating. 😎 A rectal temperature can quickly tell you if an infection or pneumonia cause is the problem or not eating or metabolizing enough feed. 9) Total use of antibiotics is usually less if you treat earlier than later. 10) Ewes down in late gestation are usually ketotic or hypocalcemic. Learn how to diagnose and treat. If either happen very often fix your ration. 11) Lamb tubing really is easy and saves many lambs. If you are reluctant to tube a lamb get over it you will keep more alive. 12) I completely disagree with anyone that feels bloat is an inevitable occurrence if you raise sheep. It's not. Pasture bloat occurs you put hungry sheep in a pasture with too many legumes. Grain bloat (acidosis) occurs when sheep eat more grain than they are used to. Your fences or gates will fail some day. You know this. Do not store pails or grain, tubs of grain or bags or feed outside the sheep pen. All belong behind another door or wall or fence. 13) Dewormers, antibiotics, coccidiostats, vitamin, energy drenches are NOT interchangeable. Just because you have one of these on hand doesn't mean it's at all useful for treating something one of the others address.

Darn deer!!

We were sound asleep at 1 AM this morning when the driveway alarm went off. And off. And off... 6 times in less than 2 minutes. And then it was quiet. For FIFTY minutes... Then it started to go off again and again. UNTIL I got up and shut the darn thing off. There were at least two doe and an 8 point buck. I am assuming this is the same buck from last year that was 6 point. I keep looking for his shed antlers, but no luck. Yet.

As I sit here recovering from yet another surgery, I am thinking of ways to get my ways to get my blogs back up and running. I will be taking pictures of available product in the next few days as I am unable to lift anything, but I can handle my camera. I will only be posting available roving, recycled grain bag tote bags and some of my hand knit/crocheted items. Fleeces will happen at a later date. Stay tuned as the dye kitchen gets built and the cabinets and appliances get moved in, and the shop camper gets its floors and walls finished so product can start moving in there. Once I get the business out of the house and the dyeing, and hopefully soap making, all moved downstairs, I hope to start working on the main floor!!

On June 20, 2023 a new to us camper came from Unity to Sutton. Between the heat, the downpours and the flooding, it has slowly been completely gutted. We have bought OSB for the floors as we have sold product. After we bought grain and hay of course! Then we bought 2 rolls of linoleum to make cleaning the chicken camper easier. This week I have been putting hardware cloth on all the windows (all the other openings in the camper were already covered) and the roof openings/vents. I will be putting new (leftover from building the house!) insulation in the roof so I can get that closed up as well. After the roof is done inside, we will build the two dividing walls to make it a 3 sectioned chicken coop. We were able to pick up some free dog kennel this week that needs some love,but thankful I have the parts needed from someone that gifted it to us years ago. Sometimes it is good to say yes to free even though you have no clue at the time what you are going to do with it. God knows!! I will take more pictures when I get a chance. Back to it!! TTFN.

June 25

July 13

July 18

July 23rd

Flipping deer keeps setting off my driveway alarm...