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...

It has been a LONG time

I am working on getting back into blogging as Facebook won't load my pictures from the computer. This post is from 2021 and was in the draft file. I have not seen Pixies stix this year. I hope all is well. Coffin cellars and Ewes Full Things were both at Sunapee Farmer's Market last weekend.

 Since I updated this blog!! Never mind the fiber blog. Face Book is just easier to post a line or two on…

I took pictures today of my fellow vendors at the Sunapee Farmers Market. As soon as the phone is charged I will post pictures here, and links, for y’all to check out the folks that I have the privilege of vending alongside of. 

https://www.facebook.com/lakesunapeeflowerfarm/

https://www.facebook.com/beaverpondfarmnh

https://www.facebook.com/Divided-Sky-Farm

https://www.facebook.com/coffincellars

https://www.facebook.com/hardinghillfarmnh

https://www.facebook.com/Ewes-Full-Things-wool-art-

Not with us today, but not to be left out. https://www.facebook.com/Thymetocook.Bri and https://www.facebook.com/Pixiesstix

 It feels impossible to me that we've had this carder for 10 years this coming November, and that this house has been under construction 20 years come November as well!! It is amazing to my how fast time goes when you are busy doing other things.

Next month I will have been out of work for 4 years and in the first 26 months of that 4 years I was to have 2 surgeries on my shoulder and then break my leg/ankle in 5 places 4  months before I was to return to work. And then to have 2 surgeries on that. This coming April will be 2 years since my second ankle surgery. Hopefully I won't be going under the knife again anytime soon.

10 years. That just blows my mind! The carder has been sitting downstairs, under cover, just waiting for me to bring it out. Yesterday and today I got a good cleaning and oiling. There was mouse poop and moth casings on and in the machine. There was LOTS of fiber left in the machine from where we purchased it. That has been removed as much as possible and all of what was left has been vacuumed out. Now I just need to roll it to the other side of the building and put it to work.

Here is the blog post I made originally in 2011.

 

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Yesterday Jerry and I met up with Donna Herrick (more about her and her farm in the next post), to visit Battenkill Fibers in Greenwich, NY to check out and purchase this machine. Of course, I had my camera with me, but I did not get any pictures of the mill, the carder at the mill or in the truck. Where it is 'resting' right now will not be photographed. So, I took the picture and description from their website and gave the address with it. I am so looking forward to 'playing' with this. I need to set up its permanent home before I can plug it in. In the meantime I am reskirting fleeces and lining them up for their turn in the carding machine. There is a gorgeous Border Leicester cross soaking right now.

Here's our beautiful 1950's-vintage 16" Davis and Furber card with custom roving coiler (see front left corner of photo). A hard worker, just like her big sister - only smaller. Perfect for processing the fleeces from individual sheep or alpacas. This allows our customers to brand and market the resulting yarn from each unique animal.    (Taken from http://www.battenkillfibers.com/visit/tour.asp)




Here you can peruse the entire website of Battenkill Fibers. http://www.battenkillfibers.com/
 
This is a page I'll be visiting for a while. http://www.battenkillfibers.com/news.asp 
 
TTFN

I hope to start running some sacrificial fiber through this carder in the next few days (weeks?) A lot depends on how distracted I get in my decluttering journey. 

When we moved here from our last house we did not move everything with us. We went from a 40' x 40' 3 story Gambrel that we built to a 24' x 24' almost 3 story camp. The two bedrooms upstairs were in the rafters of the house. You had to tip your whole upper body in order to get around the end of the bed. The basement was filled with a wood stove, hot water tank, water pump  and a few of our boxes. The camp was called a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, but there was no closets in the house. Now you can't call a room a bedroom with out a closet. Construction started on the new house, around the old house, in November of 2001. When we sold the last house we built, right around the same time construction started on this one, the basement and the garage was filled with boxes. 

Between work, the farm, shearing and haying, there has not been much time left to work on getting rid of stuff that moved from the first house we lived in together for 13 years to all the stuff we've accumulated here in 21 years. But, Lord willing!, this is the year we reclaim every room in our house and the garage. 

As much as I love the mills we use for processing fiber, it is time for me to do it myself!! I am sharing most of our adventure on our Face Book pages, but I am hoping to resurrect my blogs as well this year. As nice as it is to be able to drop a line or two, and maybe a picture, on Face Book, it has gotten very hard to work with as far as farmers and especially with animals sales.  So, I plan to come back to where I started and just share a link to the blog on FB. Here I don't have to worry about politics and PETA. 

Come back soon and see if I can get it up and running and start getting my own fiber processed! In the meantime, get out our fleece blog when you get a chance. I need to get that updated soon as well. We have LOTS of great fiber combinations in roving that Zeilinger Wool Company in MI and Sallie's Fen Fiber Mill her in NH have been making for us!!

TTFN! 

Update August 9, 2023. The good thing is I can not tell you where in the basement most of this is/was. I can't believe it has been close to THREE years since I posted this!! After I get done with the chicken camper and bring the shop camper back to the house, I am going to have to spend some time downstairs and make sure it does not look this bad. Sometimes you see the same thing everyday and you simply stop seeing it. :( Trying to make myself accountable for the mess in our house and outside.

Jerry does have some room down stairs.

Washed fiber waiting to be processed.

Fiber, fiber every where you look!

I need to spend a week or more down here organizing and cleaning, again!!

Mannequins

Some of this went to the dump today!

My super carder.

1/14/2021 UGH! 

 

 It is hard to believe that the mess was this bad!! It is so easy not to see something when you have seen it almost every day!! Things have improved greatly in the six weeks since this was first posted. I will take pictures and do a 2 month update in a couple of weeks. It makes me feel that much more motivated to continue on now that I've taken the time to re-read this post!!