The Spinner's Flock

2011 lambing

2011-04-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

Day old purebred Bluefaced Leicester lambs.
Lambing is starting slowly this year, only 6 ewes have lambed in seven days. I keep checking the heavies (a term for those at full term pregnancy) and keep feeling relief and concern at the same time. I love babies. Almost all babies, but especially those born in my barn. Aniticipation and excitement builds in me as lambing time approaches, then once started, I really want it over with all the ewes happily nursing their healthy lambs. And that's the way it usually goes. A time of quiet vigilance on my part, ready to help with any potential problem, relying on the wisdom of nature in spring rebirth.

2011-03-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

Shearing Days

2011-03-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

my corner office

bags and bags of beautiful fiber

I have been shearing my flock the past three and a half days, and am proud of my girls!

It takes me at least an hour a sheep to shear, trim feet, recoat the ewe with a protective cover, skirt and label each fleece. I wish I could keep each one to spin for myself.......... but am considering having a sale day here on the farm in early May after the lambs are born. Contact me if you want an invite!

Madder and Marigold

2010-07-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

A black and white kid mohair fleece blended on the carder, a bouncy white (with some black fibers) Border Leicster cross fleece, bombyx and tussah silk are mordanted with alum then dyed with marigolds and madder. I added some iron to the madder for part of the mohair and silk, the color went from dark rust to maroon.

Marigold and Indigo

2010-07-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

COLOR! Using alum mordant, natural inidgo and marigolds from my garden I've got the blues...and greens and yellows and golds. Wool, mohair and silk have found the way into my dye pots and I love the results..... Using a Louett motorized carder, I blended some of the wool, mohair and silk into batts which I then spun into a sportweight 2 ply yarn. Thoughts of gloves and socks are entertaining as I work in the 95 degree heat........... Visit the Milk House Fiber Studio (at the Dahmen Barn, Uniontown, WA) if you would like to purchase some dyed fiber for your own creations.

Milk House Fiber Studio

2010-05-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

At long last, we have opened Milk House Fiber Studio at The Dahmen Artisan Barn in Uniontown, Washington. The Artisan Barn is a funky (in a good way) old beautiful barn donated for use as artist studios. You can read the whole story at http://www.artisanbarn.com/.
My friend, Judy Lalonde and I transformed the old milk house into a working studio. We spent over 70 hours remodeling, and with the help of other barn volunteers opened our studio in early May.

We offer locally grown fiber from our own farms. Judy's alpacas are offering up their roving, fleece and yarn in amazing natural colors, along with her fine finished knitted goods and knitting patterns by local knitters. I offer washed fleece, roving, handspun and mill spun yarns from my spinner's flock of sheep, along with Earthues Natural Dye extracts.

We are ready to receive visitors on Friday and Saturday when we are there working.

color my world

2010-03-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

After years of growing, spinning, knitting and selling sheep's wool in the wondrous natural colors of white, silver, gray, brown, black, oatmeal and more, I have discovered an extended palette.

I attended a 5 day dyeing conference at Earthues Natural Dye Studio in Seattle, and am thrilled to dye wonderful colors with natural dye extracts. These are concentrated plant dyes, when used alone and combined, provide an unlimited range of colors. After April's lambing season, I move to a new studio, Milk House Fibers at The Dahmen Artisan Barn (http://www.artisanbarn.org/).

I will be joined by Judy LaLonde of Big Meadow Creek Alpacas

(http://www.bigmeadowcreekalpacas.com/). We will demonstrate fiber processing, teach workshops on spinning, knitting, felting, and dyeing, and have fiber, roving, yarn, and finished goods available to purchase. Keep in touch for dates and events.

Thinking Spring

2010-02-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

It has been a mild, open winter and the signs of spring are showing. Can my favorite season be far off now?

Rudy, one of our favorite (really, they are all our favorites!) SanaanXNubian dairy goats had triplets last Thursday, Feb. 11. She is a wonderful mother, calm and easy, had three kids without assistance on a sunny day. The two white kids are doelings and the black and white is a buckling.

There are four more does to kid, pretty soon the goat pen will be active with the boing and spring of cavorting baby goats jumping and playing.

A very shiny day

2009-11-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

A bright frosty morning sparkles with light, frozen dew and sunshine.

2009-11-19T19:24:00.000-08:00

These two photogenic guys are Cyrano, a brown Merino, and Steenie, a white Bluefaced Leicester.

The rams have been turned in with the ewes November 1, and will stay until mid December. I keep back the 2009 replacement ewe lambs, away from the rams until they are over a year old and fully grown. I separate the ewes by color, breed, and fleece type, then pair them with a ram that is unrelated, and well matched. The ewes are bred for fleece type, purebred blood lines, growth and vigor. This is the last year I will use multiple rams, since I have so many really nice ewes I will keep them and change rams every two years instead of replacing the ewes.

These lovely girls are a couple of the brown, or moorit, ewes I especially love for the color of their fleece. I keep covers on the sheep year round to keep the fleece free from sun damage and fading. Handspinners appreciate the naturally colored clean wool to create beautiful yarn with.

Lambing will begin around the end of March 2010, and I will be dreaming of dancing lambs throughout the winter months. I will begin shearing in mid February and work my way through the flock in three weeks. As I shear each sheep, I take time to trim hooves, replace missing or damaged ear tags, replace the old coat with a fresh one, then skirt and label the fleece as soon as it comes off the sheep.

A Wonderous World

2009-10-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Every fall I remember how much I love this time of year. It is a special treat to me, a surprise bestowed upon my world. I so love spring and the regenerative growth it brings, I tend to forget the twilight of nature before winter's deep sleep. Spring is like early morning hours I love, promising new ideas and projects I have not yet imagined. Fall is like early evening when the day's work is complete and I enjoy warm, quiet time reading, spinning or knitting by the wood stove.
Hawthorn, blackberries, and wild fruit trees create a palette of fall color beyond compare. I am surrounded by beauty and abundance which astounds and humbles me.

Time really flies when you're having fun

2009-05-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

I have a new mental health therapist.
Meet my new pug puppy, Taterbug. Or maybe they made a mistake and gave me a fat little pig instead of a fat little pug.....
Despite the fact that I have other working dogs, for my birthday I treated myself to a fun loving, inside companion.
I am completely smitten, nothing like a new love in the springtime.......

Spring Busy-ness

2009-03-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

There is never a dull moment on our farm. Well, it may be dull if you don't love sheep, goats, dogs, horses, llamas, and poultry and the baby animals they create, but I do and it keeps me hoppin'!
I take the month of March off from teaching so I can tend to the lambing and kidding of my flock. I only keep the very best of each year's lambs and kids and after ten years, have a healthy flock of goats and sheep that I know and love.

Weather in conversation

2009-01-27T05:59:00.000-08:00

After a phone converstaion with my brother Phil in Denver,I realized when he asked how we are, I talked about the weather. Weather has a huge effect on my day, every day, as I spend at least one and a half hours outside doing farm chores. The weather also effects the thirty mile drive to work in Moscow, Idaho teaching at the Moscow School of Massage. The weather is of great importance to our safety and the welfare of the critters I care for. We heat our house with wood, and the weather has a large impact on our keeping cozy and the plumbing running. Our farm is located on the side of a river canyon, the road in and out is steep and winding. Weather has a huge effect on the safety of our driving.
So if I mention the weather in a conversation, please accept I am not making small talk, but sharing an element of nature I am intimately involved in.

homespun, handknit

2009-01-20T15:43:00.000-08:00

Been knitting! The weather has been so frosty and cold, all I want to do in my free time is sit by the woodstove and knit. This is the first glove, I am hoping to keep a better understanding of the pattern for the second glove! With all the tearing out and reknitting of the first glove, I should really have a pair already....
This pattern is "Liidia's Gloves" from Nancy Bush's book Folk Knitting in Estonia. The yarn for these gloves is hand spun wool from my own sheep, which I dyed with cochineal.

Some kind of winter

2009-01-02T17:30:00.000-08:00

Returning from a balmy 60 degree week with my family in Denver, the farm is in a wintery deep freeze. There is at least a foot of snow on the ground and huge berms where it has been plowed or slid off the roof. I don't mind the snow at all, it is clean and fun to play in, and so much better than mud! As long as the electricty does not go out so the water tank heaters are operable, chores are realitively easy.

We watched a flock of wild tom turkeys across the pond yesterday.

Helen, a Pyraneese/Akbash sheep loving guard dog, smiles her hello as I greet the sheep in the morning.

A path through the snow berm on my way to the barn.

CCCCCold

2008-12-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

The current cold snap has my full attention today! Winter is a magical time, mostly. I am in a nice routine of an hour of morning chores feeding hay, filling waterers, taking nose counts to assure all the critters are doing as well as they can in below freezing temperatures. I discovered all the water lines frozen this morning, which meant all the tanks were also frozen due to an electrical malfunction last night. I have sorted it all out, and thawing has begun, and I feel lucky to have the temperature rising to 21 degrees today.
If it is not one thing it is another.......

Fall Harvest

2008-10-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes why I make so many preparations for winter's eventual arrival. I think it is just in me to do, and the reasoning of it is as illusive as the last warm rays of sun.

I keep finding more food to put up, it seems such a waste to lose it that I spend day after day making applesauce, fruit preserves, roasting chilies, preparing cooking sauces, stuffing the freezers full. We have three freezers which are all FULL right now, with beef, lamb, chicken, pork, vegetables, fruit and natural dyestuffs, all of which was home grown. It seems so natural to me, until I visit another "normal" kitchen

filled with commercially prepared foods. I milk goats and we enjoy milk, cream, yogurt, kefir, (thanks to Lisa O'Leary) and a variety of cheeses. And we have a flock of layer hens giving us eggs every day, so grocery shopping will be limited to fresh greens, sweet treats, and bread.

I am grateful for the luxury of time and ability to grow and prepare our own food. We buy hay locally to feed the critters and buy firewood from neighbors, but we are globally connected through the satellite modem. Modern Pioneer or Regressive Farmer reinventing the wheel???

Fall

2008-10-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

Fall is a time of abundant garden harvest, food preserving, firewood gathering and hay hauling for the two legged ones on the farm. For the sheep and goats it is breeding season, and things get frisky as the air cools and the hormones rise. I have four different groups of sheep that are separated, according to the ram they go with. Every mid September is a time of original frenzy getting the sheep separated, replacement lambs and goat kids away from the rams and bucks, hay and mineral feeders secured, shearing the rams and trimming their feet, then moving the selected groups to their respective pastures or pens. Then we all settle into a quiet routine for six weeks of daily feeding and frolic. At the end of the six week breeding season, the rams and bucks are removed , and put into a pasture I call the Testosterone Team. After spending a few days in a small pen, the rams become reacquainted without much room to back up and butt each other. Winter is spent in relative peace and hay munching.

missing in action

2008-10-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

June Bug seems to be asking me to follow him by whinnying, trotting to the plum thicket and back while looking directly at me. I don't see his horse buddy, Kai any where. So I follow him. I am looking and listening for Kai when I hear a huff coming from deep in the plum thicket. I call to him and he anxiously answers me. He is stuck! He has pushed his way into the thicket after plums and a branch closes behind him so he can't back up or go forward. Goofy greedy eater. I run to get the pruning tools, cut a couple of branches and help Kai back out.
Kai must have spent a few hours here, he nibbled the bark off a couple of prune trunks and trampled the ground. Poor guy. As soon as Kai was free, he and June Bug trotted off to the hay feeder, disregarding me completely.
I walk out of the plum thicket, toting my tools, and they come up to me as if to say What's Up?
I love these guys.

Busy day

2008-09-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

Today is sorting day in the sheep pen. I will sort the ewes according to the ram I want to put them with. The love crazed Navajo Churro ram , Rocky, went through FOUR fences yesterday and was happily with all the ewes when I brought them in last night, so I am giving him his harem today to prevent any accidental cross breeding. I have some purebred ewes that are not N.Churro, I certainly hope they were not ready to be bred yesterday when Rocky butted in. So THIS is why they are called "rams"...............
I am going to LaGrande Oregon on Saturday to pick up 3 ewes and a ram lamb, the last of a brown line developed by Mary McCracken. The trip is shaping up into a lot of fun, Border Collie regional championship trials to watch in Pendleton on the way over, then a talk by Joel Salatin in LaGrande at Oregon Rural Action's annual convention http://www.oraction.org/.
A visit with Wyoming neighbors and good friends, Tony and Andrea Malmberg, with the opportunity to acquire a polled Alpine doeling goat from Andrea's flock of dairy goats.
It is as if every moment has a task this time of year, I feel very much like the ants in the fable The Grasshopper and the Ants right now. If only there were a whole army of me.........

apple fat

2008-09-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

It is a great year for apples and all the creatures here LOVE them. I consider changing the name of this place to Apple Fat Farm as I watch the animals vie to be first getting to the windfalls. The horses nicker for them every time they see me, and though I would love to think it is their utter devotion to me, I know it is the treats from the tree in my garden they call for. There must be at least twenty different varieties of apple and pear trees throughout the farm, many so sweet, and some so puckery worms won't even eat them. Purple, yellow and pink plums grow in thickets the deer make nests under, to sleep off the stupor of gorging. Blackberry brambles line most of the driveway with dark purple berries as big as your first thumb knuckle, and you have to be careful not to pick a yellowjacket taking the nectar to feed his queen. All this amazing fruit was not planted by hand, but by bird, pollinator and wind. I am amazed.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

2008-09-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

A glorious early fall day, sunny and bright with tempratures perfect for harvesting fruit. Pears, plums, apples, raspberries and blackberries are in overabundance today. Wild fruit trees inhabit this south facing hillside, protected by big timber Pondersoa Pines, creating a long growing season. I am cooking down raspberries and plums into preserves, snacking on goat cheese and crackers humbled by how lucky I am to be alive and healthy on this beautiful day.

Sheep eating windfall fruit

honeybees in the marigolds

dogs sound asleep in the sun