Mayvember

I really shouldn't complain. Seriously, other parts of the country are completely under water. But up here in the Pacific Northwest, we have had one day of joyous springy sunshine followed by a week of gray, cold, dismal drizzle, outright downpours, and everything in between. Repeatedly. We had snow in April, for Pete's sake. I never knew the definition of “graupel” before. I thought that was Rubeus Hagrid's brother, in the Harry Potter books. But we've had that, too, and FYI, it's soft hail.

Our pasture is extremely soggy, which is holding up start of our new perimeter fence. And my tomato plants? Well, I just hope they don't just freeze their little pieces off. My stepdad used to say that we needed to wait until we had 55 degrees before putting out tomato plants. I went ahead, and now, in addition to the weather concerns, I am wondering if chickens like to eat tomato plants. We could be doomed.

The chickens have begun laying eggs again. We have a few different breeds. The Auracanas give us blue/green eggs. The Buff Orpingtons, Black Australorps, Barred Rock & Gold-laced Wyandotte give us various browns. The little one? No clue who that came from. If it had been white, I'd have suspected pigeon. We still have four homing pigeons. Hard to get rid of those little buggers.

On a happier note, all our precious little lambs are weaned. They went to a pasture within view of their mommies, and all spent the first day calling to each other. (My apologies to all our neighbors for a rather noisy Easter.) Things settled down quickly after that first day. The lambs were under the tender loving care of their Uncles Raoul & Little Guy, both wethers. They have been apart from mommies long enough now for milk to dry up, and now, the little ewe lambs have moved back to the ewes' barn. The ram lambs are now with their daddies & the wethers in Barn #2. The boys all got acquainted without mishap. It's always a concern with rams, but in this breed of sheep, even the rams are pretty mellow.

A Great Big Thank You!

To everybody who participated in or came to shop at our First Ever Annual Wonderful Woolies Fiber Sale! We are grateful to all the other farms that participated:
Allegre Alpacas Alpaca
Ferndale Fibers Romney X, Border Leicester X
Humble Home Goat Farm Angora goat (Mohair)
Thistle Dew Studio Alpaca
Marietta Shetlands Shetland
JNK Llamas Llama, including Suri llama
Nancy's Farm Blue Face Leicester X, Shetland
Little Orchard Farm CVM/Romeldale
Wake Robin Farm Icelandic

It's fun for spinners to be able to work with a variety of fibers, and together we were able to offer a nice variety of raw & washed fleeces, processed wool & handspun yarn. We were happy to have a day without rain, & although the weather was pretty chilly, the atmosphere was warm & friendly. Thank you, everybody that put on warm mittens, hats, & wool socks, to venture out to the farm!