Other Weekend Highlights

** Naturally-dyed 12 ozs of lamb’s wool locks in a daisy dyebath, adding a little baking soda at the end to change the ph; aiming for chartreuse but resulting in a kind of bright, yellow-green; pretty but not chartreuse

** Carded some sun-yellow lamb’s wool for a roving project; washed some Border Leicester fleece

** Spent an hour tearing apart the fiber room looking for an escaped guinea keet; finally found hunkered down among small bags of wool on a shelf about 4 feet off the floor

** Cleaned out the ‘deep bedding’ pen in the barn; spread the manure on the graveyard field; many thanks to John, Terry, Jonathan, Megan and Lena for their help and 5 1/2 hours of hard work

** Watched the tree swallows doing some serious dive-bombing of the crouching until almost flat Davita cat

** And best of all, picked and enjoyed the first blueberries of the summer!

And the Weanees Are…

We decided it was about time Miss Juliet (aka bottle baby) moved into a ‘big girl’ pasture with some new friends. So the oldest happy accident lambs became the first weanees of the season.


little Mr. 901, twin


little Mr. 902, twin


little Mr. 903, twin


little Mr. 904, twin

Mr. 905


Miss Lucy

So far everyone is getting along great. The lambs do not seem to be too upset about leaving their mamas. The mamas however are a different story, especially one Miss Curly who misses her little Lucy very much.

Making Hay

Making hay… well, you know… while the sun is shining.
We baled the graveyard field yesterday; field number two – done. We are up to 493 bales, maybe about 1/3 of the way to our goal.
In other news, Terry saw the blasted fox while he was tedding hay Tuesday evening.

Summer Mystery

Those of you who know us are aware that one of us (not mentioning any names) is obsessed with, err… in love with guineas. So much so that she frequently mentions to anyone who will listen that they look like civil war era ladies holding up their hoop skirts when they are running through mud or rain. (Seriously.)

So there has been a lot of distress around here because our guineas have been disappearing, during the day. Now at night they are safely locked up in their wonderful coop, but during the day they are voracious bug-eaters ranging in the pasture and out into the barnyard. We have not had a problem until this summer.

Enter Mr. and Mrs. Fox and family… boldly making daytime appearances about 1/4 mile from the barnyard. Since they have been spotted, seven, (yes – 7, siete, sept, sette, sieben) of our guineas have disappeared… during the day – leaving not a shred or feather of evidence.

Knowing all this, you would think that it would be safe to send above mentioned guinea-lover to the feed store in the pouring rain. Well, think again. Meet the newest PEEPs… Keets. Now you must understand that this guinea lover has even lower keet-resistance when it comes to lavender guineas. And, have you ever seen anything like the other two keets? Having done a little bit of research at the Guinea Fowl Color Chart, I am kind of betting on the Royal Purple.

Rest assured that the Mystery of the Disappearing Guineas will be solved and preventive measures will be taken well before these little keets will be able to make appearance anywhere outside a box… or a coop.

And, NO, you may not (as some have suggested) name them Fox Food.

Good Time Had By All

There was a great crowd at the Aurora Heritage Days, and the weather was wonderful. There were old tractors on display, a bee-keeping demonstration, and Sheila Elliott was there demonstrating her hand-spinning skills. John Slawter’s Famous Chicken BBQ was a big hit! And hey, did I mention that there were old tractors?

We had a wonderful location for our craft booth and had a great time visiting with all the folks that stopped by. Along with many other items, we had both our naturally-dyed yarns and our hand-dyed yarns on display.


Thank you, Travis, for all your help setting up/taking down the tent!

It was our great luck to be in the booth right next to Crimson Shamrock. We really enjoyed visiting with Tacoma and Marcus. (Though I have to admit that Marcus was a bit of a whiner.)

Many thanks to all the wonderful people who worked so hard to make this event a great success!

Aurora Heritage Days

Join us at the Aurora Heritage Days this weekend. There will be wonderful activities beginning Friday evening with ‘A Pictorial Walk Through Aurora in the 1930’s’. Saturday there is a ‘House and Barn Tour’, ‘John Slawter’s Famous Chicken BBQ’ and much, much more.

We will be manning our ‘made on the farm’ table at the Aurora Area History Center/General Store from 10 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday. Please stop by and visit for a spell!

The Final Lamb

Grace, the orphan straggler, presented us with a lovely ewe lamb early Sunday morning. She has a very cute little Border Leicester face and weighed 8 lbs 10 ozs. It is a big relief to be done with lambing for another season, but it won’t be long before the wheels start turning as we begin to think about the ultimate breeding combinations, once again.
Right now, though, we will enjoy watching this most recent crop of lambs grow and develop, and of course look forward to their wonderful fall wool clip.

Moving Day

Yesterday was moving day on the farm. We moved the rams over on the backside of the hill to their summer paddock.

We moved the ewes and their lambs to the paddock at the bottom of the knoll, that was a zoo.

We moved the yearlings and wethers to a paddock near the new pasture.

Hera and the Mod Squad, along with a few other ewes and lambs stayed in a paddock near the barn so that they can get a little extra tlc.
Samson and his much loved igloo also moved to new quarters.

Everyone is now very happy…

…and we felt like border collies for much of the day.