Needle Felting 101

Let me just say that before Maggie's Farm and sheep and all that, I didn't much appreciate wool. But, as sheep produce wool, lots and lots and lots of it. I've discovered the humble fleece. Wool is my friend, our friend. I'm getting to know it rather intimately, in all it's permutations, from raw, poop-ridden unskirted wool, to fine spun two ply yarn and everything in between.

Wool is pretty amazing. It keeps sheep warm enough in -11 degrees (This, grrr...., is what the weather's been like lately) and cool enough in 80 degrees (Oh, 80 degrees, I miss you....) It can be messed with and manipulated in countless ways. In the last few years, I've tried my hand at spinning (I stink at spinning), knitting (more or less abysmal results), dyeing (kinda neat and hard to mess up) wet felting (Fun, but very tough to do consistently well) and now, needle felting.

Needle felting is deceptively easy. Basically, you poke a blop of wool with a sharp (Sharp!) needle until it mats into a solid shape. Hopefully, the shape is cute or useful in some way. That's all there is to it. Really. Of course there's a lot of skill involved in poking the matted blop into something cool, or cute or beautiful... I've got a ways to go in that department.

Anyway, here's my first attempt:

I'm pretty proud of it, I must say. I ran out of bear-colored wool and so fashioned a "UF colored" sweater and pants for my little guy. (That way, I only needed a bit of brown for the tips of his arms and legs. The whole project took about two hours.

Dan came around and made a little gator to match.

Musical Rams

No, the rams are not suddenly operatic. Instead, they seem to be playing that old-fashioned party game, scooting pasture to pasture waiting for the music to stop, or at least busting out and trying to scoot from pasture to pasture as long as the music of love is loud in their ears.

It all started (of course) when we were away for our yearly sojourn down south. Charlie Bucket thought this would be a fine time to go visiting the gals in the far pasture. Luckilly, he was caught in the act (before the act...) and coaxed into semi-isolation.

But the hijinks didn't stop there, oh no. Next, it was Rahm, who managed to hop the fence and visit the ewes Charlie left behind. "Boys will be boys" Dan and I sighed and dutifully marked the unplanned meetings (Hopefully not "matings") on our farm calendar just in case.

But then Bombadil, our serene, affable polled gentleman ram decided to GO CRAZY yesterday and busted down the pen that had been just fine by him all fall and winter. He went mooning over to visit Chance's group. Chance (Below) was a good little ram-boy and while all this mixing and attempted matching was going on, he stayed put.

So Dan spent a bit of time on Friday sorting (and re-sorting) sheep. Hopefully, all this, um, curiousity is after the fact and the breeding groups we'd planned so carefully will have been the groups in which breeding occurred.

These sheep, I swear they like throwing us for a loop now and then!.

Sliding Home

Maggie's Farm fell victim to the ice storm of 2008 on Thursday. Also on Friday and Saturday....

But we were lucky in many ways: We had heat (Our home is heated via woodstove) and we had phone access (ancient land line telephone). We had a working stove (Propane) and most importantly, we had each other, safe, sound and cozy on a dark, spectacularly ice-ridden December evening.

What we didn't have and grew to miss most accutely was water. Our well runs by an electric pump and so we awoke to dry faucets and unflushable toilets. Not so fun for a family of five. Extra unfun for our thirsty animals. Luckily, we were able to catch the drippings off the roof to flush toilets. And we melted chunks of ice by the woodstove for the animals. The contents of the fridge did just fine on the porch and the freezers (Thanks to an infusion of ice) kept our harvest bounty cold.

Dan was able to drive into town for jugs of water (And take-out Chinese food) and things were fine and cozy again.

The kids just received a gift of really neat battery-free flashlights from their grandmother, and so the night was filled with the RRrrrrr RRRrrrr of wind-up LED and the gentle glow of candles and lanterns. We read and played board games and missed nothing much.... except water.

On Saturday, we drove down to the Greenfield YMCA for "Family Swim" and much (much!)needed showers.

Not so bad really. Not so bad at all.

The Story of Puff

On the surface, Puff was nothing special, a plump little silver-laced wyandotte hen with that clear-eyed look that chickens sometimes get. She arrived in a peeping octagonal box with the rest of our first brood, resided in the basement a while, then the coop.

For the first three years of her life, Puff was as ordinary as they come. She didn't get broody or mean mean enough to remark upon. She didn't get friendly either, following around behind us hoping for a treat the way some of her sisters did. Unlike Fancy Feather and Brave Sarah, Puff was no child's favorite.

She lived through the rooster-reign of the nasty Archie, the somewhat-less-nasty Batman and the reasonable-most-of-the-time Batmandu. But when Stellar, a honking, Baby Huey of a bird, came to power, Puff did something quite remarkable for a chicken: She left the flock.

Now, it should be mentioned that Puff was Stellar's apparent "favorite". He'd seek her out for his roosterly duties with frequency and ferocity, and one warm summer day, after attempting to avoid Stellar in the driveway and side yard, Puff had had it. She struck off for territory of her own, territory totally free of roosters or fowl of any kind. She made a roost of the ledge of the utility sink in the barn and hung around at the far edges of the barnyard, in the woods and compost pile.

At first, we didn't understand the depth of Puff's voluntary isolation. We thought that maybe she was a little confused and tried to return her to the coop. No dice. As soon as she had a chance, Puff made a bee line (A chicken-line?) for her new home in the barn. When the roosters (Yes, we currently have THREE roosterS: Stellar, Little Jaguar and Otto Longlegs) came snooping about, she hid in the stalls with the sheep.

We wondered how long this would go on. Perhaps, as the days got colder, she'd end her boycott and return to the warmth, safety and guaranteed grain of the coop. But she didn't.

I took to scattering a few grain pellets for her and a bucket of fresh water. For a while there, I left a heat lamp over her utility sink roost but that was too much of a fire hazard and a crazy-bad waste of electricity at that. So Puff was on her own.

She disappeared during the first bad cold snap of the season, on a day that didn't make it past 25 degrees. The kids and I searched the edge of the woods by flashlight, checked out all her old haunts but there was nothing else to do. She was gone. Perhaps she decided to roam even farther, to our neighbor's coop perhaps, or off into the oblivion of a predator's jaws (This is the most likely fate).

At any rate, every time I go down to the barn for chores I can't help but cast a hopeful glance at the sink-rim roost and I think about Puff, an ordinary old hen that made an extraordinary decision. I realize that I am being anthropomorphic here, but how else can you explain a chicken resisting the strongest of instincts: the instinct to flock, the instinct to retreat to warmth and safety in favor of a lonely, danger-ridden no-roosters-land?

Thanks

I love Thanksgiving.

What could be better than a holiday devoted to gratitude, one that urges us to take stock of the goodness in our lives?

This year, like every other, we filled the last hours before dinner with art-- "Thankfullness Pictures" as the kids call them.

Micah counts, the school food bank among her blessings (Our donation a few weeks ago must have stuck in her mind), the color red, fun, and the planet.

Anna is thankful for "The knowledge of art", her school, the earth, her family, baseball (She's a big Red Sox fan these days), dogs, teachers and herself.

Joe is thankful for his friend Oliver:

I, myself, am thankful for another Thanksgiving here on Maggie's Farm and the gathering of family and friends that happened this year, the joys of children, animals, and easy love, the bounty of here and now. And for Dan, my partner in every sense of the word (and the most awesome man in the whole world). For birthdays and busyness, quiet and cold. For snowdays and sunny days, for the animals and plants that gave us our first seriously homegrown feast-- homegrown turkey, lamb sausage stuffing, apple everything. And I am thankful for the spirit of change that has overtaken my own and the country's cynicism. Oh, I could go on and on. But I won't. Not here anyway.

I hope your holiday was a good one.

Ramarama!

You may have heard that farming is cyclical. This is most definitely true. The seasons take on a certain resonance when the variety and type of work you do, the worry that tugs you awake at night, the hopes and sadnesses, are intimately connected with them.

For us, each season has its own "issues". Winter is about waiting it out, about hidden life growing in the bellies of the ewes, in the earth, in suddenly prodigious fleeces. Spring is lambing, an anxious, joyous, busy time. Summer finds us working to ensure the flock flourishes, worrying about parasites, chasing cute little lambie escape-artists back into the fold, rotating and rotating those scant pastures.

Fall...? Well, fall is about harvest, yes. Thanksgiving and all that. But it is also about sex, or at least, as we shepherds prefer to call it, "breeding". This is the time when we appraise our flock (Those that did not fall victim to the "Harvest" part of the season) and plan for spring lambs.

Before last year, there wasn't much of this "planning" to do. We had one single (nasty) ram, Gus. He was our breeding program, all of it. Last year, there were three eligible batchelors in Maggie's Farm's version of "The Dating Game", Charlie, Harry, and the adorable Mr. B. This year, Harry has gone on to other pastures, but we have added his offspring "Chance" and also happen to have acquired Rahm, another ram lamb with a whole other pedigree.

So we've been thinking a lot about these four gentlerams and the qualities they might pass to their offspring....

Charlie Bucket, the handsome guy at the top of this post, is the number one ram around here. He is huge and massively horned, but Charlie is a cautious soul who doesn't push his weight around much, an important trait in a ram. We like his build and his genetics as well. Oh, and Charlie is very resistent to parasites, an excellent, excellent quality.

Then there is Bombadil. This guy is a real sweetie, personality plus and not in the least aggressive, even when our crafty puppy Luka sneaks into his stall and scarfs down his meager grain dessert. Also, he brings a different set of genetics, a nice gray black fleece and a long-bodied build. He isn't the largest ram in the land, nor the most parasite resistant, but we like him anyway. Lots.

Chance is a recessive little guy-- a spotted solid moorit, carrying the genetics for the badgerfaced pattern as well-- with a really nice fleece. He has potential, and we'd like to see what he can produce with Copper and Daisy, our big, solidly built ewes.

And then there is Rahm. Rahm is 3/4ths AI from Jager Farm. He has an excellent meaty build and a nice thick fleece. He is (so far) calm as the day is long. A pretty cool cat all around. On the down side, he's got some scurs going, scurs we hope can be offset by breeding to some cleanly-polled beauties. This is a picture of Rahm, on the day he arrived. He's a bit dirty and burr-full but a real looker nontheless.

In short, fall is not all harvest and heartbreak around here. It's also about long-range planning. Long range planning and a whole lotta hope.

And so, without further ado, here are the Maggie's Farm Fall 2008 breeding groups:

In Pasture #1... Charlie with three lovely ladies: Leela, Cedar and Acorn. (Yes, Acorn is polled. But as her lambs were scurred last year, we thought we'd try her with the strongly horned Charlie in the hopes of keeping some of her superfriendly lambs in our horned flock.) Leela has a beautiful fleece, but less than stellar build. So, hopefully, Charlie will improve that aspect in her offspring.

In Pasture #2... Bombadil is hanging with the lovely Caroline. Yes, we know Caroline is horned, but she is a ewe lamb and we are hoping lambing will be a bit easier for her without the hornbuds to worry about.

In Pasture #3.... Chance with Copper and Daisy, two lovely and quite assertive ladies. Okay, Chance is not thrilled with this arrangement. The girls aren't showing him any love as yet. In fact, they are downright mean. But they are also terrific mothers and well-built genetic powerhouses, so he'll have to stick with them long enough to impart his offspring with fine soft fleeces. Also, Chance's recessive little self will tease out any latent color in these two white ewes. Copper may be homozygous for white as she has never had any lambs that were NOT white. But we know Daisy can produce solid moorit. What are these two ladies hiding? Chance will tell us.

And finally, in Pasture #4... the stolid Rahm (Yes, we did name him after THAT Rahm...) with our lovely and quite cleanly polled Penny. Rahm will also serve as our "Clean-up Ram" as well.

Here's to fall's high hopes!

Ten Bags Full

Shearing day.

You gotta love it, always hectic with herding dogs herding (or trying to anyway) kids underfoot, spur-of-the-moment gatherings (Always seems to happen somehow...) and lots and lots of sheep wrestling. And in the middle of it all, Andy the shearer, as calm and cool as a guy with an upside-down sheep in his lap could be, separating animal from mineral (or fiber anyway).

What a scene! At first, the sheep look so skimpy and strange without their fleece!

Here is Penny before shearing:

Here she is after:

Not so stately, eh?

But if you're looking for raw skirted fleece, we have some nice ones. We'll be sending them off for processing in a few weeks, so let us know.