Culls

Our dear friends, Jeff & Kim, always send cull tomatoes home with me after we've done the Saturday Market together.  This week after we'd filled the two cull buckets that I bring with me each week we dumped extra tomatoes into my empty egg cooler.  I let the creatures find the goodies on their own.  Carrie, one of the Dexter cows, pushed her way in first and eventually managed to flip the lid.  Once she'd finished up a few of the goats and sheep stepped in for leftovers.  The cooler will get a very thorough scrubbing inside and out before we use it again!

Beating the Heat

It was almost 80 at 7 a.m. so I decided that if I was going to work outside I'd best get to it.  I have had a few fleeces that I needed to pick for the longest time so decided to go through them.  Since I was working out at the side of the house Eve, the donkey, had to help.  Sadie, the Anatolian Shepherd, checked to see if I had something interesting in the bag but quickly went about  her own business.

I did end up with 2 laundry baskets of wool to process.  It took me an hour to go carefully through everything.  I believe other than the usual outside visits to gather eggs, bottle the Lincoln lambs and check water troughs I'll spend much of the day inside at the spinning wheel.

Borrowed Children

It was too stinking hot to dye things today.  Instead, I borrowed three delightful children from town and we did a little visiting.  We started at my daughter-in-law's family farm in Anderson, Hardy Berry.  They got their berry picking baskets weighed and then visited Jack, the Anatolian Shepherd, and his sheep and alpacas.

Since our son was working the farm he gave the children the grand tour including a trip up to the big water cannon irrigating the corn field.  On the way back they raced Bear, one of the farm dogs, around the edge of the pond.

They helped cull some overgrown squash, loading it all in my car to take home to the oxen.

Every time Betsy disappeared it was because she was busy snuggling Bear.

After picking blueberries we went on to our friends at Iszy's Heirlooms.  I'd called ahead and asked Jeff if we could trade him some blueberries for his gorgeous tomatoes.  He was in the field when we arrived.  He had just seen evidence of a tomato horn worm so let the children help him track it down.

We finished back at my farm where we had to give bottles to lambs, gather some eggs, check the water troughs and feed the culled squash to the oxen.  All in all, it was a pleasant morning.

No Wonder

No wonder the hen I pulled this egg out from under was in a foul mood, pecking at my arm as I slid my hand under her in the nest box.

The extra large egg on the left weighs 2.4 oz. and the special egg weighs in at 4.1 oz.  It will obviously not fit into an egg carton.

Carissa's Scarf

On Saturday a young lady who works at the restaurant right behind my Market tent was admiring my sock yarn and also some of my scarves.  Long story short - I offered to knit her a ruffled scarf from her favorite sock yarn and also to dye some more sock yarn in yellows for another scarf.  So I started knitting Sunday afternoon, dyed her yellow yarn on Monday & finished my knitting this morning.

The scarf is knit sideways and I don't have a pattern, I just cast on lots of stitches and go.

After a while I knit stitches together to draw up the ruffle.  I also throw in a few yarn over/knit two together business to make a few lacy holes.

I think this scarf, which ended up being over 6 feet long, should suit her just fine.

A Little More Work

I love to dye sock yarn.  The dyeing is fun even if it can be a bit of a challenge. I do my dyeing in a stall in the stable.  Sheep, goats and an occasional cow accompany me as I walk back and forth from the house. A few who are in the know and realize there may be a handful of sweet feed in the stable try to slip through the big sliding door.  They do often get a treat as I fiddle around tending to the rapidly growing baby chicks and one poor sheep who is injured. It often takes me almost half an hour to get around to the dyeing that I came out to do.  I keep the stall door shut so that I don't have the animals in my space but I can hear them as I work.

Yesterday morning as I was dyeing it seems every chicken within earshot had something to say.  There was a little crowing but most of the noise was the nice clucking sounds that happy chickens make as they scratch around working for treats to eat.  I was dyeing early in the day so the birds were much more ambitious than later when it warmed up.  By noon the birds were mostly reclined in shady spots staring at me as if they just knew that I was the cause of their distress.  Seems we all gave up working by midday because of the heat.