Gotta love those cull tomatoes!

Betsy, one of our two Sofa Sisters, got to the cull bucket before her sister, Bitsy, did.  We lovingly refer to these two gals as the Sofa Sisters because when we first got them from another farm they were grossly overweight.  It seems the poor woman who had them was having difficulty getting hay so was only feeding them grain.  They were so heavy that they panted when crossing the yard.  After almost a year with us on a more appropriate diet they have each lost a good 60 pounds and are much more spry.  They get lots of nice hay and their treats now are windfall pears and the best of the cull bucket of slightly bruised tomatoes.  It had to be some awesome heirloom tomatoes to end up with them above the eyebrows....  Betsy wears them well, don't you think?

Rain, finally....

We have had three days in a row with hard rains.  I found this little toadstool popped out on the side of an older round bale of hay today.  Although the goats were not pleased with the torrential rains we desperately need as much as we can get to offset our drought.  Our next few days are supposed to be clear but we are praying for regular fall rains to make up our rain deficit.

Monday

After a busy weekend it is time to get back to some fleece.  This white fleece has been sitting outside on the stable porch since spring and was just calling to be dyed.

It needed a very good soaking just to remove the surface crud.

I'd already mixed some orange dye with water and gradually added the wool.  I want to felt it later but handled the wet wool carefully as I don't want to felt it quite yet.

After a gentle stir I put it on the burner.  We'll see what kind of orange I get on this pretty cream colored fleece.

Back at It

After a little recovery time it seemed urgent to get back to the dyeing. I sold so very much at the Indie Craft Parade that I would be ashamed to show up to Saturday Market this week with such a low inventory.  I did manage to dye seven new skeins of yarn.  I'll pull the spinning wheel out any minute now and spend the rest of my evening between skeining out new yarns to dye tomorrow and working on a curly handspun from Betsy, one of the Border Leicester gals.

Finally....

Indie Craft Parade kicks off this evening.  I had an 8 a.m. load-in which I chose so that I could set up, race back to the farm, gather eggs & do a few more routine farm chores before it is time for the doors to open at 6.  I had such a fabulous Saturday Market last week that I ended up selling lots & lots of the things I'd planned on taking to Indie so this week has been busy playing catch up.  Just thought I'd make a quick post before I get on with the day's work.  Can't wait to enjoy the crowds over the next few days & then it is back to the farm routine, whatever that is!

Hmmmm

This morning Betsy, whose fleece I was trying to sort out, decided to check out her previous year's work.  And I had to laugh as I looked at the picture I managed to take.  The bucket I am gathering wool in is from the season's kid milk replacer (Little Ralphie sure went through a lot of the stuff) and the paper sack that I'd stored the fleece in is from chicken feed.  An awful lot of our "feed" comes from wonderful culls at the tomato farm and also from the prep kitchen at the Hyatt.  We sure try to make the most of everything around here.  No wonder we rarely manage to fill the trash can for the weekly garbage pick up.

But back to wool.  I'm washing up small batches and have been quite content with the lovely white silky curls.  I'll do a final good wash after I've spun the yarn but as for now I want to just tease the locks apart for a wild yarn.