Fiber, Fleece
I wanted to share a look back across this year’s workshops on Long Ridge Farm. Natural dyeing and indigo were taught by me and the fiber workshops were taught by Patty Blomgren. I will post the annual natural dyeing workshops with Earthues soon!
Beginners spinning…
First plied yarns…
Basics in Natural Dyeing….
Unraveling the mystery of dyeing with indigo…
oxidizing after an indigo dip…
Luna…
Sidney…
Working on a custom dye order…
Drum carding for color workshop…
How to choose, prep and wash a fleece workshop…
Kalie…
Washing fleece…
A workshop for intermediate beginner spinners…
Look at that bobbin fly!
Finished skeins again…
Katie helping me get ready for the next show… the Fiber Festival of New England, November 6th and 7th in West Springfield, MA.
Our town spinners and knitters group, The Twisted Sisters, at the farm for a Halloween party…
It’s been a fun spring, summer and fall, gathering with so many great people all in the interest of fiber, dyeing, friendship and learning.
Sheep
Our lambs are looking good at six months old with proper weight and conformation.
Left to right: Griffin, Maggie and Lily. Maggie and Lily are twin ewes. Maggie’s birth weight was 10.5#s and Lily’s was 5.5#s and a bottle lamb. You can take a look back at the early days here. After the first few days on the ground, Lily grew steadily and solidly thereafter. Griffin was born big. A single at birth he weighed in at 10.75#s and now a wether, is still just so darn handsome and personable. When looking at sheep for good characteristics one important view is the hind quarters. Each of these lambs show a straight backbone, good spread across the rear, legs not close together, with a solid build and bone structure.
Every feeding the lambs line up at the rack together…awfully cute, eh? Maggie and Lily’s mother, Della, is to the left of Griffin. Quite often the lambs will be flanked by one or the other of the mothers at the hay feeder. Now that we are fully into off-pasture feedings I need to get coats on those lambs to protect the fleeces. That’s always entertaining when they first sport their new duds!
When the opportunity arises I will catch a photo of Della and Maggie together face on. Their matched resemblance is uncanny and so beautiful.
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Rhinebeck, as always, was incredible. We had awful weather on Friday for the trip out with driving wind and rain but the storm passed in the evening and the weekend, although cool on Saturday, was just perfect. I didn’t get out of my booth at all on Saturday. Katie went out for some awesome fruit tarts for us as an afternoon treat but that was it! Needless to say, I didn’t get a chance to take very many pictures.I heard from the main office at the fairgrounds that the preliminary head count for Saturday by 4PM was 16,000 and that is more than they have had in any two days in the past. There were a LOT of folks there! I didn
This is a partial view of my booth on Sunday morning before the opening…forgot to get the beginning photos so by this time the stock was gone on a number of yarns.
A beautiful baby and mom….
Here’s Katie, my helper and shepherdess on the farm, on the left with a wonderful woman who came to shop with us. We had a great time! She sported one of my Tribal Tiaras that I offered for sale. They make you feel free and offbeat while all the time reigning your kingdom!
Feeling free and happy!
These two ladies stopped by having brought these beautiful brooms from a man who makes them right at the show. Apparently they will last for years and he even suggests leaving the rubber band around the bristles to keep the broom from sloping to the side eventually. That was a new idea to me, but makes sense. These gals swear by these brooms and covet them as do many of his customers. Check him out at Lone Oak Brooms in this youtube video!
The fall colors were spectacular!
Another tiara being sported!
The end of the day Saturday Katie and I passed through the livestock barns on our way to dinner. This dear sheep was so tucked she never even woke up while I watched her.
This ewe was quite the heart throb. When we came upon her she was baaaing away. It was dinner time but she hadn’t had her hay yet and so we spent some time just loving her up and whispering sweet nothings in her ear. She was a real schmooze. When we left her I turned back and she had bedded down and was chewing cud. Sheep whisperers?
And always the wonderful music from Peru….you can hear it here
This woman happened to come by as Katie and I were leaving for the evening Saturday and danced to their music….quite a sight, a number of children joined in, all of it unrehearsed.
Another cute-as-a-bug baby who stopped to shop with his dad.
As Katie and I finished loaded on Sunday night and headed out I looked over to my left and this dog caught my eye. Looks like he is ready to go home!
I want to thank all of you who came to visit this year. It is what makes the show worthwhile for all of the weeks and months of preparation. My new line of yarns has hit the ground running and I so appreciate the enormous round of compliments and purchases you gave.
On another note, there will be a final show in New England and you can check it out
here in case you need yet another fiber fix before the snow flies! I’ll be there in booth 463E.
Events
Countdown….Rhinebeck 2010 is this coming weekend. A few of the boxes that are packed with yarns….
all in natural dyed hues with yarn from the flock! Looking forward to the show! Please stop and say hello!
Shearing, Sheep
Ashley, our most famous, beautiful ewe has gone to greener pastures. Her health has been slowly declining since early summer and with each passing week it has been harder and harder to watch. She still ate well and grazed but she walked ever so slowly from stiffness and lost her eyesight just weeks ago and her hearing was sketchy.
A few days ago we moved her and the rest of the flock back to the winter barn and pasture for the year. Here she was that afternoon, blind and tired but happy. But in the late day when the rest of the flock headed for the barn, Ashley would still be in the pasture, alone and baaaing. She knew they were gone but wasn’t sure how to get back. She couldn’t see and her safety was in jeopardy. Each evening we would lead her back with grain, loving words and a nudge from behind. She hated coming down to the pasture sheds all summer for the night shift. Ashley loved the high life and pasture was her glory. It was a hard transition for sheep and shepherd.
The day after we brought Ashley and the flock home I happened to be outside just at dusk. I heard a round of commotion, low key, but odd. I decided to walk down and double check the barn when I heard Ashley’s big bellow baaa from the wrong direction. She should have been in the barn but she was across the lane. I looked into the dusk and saw Ashley headed into the woods.
It was pouring rain, damn near dark and she was hobbling off into the woods, blind and lame and tired. I ran up to Katie’s cottage on the farm (our dearly beloved assistant shepherd) and asked for her to help me wrangle Ashley back to the barn. Jack was away for the evening so it was girl’s night! We quickly got back to where Ashley had last been roaming and meanwhile she had wedged herself between the ledge on the right and the tree on the left and she was down.
After a good 10 minutes of pushing, pulling and coaxing with grain and halter we got Ashley back in the barn in a private suite fit for a queen. The rain hammered down and at one point as Katie and I were pushing and pulling Ashley home, I looked at Katie and said “isn’t this a scene from Cold Mountain”. We both briefly chuckled. As it turned out Ashley had blindly walked into the electric fence outside the barn, gone through it at what cost and then wandered away, not sure where she was headed. I am so eternally grateful I was there in the barnyard at the moment I heard some off beat sounds. Otherwise she would have spent the night in the woods and perhaps not survived the night predators.
The next twenty four hours we devoted to Ashley’s comfort. She had her evening alone, safe in the barn adjacent to the rest of the flock but with her own water, hay, salt and comfy bedding and during the day she was with the rest of the flock. But we knew it was a lost cause. If she couldn’t see, nothing could be safe for her. Wednesday we made arrangements with the doc to make that hard, hard final decision. It was a lovely day on pasture, all the sheep were just mellow and cruising. I “asked” the rest of the flock late-morning to spend some time with Ashley as she would be departing later in the day and as God is my witness within two hours most of the flock was resting around her. Up until this time, all summer, Ashley quite often was just sleeping alone somewhere on pasture. They know.
Ashley was a queen. I bought her when she was 8 years old as she traveled the sales circuit. To others she was a “has been”. Old and useless. I came to learn she had the most divine fleece I have ever encountered. In fact, I never sold her fleece after the second year I owned her because it was too good to be true! Soft as butter. Her cheeks were soft, her neck, her hind quarters, all of her. I chose to buy her so she’d have a good final run on life. And she did. She lived here for 8 more years and gave us more than we dreamed of in so many ways. In 2006 she gave us triplets at 10 years old!
She loved the fall when the apples fell…like an elixir.
She was a clown.
And most of all a lady.
She was laid to rest, September 29th, 2010 at Long Ridge Farm. A jewel in the crown. Forever loved, forever missed.
