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….call a friend and take a wine break!
We got about 17″ of heavy,wet snow yesterday and I spent the greater part of the day shoveling paths, the barn area and raking snow weary rooves. By 2PM my back was breaking. I spoke to Betsy on the phone and being in the same condition we decided to get together for a repast at Burdick’s in Walpole. If you click the link the handsome gentleman in the far right picture was our server and he made it very easy for us to sit back and reeelax as the snow fell outside. We shared some sauteed greens and pommes frites plus some absolutely delicious wine. We left soothed and refreshed and ready to once again lift our shovels!
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Have a bonfire and chew sticks
Contemplate it’s warmth and beauty
chew sticks with friends
and always, always manage the affairs of the barn!
Natural Dyeing, Shearing, Workshops
Workshops for the 2010 season at Long Ridge Farm are open! Three day workshops with Michele Wipplinger are featured for August. The first is Basilan: Earth Pigments and Infusions from Mali, Africa. The second is Woad: The Ancient European Blue.
Michele Wipplinger
Patty Blomgren and I will be teaching a series of one day workshops throughout the year focusing on working with fiber and natural dyeing
Patty sharing her expertise with me about my yarn order
Patty Blomgren has been a spinner, weaver and fiber artist for over 25 years. She has taught spinning and weaving at Ewe and Me in Northfield, Massachusetts and currently teaches at Margie’s Muse, Jamaica, Vermont, Maybelle Farm in Wardsboro, Vermont and is in her 13th year teaching spinning at The Putney School, Putney, Vermont as well as numerous spinning classes in the Southern Vermont area. Patty also is a spinning/fleece contest judge for the annual Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival.
For the past 5 years Patty was the master spinner at the Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney, Vermont where her knowledge of handspinning translated to working the Spinnery’s 1948 ~ 96 bobbin spinning frame. Patty graduated in 2001 from Mount Holyoke College with a major in Women’s Studies and a minor in Art. Her final project in Women’s Studies brought her back to her passions of the fiber arts when she was curate for a weaving exhibit at Artspace Community Art Center in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Teaching people to spin is Patty’s favorite obsession!
Patty Blomgren
Nancy Zeller ~ Photo courtesy of Marti Stone Photography
Nancy Zeller of Long Ridge Farm is celebrating ten years of raising sheep and particularly the most rare and endangered CVM/Romeldale. Long Ridge Farm has won numerous prize ribbons for raw fleeces, is recognized nationally for their involvement with CVM/Romeldales and continues to produce breeding stock lambs from their flock of CVM/Romeldale sheep. Nancy received a BA in Art from UNH at Keene, NH and has been immersed in natural dyeing since 2005, working side by side with Earthues of Seattle, WA. She teaches by request throughout the Northeast. Nancy does custom dye work for Green Mountain Spinnery as well as individual requests. You can visit her at fiber shows throughout the year around New England and also by visiting her studio at Long Ridge Farm.
Learn to spin, learn to dye with indigo, learn how to buy the best fleece, learn to use combs and carders properly and more…. won’t you join us this year?
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Sidney and Luna are snow birds. We knew Sidney was but it sure is great that Luna is also.
It’s a must that all animals and people living on Long Ridge Farm love the snow!
We still have a lot of snow on south side of the saddle up here and today it looks like a lovely snow globe outside.
She eats, breathes and sleeps in it whenever she can.
Our lone hen, Bianca, comes in from the cold to visit from time to time. She is very polite (no messing!), she has some water and then rests in and around the kitchen. Then I pick her up and put her out to live the life of a not so spoiled hen. It’s hard to have just one. We will be getting more chicks in May, enough of this!
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Did you know that January 25th is coined the “most depressing day of the year”? We are getting a massive rainstorm coupled with frozen ground so the water has no way to soak into the ground coupled with a snowmelt to beat the band. This is depressing!
Our cozy farmhouse is approaching flood stage!
Because we go through this every time we get a storm under these conditions, we knew this was coming and took precautions by setting up a brand new sump pump along with an older one. The new one is getting packed up in it’s pretty box and shipped back to the store. It is USELESS! Betsy is enroute from her farm in Putney with another pump and we have Lyle on call with a gas-powered pump if this doesn’t solve the problem.
The one thing that’s for sure is we aren’t alone today. This is the same storm that came from CA where it left such a wake of destruction and traveled all the way across the country in similar fashion. I am happy to report that the sheep are high, dry and comfy.
Betsy’s here….time for a glass of wine!
