I went to the barn this morning and the first thing I do is scan the sheep and the scene to make sure all is well; everyone alert, their coats intact, nothing seemingly in disaray. You know leaving a flock of animals unattended for 12 hours can prove problematic at times. This morning I instantly spoted this area of blood in the snow. My heart skipped a bit…with no real reason, blood just does this! The flock was quite chipper and happy. So as I fed them and cleaned I kept thinking what could have caused it. Did an owl swoop in on a bluejay? No feathers. The area itself was not broken down as if a sheep had laid there…no blood on any hind ends or noses. No one coughing or sneezing. hmmmm. I took the dogs for a walk and on the way back there were a few sheep eating snow. We have a nice crust now after the rain storm this past week. I went back in and watched as some ate the snow. Low and behold Wetherby, for one, had bleeding gums. Akin to a dog chewing on a rawhide bone, I decided this was not life threatening and even perhaps good gum therapy. Certainly one thing I know for sure, there is nothing that I can do about it! After Wetherby ate some of the snow he went right back to the hay rack to eat. On with the day!

Quite often I want to create a color from the Earthues dyes, but until I am sure I have acheived it, I find dyeing small swatches the best way to do the tests. Just take a quart sized canning jar and place enough water in it to cover the goods to be dyed. Place the jar in a canning pot or stainless pot (used soloely for dyeing) as shown on the stove with enough water in the pot to allow the water in the canning jar to heat up; like a double boiler of sorts. Because I mostly dye wool, I use natural colored wool strips as shown to the right of the dye pot. If you work with silk or cotton, do the same with the fabric. Mordant them first and let set at least a few days after, wet and cool. Then measure the dyes, based on your weight of goods. It is tricky when the goods weigh an ounce or less, but working in gram weight helps as does a good eye for fractions. Then just simmer at the temp required and you will have swatches to refer to if you like the recipe. You can do up to 4 colors at once in four separate jars. I was looking for the color of a dye sample I have from a 5-step gradation, the sample in back of the swatches. It matches the one sample pretty closely. I used Madder at 8% and Logwood Purple at 2% and if I reduce the Logwood Purple just a smidge, I’ll have that color!

The first load of logs left the farm yesterday. Bright and early every morning I can hear Gary running the skidder and chainsaw as I do sheep chores and walk the dogs. I full appreciate his job, whether it is windy, snowy, rainy or just plain cold, Gary is there, cutting, trimming and pulling out the chosen trees. Not an easy way to make a living, but surely necessary to keep our forests healthy.

Today we took to our own trails in Westmoreland with Lyle and Sandy. They rode over from their house and met us here at the farm and from here we rode across town and up the tracks to The Minuteman Cafe on the summit for lunch. It’s a great location with lots of windows facing west while we at lunch we watched snow squalls roll in from VT. Too bad it wasn’t a blizzard! Again the trails weren’t the smoothest but we had lots of laughs and fun together. Cheers and hooray for snow!

We were finally able to get out and do some snowmobiling. Jack and I trailered up to meet Bill and Jennie in Lempster, NH and took the afternoon riding toward Sunapee and then over to Washington for lunch and back to their house in Lempster. The trails weren’t the smoothest but the company was great and the weather was perfect!