angora fleece carding

sadly, this will be our last fleece from our favorite angora goat, Nanny. Nanny gave us her last fleece just prior to her leaving us for that big pasture in the sky. Angora goats are so wonderful to keep, they are friendly wonderful weed wackers and twice a year they bless you with all this glorious fibers.

Midsummers eve

our family's style......

Memorial Day

I hope the day finds you blessed with those you love near you, watermelon in hand and remember to whisper a prayer for all the fallen soldiers.

a day in the sun

yesterday was a glorious warm day.  we have so much to do here, so many gardens to catch up on after so much rain, but what did we do........

because sometimes life is to short not to play for the day............here is hoping for many more summer days of play.

chicken tractors and spring days

we have been swamped with the busy day to day life of spring planting, keeping new bee hives fed and chickens happily munching on fresh grass.  Grass fed animals are the goal and finding ways to make this more reasonable seems to be a constant challenge.  We have chicken tractors made of wood that are great for keeping the girls in, but terribly difficult to move by oneself, leaving the girls too long in one spot quickly destroys large spots of grass.  I am tickled to death with the ingenious idea of tractors made of PVC pipes, that one can literally move with one hand.  Tomorrow we are going to try these out on the rabbits, if it works we can easily place these over the raised eds in the winter, put a hoop house over them and have our beds cleaned up and fertilized for next summer.  It is a forever process of learning and trying new ideas; a grand life.

Mushrooms....pioppino

  We are delighted that our mushroom kit from fungi perfecti  is coming along nicely.  In this cold, wet and muddy spring, not much else seems to be thriving.  These are pioppino mushrooms, it is wonderfully exciting to start a new project such  as this, and have success. If anyone else is tempted to try their hand at mushroom cultivation, I will say this company has been very helpful each time I call with another novice question and/or concern,

Bon appetite!

Yarn Along

Joining in again with  Ginny, though I confess, I am not knitting much these days.  When spring arrives on a homestead it is hard to do anything that does not involve large amounts of manure.  I am still working on the same Noro hat I started 2 weeks ago,  I picked this hat because it was such a quick knit, well.........
I am getting lots of reading time in, and I am very excited about what I am currently reading.  I apologize for the lack of a personal picture, my budding 7 year old photographer seems to have mis placed my camera again.  Anyways back to my reading, Apostolic farming by Catherine Dougherty, from Madonna House in Canada. Her reflections of her youth in Russia, families farming and feeding the poor, respecting and healing the earth are simply prophetic.  This is a small, quick read, that I am busy highlighting passages from.
The second book I am reading in We Took to the Woods; old classic!  Fabulous, eccentric, read that speaks to my heart.