We have also been busy with school and de-cluttering the house. That almost makes me laugh..to think of de-cluttering a house with 9 people living in it.
My pile of unfinished projects is slowly getting smaller, if I can just keep from starting new ones. Haha...I am seriously laughing at myself right now.
Well, I thought it was past due for an update!
First, I have been trying to crank out some milk based soaps. This batch here has lemon grass and rosemary in it and it smells fabulous. 6 weeks to cure and there will be plenty of soaps to go around!
Friday I cleaned up my room, or rather the pile of junk that sits in the corner of the room. I came across some old Usborne books and all of the kids spent some time reading them, including the teens!
I found some cute skull fabric at the local quilt store and decided to make a new purse. You cannot tell from this low quality picture, but the skulls are bit sparkly. I made 2. One to keep and one will go on Etsy.
I am teaching classes in a local fiber studio and needed to hand dye yarn for a beginning crochet class this Saturday. Journee learned how to dye the yarn too and was a huge help to me! Next week we will hand dye some fingering weight yarns for use in embroidery.
Moving on to farm animals.... Flicka (the house lamb) never did adjust to being with sheep. She does love the calves though, so we keep her with all the bovine babies. You can see that the calves love her equally as well. Molly, who has grown a ton, likes to lick and love on Flicka.
The baby steer who was so sick has made a full recovery! We still do not know for sure what happened. we assume it was a mineral deficiency and so we are very adamant about keeping good mineral salts out in a loose form for free choice. We are also keeping him locked up at night by himself so he can have lots of extra alfalfa and grain to munch on. We are hoping he will keep gaining some weight.
Winter here brings mucky, wet ground and no green grass. For this reason, I am letting the hens totally free range all winter. This works out very well and allows them to spend lots of the day scratching through hay and cow patties. The cows tend to create nice hay beds after they are done eating but the hens will help compost it up, spread it out and fertilize the ground. By late spring this ground will be green and lush.
A proper hay feeder is on our long list of things to build, but for now we just have to settle with hay on the ground. The ladies don't seem to mind. Right now Belle and Ivy are spending all of their time with the bull in hopes of being bred. I still need to get Penny and Valentine out there too before he leaves the farm.
Spring looks to be a busy one. We have a couple of big projects in the works, and that doesn't even include getting meat chicks!
I am grateful for NO SNOW this winter so far and hope I did not just curse myself:-)
Enjoy your day! I am making cheese today and finishing up school with the kids.
Happy Monday Ya'll!
Those are some nice items, indeed. They are dynamic in options and are varied, so I guess that all's good in there. I just hope that you keep that up, and really bring that to bear on your Etsy shop and here on your blog. Thanks for sharing that! More power to you!
ReplyDeletePam Zimmerman @ Client Direct Marketing