The Calm Before the Dec. Storm

Posted on December 5, 2025 by bluestempond

We have two relatively quiet weeks to clean, rest up, and do our holiday baking. After that, I am having some surgery and we’ll have company while I recover. I am crossing my fingers hard that I will bounce back quickly and can fully participate. We are inching along with getting the house ready — cleaning, decorating, and rearranging furniture to make room for a my (future) walker to move through the main floor.

We have lots of sparkly white snow outside. It got bitter cold last night, and I worried a bit about my goats and sheep, but this morning they were all there to loudly greet me. I am glad I finally got the last of the water dishes hooked up to electricity so the bowls and buckets were still liquid. I am also glad that I am one of the ones who gets to sleep in the house! I just don’t understand how they all do it, but I am glad they do.

I have not done much spinning this year, other than once a month when the Weaver Guild meets to spin together and share stories for a couple hours. It is very enjoyable and a number of new people have joined because they found us out in public and were intrigued. I sat at a holiday craft sale for a few hours last week and worked on my e-spinner to pass the time. I mixed a little bit of blue tinsel with the mohair/wool blend yarn I was making, and asked my guild friends what they thought I could make with a 60-foot skein. One suggested I do a honeycomb weave to show off the tinsel yarn.

When I got home, I decided to jump right into it and look up how to do a honeycomb. It is not hard, just requiring a lot of connections to the treadles. I had to make a couple more connectors out of clothes hangers, but once everything was tied up, off I went. This pattern is an amazing feat of engineering! There are 16 rows of fine thread and then just 2 of the wool yarn I made, repeated over and over. The fine thread takes forever to make any headway, but it is so cool how the weaving pattern causes the wool to curl in and out in a honeycomb border. It’s hard to describe, but here is a picture, worth a thousand words.

And yes, I realize there is one mistake in there. I didn’t notice it until I was 10 minutes past it and was too irritated to back everything out to fix it. I guess if there were no mistakes, people might not realize it was hand-made.

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Time For The Holiday Sales

Posted on November 10, 2025 by bluestempond

All the harvesting is done, even the potatoes which I dug up a few days ago. The heated water buckets for the farm animals are set up and we got our first real snowfall. It could be a lovely restful time, but now we are into the holiday sales going on around the area, three of which I will attend to try to sell some of those warm wool and mohair blankets I made this year.

The local Handweavers Guild to which I belong had their event over the weekend. People were generally only in the mood to buy little trinkets — cat toys and ornaments — so I only sold a couple scarves and one blanket. I will bring my stuff to the pottery sale my friends holds in her barn next week and will also take things to an arts/crafts sale at the art center in Buchanan. Those should both be fun. I signed up for a Square account on behalf of the Handweavers Guild so that we could take in credit and debit payments. It worked very easily with only a small fee from the service provider. Hooray for technology!

We have a stray cat who has been hanging around the barn the last couple months. He/she looks a lot like Mickey except for shorter legs and a fear of me. Mickey comes running towards me, this one runs away. I tried chasing him away, but he keeps coming back. It seems he doesn’t know how to come in the cat door to the barn, or perhaps he is not welcomed by the current residents.

I have decided to take pity on him. I’ve named him “Hobo” and if he shows up when I feed the others, I bring a dish of dry food out onto the barn porch for him. He eats it after he thinks I have gone away. I don’t know, maybe I can slowly tame him. If I don’t become too attached, I can take him to the shelter.

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Junior, the Angora Goat

Posted on October 17, 2025 by bluestempond

I bought Junior a few days after the tragic loss of my sheep to marauding dogs. I was worried that my remaining goat was lonesome and depressed and I felt an urgent need to get him a companion. Junior was born in the spring to a small momma angora goat with long curly horns. She stood next to his twin sister, smaller still. The farmer told me he’d de-horned Junior as an infant, so he’ll never develop the horns that angoras need to regulate their temperature, which is kind of tragic. I guess he’ll get along as it is all he has ever known.

Junior’s momma
Eddy and Junior, after Fall shearing

This week was Junior’s first shearing. His hair was awful — grimy, matted, stiff, and hard to cut through. I don’t know if his mohair quality will always be poor, or if he just needs more loving care than he started out with. I jumped right into washing it in hot water with Dawn detergent, giving it about six soaks in the big tubs in the barn. It gradually began to take on the same silky properties as Eddy’s, so perhaps it is salvageable.

Mickey found the bag of Eddy’s hair, waiting its turn to be washed and dried. I thought it was pretty sweet that he felt so at home in that warm soft pillow of mohair, even if it did smell strongly of goat.

This morning I went out, hooked the hose up to the water heater, and dragged it to the outdoor stall where I had captured Junior for his first bath. It’s funny — goats hate the rain and run for their shed if they begin to get wet, but once I started massaging Junior with warm soapy water, he relaxed into the luxury. He turned his head to give me a grateful kiss, and then grabbed a mouthful of my hair and tried to yank it out.

He was shivering, so I gave him a rub down with a bath towel and set him loose. Eddy wanted to come in. I cornered him and scrubbed his undercarriage, and then finished up shearing it short. He absolutely hates me getting under there so I often have to just let it go, but with that nice warm water he was willing to stand still with his legs apart and calmly let me do my work. I feel really good about taking care of the boys before winter.

The shearing was the natural next step, after we moved the goat shed closer to the barn door for the winter and applied the front wall to block the winter wind. That done, I knew it would be safe for the goats to manage cold weather without their thick, curly coats on. I still will have to set up the heaters for the chicken coop and everyone’s electric water warmers, but it isn’t too bad out yet.

That is one of the things I really love about living on a farm. The seasons prompt you to take action to care for your crops and your animals, regardless of how you are feeling or whether you might rather curl up in front of the TV. It is not an imposition, it is just what is required to care for your family and farm. I guess it’s a lot about love.

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Grape Juice and Apple Hand-Pies

Posted on September 25, 2025 by bluestempond

(I can’t believe my incompetence, but I never posted this from a few weeks ago. Sorry for the delay)

I’m in the final days of putting up food for the winter. We will be going on vacation soon, so that is the deadline I needed. I picked about half our concord grapes and extracted 14 quarts of delicious juice. Here is my steam juicer set up that does a really nice job, but it is a slow and tedious chore.

Steaming out grape juice

I did not want to waste time while I attended to the grape juice for hours, so I also chopped up apples and made apple pie filling. I’d come across an intriguing recipe for “apple hand-pies” and wanted to give it a try. I printed it and now can’t find the web version to share, sorry. They are like the old Hostess fruit pies except they are baked instead of fried and are small and fresh.

They are delicious! I froze a double recipe and ate a bunch off the rack before they got that far. You can only use a tablespoon of apple per pie, so I had lots of filling left over. I measured out how much is needed for a whole traditional pie and froze up three bags of potential pies.

Apple hand pies

I did one final batch yesterday because I had one store-bought pie crust left in the fridge. My friend came over to help me peel and core the apples and we laughed as we worked, which made it more fun.

Now, the work is close to done. My garden produced well for me, and I am putting it to bed for the winter. There are still apples on the trees and grapes on the vine, but I think the deer and other critters will get some winter sustenance because I have done enough.

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Pleasant Autumn Days

Posted on September 15, 2025 by bluestempond

September is turning out to be very nice, here. Warm days, not too much humidity, a little less running around so that we can get things caught up. As the days get shorter, we are up to see some beautiful sunrise views.

I am still working on my apples, and tried making apple jelly a few days ago. I do not have a very successful track record on jellies or jam, usually coming out too runny, but I am ever optimistic that the next time will be better. I bought some tools to make it easier. Here is the juice strainer I thought would make my processing easy.

Instead of easier, I got very little juice but lots of thick pulp. I thought, “Hey, this is just apple sauce!” However, when I sat down to enjoy it, I had to spit out seeds and the sharp pieces of shell from the core. Boo hoo. I ended up giving it all to the chickens and goats. They were happy for it, anyway.

Then, I took the four cups of juice I’d extracted and cooked it down with sugar, per the instructions in the Ball canning guide. I boiled it down, watching for the “sheeting” stage to indicate it was ready to gel. I filled four jars and put the little bit left over in a bowl and when it had cooled down, it was like rubber cement. Oh well.

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The Pond House and Fruit Harvest

Posted on September 7, 2025 by bluestempond

One project that has taken my husband a couple years to plan and all spring and summer to organize is the Pond House. (Or, as my daughter prefers it, the “Pond Palace”) It is a very lovely greenhouse that came in a kit from a company in Canada, before all the tariff wars began. Don’t get me started…

Anyway, it is close to finished and we are beginning to enjoy it on quiet evenings playing cards and listening to the frogs and crickets at the pond. What a nice new way to enjoy the farm! It has an ingenious mechanism that senses the temperature and slowly opens the windows in the roof to vent out the excess heat. I don’t think that will be enough to make it nice in mid-summer, but it is a pleasant escape for the change of seasons in spring and fall. It required a lot of work from Joe, our friends and family, and some commercial workers with more machinery than we have, not to mention the agility to climb ladders and insert windows.

I think the pond house is to blame for the terribly weedy vegetable garden, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime project and worth a crummy year of gardening. This afternoon, though, I picked most of the orchard fruit, and the peaches are the best I’ve ever eaten! So big, juicy, and sweet. I even followed my husband’s lead and ate one, skin and all, right there in the orchard. The juice ran down my chin and dribbled all over the grass, but oh what a taste experience!

Now comes the hard part, though, preserving all that fruit. I’m sure we will end up giving a lot away to friends and food pantries, but first I want to give my best effort at “putting it up” for the winter. I’m thinking apple butter, frozen pie filling, and jams and jellies. A couple years ago, I used the dehydrator and set aside several quart jars of dried fruit. It is still in the pantry, waiting for someone to actually eat it. That makes me feel foolish and wasteful, not something I need more of in my life.

We have dug up half the potato crop hidden under the weedy rows. That is kind of a fun treasure hunt, although it requires some muscle power and strains the knees. We’ll get to the rest of them after the back porch is cleared of apples and peaches. Every now and then I escape the call of fall chores and head to the basement to work on a weaving project, but that is an indulgence when there is so much to be done. This is exactly what I’d dreamed of when we thought we might develop a hobby farm, though, and I am very grateful.

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Checking in…

Posted on September 4, 2025 by bluestempond

I can’t believe it’s been three months since my last post! It’s not like nothing has been going on here, but where to begin?

The barn animals have settled in well, and we now have a good, strong electric current running both inside and outside of the pasture fence to protect them. I have experienced it myself when I was filling the water trough a bit carelessly and I was quite surprised by the heat of the jolt! Oliver stuck his nose too close when we were walking around the outside of the pasture and he wanted to smell the sheep up close. He yelped in surprise and has no interest in going near the fence again.

Part of the happy herd

I no longer work at the fiber mill, but I learned a lot from the experience. I decided the expense of having all my fiber processed there was a bit too high if I had the time and energy to do it myself. So, I purchased a motorized carding machine to make it easier. Now, I no longer have to load it up and then stop to crank the handle over and over. Instead, I just turn it on and focus on blending and loading the wool and mohair in whatever proportions I want. I found that if I run it through several times, the end result is much smoother and easier to spin.

I also bought an electric spinning machine because it is small and easy to transport when all the spinners get together. It is very efficient and consistent. However, it cannot be used if there is no access to an electric plug. That is why I also purchased a used small spinning wheel that is easier to pack and go. I am not a collector at heart, and never understood why my spinning friends confess to having accumulated multiple wheels just because they like them. For me, it is all about practicality.

I have gotten back to weaving lately and have created several very pretty “throws.” I have worked out a template to plan these little blankets without hours of work with my calculator, but it is not foolproof. The last blanket I made, I ran out of the yarn I had dyed and had to head back to the barn to do another batch so I could finish it. It seems I have a never-ending supply of experiences to refresh my humility.

We have some trips coming up in October and have booked house-sitters to watch over the animals and the property. When this works, it is tremendous! No money changes hands and both the host and the visitors get to enjoy time in a new place. The last two “sits” we booked way in advance and in both cases the sitters cancelled months later due to their situation changing. I was about ready to give up on the process, but I’m crossing my fingers it will go smoothly this time.

Today, we picked our white wine grapes and put 15 gallons of juice into a big bin with yeast to ferment. I think that will fill about 75 bottles! On Saturday, we plan to pick the red grapes. Red wine is much more complicated because you have to leave the skins on the grapes for a certain length of time before you filter them out. That is what gives it the rich color and complex flavor. It is all my husband’s department to take it from there. All I do is pick the grapes and drink the wine.

Our vegetable garden was a weedy mess this year. There was just too much else going on and we had long stretches of miserable hot, humid weather that discouraged me from going out there. I think we need to work on the soil, as well. Several crops that used to grow very well have gotten weaker every year. I didn’t even get many zucchini, which is usually producing like crazy by now.

The orchard, on the other hand, is very happy this year. I read up on how to thin the fruit in the spring so that there was sufficient space between them. It resulted in huge apples and peaches — a lot of them! The great fruit harvest was partly due to good weather conditions in the spring, so I certainly don’t get the credit. Also, Joe has learned how and when to spray to keep the insects and fungal diseases from thwarting the poor trees. Yes, I know we should strive for organic conditions, but what’s the point of having fruit trees if the leaves curl up and drop wormy fruit all over the ground?

So, there is my long, rambling catch-up post of what is going on here at the farm. If you are near enough to visit, we’d love to have you here to experience it first-hand.

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Lambs Growing Up

Posted on May 27, 2025 by bluestempond

The baby lambs, Astra and Luna, are growing really fast now. Although about four inches of their width is just fluffy wool, they are getting tall and are probably 2/3 the size of their momma already. You can see this pretty clearly when they all line up for breakfast. It is kind of funny to me how even the babies quickly learn to stand sideways to try to hog the food by crowding the others out with their bodies. I always feed the goats separately long enough to give the sheep a fair chance to get fed because goats are notorious for butting everyone else out of the way.

Junior also has reached a milestone in his growth. He got castrated last week. I think it is unusual to wait until a goat is a year old to do this, but it was not done when I got him and this was the first appointment I could get. He has recovered pretty quickly. The vet said to keep him separated from the herd for a week, but once he was on his feet and acting normally, he seemed so sad to be alone. I just had to release him.

It was kind of sweet. Big Eddy came and touched noses with him before going back to being aloof. Then the sheep came up and sniffed him all over and he gently butted heads with them before they all wandered off into the pasture together to munch the grass. I think it will do him the most good in his recovery to be among his family.

I have been slowly winning over the trust of the sheep and Junior by hand-feeding them cracked corn in the evening. It is a tricky process because Eddy must be fed first and while he chews I can give corn to Junior and then to Cassie, in that order. There is clearly a hierarchy. If I can squeeze it in, I try to give a little to the lambs although only one of them has developed a taste for corn. I am working up to getting them all to allow me to scratch them under their chins if not patting or scratching their backs. We are making progress, and I hope one day they will all act like dogs. Who cares if this is an unreasonable target?

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Keystone Farmers

Posted on May 22, 2025 by bluestempond

Honestly, my little flock is gleefully laughing at me. It seems they get such joy from foiling my efforts at managing who goes where. I have recently taken to locking the sheep and goats out of the airlock area in front of the chicken run and then propping open the door so that the chickens can run in and out at will for the day. They just love having the run of the pasture and ducking under the gate while the big animals look on in envy.

Lambs trying to climb into the airlock

The problem is that the big goat, Eddy, has figured out that if he pries up the tube gate on the airlock with his horns and gives it repeated shoves, he can often get it to open. This leaves the whole team open to run in and show off their freedom, even ducking into the chicken coop itself where they can help themselves to chicken feed. I show up for their evening treats and they look up at me in triumph for their accomplishment.

Junior
Edit and his can-opener horns

What follows is a comic routine of me chasing everyone out of the chicken run, while someone sneaks into the barn stall to discover I was too surprised to close the door into the main barn and they could actually escape totally if they wanted. I rush to slam that door and the baby lambs dart around me and I whirl around trying to catch them and toss them back out. Meanwhile, the goats have squeezed back into the coop and I have to go out through the barn to get to the coop door and scream at them to get out. Eddy barely fits through the little opening with his big horns, and I have to swat his rear to make him exit. Immediately, Junior has his head back in the coop, ready to return, so I place the waterer in the doorway to block it.

At this point, I hurry back through the barn to the stall so I can start closing doors as each room is cleared and narrow down their areas to run away. When I get everyone back out into the airlock, I have to physically shove the goats out because they are having such fun mocking me. Momma sheep slips in to check on her babies so that once the goats are out, I have the whole sheep family watching me from inside the airlock. The whole time I am trying to herd them out the gate, the goats are trying to shove their way back in.

You get the picture. I am angry and shouting while I try not to laugh.

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Spring in the Orchard

Posted on May 19, 2025 by bluestempond

My orchard is quite small, just four apple trees and a peach. Still, I am eternally optimistic that the fruit harvest will be bountiful. Two years ago I got a bushel of apples and a good number of peaches as well and I thought it would continue every year now that the trees had matured. Last year, though, there were no peaches and only three or four apples. I heard it was a problem all over southwest Michigan due to the unfortunate weather that spring.

This year, conditions turned around and the blossoms were happy and prolific. I spoke to a guy who was knowledgeable about caring for fruit trees and vines, and he explained that besides the weather, fruit trees are also prone to bearing good harvests every other year unless you thin out the fruit in the spring. He said if you do that, you’ll get nice big fruit and you’ll get them again next year.

Beautiful, but too close.

So, today I went at it. It is SO hard to snip off little apples when they all promise to become something wonderful in September. I did it though, and we will see if I regret it. For apples, you are supposed to leave one fruit every six inches on a branch. For peaches, one per cluster. I broke a few little branches by handling them too roughly, and I had to apologize to the tree. I remember a study in the 1970’s that monitored electrical impulses in plants and detected alarm when the research team even thought about hurting them. Ever since hearing that, I talk to the trees when I trim them and explain what I am doing and why.

I have been working down through my to-do list and, besides thinning the orchard, I also forced myself to weed the asparagus and strawberry patches. What a tedious job! Still, it is very satisfying to find plants that were buried under grass and weeds and clearing the space around them so they have a chance to flourish. I even mixed up fertilizer and gave everyone a good dose and ran the sprinkler for a while. I may be imagining it, but they seem to be lifting up their leaves towards the sun with a little more enthusiasm this morning. You’re welcome!

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Mohair Blanket and Rhubarb

Posted on May 16, 2025 by bluestempond

I got my first mohair-blend throw finished. It is soft and drapey and is just the dimensions I was shooting for, yay!

I’m a little nervous about the second one because this one used more weft yarn than I’d anticipated, and I’m not sure I have enough left to do what I want. Who knew weaving could be such a white-knuckles activity? I think I’ll have to rethink the design to hedge my bets.

I took a swing around the farm this morning to see if there were any more morel mushrooms popping up. I’ve been selfishly eating the one or two I find, all by myself. I noticed how pretty the rhubarb plants are this year. Last year I chopped off the blooms so more energy would go into the tasty stems but I missed out on this display.

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Mohair blankets

Posted on May 11, 2025 by bluestempond

I got my mohair back from the fiber mill, blended with soft wool and spun into DK-weight yarn. I planned to dye it and weave some nice blankets/throws but didn’t get to it for a few months. I am pretty excited to see how they turn out. The mohair in the yarn is heavy and very silky. It causes the fabric to drape nicely and as it ages, it develops a “halo” of fine fuzz. When I hand spin it, the yarn sheds a bit but I think the commercially spun yarn will not do that.

I first designed a couple of plaid patterns in colors I like. Then I sat down for a few hours and calculated how much yarn I would need of each color. It takes me a lot of revisions before it all comes out to an amount I can do with the supplies I have, but since I hadn’t dyed it yet I was able to measure out the right amounts of yarn right up front, (at least theoretically.)

Spring Blues

It’s really hard to get the exact colors I am aiming for, but I feel like it will all come together. Yesterday, I started measuring out the warp and threading the loom for the first blanket, and this afternoon I got started. I am optimistic that this will turn out well although there are always surprises and it’s possible the second blanket I have planned may come up short on the colors they share. I’m crossing my fingers.

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Loving Care of Wool

Posted on April 19, 2025 by bluestempond

I mentioned last time that I took the wool from my three sheep who had died of injuries. I had mixed feelings over whether that was appropriate,  but now I am glad I did it.

The three fleeces all came out differently, although I’d treated them all the same. The first was a mixture of shearing from one sheep and clumps that were scattered all over the yard. As expected, it was a mess of straw and dirt, but with patience, I got it pulled apart and did a first pass at getting the VM (vegetable matter) out. Then I did a second wash to get out the dirt that had been wedged in the clumps. It looks good now and will make nice yarn.

The second fleece was much easier and cleaner. I picked it apart and removed 98% of the VM on the first try.  It did not drop much dust and dirt, either, so I did not send it back to the sink.

I was looking forward to the last one because I’d collected it more carefully and expected a simple job. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Dot’s fleece was one big solid mat.

Matted wool

I pulled and tugged, getting an occasional handful of hair loose, and was on the verge of giving up. Then I remembered that this was not just about me and my convenience, but was a memorial to a good sheep. I did something I never do, and used scissors to cut out some of the worst bits.  I walked away every time I found myself weighing the idea of throwing it all out.

Micky, the barn cat, watched over the process and probably thought I was nuts. I am determined, however, and even if it takes me hours and hours, I am going to salvage this wool.

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April 2025

Posted on April 14, 2025 by bluestempond

My posts seem to be few and far between this last year, but I’ll catch you up on news from our Bluestem Pond. We have so far escaped from any serious storm damage from the spring tornado weather. It is certainly windy and has been unusually cold but we don’t have many large trees close to the house so it has bypassed the homestead. I feel for all the people elsewhere in the country who have suffered losses.

We have something fun to look forward to here. My husband has always dreamed of a little shelter by the pond so we could enjoy it in the shade and free of flying insects. This is the year we are finally going to build it. He bought a greenhouse kit from a Canadian company and today they poured the cement slab for it. I think it will be a nice addition, a place to sip a glass of wine and listen to the frogs sing in the evening. Joe is always happiest when he has a project to work on, so this will be a joy for him.

We had a tragedy here last week, too. A couple stray dogs from across the creek wandered over and attacked my flock in their pasture. We have an electric fence on the inside that might have deterred them, but they ripped the wire fence right off a wooden fencepost and jumped over. When my husband let our dogs out early in the morning, he heard snarling outside and our two came tearing through the doggie door into the porch. He went to investigate and scared the two strange dogs away. He saw them heading out to the barn and jumped into the jeep to make sure everyone was safe.

He called me to get dressed and come out, and I found one sheep dead and the other two huddled with the goat in their shed, bloody and terrified. I looked around and there were the dogs, waiting outside the far end of the pasture for another chance to go at them. I stomped out towards them, yelling, and they came running at me, facing off on the other side of the fence from me barking and growling.

I called 911 and they sent the Animal Control officer, who was able to capture them and cart them away in his truck. Now it is a matter of letting the wheels of justice turn. I have been assured that the dogs will both be destroyed, but there may be a court case involved because one of the owners can’t believe his dog did this.

My poor goat is spooked and bolts every time I come around the barn to see him. He spent the first couple days lying in the shed with his head down and I was worried he may die from the shock even though he did not seem to have been bitten. We found a farmer with an angora goat for sale and went down there as soon as we could to see it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to start in with sheep again, but he also had a momma Shetland sheep with two babies he was willing to sell, so we brought all four home.

So, it is a mixture of joy and pain around here. The baby lambs are charming and playful and my goat is a bit happier. I decided to quickly shear each sheep before burying them, so now I am lovingly washing and skirting their wool with plans to make something beautiful to remember Dot, Helen, and Pandy.

Here is a photo of Cassie (mom), and Luna and Astra, her two little daughters.

Eddy and Junior
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February 2025

Posted on February 21, 2025 by bluestempond

I haven’t had much to say for a while. National news gets me down. I find myself retreating into movies, books, and creating things to distract myself. Still, I guess it would be good to get back into sharing in the blog.

Here are some good things. It is a gloriously beautiful day today, bright sunshine glittering off eight inches of snow. It is too cold for the slushy, dirty stuff to accumulate yet. It has been frigid and snowy for weeks, and a lot of activities have been cancelled due to the weather or rampant colds and flu in the community. What is good about that is that I do like having a lighter schedule and an excuse to huddle in at home.

We have not had too much trouble with illnesses yet. I had a cold for about a week but was lucky to have it clear up early. My husband is traveling over the weekend and I won’t be surprised if he brings home one bug or another after being exposed to so many more other people than usual.

I have made some nice stuff this winter. I bought myself a little electric spinner so I could make yarn while I watch TV at night. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to chug through quite a lot of fiber from last year. Then, I took a break from that and picked some yarn out of my stash of wool and mohair to make a blanket. I designed a plaid pattern that worked really nicely, except I mis-calculated the dimensions, and it is much longer than it is wide. I like it, though. It makes a luscious shawl to wrap around your shoulders and lay across your lap, holding you warm and cozy. I decided to call it a “plaid,” which is the name for the long sash worn over the shoulder by a bagpiper.

Then I turned to knitting. My grandson turns ten years old this week, so I decided to knit him a sweater from my sheep. It took a lot more time than I’d anticipated, and I was on a deadline, so I worked night and day for the last two weeks to make sure it was ready in time. I also framed up a picture of the sheep who provided the gray wool so my grandson would know who it came from. It is a Norwegian pattern, very thick and heavy so that you need cold weather to wear it. Good for skiing!

Norwegian ski sweater

Now that the sweater is done and my fingertips are all sore and calloused, I think it’s time to go back to spinning and weaving for a while. I enjoy the creative process, looking over the materials at hand and dreaming up what could be made with them. The sheep and goats are working hard at growing out new fiber for this spring, so I do need to work through what I already have on hand.

I am working about ten hours a week at the fiber mill, when the weather permits, and I enjoy the feeling and smell of the fiber as it comes in, gets cleaned, fluffed up, and ready to spin. There are so many different kinds! I am learning how to decide which fibers work best when they are blended with other ones. I’m tempted to get just one more sheep that would blend well with my mohair.

I could always buy someone else’s fiber, but there is something about having it come from my own flock…

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Unwelcome Visitor

Posted on February 21, 2025 by bluestempond

I’ve been battling with this little guy, sneaking into the chicken coop and lurking about, scaring all the hens out into their run. I put up all sorts of wire fence patching and blockades to foil him from squeezing through the fence but he keeps showing up. At first, he’d be in the nest boxes eating eggs. Then, my husband found him lounging under the heat lamp on the roost. Finally, I peeked into the coop to see if they had enough feed, and was greeted by this little face. Cute, until he bares his sharp teeth and hisses.

I have no other ideas, short of spending a lot of money and time installing new wire fencing. When he showed up in the food bucket again this morning, I ran out of gentle ideas for discouraging him and took stronger measures. It is upsetting to me to hurt an animal, but I saw no other way. If someone new shows up tomorrow, I’ll have to re-think the strategy.

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Winding Down

Posted on November 16, 2024 by bluestempond

We’ve been so busy winterizing the farm and preparing for holiday craft sales, that when these things are mostly done it feels like school has been let out. The roaring engine of activities went into neutral and we can just coast to the end of the year.

The only thing left in the garden is the kale that just never seems to die. Really, how much kale can one eat? Hopefully it will sleep over the winter and resurrect itself in the spring. We did a second planting of spinach in a raised bed, but it never quite got going. We also had a couple plants full of reddening hot peppers but I see my husband ripped them out this week. I was quite tired of finding uses for them, so it’s okay with me. The barn is restocked with hay and straw, and the winter routines are back on schedule.

I did lots of work on my loom and knitting at night to make stuff for the craft sales. Now, they have all been set up in displays for the next two weekends and there is nothing more to do. I have heard some positive reports of certain items selling like hotcakes. (What are hotcakes, anyway, and why does everybody want them?)

My husband and I are working at the fiber mill a couple days a week and it’s pleasant to watch money coming into each of our private “fun money” accounts. I enjoy the job and hope it doesn’t get too hard to make the 45-minute drive through the countryside in the dead of winter.

My chickens finally began laying again, a couple weeks after I set up their red heat lamp on a timer over the roost. The babies have grown to full size and I am pretty certain some of the eggs are theirs, especially the tiny blue ones. It takes a week or so before the eggs are full size, and their shells are usually hard as rocks. There is one dark brown colored one that must be coming from a new hen.

I have my new “EUV” in the garage and can now charge it up overnight about once a week, so our gas station bills have dropped considerably. My pool is fixed so I can swim again, and my shoulder is fixed so my arm is once again in working order. We can’t fix the world outside the farm, but we do what we can within our little sphere of control.

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Dyed Yarn, 2024 Batch

Posted on October 29, 2024 by bluestempond

I got an unexpected free day today, so I went out to the barn and dyed 3,000 yards of Shetland wool that had been spun and skeined up at the fiber mill. It’s so fun to play with colors and see how the combinations come out. I was much more careful with handling it this time and tied an extra two loops into each skein so that they wouldn’t intermingle and get all tangled up.

Batch number one was based on a new jar of “Turquois” dye. Before I put the yarn into the pot, I dribbled some “Aztek Gold” here and there on the wet skeins, then I laid half of each skein over the side of the dye pot and let the turquois do its thing for about half an hour. It took up the dye kind of slowly and I got impatient, so at the end I dropped the rest of the skeins into the pot, expecting the last bit to be a different degree of color. Surprisingly, it was not as dramatic as I’d expected and the gold is quite subtle.

The second batch started out with “Brilliant Blue” on the half that hung into the pot. It came out quite vibrant, and I dumped it out to drain and started up a pot of “Kelly Green”. I hung the undyed ends of the skeins into the green and it turned out quite nice. The blue end pulled water out of the pot and dripped all over the counter but I sopped it up frequently with a rag.

For the last batch, I left the blues and greens behind and soaked all the skeins in “Aztek Gold” for a while and then hung the center of each skein up over the other pot that was “Scarlet”, trailing most of the skeins in the beautiful red.

Which is your favorite? I lean towards vibrant colors, but the subtle Monet pond colors of the turquoise batch are nice in their own way. I’ll bring all fifteen skeins to the holiday sales and see if anyone else gets as excited about them as I do. I will have to get advice from my boss at the mill on how to price each skein of wool.

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Getting Ready for Holiday Sales

Posted on October 26, 2024 by bluestempond

I’ve been preparing for a couple of craft sales in November — one for my Handweavers Guild and another one put on by a friend who makes pottery and invites people to her barn to see it. Whatever doesn’t sell at the Guild sale I will take to the second one. I have made a lot of nice things, mostly on the loom but also some knitting and spinning.

It’s always an interesting exercise to decide what is a fair and acceptable price to put on things I have made. I tend to under-value my work. This year, I made some estimates of the cost of the yarn I had spun at the fiber mill, and started from there as just the cost of materials. This does nothing to account for the cost of caring for my sheep and goats or the efforts in dyeing, weaving, or knitting. Then, when I am the spinner I tend to think of my time as “free.” I also checked for similar items on ETSY.com to see what they are going for. I hope my prices won’t be out of range of people’s budgets.

When I weave something, I find I that I literally spend hours planning, calculating, erasing and re-calculating what will be needed. I have learned to do it in pencil! I hope that over time my documented mistakes will turn into wisdom that sticks so that I don’t do the same stupid things over and over.

I also have learned SO much by working at the fiber mill. For instance, I now understand the value of blending wool with my mohair or pygora before it is spun into yarn. The last sweater I made is soft and fluffy but sheds all over the place when I wear it. If I had blended it, the wool would have given it a much better stickiness factor and would also have added some elasticity. I have been playing with the idea of unraveling the whole sweater and doing something differently. You can’t do too much after it is spun, but I could experiment with knitting it with smaller needles or even putting it back on the wheel and spinning it tighter. That could be one big headache, but I still might try it this winter.

Right now, I have a couple bags of fiber in the barn that are half mohair and half wool that I got back from the mill. I dyed it all in complementary colors, and plan to card it about 50/50 so it is a nice blend of both fiber type and color. I did a bit of it today and am itchy to try spinning it. If I weren’t so busy prepping for this sale, I’d get right on it.

Red wool, brown mohair

So, in the mean time, I am enjoying the beauty of autumn in Michigan. It really is breathtaking. We are so fortunate to live in a place like this.

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Fall Frenzy

Posted on October 12, 2024 by bluestempond

We have an eye on the winter that is coming, and have been experiencing a burst of energy towards getting things fixed up and completed before the cold weather comes. I had expected to have my yarn back from the mill and to be busily dying, knitting, and weaving with it. Unfortunately, circumstances have delayed that delivery. Instead of grumping about the fact that  it was holding me back from prepping for the holiday craft sales, I decided to work on my own stuff and get something done that is under my control.

Yesterday, I sheared the angora goat. It used to be a huge, nervous operation for me, but I have enough experience now that I just lure him into the barn and start right in snip-snip-snipping his hair off with the big hand shears. None of the crazy loud electric clippers that always stressed us both out. I’ll leave that to the professional shearer who comes in May. I just pull off large handfuls and toss them onto a sheet on the floor. Eddy is quite nervous as I handle his hips and rear end, so he leans as far off the table as he can, threatening to fall right off and hang himself from the tether. I figured out that if I stand directly behind him, he can’t decide whether to lean left or right and I can make some progress until he starts charging forward, away from me. It’s our little dance.

I divided up the many things on my to-do list so that I wouldn’t hurt my joints from staying in any one position too long. Yesterday, I groomed the dog who my husband had bathed in the morning. Then I planned and measured out the warp to make some dishtowels from the cotton thread I had in my stash. Then, out to the barn to shear the goat and give the mohair five or six washes before leaving it to soak it in the sink overnight. Then, I dragged myself back to the house to shower off the stink and lie down for a few minutes before dinner.

Today, I was ready for the next big batch of tasks. I went back out to the barn to feed the animals and check on the mohair. It needed a few rinses to get the suds out, but it was nice and clean so I set up my two hot plates and made up dye pots to color the wet fiber. I wanted to try out the black and the red that I need for my next weaving project once I get my yarn. I’m glad I did because the random colors I added to the red really were a bad mix and I got a lovely brown but not what I needed for my design. I’ll have to be more careful next time. Still, I have no plan yet for the mohair so black and brown are as good as anything else. I had a little left so I made a tiny batch of my favorite – periwinkle. I could be spinning for months and still not get it all made into yarn.

So, after picking apart the wet, colored mohair and leaving it to dry in the barn, I was pleased to see it was only 12:30! Time for the next 50 things. I went home to toss the ball for the dog for a while and then threw together a batch of dough for biscotti. I make this when I have too many over-ripe bananas on the shelf collecting fruit flies. Once this was in the oven, I went to the basement to start threading up the loom. I have found that a marathon session at the loom really hurts my back and knees, so having a timer set upstairs was a way to force me to break it into smaller bits of time.

I am hoping to have woven up about ten dishtowels for the craft sale and maybe even finish the first wool throw that I have designed in my little weaving notebook. The only way I could get all this done is that for one, the mill gave us the week off due to a broken machine, and two, my husband has been a real prince picking up the slack on his own share of fall chores. We booked a dinner party at our house next week and that adds another deadline to get us motivated.

I could use a vacation. Actually we did take a weekend holiday up to Traverse City last week to celebrate our anniversary. It wasn’t as restful as I’d hoped but we did enjoy each other’s company. I never seem to get a lie-around slow week to rest up. I think that it would not suit me as well as it seems it should because I get restless when I am not accomplishing things. Working on stuff also distracts me from worrying about things, so there is that. We all handle things the way that works best for ourselves, don’t we?

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