I just put the geranium that was in our bedroom all winter on the back porch. It’s been flowering for a couple of months and seems as happy outside as it was inside.
Zip like the geranium too. He often sits under it. Makes me wonder if he knows that it brings out his little pink nose.
These birds gave me a hard time. Like I said in the video of my Studio Visit with Jon, they inspired my new quilt when I gave up making them.
I put them aside last week, but this morning I brought them out again. I took most of them apart and started over. Somehow this morning I made them work. It came easy today, I’m not sure why.
With the left over scraps, I made a couple of patchwork work potholders. Then when I got them done, I still had more in me.
I had this small piece of pansy fabric and knew if I didn’t use it this time of year, it would have to wait till next spring. Turned out I had all the fabric pieces I needed to make them right at my finger tips.
I hope to have theses all made into potholders and ready to sell in my Etsy Shop on Friday.
I think I’m getting the poached eggs down. I’ve been making them all week with minor adjustments. Today I cooked them 2 1/2 minutes after slipping the egg into the pot.
When I tried 2 minutes the whites were a bit runny, but 2 1/2 minutes they lose a bit of that creamy lightness.
The best poached eggs I’ve ever had were at the Inn in Vermont that Jon and I go to every year. We might not get there till Christmas, but I’ll have something to compare my eggs to when we do.
Today I had my egg on Semolina fig bread, with goat cheese (from Cindy at Caz Acres Farm) and spinach from the Farmers Market. It was yummy.
The hens laid two more eggs today so tomorrow I’ll try cooking them just over 2 minutes.
The angel sat on the window looking out. Nothing disturbed her since I emptied out the woodshed this winter one log at a time for our wood stoves. And yesterday, when I began stacking the last of the wood that was piled up outside the shed, into the woodshed, the angel was still there. I wouldn’t move her at this point, I can be superstitious and she seems a kind of “good luck charm.”
I stacked two rows of wood so far and have one more to go.
I throw each log from outside the shed onto a pile inside the shed. Then I stack that pile in neat rows. I get a bit obsessive about it. But how could I not. It’s so satisfying to see the wood outside get lower and the stacks of wood inside get higher.
The woodshed is attached to the house and has three doors. One on the south side, where I stack last years wood so I can access it in the fall. One door leads into what is now the laundry room and used to be the summer kitchen (there is still a hole in the chimney for a stove pipe) And there is a big opening on the east side of the shed.
This is where Ed will back up his truck and dump the wood when he delivers it during the summer.
I make the stacks as high as I can reach. I will stand on top of the pile of wood as the stack gets higher so I don’t have to lift each log as high. I learned to do when I watched our Amish neighbors build their barn. They used the posts and beams they had already constructed as ladders to reach the second floor, then the second floor to reach the roof.
My task is a lot simpler, but it’s the same idea.
Each year I try to remember what the dimension of a cord of wood are. And each year I forget. So this year I will write it on the back of the door to the shed. That way I’ll know how much wood we have left from the year before and how much we’ll need to get.
Next week Ed will bring two more cords and after they have a few days to dry in the sun, I’ll begin stacking them inside the shed too.
I thought I’d introduce my new flock for anyone who doesn’t know them. And since it’s recently a new flock after the death of Suzy and Socks, I hope those of you who already know them will enjoy seeing their portraits.
Asher (above) is Issachar’s twin. They are a mix of Como, Blueface Leicester and Romeny. They are six years old.
It’s not always easy to tell Asher and Issachar apart. Issachar has a white flash high up on his nose and his wool is a bit darker. They were both bottle fed so they are very friendly. They are big wethers (castrated male sheep) and are kind. They often break up the head butting that can go on.
I feel like since almost all of my older sheep are gone, that Asher and Issachar have taken over as the leaders of the flock.
Merricat is a Romney and came to the farm in 2020 along with her sister Constance, they are five years old. My former shearer Liz gave me all the sheep I have now except Kim. She has lovely white wool that I have dyed in the past.
But this year I’ll be going to a new mill since The Vermont Fiber Mill closed. The new mill doesn’t dye wool, so I may try dying some myself. Or I’ll just sell it in it’s natural colors.
Constance is also a Romney. I think she would like to be the leader of the flock. She’ll eat from the donkey’s feeder even after they chase her away. She is always butting heads with the other sheep. And when she feels like it, she will put her head down and butt Zip chasing him out of the barnyard. She has even made Fate move from where she is standing. But she never has to butt Fate, she just looks at her.
It’s supposed to be the other way around. The sheep aren’t supposed to move the Border Collie, but Fate has never been a typical Border Collie
Lori is a Romney too. She came to the farm with Merricat and Constance, but grew up with Asher and Issachar on Liz’s farm. When we got her we didn’t know she was pregnant. Since we don’t have a ram on the farm, we had a great surprise that spring when we found a little black lamb in the barnyard.
Robin is Lori’s lamb. Although now he is a 3 year old wether. He is sweet and bit shy. But he will put his face right in mine and when he does I always feel like he is asking a question I don’t know how to answer.
Kim is the only sheep I still have from my original flock. She is a 10 years old Karakul. She is the only animal on the farm that is afraid of Zinnia. It’s because she is easily startled and when Zinnia runs Kim runs which makes Zinnia run even more.
In the next week or two, I will have all the sheep shorn and they will all look a bit different. Maybe I’ll take more portraits of them so you can see what they look like without their wool on.
There is a drawer missing from the old spice rack that Jon gave me years ago. It hangs in my studio, the drawers holding not spices, materials for my art. We got the skeleton cat in New Mexico and the painted rock was a gift from my friend Jackie.
I got some work done on my new quilt today.
I know there will another strip of brown on the bottom, and maybe one on top. Or I might put a thin strip of red, then the brown print.
I have no idea what will happen after that, but then that the fun part…figuring it out.
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