A Homesteading Weekend

Last weekend was great!  My sister and I had fun from beginning to end.  If you didn't catch the last post, we attended the second Mother Earth News Fair at Seven Springs, PA.  Talk about homesteading and sustainable living galore.  They had everything from livestock and cooking, to foraging and hammocks.  Seriously folks, if you can thing of it, there was probably a lecture or workshop on it.  In fact, there was SO much to do and see that it would have taken you a week to see and attend everything (if you had a week).  We had to do a little strategic planning to figure out what we wanted to see and when.  They great thing about going with my sister was that we pretty much were interested in the same things, and outside of maybe two lectures, we took in the same information.

So it was great from the start!  We had booked a 'rustic' cabin at Kooser State Park for the weekend.  I'm glad we made our reservations ahead of time, as I think every single cabin was spoken for.  Let me say, for 'rustic' we sure made out pretty darn well:



Other than the absent bathroom, it had all the amenities you could ever want.  Seriously, I think I could live just fine in one of these if it had a water closet of sorts.  We got all settled in, made some dinner in the wood stove and spent the evening folding and waxing origami stars, pickin' on the strumstick, and chatting up our excitement for the upcoming day.

Waxed Origami Stars

The next morning we arrived at Seven Springs by 8:15am, hoping to get a close parking spot (which we did).  The outdoor grounds were opened by 9am and my sister seemed to make a beeline for the livestock.  I don't think it was intentional; maybe some unseen driving force, or the subliminal whisper of, "over here."  Whatever it was, she made it to the meat rabbits in break neck time, and by 9:15 had bought herself a pair of Silver Fox does and one buck from Mule's Eared Farm.  Well that was fast.  We happened to run into Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm (one of my favorite authors and bloggers) purchasing herself a Silver Fox doe.  She was one of the keynote speakers at the fair that weekend.  We were able to attend two of her seminars on Raising Meat Rabbits (I guess that was fitting, seeings how we just bought three) and Living A Sustainable Life.  Both were great.  She's a great speaker as well.  Before I forget, here's my sister, happily holding one of her new rabbits:

A girl and her rabbit.

Well, that's all i have to tell for tonight as my computer is about out of power!  And I suppose it's past my bed time.  I'll share more hopefully later this week (I've only just touched the tip of the iceberg), as well as my preparations for the Johnny Appleseed Festival coming up in my home town this weekend.

Mother Earth News Fair! This weekend!

We're off to the fair this weekend!  Me and my sister, braving the elements (it's supposed to rain all weekend!), spending our nights in a 'rustic' cabin with no plumbing!  Ah yes my friends, this will be one great adventure.  And I can't wait!  For all of it!  I will get to see some of my favorite authors and hopefully come home just  a little bit smarter as a homesteader.  There's SO many great workshops and seminars going on this weekend that I just don't know how I'm going to choose.  All I can say for sure is that I will be stopping by to hear Jenna Woginrich from Cold Antler Farm and Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms.  Those 2 are a must for me.  So if you live in the greater Pittsburgh area and have nothing better to do this weekend, hop on out to Seven Springs for a little taste of my world.  We'll be there both Saturday and Sunday.  Young or old, there will be something for everyone!

Bramble's Arrival

Baby Bramble, not even 2 hours old.

So she finally arrived; Tuesday of last week.  There has been so much going on that this post has been in the works for over a week now.  A classic alpaca birth, so I'm told.  I'd been waiting for the call that Bracken was going into labor for over a week prior; ready to drop everything when my phone rang.  See, we still board our alpacas on another farm, and that farm is 50 minutes from home and 1:15 from work.  So I was sure that by the time she started showing signs of delivery, she would have already delivered by the time I got there.  It just so happened that I did indeed arrive in time though.  And not a minute too soon.  There were 2 little hooves and a nose just peeking out of the birth canal.  On went the camera and out came a beautiful baby girl!  In less than 3 minutes no less!

We were so thankful to see that healthy baby girl.  She was up and nursing with in an hour and a half.  It's amazing to watch how quickly these events take place.  And as I looked at her standing next to her mamma, I though, "How on earth did she fit in there?"  She's all legs!

Baby Bramble next to mamma Bracken

By the following day, she was galavanting around the pasture with the rest of them.  Rolling in the grass and just enjoying the fine weather.  I can't wait to see how her fiber develops.  She's just the softest little thing.  

Lessons in Dyeing

 So I'm hoping to be a craft vendor at my hometown's Johnny Appleseed Festival in a month.  I'm not sure if that makes me ambitious, entrepreneurial, or just plain delirious.  It will be my first vending event if I can pull it off, but that means that I need to more than double (maybe even triple) my inventory; most of which is already posted on my Etsy site.  So I got to thinking about what I might bring with me:

Baskets

Hand spun and dyed yarn

Hand processed and dyed roving

Decorated origami stars

Knitter's mittens

Hats

Woven scarves

And whatever else I could find ready to go in my craft room.  

I still have not sent in an application and payment.  I have till mid-September to decide, and that's sure going to come up quickly.  I spent the past couple of days trying to work out what needs to be made, prices, tracking down a tent.  There's a lot to think of.  So I started with the fiber!  I pulled out my trusty book on Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece by Gail Callahan and went too it.  I have thirteen colors to work with, although if I mixed them, the possibilities could be endless.  

Not shown - Fire Red

And here was the finished product drying in the bathroom.  It was too humid to dry it outside.

And once it was re-skeined.

Two hanks of Alpaca and one of Babydoll Southdown.  Not bad for a few hours.  Er, a few hours of dyeing that is...I already had the yarn spun up.  Still, I'm pretty happy!  And if you're not familiar with the Sheffield's Johnny Appleseed festival, take a peek HERE!  It really is a neat thing to see.  Makes you want to go out and get your own axe and start a swinging!  And let me tell you, the women are just as tough as the men!  It's quite impressive.

Who knew that alfalfa had such pretty flowers?

In the Silence of the Day

I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder rolling across the hills.  It was a slow drone that seemed to fill the air you breathed.  My husband had just gotten up and was preparing to meet a friend to work on a new butcher block for the kitchen, while me and the dog still laid in bed in that twilight somewhere between sleep and awake.  It was a still morning; still is.  One of the kind that make you feel like if you move too fast, you might accidentally stir something up, and awake the farm in a flurry of commotion.  A morning where you seem to walk gently and purposefully as you do your morning chores.

I checked the weather channel on my iPhone before I got out of bed to see what kind of weather I could be expecting (we still appreciate some of this fancy technology here on the farm) and was excited to see that we had a severe thunderstorm warning listed.  I love thunderstorms!  But when I turned to look at the map, I found that it looked like nothing more than a tiny red, orange, and green burp in the sky.  Oh well.  Another day perhaps.  I got up anyway.  Might as well at least enjoy the morning chores as the burp passed.

An hour later and that thunder can still be heard passing over hills and through fields, but the sun has broken through the clouds now and chickens are fancying their nest boxes and fussing when one of their fellow hens seems to be taking too long.  I appreciate these exaggerated mornings.  They give us time to reflect.  The storms long gone now, and though the Weather Channel says there's a 40% chance of rain all day, the movement of the radar seems to indicate otherwise.  Then again, I'm no meteorologist.  So we'll just have to wait and see.

All In A Day

ella's first art batt!

Yesterday was quite the busy one.  I was blessed with the company of my sister and two nieces for the whole day.  The older of the two was working on a wrapped clothesline basket to enter into their county fair later this month, and wanted to use my sewing machine to complete it.  She worked hard all day and turned out a beautiful project.  I'm hoping to see a ribbon on it come judging time.

Sewing baskets wasn't the only tasks performed and completed.  My younger niece (and sister) carded, spun, and plied a wonderful art yarn.  We also made two new hoops for my nieces, which were used on and off all day, and made origami omega stars.  It was quite the busy and productive day!

Come evening, I had them happily on their way back north and my husband and I headed up to the Farm Show.  Let me tell you, farm shows have a whole new meaning once you enter into the world of farming yourself.  Even if your farm just  consists of chickens, angora rabbits, and alpacas.  The first place we always head for is the Poultry tent, perusing through the menagerie of different breeds and admiring their plumage, color, and size.  Also of interest were of course the sheep barns and the rabbit tent.  Meat rabbits are seriously on our list, and visiting the rabbit tent allowed us to get a good idea of the breeds out there raised for that purpose.

By the end of the evening I was exhausted and ready to go home, put my feet up, and work on some knitting before heading to bed.  It was a good exhaustion though.  I love that sense of accomplishment and the sleep that comes after a good day's work.