Farming in the shade

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. --Matthew 5:3 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. --Matthew 5:4 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. --Matthew 5:5

Congratulations to Janette who is the fortunate winner of the $15 gift certificate to the Shady Side Farm etsy store ! Thanks to all of you who participated in my first bloggy giveaway! Fun, fun!

If you're interested in the $15 bloggy giveaway that ends Friday, click here. I was walking around the farm Sunday with a friend. As we walked, I pointed out the tree line to the west of the sheep barn. It includes highbush cranberries, button bushes and assorted spruce trees. Nice cover for wildlife, including the robin which had built her nest in one of the trees. She flew off and we were able to see one perfect, lovely egg. We talked about how our farm straddles two watersheds. Half the farm drains into a watershed to the south, the other half drains to the north. While we believe it's important for everyone to be good land stewards, we realize that we need to be especially careful. I showed her how we've planted filter strips (they look like grass pathways) along the ditches on our property. She asked why, and I told her the grass catches any runoff--fertilizer runoff, pesticide runoff and soil runoff. Keeps the waterways clean. Then I laughed and said since we are tran...

**This bloggy giveaway is now closed** Thanks to all who participated and gave such great comments. Janette is the winner of the $15 gift certificate to our etsy store . I'm participating in the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival . Click the link to go to the carnival where you can enter to win literally hundreds of things. The good news is that even if you have no time to play on the computer trying to win hundreds of things, you can still enter to win one thing right here. This week, I will be giving away a $15 gift certificate to be used toward the purchase of an item in my etsy shop . This contest is open to residents of the United States or Canada only. The winner will receive free shipping on whatever item they choose. Items in my etsy shop include handwoven rugs, wool yarns and roving from our farm, and the ever-popular cotton dishcloth! To be entered in this wonderful drawing, you must go to the etsy shop and look around a bit. Then come back here and type a comment that ...

Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. --Psalm 100:3

One morning this week The Farmer went out as usual to check for new babies. Sometimes he finds several babies and several moms and has to sort out who belongs to whom, as they are all in one big pen. The moms know their babies by smell, and it's very easy to tell by holding a lamb close to the ewe's nose whether it's hers. In fact, we lead the moms out of the large pen and into their individual hotel rooms (a.k.a. bonding "jugs") by backing slowly out of the large pen while holding their lambs. This particular morning he was a bit surprised to find that an unusal alliance had been formed. This is a Suffolk ewe with a Polypay lamb. There is NO way that this baby belongs with this mama. But here he is, nursing away. There is NO way that this ewe would allow him to nurse unless she thought he was hers. We suspect that a fruitful Polypay mom had a set of twins or triplets, and while she was busy birthing someone else, this baby was adopted by this ewe, who was herself...

"Deep End of the Loom" asked for a close-up of the sock knitting machine a while back. Here's a look inside, as The Farmer finishes the shaft of the sock and is working on the heel. The bottom of the photo is the heel; you can see the red marks if you look closely. He starts the heel by knitting back and forth between the red marks at the side. He decreases with each row until he is only knitting between the red marks near the bottom. Then he begins increasing each row until he reaches the red marks on the side. When the heel is done, he cranks around and around (using all the needles) to make the foot of the sock. Lastly, the toe is made very much like the heel, only a little bigger. He sews the toe shut by hand once the sock is off the machine. More photos and attempts at explanation here.

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. --Song of Songs 2:11-12

This is our son's rejected triplet . After bottle feeding him for several days, we found a new home for him. Cindy is a foster mom who sees benefits from having animals around for her kids to enjoy. The lamb was becoming very friendly, as bottle lambs do. He'd follow our son around everywhere, if allowed. Remember "Mary had a little lamb?" Well, Mary's little lamb was probably bottle-fed... Son had mixed feelings about selling the lamb. He was so cute! But lots of work... (especially since blog reader Pam suggested that he do the 2:00 a.m. feeding!). And the money sounded good. But he was so cute! Such is the life of a farm kid. You learn to appreciate the good times and accept the less-than-good times.

Okay, so it's only the blog of Schooling at Home Etsians (SHE), a group of etsy sellers who also home educate their children. But still! Quite a thrill to see our wool products and rugs on the web somewhere else. If you have a chance, go take a look at the SHEteam blog. Make sure to click on some of the links on the sidebar and visit the various etsy shops of the team members. Items range from handmade aprons to island dance costumes to cool vintage feed sack bags to unique jewelry to cute baby/children items and more, all made with love by homeschooling moms.

Have you ever started a project and realized that you really had no idea what you were in for? Welcome to our weekend. Our $8 do-it-yourself oak wood flooring (removed from a lakeside cottage destined for demolition) was finally in need of refinishing. We'd gotten a quote from a pro last year, and it was a bit pricey. So we talked about doing it ourselves. The Farmer was a finish carpenter in his former life, and is not afraid of hard work. He likes power tools. (Me? Not so much.) This weekend we decided to go for it. How hard can it be? You rent a sander. You get your shop vac handy. You sand everything down, vacuum up the dust and refinish. Right? Not hard. The trouble comes when you realize that the hardware stores have taken all the danger (a.k.a. effectiveness) out of the sanders that they rent out to people. We sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded (getting the picture here?). We sanded until our arms ached. Well, at least my arms ached. Then we figured out that it was easi...

Everyone's talking about it--the check from the government that will solve all our problems. Our dentist called it "The Promise," but he said it with a smirk on his face. Apparently dentists can see holes in logic as well as the rest of us. Except for governmental officials, of course. Where's this money coming from? Are we just printing more? When the dentist and I discussed "The Promise," I commented that I should probably use the money to buy braces for my kids. They (and any future grandkids) are going to be paying the price for this silly idea for years to come--they might as well get the benefit. Since it's a done deal, and no amount of my whining will change the minds of the powers-that-be, may I make two suggestions? If you have debt, pay it down. I know it will not stimulate the economy in the way that the government had hoped. But a stimulated economy built with debt is still a house of cards. If you don't have debt, good for you! Go ahead...

Our 17 year old daughter likes to play with beads. Today she made a lovely bracelet, and listed it in her etsy store . She made a pink one just like it, but since she's fond of pink (actually fond is too tame a word--obsessed might be closer to the truth), she decided to keep it for herself. She's learning a lot of new skills: photography, descriptions, pricing, and shipping, just to name a few. If you click on the photo of the bracelet, you will be taken to her store. Look around, and tell me what you think.

Two of the three birthday triplets are doing well. Their mama is a bit standoffish, but has accepted those two well enough. The littlest triplet, however, is a different story. He has been rejected by his mama. We tried and tried to get him over the hump. We'd lock the mama's head in the headgate of the pen to hold her still. He would drink and drink and drink. He wasn't getting it any other time. We'd let her loose when he was finished, and she would ram him into the wall. She was either ramming or ignoring, and it was very obvious it wasn't working. So, he has become a motherless bottle baby. For the first couple of weeks, these lambs need to eat several times a day. And night. So The Farmer is setting the alarm for 2:00 a.m. and heading out into the cold. I told him that I did my time taking care of babies when our children were little. Because of the form of feeding we chose, he wasn't much help for those middle of the night feedings. So he gets the joy of s...