Josephine Goes to Pleasant Springs Farm

Josephine moved to my friend Peg's farm last week. Peg has two older skittish ewes and wanted a friendly sheep to follow her around. They both look pretty happy, don't they? I hated to see Josey go, but my fields are so bare and I know Josey will have a good home. We set Josephine up in her new digs in the barn then Peg and I went to look at her beautiful gardens down the hill. After a few minutes I thought that Josephine's bleeting was a bit too close and I looked up and there she was, out of the barn, running full throttle towards me. I picked her up and we put her in the field with the big girls.


She went from a happy face to a sad face. Those girls were mean! They didn't like any young whipper snapper invading their field and chased her, butted her and made her feel pretty darn miserable. Josey finally found a way out of that hell field (after I had left) and Peg sent me this e-mail later on: "I finally caught her yesterday afternoon and locked her up in the barn. I force fed a bottle warm milk and took her on Pam's leash to the green green grass behind the house. She was like B'rer Rabbit, "Oh PLEASE don't throw me in the briar patch." I plan to keep it up for a week in hopes that she will be my friend and NOT run away. Tough love." And on day two: "Josephine has quieted down already. I took her out on the leash and she is learning to follow me. She drinks from the bottle and sits on my lap quietly. Maybe she will be my friend."


This is the sheep's secondary 'house'. Peg built it herself.


And this is the chicken coop that Peg built. She had a few chickens but the fox got all but the rooster cuz he's too ornery.


This is ornery Poppycock, who can outsmart a fox. They did pull out all his tail feathers awhile back though. That's a bit too close for comfort!



This will be Josephine's new field when the grass turns green.


Peg has rehabbed this very old (1760) log cabin into Pleasant Springs Farm B&B. She was featured on Home & Garden TV years ago. The cabin was totally covered in vines and briars and really falley downey. She did a lot of the work herself, hiring a local carpenter for the really heavy stuff (like jacking up the cabin and laying a new foundation). Peg and Dave, the carpenter, had it out once though when she wanted to use pig hair for the chinking like in the old days. She had gotten the pig (dead), scraped the hair off it and wanted to mix it with clay. Dave would have nothing to do with it and they had a spat. Dave won and there is no pig hair in the chinking. But Peg does some old fashioned type crafts. She hand spins wool from her sheep, dyes it and stocks the shelves with her lanolin rich yarn. She also makes soap, grows a myriad of flowers for scent, color and eating, and builds most anything she has a fancy for. She is my idol and she's taught me everything about sheep, yarn, dying, spinning and knitting. She's also an author, with two new books coming out in May. One is about women wearing two hats during WWI, working the fields, raising children and doing whatever it took to keep the family going as the men were away at war. The other is an historical book about a local city, Germantown.
So, Josephine seems to have settled in and Peg is happy to have a lamb following her around.

March Calmness

Spring is my favorite time of year. Most people around here like autumn the best but spring brings new life and warmer weather and more time outdoors. It does mean more outdoor work too but I see that as rewarding and (fun)! Toiling in the garden, spreading mulch, fixing fencing, new outdoor projects, all good stuff. Folks complain about mowing the lawn but that's my down time. I'm sitting down looking at the views as I go round and round the yard and I find it relaxing.


But I'm REALLY relaxed sitting in 104 degree water. This is what I see while reclining in our hot tub. We've had the spa for 7 years now and I'm in it at least twice a day. It's wonderful for these old bones, especially after mountain biking or working in the garden.
The maple buds are bursting forth and the sky is cerulean blue and the birds are all a-twitter. The birds don't know I'm here (either that or they see me as no threat) and I love watching them flutter from branches to the birdseed I cleverly put 5 feet from the hot tub. Recently I've had a large woodpecker stop by, shooing away all the smaller birds to get to the feed. Two mourning doves (they're always in pairs, I call them love doves) come around all the time and I enjoy their interactions with each other.


But all is not quiet and peaceful and chirpy when Big Galumpus shows up. Casey and Tasman love to visit when I'm taking a soak, coming to say hi and hoping for a pet.





They visit for a bit, then start wrestling on the deck and have to be shooed away so I can relax.

Get Your Easter On

Some folks dye Easter eggs, but at Dancing Leaf Farm we color our sheep. That's Picadilly in the blue, Josephine in yellow and taking backstage is Leopold wearing pink. They're checking out the spring colorway, 'Spring Has Sprung.'


Since spring keeps popping up for a day or two (then retreats to let winter give us another blast of frigid weather) I've wanted to dye some happy spring colors.


Plenty of roving to sit and spin some Easter egg colors. I've been spinning more lately, setting my spinning wheel up in the sunroom where I'm surrounded by 3 walls of windows offfering pretty field views.


A mess of color.


Here's the sheep growing the wool. I got them a new hay feeder that they love. Kip of Kiparoo Farm made it and it really saves the hay from being wasted. At $7 to $11 a bale, one can't afford to waste any. When the feeder was delivered they were curious and all came over to see what it was. Maybe it was a rubber-againster, or a play gym for the lambs to jump in and out of. But when I put the hay in, they finally got it and surrounded it and were very content munching away.


Sparkleberry turns to me and tells me "Thanks so much!" I tell her not to talk with her mouth full.


While I was taking pics of the new feeder, Bodacious, the single lamb from Dewberry, was totally intrigued with my bright orange crocs and wouldn't leave my feet alone.


I gave Josephine a kiss on her cute face. I do this a lot. One day awhile back I was visiting my friend who lived next door to a herd of goats belonging to her neighbor. One very friendly goat always came over to the fence to say hi and I walked over and gave her a big kiss on her white face. I always have bright pink lipstick on so I left a perfect lip smacker. I wonder what the farmer thought when he fed the goats that night.






I'm going to start taking photos of M&M Bakery in Cumberland. They always have a kitchy window display honoring the seasons or a holiday.


So enjoy your Easter sweets and have a great day and let's hope that spring comes to stay.

3 Days of Fabulous Felting

For 3 days last week 10 of us felters got together at Sharon's fantastic studio in Potomac to learn new ways to felt. We hired Lisa Klakulak from Ashville to teach us her mad felting skills. She's a very accomplished artist in the medium of felt and is a great teacher. We learned to manipulate the wet fiber like clay with absolutely amazing results. Above are most of us with our finished projects. We learned to make a vessel from a ball form and making a 3-D object from a 2-D form, which turned out to be our bag.
We worked from 10-12, broke for lunch for an hour, and continued for 4 more hours in the afternoon. The meals were all planned out ahead of time, with all of us taking turns at the lunches and everyone contributing to a superb Friday night meal, including lots of wine. The food was all vegetarian and we all made delicious dishes. There was way too much food, even though I did my best to make a huge dent.
I knew a couple of these women before I started with this group, but these few days were a true bonding experience. I even got invited by Christine (she's Scottish) to join her at her sister's croft in Dundee, Scotland next spring to help with lambing out 600 ewes.


In Sharon's studio, taking a laugh time out. Sharon has an incredible studio. Being a clothes designer, her space is filled with color, awesome print fabric, runway samples, and every conceivable sewing machine, felting machine and gadget to create her fantastic designs. She is so generous with sharing her studio too. She set up 5 tables for us, put plastic down on the floor and even hired an electrician to install 3 new lights so we could see better. Thanks Sharon!


Some of the supplies needed for felting.


And some of the fiber (roving from sheep's wool) we used.


Lisa showing us how to barely 'tickle' the fiber until it forms a skin. Then we can really start rockin and rollin, turning the fiber into something substantial.


Cutting a slit into the bag exposing the inside where there is a 'resist,' which is a piece of canvas so the two sides do not felt together.


Lisa explaining how to make a gusset in the bag.


This is my flat piece of wet felt that turned into........


this little bag. I still have to embellish it with some beads and a button. It still amazes me that
I can use the wool from my sheep and make something that I can wear or carry around. Thanks Sparkleberry!


Three of the finished bags, well not totally finished but at least the shape they'll be. All of us are extreme embellishers so it'll be interesting to see how they all turn out.





Lisa laying out the fibers in very thin layers. It's hard to get it this thin. She makes many, many layers of very thin layers because they stick together better that way and felt down tighter.


We covered a ball in layers of the wool roving then rolled on another layer.


and it looked like a big old hairy ball with a bald spot....on a cup.


We then used pantyhose (a much better use for them that what they are intended) to wrap the ball so the fiber wouldn't shift. Jeanne was so focused. I think she's done this before.


Tucking it in



Some us needed two people to conquer the wrap.


Then the fiber wrapped ball with the pantyhose tightly encasing it is placed in a bowl of hot soapy water and rubbed gently at first, then harder, and finally handled roughly. All this agitation makes the fibers stick together to form something resembling fabric. It's actually very strong and durable when dry.


This is my fuzzy ball of fluff. . . . .


. . . . that turned magically into this! Ta da!


Everyone's vessels turned out so different from the others.



















We'll take what we learned to another level. The possibilities are endless.

Peachtree Road

We live one road over from Peachtree Road. It's named that for the very simple reason that it has at least three large peach tree farms off it. Hundreds of peach trees lined up over the hills and valleys. I love the look of the peach fields in all the seasons. In the winters the gnarled trunks and branches are exposed and the trees show their age.




Soon the blossoms will burst forth and there will be a pink mass of flowers hovering over the lime green of the fresh grass underneath. Come on spring!

How Sappy

Last week Bev, Ann and I traveled up to Marie's again to work in the sap house/sugar shack. We weren't sure if the weather would co-operate as the days have to be above 40 and the nights below freezing but not too cold. It rained about 2" the day we drove up there, hard to drive in but great for sap running.


Our only full day there was pretty nice, not sunny, but thankfully not pouring down rain because I REALLY wanted to tap some trees. But first, coffee and a lazy morning. I love the view from Marie's dining room/kitchen. The first building is the 'donkey barn' where the donkeys live and the further house belongs to the Curtis family that run the maple operation.


Walking over to the sap house, we saw smoke and steam coming from the stacks, a sure sign that they were boiling sap.


There are two evaporators in the sap house, boiling the water out, leaving maple syrup.




Fuzzy pic of the grand daddy of this operation, Ralph Curtis, a kind, gentle man.


This is Bill loading logs into the burner. This operation is one of the last that use wood to boil the sap instead of propane or oil. I was amazed at how much wood they used during the day and when the sap really starts coming, the two burners will go 24 hours a day. The logs were about 4' long and nearly 12" around. A new log was put on every 5-7 minutes. That's FAST burning! It was really toasty warm in there. Bill has worked here for over 30 years. As a child he would get off the bus and look to see if Ralph had tied a red bandana on the mailbox. If so, he knew it was sap time and he'd rush to the sap house to get to work.


Ann, Kate (a 17-year old from Philly who is working here for a month) and I washed out these 50 gallon drums that were purchased from a candy factory. They had been filled with chocolate and we had to wash out the remaining chocolate. Yum!


Barrels, clean. Check


These are the lines that go from tree to tree and eventually down to a barrel in the sap house.


We used this stone wall to reach up high on the trees to put in the line.


The tubes were all set for us to just drill and put in the line. Some trees got 2 or 3 lines.


The drill had a tape on the bit so the bit wouldn't go in too far, about 2". As soon as the hole was drilled, the sap started running, a clear, shiny liquid.




Back in the sap house, I got this great shot of Ralph with his dog, Molly. The evaporator has to be watched closely as the temperature has stay high enough to keep the sap boiling.


The top has four compartments that the sap moves from one to the other.


Sap boiling


When the thermometer reads 'syrup' and the syrup forms a 'sheet' while being poured from the pan, it's time to turn on the faucet that will drain the liquid through a filter into these old milk jugs.





Kristen took some of the syrup and put it in her grader to judge if it is grade Grading standards are the same for most of the United States. Maple syrup is divided into two major grades, Grade A and Grade B. Grade A is further broken down into three subgrades: Grade A Light Amber (sometimes known as "Fancy"), Grade A Medium Amber, and Grade A Dark Amber. This first batch is Grade A light amber, the best and we each bought a gallon of it. I think it's $50 a gallon this year.


Kristen (in the middle) instructing us novices in the finer points of grading maple syrup.


The water that's boiled off has to go somewhere, so it drains out into these buckets, then spills over the a drain below the floor and eventually ends up outside.



And what better way to use maple syrup (except of waffles or pancakes) than to make maple sugar candy. Kristen is filling the maple leaf molds with the boiled down syrup. It only took about 1/2 to cool enough to eat. Yum!






We then packaged them up so they'd be ready for the Poconos tourists this summer.


Kristen's passive and active solar house where we made the candy.


And now for a look at some of the animals at the Curtis' Maple Syrup Farm and Marie's Funny Farm.


The cows lined up for lunch.


I kept trying to get a pic of the cute calf in the pen but it was so curious this is usually how they turned out. That's her nose.


Finally I got one when I left and snuck back in. She did catch me with her sideways glance tho.



This is the front of the peacock house at the Funny Farm.











This is Woody Guard Duck who thinks he's the boss of the farm.


and the turkeys showing off for me. We always hate to leave Marie's, but we'll be back this summer for more farm frivolity.

Cute and Ugly

Cute: Ozzie LOVES my yarn. I put the yarn for my orders on the table in my office. Sometimes Ozzie pushes the skeins to the floor and just cuddles up. He really thinks it's his yarn.


It looks as though he's protecting the yarn, but he's just yawning. growwwwwwwwwl


and Ugly: This is my third stove that I've killed. I've dyed over 500 pounds of yarn on this stove and over the last couple months I lost one burner, then two, then three, then I called it capoot. We wrestled it out of the basement and took it to the 'beauty spot', which is what our local dump is called. I treat the dump as a trade-in place; I take something to leave at the dump and I find something 'wonderful' to bring home.


Yucky and gross.


The sides were so colorful though. Good bye stove. Sorry landfill.

Mosaic Madness Day

For Christmas last year I gave my girlfriends an invitation to a day of making a mosaic piece, with a break for lunch. (yikes I had to cook!) Everyone brought a base, like a table top, a tray, a mirror. Some brought shards of glass collected from the beach, a 'dump' in Scotland or 'oops I broke this plate' pottery. We did have to hammer away on some pieces, which was way fun.


The table was laid out with supplies.


Tina brought a tray to do and some beautiful Willow ware that she accidentally broke. This is pre-grout.


When I visited Ann in California a couple years ago, she took me to a fantastic beach called Glass Beach. Until the 1970's it was a garbage dump, right on the beach. Not so eco-friendly. In those years, the sea has taken the glass and tumbled it to a smooth, frosted finish. The garbage was also tumbled to smoothness. Above is some of the weird stuff I collected and paid to have sent home. There's a heel of a shoe, lots of rusty bits, a mangled holey whatzit, a blobby thing wrapped in wire and objects of mystery. Most folks would think "What the hell?!" but I like things like this.


Marsha covered a rectangular tile with a pattern she found in a weaving book entitled, Tracks, Paws and Claws or something like that. Whatever, it's cool. The shells are the cat's tracks.


If you squint your eyes you can see the words better. It's my directional sign to the studio.
I didn't get a photo of Bev's so will have to update when I get one.