Friday, July 16, 2010

home sweet home

Hello! I've sort disappeared from the face of the internet for a few months there - did you miss me?

There have been some big changes going on in the little world of folktale, mainly: we bought a house!





A house...and 4.5 acres!



And the past few months have been a blur of moving and adjusting. We bought this house from the Thornes, who are amazing. We didn't know this when we first found the house, but they're involved with the maryland sheep and wool fest and have a booth there selling wool, yarn, and seedlings (I'm pretty sure we even bought stuff from them in the past).

I love this house. It was built around 1950, and it reminds me of my grandparents house a bit (which was probably built around the same time). I'll have more pictures of the inside (including my small craft/fiber room) when it's a little more organized and set up, but here's part of the kitchen:



I have a small veggie patch going in the garden, but about 99% of the garden is giant weeds and wheat right now. The garden is huge. Huge!! Since we don't have a tractor, my plan is to build a ton of raised beds and then have some fruit trees and berries and herbs in the back. I'm really excited to be able to grow things, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with sustainable organic gardening. I did a bit of companion planting with my vegetables - carrots and calendula in with the tomatoes, and a "three sisters" patch with corn, squash, and beans planted together.

We also have chickens! They're pretty spoiled. I still can't get over their funny little dinosaur noises and their silly chicken mannerisms - they manage to make me giggle almost every time I see them.



And the best part: I'm going to have a small fiber flock. My first pygora goats will be arriving this fall, and we'll have a few miniature milk goats as soon as we finish fixing up the barn. I haven't decided whether or not I want to get sheep - I'm going to think it over and decide next spring after we've been living with the goats for a while.

I'm about ready to re-open my etsy shop. I finally made it through nearly all of my custom orders, and I have a nice little stash of handspun yarn stockpiled for the shop. I'm hoping to update sometime in the next few days - I spent this morning taking pictures of yarn on my window seat.



I kind of forgot about this until recently, but when I was about 12-14 years old I went on a field trip with my school to a place where you take a series of tests and then they give you an extensive list of ideal careers for you. My top careers all turned out to be things like "llama farmer", and the 12-year-old me found this hilarious. But man, those must be some crazy accurate tests, right? And I guess it's good to know that I'm suited to raising fiber animals ahead of time, haha.

7 comments:

April said...

Congratulations on the house! Good luck and have fun with all of your plans.

The Goatherd said...

Yay Abbie!!
So glad to see pictures of your place.
Lisa

Anonymous said...

Well, you'll need a llama to guard your fiber flock! :)

Congratulations on the house...it looks amazing!

Goats are one of the most ridiculously satisfying creatures to have around...we miss ours so much! I don't know about pygoras, but we had sonnen (milking goats) and they were all kinds of awesome...just funny and friendly and great companions. We had to sell them when we moved across country...didn't want to put them through the trauma of all that. Hopefully, we'll have goats in our life again soon. Have fun!

Lolly said...

Big congratulations!! it's an adorable place and looks so nice. The 4.5 acres sounds like a lot of fun! Excited for you!

Maggie said...

That is so exciting! Very cute house. I've always wanted goats, even before I was into fibre. You know, to eat the lawn. :)

I love how this correlates with your Llama Farmer results.

Erin said...

What an adventure!! I'm so excited for you!

Laughingrat said...

Super cute! It looks like the perfect little house, and the land is great.