folktale

In early december, my dog* suddenly and unexpected got really very sick. Sick to the point that I thought I might lose her. Long story short: she ended up having to be hospitalized for nearly a week, no one ever figured out what originally caused her to get sick, she got pneumonia on top of whatever it was she had first, and I'm now paying off huge vet bills. She's fine now, as far as I can tell, but since what she had seemed to be at least partly gastronomic in nature, I'm being super extra careful about what she eats.



The vets bills mean that I have to find a way to make more money this year, but I'm trying to see that as a good thing. I have tons of ideas for ways to expand my fiber business and for actually making some money from farming, so hopefully this is just the kick in the pants I need to make things happen this year!



I've been dutifully updating my etsy shop about every two weeks on the dot since December. I plan on continuing to update as often as possible, at least until craft show season starts. If you're dreaming of a particular patchwork colorway and haven't been able to grab it, let me know and I'll reserve it for you the next time I spin it. There have been new colorways & rare breed farm wools in the past few updates. I'm mostly putting up patchwork yarns, but there are more novelty yarns & striping yarns to come. And I'm busy sourcing millspun yarns made from small farm wool (and considering having a mill custom spin yarn for me) so that I can add hand-dyed breed-specific farm wool yarns to my lineup. I'd like to mix some sewing and felting in with my spinning and dyeing too, but I'm still working on dreaming up prototypes.



I've also decided that I need to eat more eggs. My chickens started laying last fall (brown, white, and green eggs) and haven't stopped, and since I don't spend a lot of time cooking for myself I've just been eating plain fried eggs. But that gets old real fast! The first new thing I learned to make with eggs is custard.



I used eggs from my chickens, milk from my goats, and whole vanilla beans. First I made baked custard (amazing), and then frozen custard (super amazing). But that was months ago, and I forgot about how fun it was to discover new egg recipes until today.



I made shirred eggs, which I had never heard of before, thanks to this blog post from Juniper Moon Farm, where they seem to be having the same sort of egg 'problem' (not that all the free-range organic eggs you can eat can really be called a problem). Shirred eggs are eggs baked with tons of grated hard cheese (I used parmesan) and cream. The JMF recipe calls for infused olive oils, but I just put red chili pepper flakes right in the eggs and it was plenty flavorful. Creamy eggy cheesy goodness! This has reminded me that finding new ways to use eggs is always a good thing, and I want to try and find a new egg recipe at least once a month. Please drop me a note if you know of a good one!

*I adopted a 9yr old welsh corgi last january. She's my first dog and she's awesome.