Farm Update: Babies galore!

A few weeks back, we had four baby goats and 50+ day old chicks arrive, all on the same day. I thought it was probably about time to at least introduce the goats! We named them all after Harry Potter characters this year, since I just finished listening to all 7 audiobooks. I grew up reading the books, but this was my first time listening to the (british version) audiobooks, and my first time reading all 7 in a row. First up is Nymphadora, or Nymphie for short, whom you have already met and who is now a big girl at 6 weeks old.



Cameo and Tarot both had a set of boy/girl twins.



Cassiopeia and Orion are names from the Black family tree, and I picked them because they are also constellations and both babies have black moonspots.

I have been spending lots of quality time with the babies, especially Nymphie, who is my darling.








Actually, it's really hard for me to take pictures of the goats right now, because my lap is usually full. 90% of my pictures look like this:



(that's Nymphie, chewing on my scarf, which she is obsessed with - she has a terrible habit of either popping up into photos she was not meant to be in or knocking my camera hand just as I take a picture)

Orion and his little sister are so sweet. They're super friendly, just like their mom, and they will both happily fall asleep in my arms.



Draco and Luna on the other hand, are both a bit unique - like THEIR mom. They're friendly too, but much more independent. Luna is a perfect copy of her mother, she's similar both in looks and personality. I still call her Mini Tarot sometimes.



Draco seems to think that Cameo is just as much his mom as Tarot, he is constantly following her around and trying to nurse from her. He is huge, by far the biggest baby.



The chicks are also doing well. I picked out a mix of 13 different heritage breeds for our laying flock, so we have a wide variety. We will have multi-colored eggs too, green/blue, brown, and white. This is an old photo from their first week, they have now grown feathers, tripled in size, and look and act like mini chickens.



I will get better pictures of them once they are moved outside. They're in our basement right now to keep them warm, but I'm building a chicken tractor so they can forage around the pastures and garden during the spring & summer.

The kids are still nursing right now so I'm only milking once a day.



But when they are weaned in about a month, I'll be milking twice a day. I am enjoying milking, it's very meditative for me, like spinning. A nice quiet moment to start the day. Although I am a novice milker, so it takes me about an hour to milk three goats and do a few other chores. The milk is amazing, so lovely and rich and sweet. I don't really drink milk except for a dash in my morning tea, so I'm learning to make cheese. And also yogurt, kefir, ice cream, sour cream, and buttermilk. I'm dreaming of wheels of cheese aging in the basement, hopefully I will learn quickly and not make too many mistakes!

On the fiber front, I was a vendor at the Homespun Yarn Party this past sunday. It was super fun as usual, and I have some yarn left over so there will be a shop update soon! I have lots of fiber dyed for patchwork yarns, so expect to see a bunch of those popping up soon. I also have a few pygora goats that are about ready to be sheared.



Stardust, the matriarch/queen of our herd, is starting to shed. She's going to be really happy to get all that fluff off and enjoy the warm spring air!

Well, hello!

We weren't expecting any baby goats to be born for at least another few weeks to a month, and I had just checked out the pregnant girls while clipping hooves and decided that none of them looked ready to go yet, so I was very surprised to walk out to the barn on friday to find this:



I hadn't built the kidding stalls yet (I was planning on building them this week), but the other goats were all giving Cowalick her space and she was by herself in a corner, calmly cleaning off her kids. She had a boy and a girl, but the boy didn't make it. I'm glad that I happened to go to the barn a bit earlier than usual, because it's entirely possible that if I had gone an hour later I would have found him dead and always wondered if I could have saved him had I found him earlier. We took him to the vet, and sadly they said there was nothing they could do. Luckily my friend Josie and her aunt were visiting that day, otherwise I can't imagine how panicked and scared I would have felt, but I'm very good at being calm under stress when there are other people around. What a day for them to pick to visit the goats!







I threw together a quick little stall for mom and baby to hang out in until I get the official stalls built. After suddenly losing one baby, I was very worried about this little girl and drove Cowalick crazy because I checked on them every hour or two all night long the first night. I don't have any real reason to worry, and this little doeling looked much better than her brother from the start and is giving every indication of being a perfectly healthy baby goat, but so many things can go wrong with babies and she's my first! She seemed warm enough friday night, but I wanted to make sure, so I knit a tiny little wool sweater for her:



She is so magical and perfect and sweet!



Here's a little video of her trying to figure out what her mom is eating:

Happy Holidays!

From me and the reindeer goats.

Bonus outtake:



I hope everyone is having a warm and cozy winter! If you want more goat pictures, check out my flickr stream or this blog post by my friend Josie about my first time shearing my pygora goats.

Rain, rain, go away

It is so very rainy here! All day it's been dark and dreary, and every so often the wind picks up and I can hear walnuts thunking onto the roof. It's actually pretty good spinning weather, but I'm crossing my fingers that my last few yarns dry in time for Crafty Bastards this saturday, and that the sun comes out for the craft show.



Here's a small preview of the many yarns that I'll have for sale at Crafty Bastards - the pictures are extra moody and dark thanks to the clouds:



Corespun yarn with lots of multicolored puffs



Cherry Blossom yarn, spun from naturally colored local farm fibers with a bit of hemp and hand-felted, hand-dyed, and hand-embroidered cherry blossoms



Mushroom Collector, with tiny felt mushrooms spun in



Handspun and hand-dyed recycled bamboo rayon



Leafy yarns! I have a lighter version and a darker version, four skeins of each

Now it's time for labeling and the final inventory. I know for sure that I surpassed my minimum goal for this show, and also broke my record for most yarns spun for a show. I have so much yarn right now. About three times the amount of yarn I brought to my first Crafty Bastards! Every year I manage to spin more and more.



Besides yarn, I will also have: felty baubles, 2 pairs of handspun + handknit fingerless mitts, sheepy sachets (filled with organic herbs), batts, and a few other fibers (hand dyed local wool locks & rainbow hemp).

Crafty Bastards is this saturday, October 2nd, 10am-5pm at the Marie Reed Learning Center at 18th & Wyoming in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington DC. The map of the fair is here - come look for me in booth #95!

Getting ready for Crafty Bastards

It's that time of year again! Crafty Bastards is coming up fast, and I've spent the past month getting ready. Strangely enough, the usual craft show panic hasn't hit me yet. I'm feeling pretty serene. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm fairly certain that I'm going to break my record for most yarns spun for a craft show (or ever all at once) sometime in the next few days.



I also recently finished spinning the largest single skein of yarn I've ever spun. 9+ ounces! The hardest part was fitting this thing on my bulky flyer, I ended up having to stop because I had it packed on so tight that the back of the flyer popped off and refused to go back on.



I've secretly been referring to it as 'the beast' in my head. Although probably I won't actually name it that. Probably I'll come up with something nicer sounding.



Here it is next to a normal sized skein of my patchwork yarn (heavy worsted to bulky weight) for scale.



I was planning on spinning another huge skein or two in different colors, but I haven't quite recovered yet from the first one. We'll see!



P.S. This year at CB, when people ask if I raise any fiber animals, I will be able to answer: "Yes!"



But please don't ask unless you really don't mind hearing all about how awesome my goats are.

Goats!

I have a few different things that I've been meaning to post about, but the only thing I can think about right now is: goats! Our three milk goat ladies arrived here this past sunday, and this week has been full of as many visits to the barn as we can fit in. We even contemplated sleeping in the barn (we're still thinking about it!). They're all registered purebred nigerian dwarf goats with fancy papers. Oh, and they're all under knee high - I think the average height at the withers for a nigerian dwarf goat is about 20". Get a ruler. It's little.



Let me introduce them:



This is Cameo. She's the daintiest of our goats and looks a lot like a fawn with her coloring and body structure - but she's also the most fearless and aggressive! She's our current herd queen.



This is Tarot. She's a big scaredy-cat but is coming around quickly. Tarot and Cameo are about the same age and I have a feeling they grew up together, because they stick together a lot.



And this is the lovely miss Cowalily. She's my goat (Lucius picked out the other two). She's a year older than the other two and so a bit bigger. I think she's just gorgeous.



We're going to take our does to visit a buck this fall and be bred, so next spring we will have tiny baby goats and milk. And my first pygoras will be arriving in about a month or less, so we will have a nice little herd soon! Next we need to think of a farm name so we can get started building a website and getting business cards and such in preparation for selling at farmers markets. I think we should just go with Folktale Farm, but L hasn't been very receptive to that so far.

I'll be back to talking about fibery things soon, I promise! I updated my etsy shop on thursday and it's already empty again - but I'm working on another big update in a week or two.

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.