Long time - very busy summer

Hi
I am sure that you are stunned to see something new here. I had plans many times to come post. They just never seemed to coordinate with making sure that I brought appropriate pictures. I have decided to just write and post pictures at some future time when that all falls into place.
We have had a very busy summer. Our CSA filled and we have been feeding ten couples for the past four months. We have four more weeks to go! It has been hard for the dh to watch all that food walk off the farm, so next year we are growing food just for us. He has been planning it out for several months. How much we need to grow to meet all of our caloric needs. It is a lot of food!
We have transformed some areas on our farm. Those are the pictures that I kept wanting to bring and post and it just doesn't seem to be getting coordinated. I will try to do it next week. I may have some time at a computer that has internet long enough to work it all out.

Along with growing food, I have been knitting furiously. I created a shawl for my niece's wedding and have finished five pairs of socks. I am learning techniques that work well for me. I like knitting two socks at a time and I discovered a way to do that doesn't create too much of a gap on the sides. I have read MANY knitting books over the summer. I am learning intrelac. It is a lot easier than it looks and people are so impressed because it looks so hard.
I have also been learning more about how to take care of my fleece and how to dye things. I am going to try this weekend to dye some yarn and fleece. I am very excited and can't wait to try. The book "Harvesting Color: How to find Plants and Make Natural Dyes" has great easy to follow recipes. This book is going on my wish list! It is well written and she goes through and discusses how to harvest and find things in your neck of the woods. I will try to keep you posted on how this experiment is going.
I will also be processing my own wool this year. I think I know how to clean it but I don't have the other equipment yet to process it further than a wash. Working on that too - I am thinking this will be a weekend of wet fun. I need to get it done before it gets too cold.

I will work harder at picking a day and posting so that you don't think I fell off the edge again. LOL

One more thing- I will be teaching a class "Living Well on Less". I will try to let you know how this goes too. See why I haven't posted in months? So busy!
Our next step is to figure out how to make money (grow it on trees?? ha, ha) on the farm so that I don't need to leave the farm to work. May need to leave the farm to promote and advertise. This is a long term goal that is creeping up on us due to vehicle with over 200,00 miles.

Take care!

Kate

Busy spring!

Hi,
Sorry it's been a few weeks. We sheared sheep last week. Whew! Glad to have that job over with. Thankfully we went with a new shearer and I am now booked for the next two years so I am not scrambling in January. Yeah!
The sheep are all adjusting to their new looks. It is always fun to watch them after they have been sheared. They don't recognize each other and spend a few days re-establishing the order.
Spring is also the start of our CSA. We are launching "Our Little Farm CSA". It is a little late start but we aren't planning on taking on more than 20 shares this year. We are hoping to get that many. We created a single and couple share price ( $180/$300). We had heard from people that most CSA give out too much food so we wanted to give people an option for a smaller amount. Larry met with another young gentleman who has been running a CSA for about two years. He received some good information and help. So we are busy putting all the pieces of that together. We will be working hard this year to get some money out of the farm.

Have a wonderful week!
Kate