Sunday Homestead Update

Busy, busy here on the homestead.

Sheep

We decided to name the new dairy sheep Autumn.  Here is a cute pic from when I was sitting in the barnyard for farm therapy the other day.  Fiona and Autumn were blocking the chickens’ door to get into their coop.  The chickens were crowding around them trying to figure out how to get in and the rooster decided to stand on Fiona’s back to see if he could somehow get in the door that way.

We had more sheep excitement this week as we added more dairy sheep to our flock. I will introduce them in a post later this week.  Settling them in has been rough so far.  There are some issues with Autumn and Pansy bullying them.  Fiona is doing great with them.  Anya is being too rambunctious with them, since they are only 5-month-old lambs and thus smaller and not good at standing up for themselves with her, which is also a problem.  So we are having to keep everyone somewhat separated and under watchful eyes.  Hoping everything settles soon.

Garden

We have been very busy harvesting the garden and putting up the harvest.

We had a very very light frost on Aug 28 that did a tiny bit of damage to the bean plants, but since then there hasn’t been a frost yet and it doesn’t look like one is coming for another week at least. This is looking to be a late fall, which will be wonderful since we had such a cold spring, the plants need the extra growth time.

The first tomatoes have started ripening.  It looks like it will be a pretty good harvest despite the late frost and cool weather set-backs we had. I pruned the tomato plants a bunch to help keep their energy focused on the fruit already on them as opposed to flowers and tiny fruit that don’t have a chance of making it this year.

The pepper harvest has been much better than last year, and we are bringing in Red Kuri and Golden Nugget squash now as well.

The green beans are coming in well and we are canning them and lining the root cellar shelves with jars of them for winter.

The carrot and pea harvest are done for the year. They produced well but a massive aphid infestation cut them short.

While we were picking up the new Dairy Sheep from the western slope of Colorado, we grabbed two bushels of peaches.  They are huge and beautiful and we are enjoying eating them and canning them for winter.

Heritage Arts

I was able to get some knitting done while we were in the hospital with Mr Smiles.  I finished the cabled cardigan that has been on the needles for 18 months and kept getting ignored because of other projects, it feels SO good to have it done.

The pattern is Let Go by Joji Locatelli.  The yarn was Knit Picks Gloss DK in the colorway Blackberry.  I absolutely love how this turned out.  It fits me perfectly and it is so soft and warm.  I cannot wait for the weather to cool a bit so I can wear it regularly.

I have also been making progress on two different pairs of socks I am working on.

We got a new toy…I mean tool…for the homestead. We used to have a large 42-inch floor loom for weaving. But it was just too big and rarely got used because we didn’t have a good place to set it up. So this summer we sold it and bought a smaller loom. It is the Wolf Pup LT from Schat Spindle Co.

We love it! It fits nicely in the corner of the living room and is big enough to make any of the types of things we want to weave. Little Miss is currently weaving a practice/learning project on it.