We're Featured On A Blog!

Hey look! An interview with me about my farm and my art is featured on the Late Night Design blog this week!

How Windy Is It?

The wind has been roaring through here all night and all day. Look what happened to our icicles. They have all formed sharp bends in them because of the wind!

A Sheep in the Kitchen

I love it when the animal/human rapport gets developed to the point where you can actually have meaningful, useful communication. I had an example of that today.



One of my sheep, Teasle, was sick earlier this winter. She's recovering now, but when she was still not feeling well, she ended up getting quite thin. Sheep are very pushy at feeding time, so a weaker sheep doesn't end up getting as much to eat. And it's harder for her to gain the weight back during the cold weather we've been having, since more calories are burned just staying warm.

So, whenever I get the chance, I try to sneak Teasle a serving of grain when the other sheep aren't looking. If I do it when the other sheep can see, they all crowd in and shove her away. If I make a point to round her up, catch her, and put her in a separate pen, it stresses her out because she thinks something's going to happen to her. So I try to wait until she comes up to the house by herself and give her some food then.

A couple of times I've lured her right through my back door and into my kitchen, so she could eat her bowl of grain in peace when the other sheep started crowding around. She eats quietly, then waits for me to open the door and let her back out.

So now we've developed an understanding. Sheep aren't like dogs, or even cats. They don't know their names, and they don't usually distinguish that human speech means much of anything. But they can still understand communication at times.

Today when the whole flock of sheep came up to drink at the water trough, I went out on the porch and quietly said, "Teasle! Teasle!" until she understood I was talking to her. Amidst all the commotion of the other sheep, she looked at me and said, "Baa! Baa!" just as quietly.

I showed her the grain bucket, just briefly, so the other sheep didn't notice it. She trotted right through the whole crowd of sheep and around the side of the porch to where the steps are, right up onto the porch, and slipped inside the door when I opened it a crack.

She happily ate her bowl of food, and then I let her back out. And none of the other sheep even noticed what had happened.

Indoor Dog, Outdoor Dog

Because of all the recent snow and cold weather, and the recent death of his companion Ruby, a couple of nights ago we decided to see if our remaining outdoor dog Jesse would like to start being an indoor/outdoor dog again.



I brought him into the house during the afternoon so he could get used to the change before bedtime. He's a nervous dog, very worried about trying to do the right thing, so he stuck very close by my side all afternoon. So intent was he on staying within a few feet of me the whole time, that he neglected to tell me that he needed to go out, even when he couldn't hold it anymore. Not exactly helpful, but hey, a dog makes mistakes sometimes.

We also had to deal with jealousy from our small indoor dog Leeloo, who wasn't happy about sharing her space and her people. Jesse was not interested in being mean to her, but he constantly growled at her to stay away from him, which she didn't always obey. Because Jesse could easily bite her in half if it came down to a conflict, I had to keep a very close watch on both of them.

Jesse was also having a hard time adjusting to indoor temperatures. We thought we were being merciful bringing him in from the cold, but all he could do was pant and drink bowl after bowl of water!

At night, Leeloo sleeps in her own bed, shut in our small home office. She likes a private place so she can sleep uninterrupted. In light of Jesse's accident on the floor earlier, I decided he could sleep shut in the bathroom, where the tile floor would allow for easy cleanup. I put a bed in there for him and left him settled in for the night.

Or so I thought.

In the wee hours of the morning, Jesse began to howl, long and mournfully. This caused Leeloo to start barking. It was not a peaceful night for any of us!

In the morning, when I let Jesse out for a bathroom break, he raced straight over to his outdoor pen and asked to be let into it. I took that as a sign that the whole indoor dog experiment was a failure. Whenever possible, I like to let the animals tell me what they want, and Jesse was clearly saying he had not enjoyed being inside, and he wanted to go back to his old routine as an outdoor dog.

It was still pretty cold out, but I figured he knew better than I where he was happiest. So last night, I left him outside as usual, with his big shed for shelter and his enormous fenced run.

Imagine my surprise when, first thing this morning I hear a sound on the back porch and there is Jess, escaped from his pen---something he has not done in about 2 years!---and begging at the back door to be let inside!

Apparently during the night he'd had second thoughts and decided he'd like to give the indoor dog thing another try. So now he's napping beside my chair, with one ear and one eye always cocked to keep track of where I am.



I suspect it's going to take a while to smooth out all the conflicts between him and Leeloo, and to remind Jesse about the housebreaking rules he's forgotten. But he's let me know he's willing to try, so I guess that's what we'll do!

R.I.P. Ruby

We lost our dog Ruby today. Yesterday she was fine, and today she was just dead, with no warning. She was getting to be fairly old for such a large dog, but still, apart from a little stiffness in her hips lately, she hadn't shown any signs that anything was wrong, so this came as a surprise.

When Ken and I first moved to Virginia, long before we bought our farm, we rented a house with a lot of land, and before long started talking about getting a dog. We discussed what kind of dog we would like, looked at all the pictures in dog breed books, and still couldn't quite decide what kind of dog we'd like.

Finally, after much debate, I said, "It doesn't matter what kind of dog we get. When we're ready for a dog, the right dog will come along."

The VERY NEXT DAY a litter of puppies was abandoned on our property. We figured one of those must be "the right dog." Out of the four, we picked Ruby as the one we'd keep.



She was smart, a little bit shy, and (usually) very obedient. I taught her many tricks. The normal ones, like Sit, Stay, Down, etc. But also others like Shake Hands, Speak, Growl, Crawl, and Shut the Door.





After about a year, it was obvious that Ruby was lonely, so we went to a shelter and got her a border collie cross, Jesse, as a companion. They made friends instantly, and have been companions ever since that day.

When we moved to the farm, they shared the large shed and 1/3 acre run we gave them, and spent many happy days romping together.

So, sad as it may be that she's gone, she had a good life and appears to have had a quick, relatively painless death, since we found her just lying in her shed as if she was resting.

Could be a lot of worse fates for a dog. Could be a lot of worse fates for any of us. And we'll always remember her fondly as "The Right Dog."

Goodbye Ruby. Rest in Peace.

Trainer Who Starved My Horses Claims Another Victim

Remember when I posted back in June about the Trainer Who Starved My Horses?

Well, not long ago I was contacted by another horse owner who had almost the exact same experience with the very same trainer. One of her horses DIED, and another was severely malnourished.

Here's her story.

Now the trainer has moved to a whole new farm with a new website, with lots of pretty pictures to make everything look clean, happy, and professional. As if nothing was ever wrong. As if the suffering, starvation, and death of dozens of horses could just be erased by a change of location.

It makes me sick!!!

Ultra the Fairy Sheep

Wet-Felted Soap and Beads

After getting used to needle felting for the past month, I decided yesterday that it was time to try a bit of easy wet-felting. I'd attempted wet felting a couple of times before, with poor results, so I didn't want to try anything too complicated this time around.

First, I made a felted bar of soap. Based on the directions I had read online---and my previous unsuccessful felting experiments---I was prepared for the process to take a long time. I was amazed when it took almost no time at all!

I fluffed up the wool into a criss-crossed mat, wrapped it around a bar of our sheep's milk soap, dipped it in warm water, and gently rubbed the wool. In almost no time at all, it had formed a felted case around the soap.

The next test was to see how the felted soap worked, so today I took it in the shower with me. I was very pleased with the gentle exfoliating action of the wool. It had just the right amount of scrubbiness, like a good washcloth.

I'm used to using store-bought shower gel, so I had to remind myself that our sheep's milk soap is olive-oil based, which means that it cleans really well but it doesn't produce lots of big, showy lather. I got plenty clean, I just had to not expect a lot of bubbles. At this rate, the bar of soap is going to last a long, long time!


My second little experiment with wet felting was to make a couple of wool beads. I've been making wool beads by needle felting, and I wanted to see how the wet felted ones compared.

I just took a little wad of wool, got my hands wet and soapy, and rolled the wool around and around between my palms until the wool formed a sphere. Again, the process worked fairly quickly. Much more quickly than when I make the needle felted beads.

Visually, the two types of beads look nearly identical. In this photo, there's a handful of needle felted beads at the top, and two wet felted beads at the bottom.

The difference, though, is in the feel of the beads. The needle felted beads are sturdier and more evenly and thoroughly felted all the way through, while the wet felted beads were a bit softer and without quite as much structural integrity.

So, my verdict is a thumbs up for the wet felted soap, but I'll be sticking with needle felting for my beads.

Did You Notice Our Redesign?

If you look at this blog regularly, it's probably pretty obvious: I gave the blog a bit of a redesign today.

Since we finally sold our last horse, I exchanged the horse photo at the top of the page for a sheep photo, and removed a couple of references to "raising horses" from the site.

I also updated our list of websites (on the right side of the page) to include our Etsy store, our CafePress store, and our brand-new Facebook page, which will be featuring some promos and giveaways in the coming weeks.

I've introduced several new products to the farm in the past year. Now it's time to figure out how to market them!

The Magnetic Attraction of Hay

This is the time of year when my sheep are mostly eating hay, but I let them have access to our big pasture anyway. There's not much to eat out there right now, but they seem to enjoy having a choice, and I enjoy watching them "commute" from the hay feeders to the pasture and back several times a day.

Sheep, of course, are always hungry. And when they're hungry, they're pushy. So it's always a bit of a challenge trying to fill the hay feeders when there are 50 hungry sheep crowded around trying to eat everything in sight.

So imagine my delight when, yesterday at feeding time, I went out to fill the hay feeders and discovered there was not a single sheep in sight. Every sheep was at the other end of the farm, out in the big pasture.

"Wow," I thought. "Feeding time's going to be quick and easy today. I'll have these feeders filled before the sheep even know I'm here." Since the hay feeders are currently located only a few yards from the hay storage, I thought that was a reasonable assumption.

Quietly, quietly, so as not to attract any attention, I wheeled my garden cart down to the hay barn. Pushed open the sliding door. Turned around. And there at the top of the driveway was the entire flock of sheep, coming at a gallop!

I don't know how they could possibly have known I was there, but I didn't even manage to get a single bale loaded into the cart before they were swarming everywhere, "helping" with the hay distribution.