Venus of Willendorf and the Sacred Cow

Now that the farm's outside chores have quieted down a bit, I've finally had a chance to start working on some of my long-postponed indoor projects.

Over the weekend, I washed a couple of fleeces and did some needle felting. First up: my version of the famous prehistoric Venus of Willendorf sculpture. She is for sale in my Etsy shop:


Next, I made my needle-felted version of one of the sacred Brahman cows of India. I've always thought Brahman cows were beautiful. This one is also for sale in my Etsy shop:

Up Before Dawn

For some reason, I woke up at 3:00 this morning and could not for the life of me go back to sleep.

The farrier was supposed to come first thing this morning to trim all the horses' hooves. So since I was awake anyway, I decided to get up before dawn to get everything ready: ate breakfast while waiting for the sun to come up, then went out to feed and water the animals early, put halters on the horses that didn't have them on, and started cleaning hooves.

Then the farrier called to say he'd hurt his back and could he reschedule for Saturday? Of course we're not going to say "No" to that. But I was grumbly to have gotten up so early for no real reason, just the same.

I managed to do a photo shoot yesterday and got good photos of most of the rest of the dolls I'm selling on EBay to raise money for hay.

Then I spent part of today packing up and mailing several that I sold in the past few days and writing up descriptions for the new ones that I'll be posting for sale on Friday (I wait until Friday, because sales are much more brisk over the weekend). I've included a few photos here, because I think they turned out pretty well.

It's tricky, because there's one specific place that has a nice background for taking photos, and it only gets decent lighting for a couple hours a day. So I always have to be ready for that time, and hurry through the photos before the light fades away.

Out of curiosity, I just added it up: so far, in the past three months, my EBay sales have brought in nearly $5000 to pay for hay and bills!

That's not bad for just selling stuff that we already had lying around not being used... mostly my Franklin Mint dolls and a few other valuables, plus Ken's old Sentra.

Of course, our animals eat more than $2000 worth of hay per month, so the Ebay sales are just kind of helping us tread water until some of the horses sell. But it's way better than NOT having that extra money!

Our neighbor Bob finally had a chance today to come by with his tractor and scrape the manure out of the main part of the front paddock for us. With so many horses living there, it accumulates too quickly for me to clean out by hand, so every now and then we hire Bob to remove it with his tractor.

He didn't quite have time to finish yesterday, because he had somewhere else to go, so he'll be back tomorrow. We may have him scrape out the sheep paddocks too while he's right here.

I do have to clean the weanling paddock and Senter's paddock out by hand soon though. It's been accumulating too long. The weather is mild enough now that I'm not going to be risking heat stroke to be outside working, and the fact that it hasn't rained in forever means everything I need to muck out is dry and (relatively) light.

Actually, things are beyond simply "dry" now. Our fields and lawns are scorched and dead. Any little breeze or an animal walking by stirs up clouds of dust that hang in the air like mist.

We are so lucky that our well is good. We've had no shortage of water to fill the horse and sheep troughs.

And we are so lucky not to have had any fire problems in our area. The whole county is so dry, there'd be no stopping a fire if it got started. So I'm very thankful it hasn't been an issue.

Busy Day

It's late and I'm tired, so here's just a simple run down of what I did today:

• Made my first prototype splint for Peri's leg. I padded her leg with sheep wool (I figured that's a pretty natural padding for a sheep's leg), wrapped it with Vet Wrap, put on a cylindrical splint I cut from a plastic water bottle, and held that on with Vet Wrap. Now I'll keep my eye on her to see if she seems to start using the leg at all, now that the ankle joint is stabilized. If not, I'll have to make a new design.

• Made a new isolation pen to put the sheep in that have been at the fair. Last year, at my request, they had a second barrier around their pen to keep people back (I didn't want some little kid poking a hand in there and getting her fingers mashed by Nicholai's horns). But this year, the fair people didn't provide that barrier. So all week long, my sheep have been petted by hundreds of people who also petted every other animal at the fair. Not exactly a biosecurity dream come true. So I'm putting the returning sheep through quarantine, just to make sure. The two ram lambs are probably bound for the butcher pretty soon anyhow, but I don't want them mixing with the other sheep until then anyhow.

• Set up the back pasture with a hay feeder, water and grain buckets, and moved Shane and Torchsong back there. Being yearlings, they are using energy on growth, so they are a bit thinner than the adult horses they've been pastured with, so by moving them into a separate enclosure, I can feed them extra. Torchsong is so submissive to the other horses, she barely dares to eat with them at all, so she'll do much better with less competition for the feed.

• Went to Richmond with Ken to pick up the sheep from the fair. Loaded them up, came home, and put them in their isolation pen.

• Checked my email and discovered that 3 out of the 4 dolls I put up for sale on Ebay two days ago just sold tonight for my full asking price. That's an extra $400 that I didn't have this morning. Yay!

A Trickle of Good News

Four bits of good news today:

1. One of my Franklin Mint dolls (See My Secret "Girlie" Side) sold on Ebay for $275 in just 2 days.

2. Trouble, the Runaway Lamb (See Can't Catch a Break... Or a Sheep!, Looking for Trouble, and Trouble Ahead) has been captured. Either Ken or I will have to drive back to Tennessee this weekend to pick her up.

3. A potential buyer is coming here tomorrow to look at Bonnie and the other horses.

4. We got our first donation through the "Donate" button I put on the blog homepage. It was from an old friend whom I haven't seen in a long time. Thanks Ginny! She is a very talented artist who makes gorgeous paintings. You can see them here.

My Secret "Girlie" Side

I've never been much of a girlie-girl. I loathe pantyhose and high heels. I almost never wear makeup or jewelry. I have no interest in designer shoes or handbags. Heck, some days on the farm, I don't even brush my hair!

But for all my daily concerns with dirty, non-girlie things like loading hay, training horses, and picking maggots out of wounded sheep, I have to confess (with a certain amount of embarrassment) to one exceptionally girlie hobby.

I collect porcelain dolls.

Not just any porcelain dolls. Just the most exquisite---and usually quite pricey---dolls made by Franklin Mint. Preferably the Gibson Girl dolls or some of the historical or storybook themed ones. I have an entire wall of my office with shelves on it to display them, about two dozen in all, plus another half dozen or so other dolls that I started with before I graduated to Franklin Mint.

For several years now, these dolls have been my secret addiction. Whenever friends come to visit, I'm embarrassed to show them my office, because this wall of dainty, elegantly dressed porcelain ladies doesn't fit with my idea of who I am.

I like to blame them on the fact that I'm no longer in the SCA. My husband and I did medieval historical recreation for many years---in fact, that's how we met. But after moving several times and getting busy with other aspects of our lives, we eventually stopped participating.

For all those years, I had the creative outlet of designing, making, accessorizing, and wearing my own medieval-style costumes. But after we quit, I got tired of seeing them hanging unused in my closet, so I gave them all away to a friend: Thirteen years worth of green, crimson, purple, royal blue, and ivory colored gowns, embroidered, beaded, jewel-bedecked. Once they were gone, my closet was spacious, practical---and dull.

Right around then, the doll collecting began. I guess they were a smaller-version, eye-candy substitute for the costumes I'd given away. Having spent many tedious hours making my own costumes in past years, I could really appreciate the dolls' intricate level if minuscule detail.

I love them, and I hate the fact that I love them. I can't wrap my brain around the idea that I have such a girlie hobby.

But soon, that inner conflict will be resolved. I'm selling them all on EBay to try to keep this farm running a little longer while we wait for some horses to sell.

When I started putting the listings up today, I soon learned something: It's really time consuming to make a good EBay listing!

After you decide which item you want to list first, you have to find a good place with a nice background and take lots of close-up, well-lit photographs of the item. Then you have to download the photos to your computer, select the ones you want to use, crop them if necessary, and save them in the proper format. Then you have to fill out the EBay forms, upload the photos, and write a detailed, sincere-yet-enthusiastic description of the item.

I have LOTS of things I'm planning to sell, but I only managed to get five listings made today. Three of the Franklin Mint dolls, my gorgeous leather motorcycle jacket, and Ken's 1992 Nissan Sentra GXE.

There will be lots more listings to come in the next days and weeks. Everything I sell will go towards helping us keep this farm going, so please check my auctions every now and then to see if we have anything you "need." Tell your friends, too!

If you want a preview of some of the things that will be coming up for sale soon (and some things we're offering for sale directly, not on EBay), visit our Online Yard Sale. The list is not complete, and it doesn't have a lot of detail right now, but if you see anything you're interested in, contact me, and I'll be happy to take photos and send you a more thorough description of the item.

We are almost entirely out of hay now, and almost entirely out of money.

On the bright side, our mare Bonnie has suddenly become very popular. I have two buyers who are interested in her already, and today I got calls from two more people asking about her!

All the potential buyers seemed knowledgeable and pleasant, like they would probably provide Bonnie a good home. So keep your fingers crossed for us that one of them will decide that she's the one for them. That money would do WONDERS for our cash flow right about now!