A Saturday of Small Victories…
Sometimes it’s the small victories that mean the most. Today was one of those days …
I let the boy bunnies out to run around and play until they finally gave up, exhausted.
I put up a new set of shelves in the “back room” of the Bunny Barn and organized all of my dyeing supplies.
The packing material turned out to be great bunny toys!
I hung up this nifty hair dryer organization rack in our bathroom.
I ordered supplies that we’ll need for the May Dye Day, particularly if you want to dye cotton!
I also ordered a new product to carry in the Farm Store! Care to guess what it is?
I also weighed out my Ashland Bay ecru fibers and bagged them in 4 oz bumps, and
while others of my fiber friends were dyeing beautiful spring colors…
I dyed a batch of angora and wool Jet Black. Yum! Picture it with a little silver angelina, and I think you’ll see where I’m going with this.
All in all, a Saturday of small victories!
Workin’ and Playin’ on Easter Weekend
Daniel & James
You can work all day every day on a farm. I’m sure of it! But sometimes you need to just STOP and smell the wild onion grass, or whatever happens to be growing in your yard. There has to be both work and play, and that was the story at Fancy Fibers Farm this weekend.
Daniel and brother James (home from Texas A & M for the holiday weekend) spent a good part of Friday and Saturday with us, and got quite a bit of work accomplished. They loaded up a bunch of junk and took it to the dump for us. Some of the junk was ours, but a big part of it was the last (yippee!) of what the prior owner had left for us to clean up!
They also hung the screen door on the Bunny Barn back door which will be wonderful on these cool spring nights, and re-hung our chicken nest boxes, adding extra supports to keep them firmly attached to the walls even when some of the smaller goats decide to play on them!
The Welder impersonated a plumber for one more day to put the final fix on the persistent water leak at the border between our backyard and the small pasture. Ken was SO happy to have this fixed because this meant the water to the barns could be turned back on and he could quit carrying buckets out to the animals!
Bear supervised from the main barn. I plyed some yarn, and took advantage of the south wind to dry it.
This afternoon, DD#1 and her family, and The Prindles came to visit, eat, play with the animals and …. you know it …. ride on the golf cart!
The GrandGirls always go straight for the baby bunnies. These little guys are only 5 weeks old. Look how big they are! We got the bright idea of using some pen panels to make them a play area inside the Bunny Barn, but quickly found out they could squeeze their bunny bodies through the 2×2″ square holes with no problem! We had to give chase, get them all rounded up again, and the girls got in the pen with them and guarded the edges with outstretched legs!
Mandy cooked us a delicious dinner which we all enjoyed on the back porch in the cool breeze.
Lizzie put down her bunny long enough to collect the eggs, and Papa Ken gave The Prindles the nickel tour of the farm.
Bo helped me give the alpacas their annual booster shot, and every time we looked for the kids they were driving the golf cart. Look for the video in our next blog post!
Some work, some play, visiting with friends and family. It was a great 3-day weekend at Fancy Fibers Farm!
Home Sweet Home (Someday)
Bear takes a nap
After yesterday’s smattering of rain, today dawned as a beautifully clear spring day. Two of the three Big White Dogs that were alert and working all last night found places in the shade to sleep, and I did some cleaning in the Bunny Barn for a while.
But the blue skies, light white clouds, and green grass pushing up through the black dirt called at us to wander around outside. We decided to walk out to the back part of our property (currently not in use) to stake out a place for our house-to-be.
Once of the things we liked about this place when we bought it last year was that it had a place to live already on site. That meant we could move in and focus on the animals right away instead of having to build a house first.
But part of the plan has always been, and still is, to build a small house farther back on the property. With the help of a topographical map supplied by the USDA that details where the “high spot” is on our land, the Welder’s 100 foot tape, a hammer, and some stakes, we headed to the back.
First we measured how much depth was left from our current fence to the back property line. We needed this number to tell The Welder how big to make the two new pastures he’s about to fence off for us.
Then we walked back up the fence and across a ways, using the pond and a particular cedar tree as our points of reference.
When we were in the right place, we measured out a 50 foot square.
Ken pounded the stakes.
Someday this square will contain a 1 bedroom, 1-1/2 bath, great room, office area, kitchen, mud and laundry room house with a double carport.
In the meantime, care to guess what’s wrong with the next picture?
Yup, the stakes The Welder made for us to secure the new loafing shed to the ground didn’t get pounded in quite soon enough! The strong south wind we had two nights ago flipped the shed completely over onto its top. Won’t this be fun to fix!
Horizontal Snow!
My first thought this morning was, “C’mon! Really?” It’s March. In Texas. And Everything is covered in SNOW. What is this all about?
Not only had it snowed overnight, but it was our own special type of snow: Horizontal snow. The kind you get when the wind is blowing. This was bad news for the animals because it meant that snow had blown into their usually dry shelters. This is also bad news for us because it means we’re going to have a wet mucky mess INSIDE the buildings as well as outside. Ugh! Wish I had gotten those doors built for the barns!! Oh, well.
Of course the Big White Dogs didn’t mind the snow, nor did the alpacas (who still have their coats). We were more worried about the sheep and goats who had given up their fiber coats about a week ago. They seemed nonplussed, however. One of our little doelings insisted upon jogging out to the far loafing shed. I trudged out after her, picked her up, and carried her back to the near loafing shed where all her goat and sheep brethren were trying to stay dry. Not five minutes later, she and her sister doeling were skipping back across the snow! Whatever.
Of course the bunnies were nice and dry, but we were surprised to find the front door of the Bunny Barn blown wide open! We had a devil of a time getting it closed, and ended up setting something heavy against it to keep it from blowing open again. What’s up with that? Don’t know, and it’s too cold to fiddle with it now! Most all the bunnies are fur-less now, too, so we cranked up the heat for them.
The baby bunnies continue to grow and flourish, including our one hearty survivor from the January litter, Hercules. The little guys are almost a month old now. They are eating hay, and stealing food out of Mama Bunny’s feeder! They are too cute for words as they dogpile and climb on one another, or stretch-stretch-stretch on their hind legs to get up to the feeder. I think Mama would just as soon they went somewhere else!
Today will be another luscious fibery day as I put Big Tom (the electric carder) into action, and/or start knitting on a mohair wool scarf, and/or start spinning from a mohair cloud, and/or knit those cute little toys I bought patterns for. It may be cold and snowy outside, but in here its wooly warm!
2010 Baby Bunnies: Take Two
I’ve been a little hesitant to say anything publicly because of the bad luck we had with our last rabbit litter, but we have another batch of baby bunnies at the Farm. There are currently 7 (down from 9). Six are black and one is white. We can think Grampa Carter bunny (R.I.P.) for that white gene!
Mama bunny is our Cocoa, a German/Satin mix. Daddy bunny is our Caramel, also a German/Satin mix.
Let’s all send good vibes toward my Bunny Barn for the good health of this group of squirmy, sqeaky, sweethearts!