Thank you all for the comments from my last post. Your support of the family farm, whether virtual with kind words and support or by purchasing family farm products in your area, or from our Leyden Glen Farm makes my heart swell.
I've had a great response to the Lamb Meat-Up happening at Webs tomorrow evening in the parking lot. Still time to order. Check out this post here for prices and what is available. The lamb meat is frozen and packed in cryovac so it travels well. Farm raised lamb meat makes a nice gift for those foodies who are hard to buy for. I'll be bringing recipes too if you need help and guidance on cooking it. Leg of lamb makes a very nice festive holiday dinner. Most of the legs are cut in half and weigh about 2 1/2 pounds. Someone yesterday emailed me and couldn't understand why the legs are so small. He is used to those big old enormous western lambs that are finished on feed lots. Our sheep are pasture raised and a smaller breed of sheep. They are more compact animals that thrive on the rocky hillsides here at our farm. Most of the breeds we have used over the years originated in Great Britain - Romney, Dorset, Border Leicester, Cheviot, and Shetland breeds.
This evening I am going to try to convince The Farmer to go down to Noho with Julia and me to meet the knitters at the "meat-up" who are buying our lamb. I think I have a chance at getting him to go, considering it is dark at 4:30 and he can't do much farming. We shall see.
Thanks again to Kathy and Steve Elkins and the Webs team for supporting our family farm. Webs still has some of my Julia Yarn available in the back close-out room too!
The series of photos in this post were taken over a few weeks this fall. We have a rather large shrub-like tree right outside my studio door. I do not know what it is - maybe someone else does and can leave the name in the comments.
When we first moved here, I wanted to get rid of it because it is rather huge and spreads horizontally. I'm glad I lived with it and didn't take it out. It adds such visual interest all through the year. Next year I must document the flowers and the bees. These photos show the slowing of the season as winter rolls in.
Today is the Winter Solstice and it seemed appropriate to share these photos here as we celebrate the dark of winter with all the winter holidays coming up over the next few weeks. It is also the day my Dad Arch passed away seven years ago. Still miss him and think about him every day. Now that we have "Archie", the Great Pyreness Livestock Guard Dog, living out in our field, I think about him even more. I've had a lot of friends lose parents and loved ones this year and my heart goes out to them (and perhaps some of you) as they celebrate the holidays this year without the special people in their lives.
Off to do a bit of Christmas shopping. Good day everyone! See you tomorrow at the "meat-up"!
5 comments:
I'm going to guess the shrub is a chokeberry. The rabbits girded mine, so it never got very big.
Good luck at the meat-up!
I can't make a firm id (do you have pictures of the flowers?) but if it is a chokecherry, you can eat the berries. They're sour, but nice in a jam. I've been enjoying the pretty red berries on the brush near our local bike path. Then I found out it was bittersweet, the scourge of the DEP, LOL.
I was going to guess a pyracantha bush but I really don't know. Could you take a twig to a nursery or garden center and see if they can identify it for you?
I was actually going to suggest highbush cranberry...
**HAPPY SOLSTICE**!!
Hope Your weather holds up for Your Meat-Up. We've got freezing rain here.. Hope it doesn't head Your Way!
BTW, I've just come across THIS article - http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/more-young-people-see-opportunity-in-farming
And was thinking.. - if You haven't already done so - that perhaps the USDA had "Students" that could use some "Field" experience in Sheep Farming..? What with *Hatching* Season about to begin... I'm sure that THE FARMER can use all of the help He can get!
:-D
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