Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Visitors to the Farm

Once in a while I have a really fun and memorable day here on the farm. I always remember the days I share the place with others - either my students who come to the farm to learn or with friends who have heard about the place. On Monday, my friend Trisha arrived with her twelve year old son Garrett. Trisha has been trying to get here for a while but she is really busy (she is VP at Soho/Vogue Knitting and works way more than humanly possible). It was school vacation for Garrett and he has been wanting to see our animals. Along with Garrett, Trisha was traveling with the one and only June Hiatt - author of The Principles of Knitting. June was doing an appearance at Webs on Tuesday so the visit to the farm dovetailed beautifully. (Poor June - the snowstorm hit Tuesday. I'm not sure how many people turned out. I was going to go down but couldn't because the snow was so awful.)

Garrett was so interested in everything - he helped feed the chickens and collect the eggs. Then he used my antique egg scale to weigh the eggs. He figured out that some of my eggs weighed almost the same as a 50 gram ball of yarn! Quite the difference in size though. I love how kids' minds work.


We spent the afternoon eating soup, talking knitting and publishing. Poor Garrett. What a sport. I think he has been in on many yarn industry conversations though and he didn't mind one bit. June then started talking about "Shetland knitting belts". I had never seen one in action and she happened to have one with her. Man, can she fly on that thing. Little needles, skinny yarn, and very quick stitches.


Garrett was a quick study and learned how to use it too! He is a very good knitter.


June shared a lot of her writing process for both editions of her book The Principles of Knitting. I now have two signed copies? It took June 10 years of her life to write each one. That folks means that this kind and brilliant woman spent 20 years writing a tome for we knitters to have. What a gift! We need to thank June over and over, don't we? June said that the two different editions have totally different information in them


After lunch, I took them to the sheep barns. My biggest concern was their feet! They knew about mud season and were prepared - they had read about it on the blog. Luckily, the ground had frozen again so the mud wasn't bad at all. I got a kick out of one of the pairs of boots they had on -- a bit too shiny for a sheep barn! It's been a long time since I have had such a pretty pair of rain boots.


Garrett mixed up the milk for the bottle lambs and he fed all of them.


The other sheep looked on curiously at the visitors.


After the tour of the sheep farm, I took them across the road to see my brother and sister-in-law's dairy farm - Sunbrite Farm. David gave them a great tour. He loves to talk about his cows.


Garrett asked more good questions. Luckily David's rooster Oliver Wendell Pratt Duprey didn't attack anyone! He is a notorious rooster in these parts.


What a great day we had sharing stories and tales of the knitting industry. I love a day like that! Thanks for coming Trisha, Garrett and June! I hope the snow didn't foul up too much of the vacation!

11 comments:

candi jensen said...

I am soooo sorry I missed it all. Would you have baked me a birthday cake?
Candi

Cathy said...

What a fun day! All kids should experience a bit of farm life. Too many have no clue that's where most of our food begins.

Skubitwo said...

do you read terry pratchett and the discworld series? he has several young adult books in addition to his more adult books (the main characters are adult rather than pre-teens). one in particular, "the wee free men", has a wonderful scene of the young heroine remembering the beautiful china shepherdess she won for her grandmother. the grandmother was a more real shepherd, the kind that was out in the mud with a new lamb with "an old sack around her shoulders to keep the rain off". reminds me of your spring sheep stories. the edge of a sheep ranch is not too far from me when i walk my dog on the high prairie. makes me grateful knowing i'm just walking my dog in the wyoming windchill instead of having to get lamb and wool into the grocery. good luck with your spring.
skubitwo

Blonde said...

The Principles of Knitting is a treasure!!! Thank you June!!!

Kristin Nicholas said...

Of course Julia and I would have baked you a gorgeous cake. Now I feel like I should bake one and bring to Detroit - but would it make it? Sounds like too much trouble - even for you!

Happy Birthday Candi!

Auntie Shan said...

hm. I didn't know that You had Family just "across" the road... Good to know that You've got Them close by. -- "DAIRY", huh?

Garrett's a Cutie! And, will probably end up following in his Mom's vocation..? - At least he got to see "where" the REAL Yarn comes from!

Anyhoo, HAPPY "SPRING"!! -- I'm still waiting for the 6-ft high snowbanks to MELT so that I can actually SEE "mud"! Probably in *MAY* at this rate...

oh, and HAPPY B-DAY CANDI!!
:-D

Susan B. Anderson said...

Oh, what a fun day, Kristin. Three knitting greats and an adorable son all together.... wonderful!

Was Julia there, too?

What a treat. I loved reading about this.

Elaine said...

Thanks for sharing all this fun stuff with us. Trisha was a speaker at our knitting guild last fall before VKKnitting Live in Chicao.

Unknown said...

what an entertaining post, kristin!! and happy belated birthday candi jensen!! i, too, am waiting patiently for spring here in Iowa... yesterday was just too windy and cold for the 1st day of Spring! i always enjoy your posts!! and the sheep!
^)^ linda

Robin said...

What a fun visit to hear about. It sounded as though it was a wonderful day!

If June is reading these comments, thanks for rewriting The Principles of Knitting. I am very pleased to have it in my knitting library!

Robin

LannieK said...

What a great day! I will be in search of June's books to add to my library! Thank you ~

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