Roads Leading Where?

Spring is really springing here at the farm. I have been taking a few photos to document the change in the colors on the road and posting them on Instagram. You can follow me on Instagram here. It really is amazing how fast the leaves pop out. Here is Day 1.

Here is Day 2.

Here is yesterday - Day 3. The leaves are still bright green - that amazing shade of youthful leaves. The greens at this time of year suggest such possibility. It is truly gorgeous and hopeful.

In February, we were contacted by a Richie Davis, a reporter for our local paper The Greenfield Recorder about doing a story about our farm. That's why I love our local paper - there is usually some kind of local agriculture feature - photo or article - at least once a week. The Farmer likes to stay under the radar and shuns any kind of publicity or attention drawn to him. I guess that is how we stay married - he is in the background and I'm out there. 

Richie proposed an article called Two Farms about our sheep farm and Mark's brother David's dairy farm - Sunbrite Farm. It sounded like an interesting concept for a local farming story - cow vs. sheep. I said yes before asking! The article took a long time for Richie to put together - he had to interview both families and then craft a story. Photos were taken of both farms and farmers. The result was a in-depth, 2 page article about the realities of farming in the year 2014 on land that has been in the Duprey family since the 1920's. 

You can read it via a PDF I put on our lamb website here.  The article has generated a lot of interest in both the farms. These two farmers - my husband Mark and my brother-in-law David work so hard with their animals and their land. They are the silent heroes of local agriculture, along with their sheep and cows.

A couple weeks ago, I got a call from TInky Weisblatt, the Food Writer for The Recorder and cookbook author. She had heard about my lamb recipes via Richie and wanted to feature them in the Wednesday food pages. Today, I have some recipes featured in the paper and a short interview about how I have learned to cook lamb too. The really fun thing for me is to see my photos featured in the local paper. Cool. Here is a live link to the article that you should be able to read. I don't think the photos are on-line though.

Busy here. All this spring stuff and trying to keep the energy up to keep creating. Hope you are having a good week.

Sneak Peek at a New Knitting Design

It's been a while since I self-published a new knitting pattern. Here's a sneak peek at this one for babies and kids that will (hopefully) be released at the end of this week. Can't see much from this photo but I've got your interest, don't I? Fingers crossed it all gets done by Friday. Check back here. Knit in my Color By Kristin which is available ON SALE at Webs til the end of May.

Don't forget the Webs Tent and Fleece Sale. I'll be there Saturday selling our locally raised lamb. Check out the info here and I hope to see you in person. The Tent Sale continues through Sunday.

For All the Wonderful Women......

... who help others. Hope you all are having a lovely Sunday. Enjoy your special day.

Getting Stitched Classes at the Farm - Now Open!

I'm really happy to say that I have gotten my act together. I have posted the 5 classes that I will be running this summer over on my website. They are all based on my love of color and textiles and creativity. Here's the schedule:

July 12, 2014 - Mother and Child Beginning Embroidery
July 19, 2014 - Crewel Embroidery
August 2, 2014 - Embroidery on Knits - this is what I am most known for!
August 9, 2014 - Paint Your Own Lampshade
August 16, 2014 - Simple Fabric Printing

As you can see, they are not all knitting related. This is a big gamble on my part because most of my followers and readers are knitters. I am hoping some of you will take this opportunity to learn a new craft that you can use to decorate your home or your wardrobe in new ways.  

Pop on over to my website for further information and to sign up. I'll be highlighting the projects we will be making over the next few weeks here on the blog.

Please help me spread the word by sharing the class listings with your friends. If you have any questions, send them to kristinnicholas AT gmail DOT com. Bring a friend or come by yourself - it is such a fun time and everyone is always friendly.

Old Stuff

Nice post on Kate Davies blog about origins of British socks. It has fantastic photos too. Thanks Kate. I love the history of textiles and knitting. Cannot get enough. 

For all you folks who like old things and are up for an adventure, the first Brimfield Antique Show begins May 13 and runs through May 18. In particular - I like J&J which is Friday and Saturday. Always lots of great textiles. If you aren't familiar with Brimfield, there are several fields and they open different days. If the weather is nice, it is a great time. If it rains, wear rubber boots and be prepared. It is best to go early before it gets too crowded. It is even worth taking a day off of work if you can and going during the week. You can see from this page, the names of the different fields, opening times and days of week they are open. Many of the vendors move fields from day to day as the different fields open. 

If you have any questions for me about attending Brimfield, I will be happy to answer with what I know. Leave them in the comments and I will answer in the comments. I may not know it all but I have been going for several years. I'm lucky because it is only a little over an hour from our farm. There's also lots of information on this page for new show-goers. You do not need to bring a lot of money with you. I've gone with varying amounts and always have a great day. 

From Houghton Library at Harvard University

Here are some amazing old things - a sample book of felt from Harvard University shown above via the blog of Erik Kwakkel who is a medieval book historian. See his interesting blog here. I stumbled upon him via a link from SwissMiss. I was intrigued with a one of a kind 700+ page book Dutch book handwritten with samples on mixing watercolors. You can see the entire book here. It is kept in a museum in France. Wow. So gorgeous.

 

Maybe when I go to Brimfield, I'll be lucky to find something like this? I doubt it but a girl can dream. 

Local Wooly, Yarny, Colorful Friends

My friend Gail Callahan sent a really great newsletter this week about the visual appearance of skeins of hand-dyed yarn. If you are a fan of hand-dyes, you should read it - you will learn something about how the appearance of a skein can trick you into thinking that the yarn will knit differently than it appears. Make sure you read to the end because there is a lovely example of her student's work from a dye class knit in Fair Isle. Here's the link. While you are there, subscribe to the newsletter. Gail sends very nice (mostly) weekly newsletters on Sunday evenings. 

Gail goes by the yarn name of The Kangaroo Dyer. She is also the Author of the best-selling Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece. She is also the developer of the color tool called The Color Grid. Gail is an incredibly talented colorist and is one of the nicest people on the planet. I count myself lucky to have her as a friend.

Gail hosted Julia and I back before the holidays for a fun afternoon of dyeing. I had a bunch of felted wool and old sweaters I needed colored for Christmas projects.  Here are the colors we dyed in her washing machine after the excess water was spun out.

 

Here Julia and I are in Gail's awesome dye studio after dyeing a bunch of wool felt.

Gail also helped Julia dye a couple scarves which she has had fun wearing to school on Tuesdays which is Scarf Day. She has it on in the picture above. Thanks to Gail for a fun afternoon. 

Thank you everyone for the orders for the Craftsy Crewel Yarn and fabrics to accompany the new on-line Crewel Embroidery class. You can check it out here or on the link on my sidebar. My studio is such a mess and now I've added cutting fabric and packing crewel wool. Order is needed and I am going to have to develop a system. I'm in the midst of 3 different projects that I am working to bring out. It is good to be busy but sometimes hard to complete one task. Maybe tomorrow! 

Be Ready to Smile

I can't stop smiling and laughing. Awesome. Thanks Kay.

Evidently this video can not be seen on ipads and phones. Here is the link to the Youtube page where you all with the mobile technology can watch it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DePFiF-nNoE

Have a great week everyone. Make something.

2014 Classes at the Farm - Coming Soon!

So excited to announce that I am working on planning the classes that I will be teaching here at the farm this year. I took 2013 off because I was working on a book that took all my creative and physical energy. I really missed having some of you visit. I love sharing our farmhouse, our farm and my passions with like minded creative people. 

So this year, I'm mixing it up a bit. It isn't going to be all about knitting. I know the classes could fail to fill because most of you follow me for my knitting and crochet expertise. But here is the thing - I am interested in so many facets of design including fabric painting and printing and embroidery. So I'm going out on a limb and hoping some of you might jump the knitting shark and try a new craft under my watchful eye.

The other new thing about the classes is they will be one day. This way I can keep the price down and they will be more fiscally accessible.

So stay tuned - I'm hoping to announce by the end of the week. If you want to be the first to know - make sure you sign up for my NEWSLETTER ON THE UPPER RIGHT SIDEBAR. Like always, they will be small groups because I like to be able to really give of myself during the Getting Stitched Classes at the Farm. Stay tuned.

p.s. If I get my act together and this happens, one of these classes could be a nice Mother's Day present. Hint, hint!

Derby at the Farm

This weekend, Julia, The Farmer and I headed down to northern CT to pick up a new ram. I made Julia go so she would see we aren't the only people in the world raising sheep - she is 15 now and not very interested in what her parents are interested in. She still can't figure out why she has to live on a sheep farm and doesn't live in the suburbs. I won't go on much about this but she is like a lot of farm kids - she can't wait to move away. Some kids love living on a farm and some kids don't. Unfortunately, I have one of those who wants to leave the mud and the dirt and live with asphalt and shopping malls. To each his own. 

Back to Derby at the Farm...... Our sheep farming operation's main purpose is to raise lambs to grow into meat for our farmer's market lamb business. There are other reasons we grow sheep but I will not go into them here now. Every farm needs a crop and here, our lambs are our crop. Over the years The Farmer has developed his own cross-bred homegrown breed of sheep. He is always trying to better the farm and the flock and hope it turns a profit. This is not a hobby farm so animals have to pay their way or they go away. I know most of you don't want to hear that - as I never could understand when I was fresh from the NJ suburbs. That is the way it is here and on most working farms. We do not have deep pockets - in fact, at this point they are incredibly shallow.

The Farmer is constantly researching sheep and methods to raising them. He is what I call a Sheep Geek (I just coined that - I think I like it!). The easiest way to change the breeding direction and body type of a flock of sheep is to introduce new genetics to the flock. Change the boys and you can have a new body and wool type in a year with resulting babies. It then takes another year or more to see how the babies do on our particular land and how they re-produce. It is all science and biology. Most people like to think about the bucolic parts of raising sheep - fluffy white grazing animals, heads down to the ground - but in the end it is science.

Sheep grazing last year - our grass is not this long yet

We have experimented with many different breeds over the years - beginning with Romneys (when we were primarily interested in the wool).... (These are our very first sheep and our dog Haida who was a Sheltie cross) in front of a big maple tree at the farm in Bernardston. It is amazing to think that from these animals, all the rest have come. Multiplication for sure.)

 

We've had other ram breeds -  Rambouillet, Border Leicesters..... 

(This one came from New Hampshire via Rhode Island) [Border Leicesters have beautiful open heads and long wool. They are used in the UK a lot to produce cross-bred ewes for breeding flocks]

Our Border Leicester Ram

Cheviot...... 

(This handsome ram came from Launie York's farm in Shelburne) [Cheviots are rather jumpy and are very tough sheep - the lambs thrive when they hit the ground. They are very quick too so if we don't catch a lamb on the first day, we might as well forget tailing them because they are un-catchable. Love the perky upright ears. Their carcass is rather small and they put on fat quicker than other breeds.]

The Cheviot Ram this winter

.....Dorset, Polypay, Dorper/Texel, and more which I really can't remember. The rule of thumb is you need one ram per 50 sheep although depending on the age of the ram, this can differ. Older boys sometimes can have trouble mounting and younger boys may not be quite fertile enough, nor be able to fight off the competition of the larger boys. Basically, it is National Geographic in real time around here - you know - sheep sex, gestation, life and death - that is what a farm is. 

A couple years ago, we bought a Polypay ram - he came from the University of Wisconsin. We met him on the side of Rt. 91 as he had hitched a ride from an Ohio Sheep Sale with another farmer from New England. Here he is heading out on his first day with the girls in 2011. He has sired some very nice ewes who are in their first year of breeding now. He isn't the most handsome fellow - he is getting on in years. His genetics have increased lambing % and the size of our sheep. He is docile and easy to be around and his wool is quite fine. Rams can get nasty and be dangerous. If they do - they do not stay around here - we get rid of them very quickly.

The Polypay Ram the day he arrived in August 2011

 On Sunday we went to a farm owned by Rachael Gateley in CT. Rachael is a vet and a long time sheep breeder - and only in her mid-20's. Her sheep are her passion - as with many sheep breeders. The Farmer found out about Rachael when he began looking for a Texel ram. Because we are now mainly selling lamb meat, we need bigger animals with a larger, meatier carcass. Enter the Texel. They were developed in Holland and are now being used worldwide as "terminal sires." That means that all the lambs that the Texel ram sires will be used for meat, not for breeding stock. So that is what we were after.

I love meating (oops) sheep people - they are always interesting and smart and really into their animals and farming. Rachael has been raising sheep since she was young and even her mom, who we met, raised sheep as a child. Long time farm farmily. 

Here is what we found - a pen full of beautiful two to four month old ram lambs. Can you see those muscles? Wow - what gorgeous lambs.

The Farmer had to choose one - he chose #5 who was named Derby. How did he choose? Besides the breed which he had already chosen, he looked at the head size. Derby had a slim head (some of the Texels have very large wide heads) and he thinks that will make for easier birthing for our mamas. 

"Hurry up - put that camera down."

We popped Derby into a large dog crate and headed back to the farm. He rode good - it was only a little over an hour. The Farmer got him out of the crate and carried him to the greenhouse. Here he is getting to know his new friends. Smelling is as important to sheep as it is to dogs!

Derby is 2 months old. The lambs that are around him are less than a month and different breeds. 

 

So far, so good for Derby. It is always dicey when you pay money for an animal like this - things can happen - they can get beat up and then not be able to breed. Ram lambs are unproven - they might not be fertile (yes, that happened to us a few times). They can get sick and die before even breeding. But we know this going in and just hope for the best. Derby is a looker for sure.

The Kentucky Derby is coming this weekend - will you be celebrating? We are going to a party and I am bringing deviled eggs - recipe here. Tis the time of year. I guess this Derby weekend we have another reason to celebrate - the arrival of our Derby. I'll keep you posted on Derby's growth as he matures. It's always interesting around here.

Big News! Stitch It with Wool - Crewel Embroidery - Kristin's New Class on Craftsy

Popping in today to announce something that I've been up to. Back in March I went to Denver to tape a new class for Craftsy called Stitch It With Wool - Crewel Embroidery. If you are a longtime reader, you know that I enjoy all kinds of needlework and art. Crewel embroidery is one of the first needlework disciplines I learned - back when I was about 10 years old. I have written a couple of books on embroidery. It is a craft I come back to again and again.

This class is an introductory class which teaches you all about Crewel Embroidery - from beginning skills to more advanced. I teach 25 different stitches and share many of my stitched examples. These two pillows were made exclusively for Craftsy. You can make them while you are taking the class and the patterns are included with the course materials. 

Pop on over to Craftsy to check out Stitch It With Wool. I'll be posting about it over the next few weeks. Crewel embroidery is easy to do and very rewarding. If you are a beginner, it is one of those very forgiving techniques - because of the use of the wool thread.

The cost of the class is $29.99 which gives you lifetime access to the class. I'll share more about taking Craftsy classes next week. For a limited time - until next Friday May 2nd, if you sign up for this Craftsy class, you will receive a $15 discount because you read my blog - half price! You must use this link to receive the discount. 

To coordinate with my Craftsy class, I've added some great new Embroidery Supplies to my website - linen fabric squares for stitching, crewel wool embroidery thread, needles for stitching and a beautiful wooden high quality embroidery hoop. Pop on over to check them out. 

Again - here is the discount code for my blog readers to receive half off the class until May 2nd, 2014. 

A Nest, Prolific Hens + an Egg Cookbook + Recipe + Giveaway

Well that is a mouthful for a post title. Packed a lot in there. 

From this photo, you can see where we are on spring - not far along. I looked up the other day when I was on the way to feeding the chickens and saw this nest in the tree near the house. Wow! I ran inside and used my camera to see the nest a little better. I wonder what kind of nest it is? Does anyone know? The very cool thing is it is made with bits of plastic netting from the hay bales and the inside is stuffed with sheep's wool. With the magic of Photoshop - here's what it is made of.....

I will have to keep looking for it in case it falls down one day. I wonder if anyone hatched in there? Amazing bit of the natural world using found objects! 

 

My hens are really producing. I'm getting between 5 to 8 eggs a day. Here is their output for the past 3 days. All clean and ready to box up and keep in the refrigerator. 

 

Because I don't sell my eggs, I'm trying to use them in many meals around here. Today for lunch I made myself Greek-Lemon Chicken Soup. The folks at Storey Publishing sent me a cookbook called The Fresh Egg Cookbook. What a great book this is - full of recipes for egg dishes and also full of stories about raising chickens. The author Jennifer Trainer Thompson is a Mom of two kids and in this cookbook she chronicles their adventures with chickens. This book is awesome for anyone raising chickens or even thinking about it.

 

Here's the recipe which I tweaked a bit and had for lunch. It is bright and light and just what is needed after the long winter. I added a few spears of asparagus because tis the season and the flavors blended nicely.

Greek Lemon-Chicken Soup

6 cups chicken broth
1/3 cup Arborio rice
1 carrot - shredded on a box grater
1 celery stalk diced small
1 small onion, chopped small
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 diced cooked chicken
6 stalks of asparagus cut on the diagonal into 1/2" pieces
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup lemon juice

1. In a soup pot, combine the broth, rice, shredded carrot, celery, onion and thyme. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the rice is almost cooked - about 20 minutes.

2. Beat the eggs, egg yolks, and lemon juice in a small bowl. Ladle 2 cups of the soup broth into a 1 quart pyrex measuring cup. Slowly whisk in the egg mixture. Pour the broth and eggs back in to the pot. Add the chicken and the asparagus. Simmer and stir until the rice is fully cooked and the chicken and asparagus are done to your liking - 5 to 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and garnish with a lemon slice.

Here's the good news - Storey Books is going to give one of my readers a copy of Jennifer's "The Fresh Egg Cookbook." Here's how you enter.....

Tell me your favorite recipe that uses eggs.
Contest ends Monday April 28th.
As always, leave an easy way to get a hold of you.  US addresses only please.

Have an egg-cellent day everyone. (Couldn't resist!)