I'm Back!!!!

I thought I lost my blog! I am finally able to access it after jumping through lots of hoops. So here I am. Where is that?

Alaska!

I moved here to live with my sisters family.

Sadly we had to sell off a lot of the animals. I shipped 6 of my rabbits.

Sent my books media mail, and other favored possessions in flat rate mailers. I became a master packer. Some bulky items got squeezed into mine and my moms suitcases. Yes, that's right, I took my mommy too. But I had to return her a week later :(

I love it here. Everyone keeps telling me "Wait till winter....". I'm not scared. I'm an expert bundler *smile*. When I woke up this morning it was 14 degrees outside. I pulled on my jacket, gloves, Mucks and crunched across the snow to give warm water to the rabbits and geese. Thats right, SNOW. The night before we got our first snow for the season. Snow! I was soooo excited! Growing up in California, I always felt cheated that we didn't get snow. I'll get plenty of that now.

I got here the end of June, so have had time to adjust to the climate. They have a drizzly summer. I love drizzly weather, fog, mountains, ocean air and the smell of rivers. Thats sort of Alaska all summed up, but its so much more. Someone needs to make a perfume and call it "ALASKA".

I was actually not feeling well when I got here. I had not been well for a while before I left, because I had several teeth start to fail, but was really busy with getting everything taken care of that I put it off till it was to close to moving. Well, between that and my great fear of dentists or even the word "dentist". So flying on a plane didn't help either. Once I finally got my ducks in order to get my teeth taken care of my mom decided to come back up. She loves it here too. But it worked out great, because she was able to take care of me while I recovered. I had my 3 remaining wisdom teeth, and 2 evil molars removed. I was sedated for it. They also did a root canal while I was out. Graves Disease has NOT been nice to my teeth. My mom took such good care of me, she even made me egg drop soup when I was sick of canned soups, and protein drinks. She also helped me install a electric fence on the new fenced in area for the rabbits and geese. We don't want them getting eaten my bears!

I had to built boxes for my rabbits hutches, so they would have a warm place to get out of the weather. That was quite a project. My niece loved helping. She loves helping me with EVERYTHING. She even asks to wash out the rabbits poop pans when I'm cleaning cages. She's a sweet little thing, and I'm glad she has taken a liking to the rabbits. I also built a hut for the geese. My niece also helped me with that. Then we painted them. If the weather dries back up, we will give them a second coating. Kinda got our painting done late. And did you know that the thought of using a roller paint brush is really exciting to a 10 year old? Well the weather just has to dry back up, so she will get to try it out. She can roll her little heart out.

Living in the same state, same town, same house my entire life I sure had quite a change moving here. It took a while for things to feel like home. Especially since I didn't know where anything was. Whether it be in the house or going places. But I have adjusted. I've been allowed to decorate my space in my taste (say that 10 times fast).

I got a couple pictures, but haven't decided on where to hang them yet. I brought my spinning wheel and fiber art stuff. I now have space to keep it out in the open.

I plan to do lots of spinning this winter and teach my niece to spin, crochet and we are going to learn to weave together. Who knows, maybe my little nephew will be interested in learning also.

The end of summer we climbed down the hillside and gathered fireweed blossoms for making jelly.

The kids had a lot of fun. My niece and I made the jelly and it turned out delicious. It has a floral, spicy, fruity flavor, and is a beautiful dark pink.

The snow has melted a bit, but I heard on the radio that we should get more on Sunday. I hope we get a good bit, because I want to play in it with the kids. I told them I want to sled down the driveway, and make snow angels, and make snow men with glow sticks in their eyes hehehe. They might think I'm a little off, but hey I finally got snow. I love it!

Kimberly

Generation Rescue

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving Day with lots of tryptophan and pie! Here is my long awaited turkey post to go with turkey day.

A while back my mom was contacted by someone that wanted to buy one of her extra Midget White turkey toms. They had several females and a male, but the male had just been attacked by a fox. They needed to replace him. When the woman came out to buy the tom she told my mom that her and her husband have an animal sanctuary, and gave her a postcard sized card with their info and Facebook address. She told my mom about all the animals that they have, and that they hold parties, farm visits and such to earn the money to care for the animals. They are a no kill farm. I had walked up before she left and we (all 3) talked a little bit before she left. She seemed very nice. She told me she gets calls on a daily basis now asking her to take animals, and she tells them they are full, because they have around 70 animals and are going through $1200 a month in hay! My mom asked what they do with the baby goats and such, and she said they keep them. My mom told me later that the woman did tell her that they hatch out chicks from chickens, turkeys, etc. and they sell them. I assume she uses another term for this like adopt or re-home.

This is the new form of farming. People want to have a farm, but they can't bring themselves to eat the animals that they raise. They can't afford to feed the animals they own/ raise, because they aren't eating them. So they find ways to get other people to pay for the animals they own/ raise. This is where they start using the word rescue. So they call their farm a sanctuary and become a non-profit. They buy animals, and then say they rescued them. 

I am contacted on a regular basis in response to animals for sale by people saying that they want to rescue them or adopt them, because for some reason our society has turned it into this bad thing to say you bought an animal. If you say you bought an animal, you are saying you bought a life, and lives shouldn't be owned. Well that's the mindset of the majority of people anymore. They have humanized animals, but it only applies to the animals that they want it to. These type of people aren't vegan or even vegetarians. They just want the cute goats, rabbits, and chickens they see to not get eaten, because they are far to cute to eat. They try to say how intelligent the animals are "Goats are as smart as dogs and can be trained to walk on a leash and do tricks.". Well so can a cow! But you don't hear much about cows or pigs. They are meat makers. People don't want to see or hear about them.

These people just want to pick up the styrofoam -shrink wrapped containers of meat at the store and not think about where if came from. Did you know that some people actually think that meat comes from the grocery store? I mean, I belong to a meat rabbit group, and people that have mentioned that they raise rabbits for food have actually been told "Why don't you just buy your meat from the grocery store where it comes from?". How can people think that meat is made at the grocery store? How can they go through life eating meat and not know where it comes from? They are so disconnected.

I believe this is a large reason why so much food is wasted. If your eating a meal that you prepare yourself, from vegetables that you grew. That you watered, that you callused and stained your hands weeding, that you got sunburned and fatigued from the sun while tending. If you saw that animal enter the world, helped it latch onto its mom for the first time, care for it if if got sick, fed it, and then butchered it when it was of age. Would you look at those leftovers on your plate and scrap it into the trash or put it in the fridge? They don't know what it takes to make that food that's on their plate, and they don't want to. They like living in denial.

Getting back to the rescue people. I checked out the Facebook page of this "animal sanctuary" that bought the turkey, and guess what? You guessed it. They posted a picture of their new turkey tom they "rescued". Then they threw in a comment along the lines of his feathers were in bad condition because he was getting picked on by the other toms, and that he had mites that they treated. Now they write these sort of things so that they will get peoples sympathy. This makes it sound as though they rescued a poor beaten down, bug infested turkey. And they succeeded in getting peoples attention with this. The truth is, his feathers were frayed from the toms fighting. That's what they do anytime there are more than one male turkey (same with most animals). If it had been anything like broken bleeding tail feathers or an injury he would have been separated, and she wouldn't have been selling him. And mites? He might have had some lice. They are free ranging birds, and when you let your birds free range they do get lice off and on. My mom deals with this by putting out diatomaceous earth for them to dust in, when we aren't having rain. She had just butchered one of the extra toms, and she didn't see any bugs on him, but the tom the lady bought very well could have had some.

It wasn't that there was really anything wrong with the animal that was purchased. She was just trying to use it to get peoples sympathy, so they will continue donating money and feed to them. What really cracked me up is the fact that these farm day parties they hold where they charge for people to visit their no kill animal sanctuary, they serve hot dogs! Do they not know that those are made of drop calves!? So eat some day old baby cows while you visit with the farm animals....

Don't get me wrong. I think educational farms are great, but all these "animal sanctuaries" popping up are misleading people and screwing up the minds of the children that visit them. Educational farms actually teach kids where their food comes from, to respect animals, and treat them with kindness, but that they are food. If you give your hard earned dollars to an animal sanctuary your just supporting someone buying / feeding more pets. If you give your money to an educational farm your helping to educate our future about where our food comes from, and possibly bud some future farmers.

 I actually wrote this post a long time ago, but never got around to hammering it out on the computer. After writing it, I found this blog post that really hits the nail on the head.  http://www.bedlamfarm.com/2016/04/18/another-farm-under-siege-animal-rights-and-the-war-against-the-farmers/

Kimberly

December

I never got around to taking pictures of all the baby goats that were born this Fall. Then when they were about 3 weeks - a month old I walked out the door and saw something black out in the back of the neighbors pasture. I walked across the road and all the way out to the back field to discover vultures eating one of the baby goats. My favorite one. He was sooooo sweet and easy going. He would often sleep out in the field while the other goats would come up for hay or water, and I would walk out and bring him up. He would look at me like "What? I had a nice, cozy, warm spot here in the grass." I couldn't tell anything from his body what had happened. The head had been eaten and the neck was gone, but the body hadn't been touched. I would have thought that a coyote or fox would have gotten him from the back end leaving teeth marks, and would have eaten him. I talked to my mom about the vultures. Could they have killed him? She said they only eat dead animals. Well what are they supposed to eat when nothing dies? They still have to eat. We were thinking that maybe there had been something wrong with him and we just took him for a really relaxed goat. Maybe he just died out in the field and the vultures were cleaning him up. 

I think it was two days later that I looked out at the goats in the morning when I took the dogs out and I could see Daisy's twins nursing on her. I went in and took a shower. Then my mom told me she could only see 3 baby goats across the road. There should be 5! Again I walked out to the back of the field to find vultures eating Daisy's daughter. I had just seen her earlier. One of the other goat kids was missing. I went home and got my mom. We walked all over till we found a leg from the missing goat kid. That's all we found from it. We looked over Daisy's dead daughter. There were marks on the neck leading us to believe that a coyote got her. But if so, why did it leave her body?

So down to three goat kids, we penned all the goats up in the front pasture. They are right by the neighbors house. We haven't lost any since. What ever it was Daisy's son barely escaped it. He was looking rather sad after his sister was killed, so I caught him and looked him over. His thick fur was hiding scabs down his back. When I was working on the fence to lock them in the front, I talked to the guy that raises livestock on the neighbors property next door. He said they had been loosing animals. He thought it was a coyote, but hadn't seen it. His dad actually waited out there at night to try and get it, but never saw anything.  He said it even took a 2 month old goat kid or lamb I can't remember which. 

While writing this post I decided to do a quick google search for "vultures kill baby goat". As it turns out, vultures DO kill baby goats and lambs and whatever small "smallish" animals they can find when there aren't dead animals laying around for them to eat. My mom had let the goats loose a few days ago in the middle of the day, during what we figure is the safest time to do a little grazing. She said that as soon as the goats got out to the back pasture a swarm of crows flew up and acted like they were attacking our goats. Apparently crows will kill baby goats too according to what I read online. So what are we supposed to do? Put a net over the whole field... They have Snooki the cow over there with them and she has always done a super job of keeping them safe up until this point. She had stopped grazing with them, laying around lazy since the grass was dying back. During the Summer my mom had seen someones dog get out there with the goats and Snooki took off after that dog till it escaped to its owner on the safe side of the fence. I guess she was going to stomp it. Hopefully that was a lesson learned by the owner of the dog!

The last 2 litters of bunnies that were born reached 4 weeks old. They were sooo cute. They made a little tunnel between their pens (they were in neighboring pens). They would run back and forth playing and climbing on each others mothers and aunty. Then the stupid rats came back and got 2 bunnies in their hole. It was too small for their mothers to get into, so I think that's how the rats were able to get the babies without being attacked by the mothers. It of course had to kill our only chocolate bunny. So all the holes are closed off now. We have since had several litters of kits born. 5 live litters actually. That are doing quite well. One of my does I was waiting to have her first litter and I was soooo excited waiting in anticipation for how many she would have. She is my biggest doe. The day came and she had one great big kit. I was out there when she had it. Unfortunately it was dead. 4-5 days later I went out to check everyone in the morning and there laying in the front of her pen was a giant, kinda-furry, chewed up dead kit. She's doing perfectly fine. I don't know how that came out of her. She needs to be rebred. Hopefully things will go better for her the next time around, and she will have a normal size litter. Another doe I named Sparrow had 9 kits! She is one of the smallest does. I couldn't believe it when I started counting her babies and I kept pulling more and more babies out of the nest as I counted. She is an excellent mother, but just didn't have enough milk for all those kits. So it was Dottie to the rescue! Sweet Dottie. It was her first time having babies and she had 3 toads (What you've never heard of a rabbit giving birth to toads before?). After the 2 smallest of Sparrows litter started shriveling up I tried catching Dottie to try nursing them on her. She ran into her nest when I tried catching her, so I just gently tossed the kits in underneath her (her nest is in the back of a dog house). All the babies nursed, and when she came out I checked them and they had nice round bellies. There is a major size difference and color difference between her own children and the fosters, but Dottie doesn't care. She's as good as gold.
Our total of kits in the nest right now is 30 from 5 does.

I butchered 5 more rabbits (all bucks).

I had watched a couple video's on Youtube from the Salatins farm demonstrating rabbit butchering, and it was extremely helpful. Saved me a lot of time. I set up a pan of warm water to rinse my hands and knife off in while working, with a couple old towels next to it. Set my knives next to that with the pruners to clip off feet. I did all the butchering, but when I finished each one, I brought it in for my mom to rinse and cut up and bag, since I had a limited amount of daylight. I started at noon and was done at 5 P.M. The last one I did in 30 minutes. After I butchered each rabbit I would dump my pan of water to the avocado tree and refill it with more warm water, before starting on the next. Not only did this help keep my hand clean, but also warm, since the weather was cold. When I came in my mom said "They are so much easier to cut up than chickens!" I said "Yah, and their gut don't stink anything near as bad as poultry!." As far as butchering goes I think we are pretty well sold on rabbits. Now we need to eat them. We have 6 waiting in the freezer, but my dad is freaked out at the thought of eating a cute bunny. He pulls up weeds from around the yard to feed to the rabbits all the time, and lets it be known that they are to cute to eat. But he did come home from work recently with a web address for a rabbit recipe he heard on the radio. He gave me a paper with the address to look it up. He wrote that it was for "blazed rabbit in tears" I went to the website and it was for "braised rabbit with pears" . Oh did my mom and I laugh! So we might have to make him some blazed rabbit in tears!

I think the rabbits were 17 weeks when I butchered them. Most people butcher younger, but the way I see it is the bigger you let them grow, the more meat you are getting from each life. Plus the older they are the nicer the pelts. I didn't weigh them before butchering, but I did after. The smallest rabbit weighed about 2 1/2 lbs. The largest was about 3 1/3 lbs., and all the others were right around 3 lbs. So we were happy with the turn out. I let the rabbits eat as much as they want and found that they have a huge amount of fat on them. Especially compared to the pictures of peoples butchered rabbits I have seen online. Although they also had a lot more meat than the size that a lot of people butcher at. There is something called "rabbit starvation". I learned about this before I ever decided to get the rabbits. Its because rabbits tend to be so lean that, if its a persons only source of protein that they can actually starve to death from lack of fat in their diet. This is why it is good to also have pigs, and cook the rabbit with lard. For this reason I decided to leave as much of the fat as possible on each rabbit this time. I know I said in the last post that I removed the fat from that rabbit (I have heard its a little bitter), but that rabbit had an enormous amount on its back. I have since seen that some people actually render the fat from their rabbits. So I guess it depends on each persons taste.
So hopefully next time I post, I'll actually have a couple good rabbit recipes.

Kimberly

From Bunny To Dinner Table

I'll start out showing the cute adorable bunny pictures.

I couldn't just pick one of those pictures. They are just so adorable!

The little doe above is a keeper I named Bliss. I love her color, this really wasn't a good picture of her, but its all I have. You can see both a orangey color and a blue color on her. Both colors are layered on each hair, It depends on how the light is hitting her on which color you see. She reminds me of a two tone painted car.

Today I finally butchered a rabbit for the first time. I couldn't be happier. It went really well. I used a pellet gun, and the rabbit had an instant death. I was so relieved. Then I had the project of skinning, gutting, washing, and cutting up. It took me quite a long time, but I know I will get faster, and better with practice.  So here is my finished product.

I have been selling as many of the babies as possible to pay for their feed and he was one that didn't sell. I kept putting off butchering him, but I knew I needed to get it done and over with. The weather has turned cooler, so it was just perfect. That was an issue I was worried about, butchering with lots of flies around. He was an adult and the smallest of all the males, so I really didn't think that I would get hardly any meat from him. I was surprised at how much meat he produced. In fact I cut a huge amount of fat off of him. I guess I fed him a tad to much. I have read that rabbit fat is kinda bitter, so I gave it to the cat and dog that were hanging around.

Now I have about 5 more young bucks to do. Anyone want to help?  ; )

I should also mention that in my last post I talked about the comfrey starts I bought, and that none had come up. Well as soon as it started raining (over 3 weeks after planting), they started popping up. So far there are 5 or 6, so that's pretty good. If I had to buy them locally they would have cost $5 a plant. I think it turned out to be a good deal. Since it only takes a tiny piece of root to start a comfrey plant, I decided that I am going to dig up my plant that is in a bad place in my garden and divide up its roots to start a bunch of plants from it come Spring. I think anyways, I still have to look up what is the best time of year to do that. I looked in all our garden books and couldn't find anything. Hopefully I will get a nice big patch of it going. Comfrey is supposed to be a very good high protein bunny feed, and they sure do love it.

Kimberly

Goodbye Summer

More like good riddance. I'm so glad Summer is over (for the most part anyways). I can't stand the heat anymore, it just makes me feel sick. I started out Summer by slicing my hand with a very sharp, dirty pair of hoof shears. It was a bad judgement call when a doeling started kicking her leg. With the little steri-strips the clinic gave me to hold the wound shut, I was kinda useless for a while, as if I used my hand for anything it would pop the strips off. I have been blessed that I hadn't had a wound like that, since a rabbit bite the end of my finger when I was around 3 years old. I did discover that large amounts of Ester-C worked great to keep my hand from hurting.

I wasn't going to have any baby bunnies in the Summer, because of the heat. Then I remembered "Duh, the does have nice cool holes they can kindle in.". So three litters it was. One doe kindled as expected in her hole, doe # 2 decided to use her house (because she was never able to dig a tunnel off of it, because the dirt is too hard in her pen.), and that resulted in a couple lost kits. One kit got lost when it blindly crawled off on a hot day. I think an animal got it. I had to put a second one down that got abscesses. So that left 4 kits in the second litter which were doing great. Then when they were about 3 weeks old my mom stopped putting food in the chickens feeders in the back of our orchard, because of rats. The chickens of course had feeders that she was feeding them with up at the front. Well this I guess caused all the rats to come up to the backyard and they ate the face off of one of the kits, and attacked a second that survived from litter # 2. I am so disgusted with rats and the things I have seen them do to animals over the years. I don't know how anyone can keep them for pets! They will eat your bunnies face off!

There was also litter # 3 by a doe I named Gypsy. I picked that name for her, because she was the one that ran loose at her previous owners place, and would return to feed her children at night. She had a nice hole and at kindling time spread a bunch of hair around her pen. I checked her hole, no babies. She filled in the entrance, they do that, but she was digging a tunnel in the other direction. She had milk, but no babies to be found. So after 2 weeks I had assumed she had a false pregnancy. I put her in with the buck for another go around. I thought it was strange that her milk hadn't dried up. I think it was only a few days later that baby bunnies appeared in her pen! 

Oh no! They were darling, but their mother was just re-bred, so I made sure to bump up her nutrition. I took the kits away a week before she was due and she's done just fine. She has some of the prettiest babies: castor, blue, blue otter, lilac, lilac otter, and lynx.

The garden didn't get planted till REALLY late. I can't remember if it was mid or the end of June when my mom planted it. We moved the garden area up to what was the main chicken area. As soon as the plants got past the shock of transplant they took off. Thanks to all that chicken manure. But unfortunately she had to replant many plants and seeds. The rats and ground squirrels think she planted everything for them. They ate off entire rows of beans as they emerged, and ate all the cabbage plants I started. She had to plant the beans 3 times. I guess third times the charm. We sure enjoyed the Provider beans while they lasted. My dad and I never tire of them. Just cook them with a little bacon and oh they are so good. That used up all our bean seed planting 3 times in one year. I had gotten Boyd Craven JR.'s books Backyard Meat Rabbits, and Beyond The Pellet: Feeding Rabbits Naturally for my birthday. He wrote about a heirloom seed company called Everwilde that sells none GMO seed, and have really good pricing. So I checked them out. They carried Provider seeds. Yay! And extremely cheap. I was concerned about the possibility of them selling seeds with chemical treatments on them, like I have received from some other places in the past. So I contacted them to ask. They responded that they only carried a few different types of seeds that come with the treatment on them, with a list of which seeds it was. Luckily it wasn't anything I wanted to order. So I placed my order and when my package arrived I couldn't have been happier. All their seeds are sealed in gold colored plastic packages that can be resealed with a ziplock type closure. I read that someone after getting dirty planting, put their pants in the wash forgetting they had put a packet of seeds in their pocket, and when they pulled them out of the washer the seeds were unharmed. I think that's a pretty good seed pack. Especially when its at no extra cost. Plus the seeds are supposed to last a lot longer in these packets vs. being stored in paper packets. We shall see.

I already have some comfrey growing in my garden, but it doesn't do a whole lot, because of where its planted. I want to grow a plot of it, so I can feed it to the rabbits. I have seen an advertisement running for years for comfrey root cuttings, so I used some of the money from bunny sales to place an order. I actually didn't even know if it was the time of the year to start their roots, and for once in my life I didn't feel like looking it up. I figured it wasn't the right time, I wouldn't be receiving them for a while. Not even two weeks after mailing in the order my little bundle of root snippets arrived. I followed the instructions they came with, and planted them in 4" pots, because I wanted to be able to keep a close eye on them, till they become a good size plant to put in the ground. The instructions said that they will start to emerge in about 2 weeks. Its been 3 1/2 weeks and I haven't seen anything yet. I'm not giving up. If they don't do anything I'll order some from someone off e-bay. There are a lot on there and they are better deals. 

The first day of June my mom and I had to drag all our stinky bucks home from our neighbors pasture. They had begun to come into rut and the does were coming into heat, including 2 month old doelings. What is wrong with these animals? Don't they know what time of year it is?! Their breeding cycle obviously doesn't have anything to do with day length. Just like they still don't know how pigeons know how to fly home. So over the past week our goats have been delivering kids. It started with a 7 month old doeling turning up with her own little doeling she delivered all by herself. Then my moms 8 month old doeling delivered a great big white buckling again unassisted. A 7 month old doeling had a set of twin girls. She had them after dark, so I helped dry them. They were fine the next morning when I checked them, but something happened later in the day. The mother took one a long way out into the field and it was laying their injured. I brought her home but she died. We think she got stepped on, and was bleeding internally. The mother wouldn't stay with the other kid. She was HUNGRY after getting 2 kids out of her, and just not mature enough. We brought the surviving kid home. She could have cared less. That changed the next morning when she woke up with a swollen udder. We brought her home,set her up in a dog pen, and gave her daughter back which she gladly accepted. Our mature doe Daisy had great big white twins, again unassisted. 1 doeling with LaMancha ears, and a buckling with big floppy ears and a big Boer head. That completed our out of season - kidding season. Or so I thought..... Since writing that earlier I went to check our goats for the evening to discover our doe Violet in labor! We didn't even know she was pregnant. She had a great big chocolate colored doeling. So who knows if the goats are done kidding, and to think this is going to start all over in March.

Kimberly

November 2014

Last month we bought a stack of Sudan hay before it started raining. We soon found out the problem with buying hay right before it rains is that you have a hard time getting a hay retriever to deliver, because all the farmers need their hay moved into their barns, and their's not enough retrievers to go around. Finally the guy we always use called us back in the morning, and said he could move our hay. Once he dropped our hay, the un-stacking began. An 80 bale stack of hay is way too tall  for me to get bales down off the top, and also too tall to tarp.

 My parents, "The hay moving team".

 All re-stacked on pallets, and ready for my Mom and I to tarp.

We started using this trailer for keeping some of the hay on, as it keeps the hay exceptionally dry being raised so far from the ground.

I got this multi-colored Romney wool at a fiber show recently. I dusted off the spinning wheel and got to work. It has been so long, since I have spun, that I thought I would be a spinning disaster, but I guess its just like riding a bike.

 It carded up beautifully, and was easy to spin.

I then Navajo 3-plied it, so that I could keep the colors separate, and changing throughout the yarn. I love randomness.

 I got 4 and 1/3 skeins of yarn out of the 11 oz. of wool.

I then began spinning some white alpaca.

Here is some after I plied it.

My Mom brought in a butterfly that was dying from the change in weather. I gave it a little sugar water, and used it for a photo shoot of the new cowl I crocheted out of some the the alpaca. Unfortunately there is no saving butterflies, but it sure made a pretty prop.

I already crochet, but have decided to torture myself and learn how to knit. I tried in the past but didn't give it my all, and never got past knit and purl. Well now I think its because it turns out knitting Continental suits me better, but man is knitting complicated. I guess it exercises the brain ; )

So I put a wanted ad on Freecycle for a set of knitting needles, since I will need different sizes for different yarns and patterns. Within 24 hours I had a response to come and pick up a bunch of knitting needles. BTW if you have never heard of Freecycle, I would suggest you check Yahoo Groups for one in your area. You never know what you might find, and it's great for getting rid of things you don't want anymore.

Aren't they beautiful in my Grandmothers vase!

I pulled out a tin of yarn my Mom had spun probably over 20 years ago. It had gotten moths on it at some point, but I wrapped it all into skeins and washed it, salvaging what I could.

My room looks like it has been yarn bombed.

This is wool that I spun. But seriously, yarn bombed!

I went on a search through our storage shed looking for our tote of fiber, and was extra surprised when I found it.

 There is a lot of fiber in it that I forgot were I placed it.

 Like this Romney.

 And this grab bag.

 And all mohair from my goats that I dyed with Kool-Aid and food coloring. Plus there was a lot more than I remember dying. 

 And some had already been carded.

 And some had already been spun!

Now that is a crazy color. I don't know what I should make with it, but I do know this. I have enough fiber to keep me spinning for a looooong time.

For anyone that is wanting to get started spinning, this is a really good book that explains all the different techniques.

An update on the berry bushes.

It really is amazing what the goats have done to that monstrosity.

They have eaten and stomped probably 15-20 feet of the perimeter of the bush.

 See that hole up at the top. The goats are climbing all the way up there now.

I think this goat is saying "Berry bush, shmerry bush!"  As she just walked down from the top right hand corner in the picture. 

I'm wondering what it will look like in the Spring.

I think that's all for now.

Kimberly