Lessons from the Dyepot and the Pasture

The subtitle of this blog is On the Farm and At the Loom. So here is some of each—well as I look through the photos I selected a few days ago I realize that they aren’t “at the loom” but related to that part of the business.

These are some of the latest batch of buttons that I made. Shoppers usually like to dump out the basket of buttons and sort them, choosing as they go, but we have no shoppers in person now. The only way I can think to offer these for sale is to sort them myself and put them on cards. Now they can be posted on the website here and on the Fibershed Marketplace.

I’ve also been dying. I cleaned up my overgrown and wilting dye garden. The yellow is dyed with weld, the blue/green with hollyhock flowers, and the greens are the weld or hollyhock dyed yarn dyed with the opposite (hollyhock yarn dyed with weld and vice-versa).

The next step is labeling the yarn and putting it on the website.

This is yarn that was put in the weld dyepot after the first batch was out. A little toned down.

Now to the barn. This is what happens when I feed the ram lambs. I went in the pen to clean a feeder. Notice what Ginny is waiting for.

I always get help when cleaning the barn.

The two chickens are let out of the chicken house during they day. They always find somewhere to lay their eggs. This seems to be the current favorite spot.

These next photos were from yesterday. This could be its own post but I’m going to continue with this one. In between taking photos I did some Facebook Live recording that is specifically to bring the Cyber Fiber Farm Club to the farm. Then I thought I could include a bit about the pasture in the blog. This is field bindweed, an undesirable weed in most cases, but very pretty here. This is growing on an area that is different than most of the pasture because there is an old cement floor under the dirt in a long strip in this field. I have no idea when there used to be a barn out here but long long ago.

This is the clover that we like to see. We strip graze the pasture. That means that the sheep go into each section for a period of time (2-4 days) and move to the next when we change the electric net fences to allow entrance into another strip. That way each paddock gets at least 30 days of rest to regrow the above-ground and below-ground portion.

Birds-foot trefoil, another desirable pasture plant.

Where we want to close off a strip of the pasture we set up sections of the electric net fence and use these clips to connect from one “hot” wire to another.

A length of net fence set up. The opening is between the white net fence and that wooden post. It’s hard to see but there is a 3-wire electric fence that goes from the wooden post to the wouth (right in the photo). The sheep know it’s there and respect it.

Even though field bindweed is a “weed” sheep like to eat it.

So do goats.

But the clover is even better.

I want to add something to this post. I went to school in Range and Wildland Science at UCD—that was my first degree back in 1977. It was in those years through the early 2000’s that the concept of intensive grazing managment (once called rotational grazing) was developed. One of the leaders in the field was Stan Parsons. That’s who my brother started to work with, eventually buying his business and teaching Ranching for Profit schools all over the country and overseas. Dave was asked to write a tribute to Stan, who died of complications from Covid-19 this week. He wrote a touching and very powerful statement and I want to share that with you. Maybe it means more to me because it’s written by my brother and I know how heartfelt it is. To me it also is sad proof that this pandemic is REAL and it can touch everyone.

Stay safe.