Sheep - BFL

Bluefaced Leicester affectionately known as BFL.

BFL is originally from Northumberland and was primarily raised for meat. However, its fluffy wool is a hand-spinning favorite. Fleeces average between 2.2 –and 6.6 pounds. Rams weight between 200 and 250 pounds with Ewes weight between 150-175 pounds. BFL is often used to add hardiness to other sheep breeds.

This is a long-wool breed with a staple length between 3-6 inches and a micron count of 24-28. It is semi-lustrous and quality fleece will have no kemp or hair fibers.

The sheep is said to have deep blue skin with white wool. I am unsure if this means blue in the same way a Russian Blue cat is actually a grey cat, or if they are really blue, but I plan on checking at sheep and wool, live and in person. I am hoping for blue, blue! The breed does carry a recessive gene for dark wool and can present with soft spotted tones or fully darker wool. It should not ever have clearly defined spots.

This breed has no wool on its head, belly, genitals, and utters. It is considered to be an athletic breed with a bold carriage and Roman nose.

Brewing in my kitchen

Well, it is not actually in the kitchen anymore as my Husband requested it move so he could make dinner, but you get the idea...

And the idea is that I am making beer. This is my first try at all grain brewing. An all wheat beer with Cluster and Czech Sazz hops, Orange peel and Star Anise. The first tasting - right before the yeast was pitched was kind of gingerbread-y, so I am hoping that continues.

This is right after the yeast was pitched. Yes, I hate the tiles!

The next morning the yeast monster has awoken.

The foaming spilling overflow, this is my first time using a blow off hose too. I love it. No worries about cleaning beer off the ceiling. 

I have siphoned this to the secondary now and tasted it again. It lost a little of the gingerbread-i-ness and was weak at 3%apv, so I played. I brew wine and cider and mead too so rules are really guidelines. Sorry Germany. I boiled up two cups of simple syrup with cinnamon sticks, star anise, orange peal, and ginger. when that cooled I strained it and added it to the beer. Which technically, might not exactly be beer anymore, but hopefully will still be tasty.

Sheep - East Friesian

One of the things I have been doing is writing the newsletter for my spinning guild. One segment I am working on is on sheep breeds I thought I would share what I found out with you. So here goes, I love spinning this fiber by the way.

The wool from these sheep is approximately 35-37 micron with a staple length of about 4.5 to 6.5 inches and their fleece ranges from 8.8–11 pounds. Remembering that lower micron counts are finer and that Merino average a 10 micron this is fairly coarse wool.

These sheep have clean faces, legs, and tails. Often referred to as rat-tails they do not need to be clipped for hygiene and are distinctive of the breed. Friesians are not considered a hardy or adaptable sheep, however they do well cross bred and are often bred to increase milk production of lambing in a sheep bloodline. They do not fare well in hot climates, preferring a heathland type of environment. Originally kept as household milk producers they don’t do well in crowded flocks.

East Friesian are considered to be the heaviest milking breed of sheep in the world. They were developed in the same region as the Holstein, the Friesland area of Germany and Holland. The average milk production of the East Friesian can exceed 1,000 lbs. of milk during a 220 to 240-day lactation.

East Friesians are efficient lamb producers. Mature ewes average more than two lambs per lambing. Commonly bred with Lacunae and Awassi breeds, these sheep came to American in the 1990’s but are now fairly common in Wisconsin. Historically these are a white cream sheep but with cross breeding browns and black are becoming common.

Here is the link to the farm blog for these cute sheep.

hi world it's me Julia

I took a bit of a break from blogging. At least from actually sitting down and writing out a post, I written hundreds in my head. What the quiet has taught me is I take more pictures and had something to look back at a remember exactly what I was thinking at the moment rather than what I think I was feeling from the point of view of where I am at now. So I will be fitting in more time to record my thoughts.

Finally finished the hairpin lace throw I made for my Grandpa from yarn I inherited from my Grandmother's Stash. He loves it and has shown it off to all the ladies at the senior center. They are impressed with me and with my Grandma for teaching me.

I washed a lot of wool.

Did a lot of craft fairs selling my work and my Dad's these are his work - bowls, pens, crochet hooks, wine stoppers... He is amazing.

Canned a bunch of stuff - only balanced like that for the photo, I am not completely crazy - these are tomato sauce and grape jelly.

We bought property to vacation on, Grow with and eventually move too. It is on a river flowage. I love the idea of my kids running all over this land, finding nature's hidden joys and secret places. Just being in the woods, calms and brings out the kid in my husband. It has been worth the budgeting and the frustration of the search just to see the stress and care fall from his shoulders as we explored the woods. Even if I didn't love it in it's own right - which I do - I would love it for that alone.

I took up weaving and gave some of the family handwoven placemats for Christmas. I really enjoy doing this.

I started writing a novel. I hide in a local coffee shop read while I eat their yummy breakfasts and write for a while. I have about 70 pages, hand written, so I have only just begun, but it is a bit like a date with myself as I intended to be in high school.

Lots of baking, brewing - beer, wine, and cider, I tried making sausage and cheese and plan to explore that a bit more. I've also worked more on the garden this year. We'll see, I like gardening but more in the planning and harvesting and processes aspects that in the tending it aspect.

Wool on a wednesday...

Yes I know it is Thursday, but this is what I did yesterday.  Mom and I wanted to go up to Spry Whimsy, mostly to see Peter and Ingrid, but also to get some wool and see Peter's latest creations.  He is an amazing felting artist, She is a spinner and being with them is calming and inspiring and energizing all at once. Ingrid was not in the shop yesterday but it was nice to see Peter. Mom and I had been talking about going for awhile, Dad who is still recovering from surgery was not really listening to us.  He arrived at my house thinking we were spending the day planning for our businesses and the kids 4H projects and maybe running to the Woodcraft store. He did think it was a little weird I want them here at 8! Spry Whimsy is a bit more than an hour away and I had to be back in time to pick kids up from school. Boy was Daddy surprised!

 I bought this wool (above two photos) to be plied against the the skein below.  Once I got it home I am not so sure, but it sure is lovely. Merino and silk blend. I am going to spin it up really fine and them make a decision.

 I want to play with the color wheel so I got these, that is three ounces of each.

More color play but this time a continuous blending experiment like in the current issue of Spin Off magazine.

We have a lovely day and Dad even got to go to Woodcraft but after we got the kids. They were given popcorn and sat quietly and quite contently munching while we shopped.  Mom helped my make dinner and Daddy took a nap in my chair with granddaughters giving him pillows and blankets and stuffies to cuddle. Then they made off with his hat and coat and played pretend to be Grandpa.

Hope you are having a wool... wonderful... week!~ Julia

Come have lunch with me

In the interest of feeling better, losing a bit of weight, and generally eating better I have decided the make lunch a bit more important of a meal.  I normally grab something, either from my own kitchen or out while doing errands - though I must admit I sometimes invent errands to do the two Chicago style dogs for $3 special down the street...shh!  I am then hungry and crabby later. I have been seeing these yummy looking recipes over at Farmish Momma and I wanted to try them, but thinking about the hard time my children would give me kept me hesitating. While at the grocery store this week I thought, I could just make some for me... Brilliant! So lunch is on! 

This is the yellow split pea soup she posted in her real food/real budgets series. I made a few changes, my husband was eating too and doesn't like blended soups so I skipped that step, I think it may have been necessary.  I cooked this much longer than she says, and the peas have a disagreeable - to me - texture that likely gets fixed by the blending.  It tastes amazing though, next time I will just cook it longer. I did not have any bacon grease handy so I fried up two slices and added them to the bowl of soup at the time of serving. I also added red pepper flakes because I add that to everything. 

 On the topic of bacon... I made these for Valentine's day.  Pretty but I prefer my bacon non-floral. No one in the family complained however!

For some crafting bits, I switched to cloth pads for that time of the month.  I bought some Glad rags brand and wowsa was that expensive, but rather than have something plastic-y paper-y rubbing against me all that week I have flannel. Much, much better. I did cloth diapers for my kids and thought about this a lot then. I have only had issue with them moving a bit during wear no leaks. So I am trying to make a few that are similar to what I bought but slightly differently shaped, hopefully these changes are comfy. I made a few before and they worked just as well as those I bought.  These are extra pieces of flannel from various kid projects and cotton batting leftover from quilts.  I have discovered a love hate relationship with grommet snaps, I love them when I line everything up, hate them when that is not happening. You might notice that the horse pad has two snaps set into one flap, that is not a design feature!

hope your plans are going according to plan! ~ Julia

Selling, new blog, surprise.

After a long time of talking about, dreaming about, and thinking about selling my crafts, I have decided to go for it.  I set up an Etsy site and am doing all the necessary forms and such to be all ready to sell.  I am planning on participating in a local farmer's market's craft weekends. It is once a month along with the market so I thought it was a gentle way to dive into craft fair selling and hope it will be a good fit for my family. To show what I am doing I created a new blog for the Business (that sounds so big!) it is MoonBound ArtisanShip

***

Sometimes ideas run away with me.  I decided that while my husband was off on a business trip I would empty, clean, carpet shampoo, and paint our bedroom - as a surprise! So I had a week to get everything done, this was the only room we did not paint when we bought the house, typically taking care of ourselves last thinking there.  I got my Mother and friend and co-conspirator R over to help. Mom watched the kids, folded mountains of laundry and also did some canning while R and I attacked the bedroom.  I did not clean it before my husband left - no surprise there - so we just grabbed stuff and threw it about the house. Like many people I know our bedroom had become a place where I would hide stuff I did not want to deal with while cleaning other rooms! Hopefully, I am done with that.
R got her Husband to come over after work and help move the furniture either out or to the center of the room.  We all had a nice dinner together and I discovered exactly how bad of a job my vacuum had been doing! The pictures about are us (R is working the camera and we are both laughing manically) at about 1am mixing the greenish paint I bought for this when we bought the house 5 years ago and all the leftover whites and creams we could find.  I did not want to spend more than $30 on the whole project to be an extra super part of the surprise, unfortunately I misremembered the name of the paint color when I went to get a second gallon and the color they gave me was bright deep teal. Not a good surprise. So sticking to the budget (which was wasted on buying that awful color) we mixed something up.
We got the room done and put back together and I managed to clean the house within an inch of it's or maybe my life before my hubby got home. Surprise accomplished. Surprise out of hand - Oh Yeah!

Hairpin Lace afghan I am making for my Grandpa out of yarn I received from my Grandma's stash. I have five done and think I will need thirteen or so.

I am still knitting, crocheting, spinning, and sewing up a storm here, but have found out that on days I do a lot of listings or book work type stuff the crafts come a bit harder. So I am trying to get all the necessary paper stuff out of the way before lunch and then playing after.

The kids need more time outside and I am longing for spring.

Chasing my dreams and hoping you chase yours ~ Julia