Thistle Cove Farm
First Month in a New Year 06
03:43, 2006-Jan-31
.. Link
Thanks
to Leslie of Greenberry House for telling me about Homestead Blogger.
I've spent much enjoyable time wandering around the site and look
forward to meeting and making new friends. Leslie is a fiber friend at
www.greenberryhouse.com and has a homestead blog at
www.homesteadblogger.com/greenberryhouse. I live in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest VA just a few hours south of where my family settled in, what is now, West Virginia more than 250 years ago. The Hamrick and Bennett lines began in the peat and coal fields of Ireland and Wales and stopped at the coal fields of southern Appalachia. My female kin have always been spinners, weavers and knitters while the men eked out a hardscrabble living on homestead farms. There was always a milk cow or two, hogs, chickens, sheep and, when times were fat, a few horses. Gardens and orchards gave forth vegetables and fruit; honey bees yielded honey and the mountains and rivers were full of game and fish.
I'm not a homesteader in the true sense...one who settles public land but am one in the spiritual sense. At a young age I was taught how to garden, fish, can, freeze and dry food but never to hunt. Hunting was a man's language and a man's province and for that, I'm thankful. I like being in the woods just fine when I've a camera in my hand but, although I eat meat, I dislike having to kill it myself. The first few years we lived here at Thistle Cove Farm - www.thistlecovefarm.com - I did my part at hog killings but find my time is better spent doing other things. There's a delightful farmer in our county who sells pork products from his hog killing and I'm just as happy to buy from him. The meat still tastes as great as when I did it with mine own two hands.
I breed and raise rare American Curly horses - www.curlyhorses.org/ - and Shetland, Romney, Merino and crossbred sheep. The fiber from both horses and sheep is blended and then spun so it can be hand knitted or hand woven into wearable garments. Most of my horses are pinto and gaited and all of them, thus far, have proven to be hypoallergenic and folks with allergies have found them to be the horse of their dreams. What's not to like? The horses are hypoallergenic, gentle, calm and, willingly, bend their wills to yours as long as they are treated with respect and kindness. Just like humans want and like, eh? Treat others as you would like to be treated...
Today is cold, snowy and blustery. I keep saying I'm going to look into having a wind mill placed on the farm. I truly believe we could have our electric meter running backwards as the wind almost never *stops* blowing here. There are times I've know *exactly* how the Plains women felt. Some of them have written they thought they would go completely mad because the wind blew constantly and the sound was full of fury just as the wind was full of dust.
I must go and box up some fleeces. Leslie and her cousin are coming tomorrow to pick up fleeces and to share lunch. I've also got to box up fleeces to mail to a client across country. Then there's the yarn to wind and prepare for mailing. I need to sit out round bales of hay for the two stallions and really wanted to wait until the weather calmed down. I hate sitting on the tractor and setting out hay in the cold windy snow. The hay lot is on a smallish hill and my tractor skills are slow, very slow, and it's cold, very cold, on that tractor seat. It gets dark around 6 or a little after so I've still got a little while; best get to it and burn daylight rather than dark.
May the worst of 2006 be from the best of 2005; Happy New Year one and all.
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