Life With Interstitial Cystitis

           This is such a personal and for me, intimate topic. It speaks of a very private battle of chronic pain and physical limitation that I abhor admitting to. I have spent years planning my life around it's predictable nature, trying to outsmart the effects it had on my life. I have been silent in the presence of others and participated in activities I knew would exacerbate my symptoms because I simply didn't want to discuss my symptoms or complicate other's meal or activity plans. Eating at restaurants always seems to come with a painful price tag and physical exertion often left me sweating from the sheer pain it caused.

Maid-N-Meadows: Fall 2020 Update

             Fall is on the slippery slope toward winter and we are just barely hanging on! There is so much to do and yet so little time before the cold creeps in. Plus, this year, we are going to function a little different than normal and milk through the winter. That means chores on top of preparations! But lots of fun stuff to be excited about and excited we are!

Notice the corn in the background drying in "shocks". Local Amish farmers will feed their animals with this corn, over the winter.

Managing CL In Goats

       

 Talking about CL in your own goat herd is a subject that fills many a goat farmer with shame. No one likes to talk about it or admit they have it on the farm. It is a disease that is incurable, gets in your soil, in your barn, and spreads through tools as well. Quite simply, it is gross and hard to get rid of without hard culling and testing. It was a sad day when I realized what we were facing.

Dairy Sheep Diary Part 3

       

          We have had our dairy sheep for four years now. If you are just catching up, check out "Dairy Sheep Diary" and "Dairy Sheep Diary Part 2". A lot has happened with the sheep in the last 6 months. We are still really enjoying our girls and milking them more and more. This year we are using some of their products to sell at our farmer's market booth, along with selling the rams for meat.

10 Things I Hate About Farming

         Some days, I HATE FARMING. Some days I can't help it! I get hot, tired, and frustrated to the max. So before anybody gets any unrealistic, romantic ideas about what farming looks like....let me just burst that bubble really fast! Here are the top 10 things I hate about farming.

Maid-N-Meadows 2020 Summer Update

            I know! It is actually almost fall....just a few weeks from now. I wrote a spring update and then summer just HAPPENED! And doing anything beyond the bare minimum was just about impossible. But the heat has died back and the garden is dying down....we are almost caught up on the goat and sheep chores. This week we are cutting hay and working on getting the bees ready for winter.

        The babies have grown so much over the summer. Beulah will be 2 in October and Elora will be 1. I am both excited and dreading this year of toddler delight and mayhem. Little people keep things so stirred up! They investigate and move things constantly. The little girls keep each other in stitches or tears, depending on the moment. They are just a lot of life, all the time. :-) Very fun but lots to manage, as well.

    Jaden has become like a second mother. We often work together to get through cleaning, schooling, bed time and you name it. But she is also exploring new adventures when she isn't curled up with a good book. She makes the cheese with Daniel, most days, and today was practicing driving the tractor, raking hay. We are prepping the goats and sheep for breeding season and she is prepping her calendar for all those little babies she is going to midwife into this world.

 Jacob has kind of outgrown everyday life here. He works for a neighbor farmer and is gone most of the time as older teenagers often do. Karson has taken over the main labors of the farm. But he likes to work with his friends too, so this summer we arranged for him to work with a friend once a week. All the older children hang out with their friends on Sunday for fun, too. 

    But everyone gets involved somehow, somewhere. We had a ball this morning eating sticky honey while we worked to clean out the comb. Between finding old costumes and taking turns on the extractor...all were engaged. 

Family Homesteading = Togethering

         What is the number one reason we love farming and homesteading? Two words. "Family Togetherness" If the most important and valuable thing we do in our lives is family bonds and relationships, then I want more of that! When I ask myself what will really matter in 100 years, my answer is the time I spent with my children and the impact that will have in their lives and the next generations'.

Dairy Sheep Diary Part 2

              We have had dairy sheep on our farm for three years now. We have enjoyed our fluffy white sheep! Today, I would like to share a few things we have learned along the way and a few resources that we have been enjoying. I will also give an update on how our flock is doing and how well they are paying for themselves. Part 1 of our Dairy Sheep Diary is here and it explains why we initially got into dairy sheep. Lets jump in!

It is fun to look out on a field dotted with white fluffy clouds with legs! Our dairy sheep are high percentage East Friesians with a bit of Lacaune in the mix. East Friesians are often called the Holstein of the sheep breeds, due to their milking ability. But we also use their wool for various projects. Last year, we began using their milk in soap. That has been a fun project....a project that we are continuing to develop! We have also been selling the ram lambs at the local stock pen as meat and they have graded as Prime and Choice, which are the two best grades for meat. All in all, they have paid for themselves and a little more. As we have been retaining all our ewe lambs, it has helped to have some income to support their feed and fencing costs. 

Our first black lamb in a flock of white sheep!

     Our cheese facility is up and running now, but our sheep only produce about a gallon of milk per day in their prime. With only 7 lactating ewes, we do not have a holding tank that will keep such a small amount of milk cold. Growing our flock has been very slow due to a couple of different factors. We will continue to grow our flock until we reach a size that will make buying a tank practical. At that point we will begin making cheese in this dandy commercial soup kettle! 

LESSONS LEARNED

    The biggest lesson overall is that East Friesian lambs, ours at least, are not very hardy creatures. Our goats and calves do fine in cold weather, so long as they are dry and have access to their mother's warm milk. Our lambs tend to need intervention if more than one is born on a cold, wet day. If a mother has more than one and it gets very cold, I bring those lambs in the house! With a price tag of $300 per ewe sheep, they are worth too much to chance! (Actually, I am a sucker for babies and I bring them all in when it gets cold or I am worried about them.....my pillow is much softer because I am not up all night worrying about them.) So in conclusion, my lambs don't hold heat well enough to stay outside, and jackets might work well, but I have been too nervous to try them yet.

    Once these sheep are a month old, they are easy keepers. They are parasite hardy, have few foot problems, and require very little in the way of maintenance. Compared to boer goats, sheep are easy as pie. A shearing in the spring with a little foot clipping, is about all the attention they need.

     The other major lesson we have learned so far is that bottle fed rams can be a pretty bad idea. Our ram has absolutely no fear of people what so ever and is actually quite crazy. He once got angry at the tractor and really bashed his own head up because he would not stop ramming into it. Actually, he might just be crazy. I will not be sad the day we eat him. And I do say we will eat him because he is not safe to send off the farm to a market or as breeding stock.....he is just that crazy. Our other ram was dam raised and is quite docile and enjoyable to be around. But he doesn't have quite as good breeding traits....so we keep them both.  

Dairy Sheep Resources

      Some resources I have enjoyed since my first Dairy Sheep Diary are a few Facebook groups. Dairy Sheep Available In The US, is a group that helps folks find dairy sheep, which is helpful as they can be hard to find. Homestead Dairy Sheep is a Facebook group for general questions on sheep as well as a chance to "show and tell".

      For medication dosing and general vet questions I use the website "Ask-A-Vet Sheep". This vet gives good advice in emergency situations when my vet is not available. I love the variety of posts on here and find them very informative. 

        So that is the latest on the sheep! I hand raised 3 ewes this spring and I think there are three more with the flock. With the Lord's blessing, we might just about double the ewe number this year! Here is to hoping! :-)

    

Dyeing Roving With Food Coloring

         

Wool roving.

  Learning about dyeing wool is like entering an entire world of knowledge. There are so many ways to dye wool! Some of these ways date back thousands of years. This is truly an ancient craft, connecting us, today, to the generations of before.

Maid-N-Meadows: Spring 2020 Update

         Spring Has Sprung! 
      But we are still hunkered down, waiting for Covid to pass.....like everyone else, I suppose. How has everyone's spring been? We are really fortunate to have the farm to weather this "germ storm" on. Always lots to do and plenty of fresh air to do it in. The children were sporting their swim suits for the creek as soon as the thermometer hit 70 degrees!

     First priority, this spring, was sealing the walls of the facility. When our youngest was born, last fall, we were a little too busy at the hospital to get that done. By the time we got home, the temperatures were too cool for the wall sealer to dry properly. So we made do this winter, but the day the temperatures warmed up, Daniel was out there digging and sealing and putting a rock drain around the facility.

     Speaking of that precious baby, Elora, she has plumped out substantially. As of today, she is six months old and grabbing and reaching and rolling! She is a handful when she is teamed up with one year old, sister, Beulah! Good thing I have a lot of helpers who enjoy the tots!

           Spring is a big time for babies of all kinds, here on our farm. The sheep, lamb and the cows, calve. We got our very first black sheep out of an all white flock, this spring. Can't explain that one, but I can really relate to the original mean of "black sheep"! This sheep is sooo different and seemingly came from nowhere, genetically speaking. I am very excited about the wool, though. He is definitely staying on the farm!

         Red Ears, the cow, welcomed a beautiful little heifer to the farm, early this month. She is just the cutest little thing and a real live wire. She comes into the holding pen with her mother during milking, just like she is part of the team! We really love when this arrangement works because the calves are naturally comfortable with the sights and sounds of the milking parlor.

  So we have been busy around here! But before I sign off I want to give some recognition to Karson, who turns 15 this year. He has taken up welding and is doing a pretty good job! He has been building gates and doing odds and ends repairs for us this spring. Check out these gates he built! The little notch opening there is so the goats can get out to the big field without the cows getting in the goat barn. (Cow piles are a whole lot messier than goat piles! We prefer the cows hang out in their own barn. Plus cows don't really care to watch where they are going and I am always afraid they will step on baby goats!)

   We are looking forward to seeing everyone again at the farmer's markets and just plain being back out to meet and greet everyone. Hope everyone has stayed safe and looking forward to the summer! See y'all soon!

Maid-N-Meadows: Winter 2020 Update

   

  I hope everyone out there is getting as excited for spring as we are! It has been unseasonably warm this year. So much so that the daffodils bloomed 2 weeks early!

An Easy Way To Wash A Fleece!

           Here I was with trash bags full of fleece from our beautiful East Frisians and I didn't have a clue what to do with any of it. It seemed a shame to just toss it in the woods or compost it. Surly the wool could be a valuable profit stream for the farm, but I was clueless and daunted, even, by the fiber world.

       I  started by watching YouTube videos on various topics. No one seemed to be taking wool from raw fleece to finished product without complicated processes. I did not want to invest in a carder or make roving or rolags. I just wanted to have some wool that was a pretty color and that was clean enough to felt. Felted shoes looked cool! But I need to do something a bit faster and more on my novice level. I finally settled on felted soap. I felt on store bought soap and on some of my homemade sheep milk soap!

         I don't know much about fleece, folks. I just know a little about what I have to work with....which is East Frisian. Once that wool comes off the sheep, I bag it up. When I am ready to wash it, I take off the big bits of dirt and cockleburs. I think this is called "skirting". Before I can do anything else, the fleece must be clean.

          My midwife recommends putting the whole fleece in the tub with as hot of water as can be drawn with the fleece in a netted bag. A large onion bag works well or just a netted bag. Just push the wool under the water and let the soap do its work. I use dish soap due to the high grease levels and a little laundry detergent.
          When the water is cool, lift the wool out and let it drip dry or repeat if still very dirty. The goal here is to remove dirt and some vegetative matter. But there will still be plenty of bits of dirt still left inside the fleece, even when it is "clean". The lanolin, or grease from the sheep, is what is most important to get out.

         Then I hang it up to drip dry. This can take awhile depending on the weather. Some people take it out and drip dry it in a more spread out form. You can squeeze extra water out if you are gentle and don't massage it. (That can cause it to felt into one lump!)
         Do you have an easy way to prepare a fleece? If so, give me a holler!
      

Married To An Ex Mennonite: Part 3

      Special note! Some of you may notice how delayed this post is. As we move into the nitty gritty of Daniel's expulsion, it must be understood that there is a weight that comes with the memories. It takes emotional energy to relay what happened because the experience of rejection never really ended. This telling is akin to the end of Daniel's experience in the Mennonite world and the beginning of a new kind of experience. The whole world opened up for him in the form of thoughts and ideas, while his family slowly became more and more estranged.

The only known pictures of Daniel in his youth are the ones he saved from old driver's licenses.