What next?

No seriously, I'd love to know what kind of pestilence shall befall us next. I woke up this morning covered head to toe in what is apparently chigger bites. So now after the snakes, ticks, roaches, ants, beetles, spiders, and now chiggers, what is next?
Here's the kicker- I am NOT a city girl gone country. I spent roughly 20 years of my life in the middle of nowhere in NY or VT out in the great outdoors. Even during our time in charleston (creepy crawly Mecca!) I did not encounter this many problems.
As a child I spent near everyday outdoors in swamps and woods and deep brush and never encountered much worse than a dozen mosquito bites.
This leaves me to ask- What the heck is wrong with Ohio? Did it's founders piss off some angry bug god who decided to bequeath the area with nastiness?

I am so frustrated!

Off to vaccuum, steam clean, and wash everything in hot water.
-- Post From My iPhone

Long lost update

It occurred to me I haven't written here in forever and a day. There isn't a whole lot to say. The guineas were a disaster that flew off however I've been happily free ranging my chickens who faithfully return to their roost every morning. My day went kinda like this-
"why you still in the barn chickies?"



"oh we didn't realize it was to come out and play! Here we go!"



"Mm bugs!"



Then to feed the bunnies...
Peter and Nougat
"pssst, hey peter, she looks funny when she hasn't brushed her hair yet!"


Ginger
"sniff sniff I know I dropped some hay out here..."


Princess "I'm going to kill you in your sleep..."



I swear really that white rabbit still hates me for some reason!
Anyhow things are starting to bloom and grow. The blackberries are so close!



And my tomato plant has little baby tomatoes on it. I'm a proud mater mama!



Outside of that I've just been knitting, spinning, and hanging with the kids. The Nougat shawl is almost done and I've also started the St Augustine shrug in merino.
I just spun up this gorgeous batch of yarn-
Merino, bamboo, and angelina, from an etsy purchased batt of fiber. It came out awesome! About a fingering weight, maybe a little lighter. Two ply with gorgeous blues, purples, yellows, honey brown, and sparkling silver. It came to about 115 yards. I'm trying to decide whether to list it or knit it myself.










Last but not least- two of my sheep come next month- the two wethers, a black and a moorit. In august our ewe joins us from another farm, a badgerface mouflon.

That's all for now! Will update when the knitting is done and berries are ripe!

-- Post From My iPhone

On the wing

The back door of the barn has been left open for my birdies to range. So far my remaining guinea is happily exploring the back pen, the rest of my chicken chickens are hanging out next to the door looking at it but not taking the leap.
In other news I recently attended the great lakes fiber show. It was quite nice and I hot some great prices on alpaca fiber. This new mom smiled for the camera!



-- Post From My iPhone

How to catch a guinea hen 101

So my guinea fowl are here. I think they are a boy/ girl pair. One has bigger cheeks and one makes different sounds than the other so here's hoping.
It doesn't bode well that everytime I get new animals at least one gets loose in my garage.



Notice her friend still neatly tucked in his cage. Silly me opened the cage up to get a better look at them.
Here's how you catch a guinea hen when you're in an enclosed space:
Wait till it gets dark. Turn off all the lights except for one, hung low. Put a box behind the light. When the bird runs towards the light, scoop it into the box and put the lid on fast. Tada! Wish I had figured that out BEFORE I chased it for two hours!
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Barn is clean!

That was hands down the grossest thing I've ever had to do, and I've done some pretty gross stuff. Dead mice, dirt, grease, poo, old tractor parts, old animal medicine, a desk, a broken dehumidifier, all of it covered in layers of mouse poo. Everything dumped and burned and the inside sprayed out with water and a little touch of bleach (I hate bleach but I'm not eating eggs from that place without a little sanitizing first, know what I mean?). I feel proud to now cover it in wood shavings and chicken poo heehee!


-- Post From My iPhone

Gardening and pest control

My gardening experiment, phase one, seems to have worked. When I brushed away the cedar chips to plant seeds I found no grubs, and lots of worms. Yay! I now have a long row each of yellow squash, zucchini, cataloupe, watermelon, and radishes. I also planted a sunflower house for the boys. While doing that I excitedly discovered a large patch of sorrel as well.

Operation pest control is complete. Sadly I wound up killing the snake. The repellant proved useless and despite my best efforts to coax it out gently it decided to bite my stick and I decided it needed to meet with the business end of a shovel.
I'm very sad, it's the first thing bigger than a spider I've ever killed. I understand I'll have to kill farm animals if we want meat but this seemed different.

Tomorrow I clean out the rest of the barn, hopefully with no more incident. The guineas come wednesday and my little chickies are all grown up. It's time to move them into their new home!


-- Post From My iPhone

Happy mothers day!

May your kisses be juicy and taste like watermelon!



-- Post From My iPhone