Feeling Good!
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Anita Baker
Yes, I'm feeling good today. I've been able to eat 2 (yes, count them, two) meals today, and no upset stomach. That is cause for celebration.

Maybe it has something to do with getting through my first bit of work on the new software we installed on Friday. I should have been done with this job on Friday, but it took me 3 times as long to write the report as it normally would. So, yes, today has been good.

This is what is sitting next to my desk here at Bay Colony Farm.



This is Ripley's litter. They have tripled in size in the past 12 days since they were born. I expect that their eyes will be open by tomorrow as a couple of them are starting to open their eyelids just a tiny bit.

Illume is a high percentage German crossbred doe who is due on Monday. Today she will get a nestbox put into her cage, and we'll see when she starts nestbuilding. Her babies will be considered hybrids according to IAGARB standards.

Mia (Maid in America), who is from Leslie Samson, was bred last Wednesday to Winter. So her babies will be 1/4 new import. She isn't due until May 7th.

Other than overseeing the rabbits, my husband and I have been getting ready to put in our order for apple trees. We will only order 5 this year, and see how they do. We will be ordering from this company, St. Lawrence Nurseries located out in Potsdam, NY. Bill MacKentley has studied apple trees for over 30 years now. DH and I saw him at the North East Organic Farmer's Conference held at Hampshire College last summer. Bill was an amazing instructor, and we hope he will be back again this summer teaching more seminars. I believe that we will be ordering the following apple trees: Burgundy, Fameuse (aka "Snow Apple"), one type of Greening, St. Johnsbury and Winesap. While the trees probably won't produce this year, we can hope for apples within a year or two after planting.

On the fiber front, I haven't done much knitting or spinning. But I hope to get to some of that later today, if I don't study first. :)

Long Week
Mood:  don't ask
It was a long week.

My first class ended (for me) on Monday night. Since I didn't need to take the exam, I didn't. But I did start my second class on Saturday morning. All the way down at Cape Cod Community College. That meant I left here before the sun was up. I was exhausted by the time I got home late Saturday afternoon. The teacher is very good, but the subject matter is very dry; it's a course on Standards, which is mandatory within my profession. They have made it more interesting now with a Power Point presentation, but still.....

I have the second class and final exam on Saturday. Please send me some dpn waves that I pass this test.

Friday was Calvin's birthday. He turned 6! We went up to Harry and Jimmie's farm, and played with the sheep and baby lambs. Both Calvin and Boo were delighted to have the newborn lambs coming up to them, and sniffing their faces. The sight of my kids giggling with delight over this brought such joy to me. Plus, it renews one's faith in all good things. After the farm, Deanna took the kids to the local kids play land, while I shopped for birthday presents. Following that, we were able to visit with some cousin's of mine that I hadn't seen in many years. My cousin Mike attended West Point Military Academy back in the mid-80's (his brother Jeff was there in the early to mid 80's). I hadn't seen Mike since 1987, when he was down in Philly over Christmas week. Mike is now married to Margaret, living down in Eastern MA, and has a beautiful little daughter named Abby. My boys love playing with Abby. Our visit was too short, but Mike, Margaret and Abby are less than 2 hours away, so I'm hoping we can visit soon.
The day was topped off with Calvin's birthday party; pizza and homemade cake (and yes, I actually made the cake this year!). Calvin's toys from us included 2 Rescue Heroes, and the DVD "Charlotte's Web". But the big surprise came from Deanna, who's been busily working away for several weeks now. She made a Thomas the Tank Engine toy box for the boys! They were thrilled to receive it (Boo's birthday is at the end of this month too). They have spent most of the weekend playing in it, on top of it and around it. They even put their dyed Easter eggs in the toy box yesterday. Pictures of this wonderful gift will follow later today. :)

And me? I've been busy keeping watch over Ripley's litter, which is living here in my office. We are down to 6 babies; we lost the runt (which is very common) and one of the grey babies to a nest box injury. Unfortunately, those happen, and we do what we can to save the baby, but it wasn't possible. I have 5 albino babies, and 1 grey baby left. I'm enjoying having them here in my office, but they will probably go outside to be with Ripley by the end of the week, when they are 2 weeks old.

Annie's litter is doing wonderfully too. The babies are now 4 weeks old, and just too cute for words. I removed the nest box on Thursday, and poor Annie was giving me the look that said "But that was the only place I could ESCAPE them!". She's learning to live with 4 active babies jumping all over her. ;-)

Now, if I could only get rid of this stress from classes and life, and make my stomach feel better, I'd be all set. I can't wait until the certification is done for my job, and the July 4th parade is over. Then I'm home free of stressful things for a long time.

Surprise!
Mood:  special
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm
At 11 last night, I was outside in the barn. Temps were falling fast, the wind was kicking up, and I had heard rumors of snow for today. So in order to keep Ripley's babies warm, I decided to bring the nestbox inside. Imagine my surprise to find 8 babies in there, not 6! She must have been at the end of giving birth when I went out to feed yesterday afternoon. So, we now have 6 albinos, and 2 colored babies.
I took them back out to nurse around 8 this morning, and Ripley examined the nest, but after a minute or two, jumped in to nurse. She was quite happy to see a large fistfull of hay as her reward when she was finished.

The babies will reside in here with me, until they have a decent coat on them. Of course that means keeping my office door closed when I'm here, and locked when I'm not (we don't need prowling kitties coming to check things out). :)

New babies!
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: Enya
A happy discovery was made this afternoon when I went out to feed the rabbits. Ripley had given birth sometime late morning/early afternoon. Her nest has 6 babies in it. There appears to be 4 albino and 2 colored babies. I'm hoping for a couple more sable rabbits (which is what Ripley is). I wasn't sure Ripley would do so well, since she is two years old, and this is her first litter. She keeps checking the nest as if to say "Are they in there?". A bribe of broccoli allowed me to check everyone over, and all look healthy.

I'm really proud of Ripley and happy for her. She was from my first litter of rabbits born here back in March of 2002. Her mother, Buttercream, not only nursed her 7, but 5 other babies born the same day to another doe that scattered the nest on day 10. Ripley grew up with a total of 11 other "brothers and sisters". I only hope Buttercream's mothering skills have passed on to Ripley.

As promised, here is a picture of my finished fulled bag. I think I want to make a big version next. :)

Fun with Fulling
Mood:  cheeky
Now Playing: Meowing kitty (Trina)
As a way to get myself motivated to clean yesterday, I cast on for the fulled case I purchased at the Wool Connection. I knit about an inch on it, and promised myself that when I got several things in this household really cleaned, I would pick it back up, and knit until I was finished. I found this to be a great motivator for me. By mid-afternoon, I was feeling pretty good about having a clean kitchen, cleaned bathroom, and some laundry done. After we took a trip down to Woodcraft, where my husband bought several items for work, and I drooled over the pattern books for indoor and outdoor furniture, we came home, and I set about knitting. I had no idea that glitzy knitting would be so much fun! And because this case is so small, I was finished in a couple of hours (including untangling the small bit of yarn from hell, which was one of the accent yarns). The kit contained a skein of Nuro yarn, and three accent yarns; one flashy fluff, a bright orange fluff and a slubbed carry along yarn (aka "the yarn from hell"). While knitting, I decided to change my bag a bit; instead of putting in a zipper, I wanted a flap to go over the front. So I knit that in instead, and I'm quite pleased. Here is a picture of the bag pre-fulling with the flap up:

I will post a picture of the bag when it has finished drying.

Another rainy day
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: Enya "Shepherd Moons"
More rain. We are now on day 3 of rain, and the CT River supposedly has reached flood level. I hope my friend Suzanne and her family are all right. They adopted Moshi Moshi from here at BCF, and they live right next to the Oxbow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them that they don't have much water damage, if any and that they are safe.

On Wednesday evening, BCF's Ripley, a crossbred German doe, was exhibiting signs of nest building. So I put a nestbox in her cage, and by yesterday morning, she had built a lovely nest. That poor girl probably pulled a few ounces of wool from herself, but when she gives birth, those babies will be nice and warm. For a first time expectant Mom at the age of 2, she's holding her own. Her belly feels large, and very full. She was bred to Samson's Twist, my new full import buck. These babies will be 96.5% German. Ripley is a lovely shade of sable (think coffee with a touch of cream). I can't wait to see what her babies are.

Last night was the second meeting of the Pioneer Valley Knitters over at Barnes and Noble in Hadley. A big "Thank you!" to Jen for starting this group. And another big thank you to Deanna, who insisted on calling me at 7:45 p.m. to ask me to come over. As we were just finishing dinner, my thoughts were going along the line of "I'm too tired to go out and knit tonight", but Deanna's call made me realize that I needed to go out. So I packed up my cable swatch from Sunday, and headed on out. When I finally got there, I found a wonderful group of women, sharing the art of knitting and talking like old friends. Jen and I discussed easy knitting; and how that is about the only thing one can get done with a small child(ren) around. Marcy was working on an intricate Alice Starmore sweater. She kept saying "But it's only knits and purls!". She makes it look easy. Yeah, right; at 7.5 stitches to the inch. ;-)

Yesterday I also received my brochure from Melissa Leapman. I plan to spend a good portion of this weekend deciding which classes to host here next year (2005). Since I already have Beth Brown-Reinsel tentatively scheduled in April of 2005, I'll figure out when it works to bring Melissa up here too.

Cold and Rainy
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm, Smooth Jazz
No one ever said weather in New England was nice and easy.

We are back into late winter. Today it is cold and rainy. Yesterday, it was cold, breezy and very damp; I even saw a snow flake or two (Back! Back! I say!).

However, the baby bunnies are handling it quite well, even if they did give me a huge scare this morning. When I went out to the barn, I could only see one baby hanging out with Mama. Where were the other three? After a lot of searching through hay, I found that they had completely covered themselves with hay in the nest box (where they hadn't been since Monday!), and were toasty warm in there. I popped baby #4 back into there, where he/she quickly hopped to where it's siblings were, and snuggled down with them. I think it took about a 1/2 hour before my heart stopped thudding around in my chest though. :)

I'm also on the half-way mark with my class. Tonight marks class #4, and I'm so very glad. On school nights, I get less than 6 hours of sleep. Being seriously sleep deprived does not have any positive effects, but I'm keeping it together, and plan to sleep in on Saturday or Sunday if at all possible.

Do you ever get to the point where all you want to do is knit or spin? Well, I'm at that point. And I'm just too darn tired to even consider it. Hopefully I'll be able to do some tomorrow, when I don't have to worry about class.

Posted by baycolonyfarm at 4:12 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 31 March 2004 4:13 PM EST

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Whew! What a week!
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm Smooth Jazz
This is what greated me this morning when I went out to the barn at 6 a.m.



All four baby bunnies were out of the nest for the first time ever.

After keeping the babies inside, here in my office for 5 days, I decided on Friday that it was time to move them back outside with Mamma. Annie wasn't quite sure what to think about having that big old nestbox back inside her cage, but she stepped up to the plate and has done her job well. She isn't at all sure what to think about these babies hopping all over the place, trying to nurse when ever THEY feel the need , but she's keeping them in line and gently nosing them back to their little hay nest in the corner when they try to hop all over her.

Last Monday night I started a night class at a not so local college, 25 miles away. The class meets for 3 weeks, two nights a week. For an early morning person like myself, this is torture. However, it would be even worse if I had to take the same class, and drive out to the Boston area for 3 days, so I'll go with sleep deprivation, and convenience. The class has been really interesting so far, and the instructor is funny. He has lots of experience in our field, and many amusing stories to tell. Best of all, the group sponsoring the classes wants to hold more classes in our area, and since this college is less than ideal (they can't even get an overhead projector to the classroom so that we can view all the slides that go with the text), I have offered my services of setting up more classes in other places that will offer better location, times and amenities to the students. I LOVE doing things like this. I used to do it when I was an executive secretary for another organization similar to this one, and it is great fun. A lot of work, but a lot of fun.

Yesterday (Sunday) was spent down at the Wool Connection in Avon, CT. I took a class with Melissa Leapman called "Untangling Cables". You may remember that I had signed up to take a whole weekend of classes, but due to us having to move Calvin's birthday party to Saturday afternoon to accomodate several of my family members, I wasn't able to go down on Saturday. But yesterday more than made up for that. Our class was small; 3 students and Melissa. We were missing one other student, but we got lots of personalize attention, and it was so worth the trip down! Here is a picture of the swatch we made in class yesterday (and incase you can't tell what it is, the top part of the swatch is an anchor that is 3/4 finished).

And this is what I bought:




Actually, there is more to come as I also purchased Melissa's book "Hot Knits" which comes out in May. That will be mailed to me from the Wool Connection when it is released and in stock.

Melissa is a delightful teacher, who has written some wonderful books. It doesn't hurt that she is a Mount Holyoke grad, so we sit and chat about the area, and how much things have changed. She is also convinced that once her book "Cool Crochet" is released, that I won't be crochet impaired anymore either. She said that if her husband could learn how to crochet using her instructions in the book, then anyone could learn. We'll see. She doesn't know just how crochet impaired I really am. ;-)

Posted by baycolonyfarm at 11:18 AM EST

Updated: Monday, 29 March 2004 11:29 AM EST

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New visitors in the house
Now Playing: the sound of rustling hay
Rustling hay you say? What in the world is Helen talking about?

I now have four 10 day old baby bunnies residing next to my desk in my office.

Friday night turned so cold, that we lost 3 out of Annie's litter. In order to avoid any more losses, I have moved Annie's nestbox into my office, for another couple of weeks, until the babies are hoping about, and have enough fur on them to live out in the cage with Annie.

Every morning around 6 a.m., I take the nestbox out to the barn, and Annie immediately jumps in and nurses the bunnies. She has taken quite well to this new arrangement, and I know that I won't loose any bunnies to the cold (last night's low was 19 degrees).

The plus side to this is that I get to watch these amazing little creatures grow. I talk to them often, and hold them a lot too. This conditions them to easy handling, and they will be very gentle as adults.

The last time I had baby bunnies in my office was 2 years ago with Buttercream and Julia's litters. They all grew up well socialized to people, and are very gentle and friendly. Annie's litter will be too.

Bleary Eyed
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: WEIB 106.3 fm
Yes, I'm o.k, but extremely tired. I was up most of the night on Thursday night/Friday morning with Nate due to a stomach bug. Then last night, I did myself the disservice of eatting Mud Pie ice cream, which did my stomach in. I fell asleep at 4 a.m., only to be up at 6 this morning when my husband got up to go to work. Yep, I'm tired. I have an inspection at 10 this morning, then I'm coming home and doing NOTHING (i.e. NO cleaning) for the rest of the day.

Carolyn asked where Wooly Knob Fiber Mill was located. They are out in Indiana, and did a fabulous job with my rovings. I have LOTS of fleeces out in the barn that I'm sending them. I just have to get them together and ship them. I have spent some time this week washing up a white Icelandic fleece that I got from Harry and Jimmie at True North Farm last year. I plan to dye it Cherry Red, and process it with some cherry red angora that will be dyed too. Jimmie just loves this combination, and I want to give him the bulk of what I get back.

I was very excited yesterday to get a copy of the MA Sheep and Wool brochure in the mail. My ad for Bay Colony Farm was in there as a half page ad. O.k, I know this sounds strange, but I've worked really hard for the past few years building up my business, and I finally feel like we are worthy of that ad now. Plus, I will be doing two workshops at the wool fair; the first one on Saturday morning on Care and Grooming of an Angora Rabbit and the second one on Sunday morning of Spinning Angora and Angora Blends. Go to MA Sheep and Wool for more information.