Wool festival and SNOW!!!!

Hey ya'll! Last night I returned from a busy and exciting day at the RHINEBECK SHEEP AND WOOL FESTIVAL IN NEW YORK! I learned/saw so many awesome things. This, of course, will be explained in photo. In addition, it's snowing like mad here in Rutland! It's cozy and nice. All of the animals are huddled together with the exception of two goats, Ren and Stimpy, who have taken advantage of the lack of peeps policing the farm and were eating carrots from the Peru gardens in the snow.
There were tons of tiny felt animals that people had made from wool and then sold as either toys or sculptures. They were adorable, but quite a bit more expensive than I could afford. I would love to one day be able to make these, or at least be able to afford purchasing them as gifts. These things leaned towards the toy side.

Yarn galore! There was so much beautiful hand spun yarn, sold in big hanks, balls, or skeins, in a wide variety of color. I bought myself one hank of chunky colorful yarn to make a big scarf for the winter.

A fine example of the many variations in yarn available.

An overview of one of the many many buildings that were filled with yarn, wool, spindles, etc etc etc.

Since I am not a highly educated knitter, I attended this festival primarily for the sheep, which I ended up learning a lot about. The entire experience encouraged creativity on so many different levels, as wool is extremely diverse and useful. I shouldn't take for granted the raw wool that I have available to me right here on the farm. I would eventually like to learn to clean and spin (using a drop spindle) raw dirty wool so that it can become something practical and beautiful, like a sweater or socks.

OH MY GOD! There were so many cute animals, like this tiny square bear-esque sheep.

And this very sly sheep.
There was a 1-classroom school building that was on the fairgrounds that was built in the late 1800s. We were allowed to enter the school and check out all of the old decorations and flags. Notice the old halloween decoration!

Here I am knitting on the world's longest scarf project. I knitted a total of 4 stitches, hardly a contribution, but one none the less. The world's longest scarf project was sponsored by the Keep the Fleece program, which is attempting to raise 250,000 dollars for the Heifer project.

Here is their information card sitting on top of several sections of the world's longest scarf.

Here are some more felt animals.

This was an amazing hat made out of felt. This same booth at the festival had all kinds of gorgeous creative hand-felted hats. I would have worn most of them. I wish I would have had the money to purchase this gorgeous crazy head decoration.

Bear sheep!

This woman made this huge distracting hat herself out of, guess what, wool!

There was a featured artist on at the festival who made tons of punny sheep paintings, like this one. Also included in her works: Sheep in the box, Silence of the lambs.

Baby alpacas! They made the same nervous sounds as adult alpacas, except they sound tiny and cute, which is the opposite of what these animals are trying to be when they are nervous. Poor alpacas.

And, the icing on our cake, overlook farm's own miniature goat, escaping the herd, to much on carrots. Have a good one, ya'll!

Global Village and Training

Hello all! The past few days have been incredibly busy and interesting. First, Nic and I did our overnight experience in the Global Village. I stayed in Tibet and Nic stayed in Peru. Instead of being assigned/given our food and trading amongst each other to eat, like the Global Village experience in Perryville, we are given money and then go to market to buy products. As migratory people, of course, us Tibetans did not get too much to eat. Basically, we had some black beans and less than a handful of rice. Our dinner consisted of bean water, basically. It was incredibly bland. I ended up spending the whole night just with those of us that ended in Tibet. We set up two fires and spent several hours storytelling, listening, and talking. Everyone crashed out around midnight, but during the middle of the night, our big fire went out. I was freezing, so instead of just sleeping outside (where I had started) I ended up sleeping inside the yurt. I was the lone in-yurt sleeper, but it was pretty alright. The moon was full, the sky clear (I saw two shooting stars), and the grass was tall, wet, and soft. I awoke to rooster's crowing. In a funny twist of some kind of fate, Nic and I were both pregnant. My baby's name was Monteque. I don't know the details of Nic's GV experience, so I can't write about it here, but he had a great time. Overall, I think my GV experience was interesting.

We have also started haying here at the farm. The farm makes all of its own hay. They cut it, let it dry for several days, then all of us volunteers go out for the baling and stacking. I am not sure how many bales we did yesterday, but around 180 was the estimate we were given. It's amazing how heavy bales of hay get when you are constantly lifting, moving, throwing, and pushing them for an extended period of time. After the process of baling and "barning," I was so insanely itchy and sneezey. It was the first time in my life I think I actually had real hay fever.

I have also learned quite a bit about the livestock here and the farm itself. I asked Stephen's question about where our camel is from, and as it turns out, Abu is from a petting zoo. He simply got too big for the zoo that he came from so he came here. There used to be a camel, Jasmine, that was actually the offspring of the Perryville camels, but it has passed away. Now, we only have the petting zoo camel Abu.

In addition, I have learned that Overlook itself is a public water system. They are registered with the state and everything. All of our water comes from our own wells, and it is not chlorinated and does not contain any chemicals. It is pure clean natural water that is minimally processed. It tastes delicious, and really different from Arkansas water. I feel lucky. The farm is completely independent in terms of it's meat production, water, eggs, vegetables, and has its own sewer system. The place also has some composting toilets.

Nic and I went to trivia night at the local tavern and had a blast. Our boss loves trivia, and so we are all getting pumped and going out to represent the trivia team/s. Hard questions, though. I think Nathan and Noah would be amazing at this particular type of trivia because the clues are songs, and usually the name of the song/band name/lyrics will help you figure out the answer to the trivia question. If one is a music buff, one can get most of the trivia questions correct or close.

So here are some pictures!




There was a pretty awful ice storm here a while back so there is damage all over the farm from the storm. This is a picture of some of the damage, but I think it looks pretty cool.



Here's a photo of a gorgeous stranger sitting on the wooden back porch of my house. The house I live in is pretty awesome.




This is the inside of the animal barn. It's harvesting time, and the gardeners have been busy harvesting garlic and onions. Here are some of the garlic cloves hanging in the barn to dry. The smell is intense. The heads of garlic are huge and the garlic itself is a beautiful pearly yellow-white. Everything that the farm grows is completely organic.

Arriving at Heifer, etc

Hello all! Nic and I have arrived safely, albeit late, in Massachusetts at Overlook farm! It is gorgeous here. We arrived extra late, at 2:00 AM, and didn't get to take a tour or anything until this morning. We slept pretty late, and then several people that lived in the house met us and took us around. We are staying in a place called Camelot/Camel Lot, haha, because there is a lot in the back with a camel in it. A guy named Al picked us up and told us all about the farm, etc. I have only been here twelve hours and I already smell like a farm girl. It's pretty amazing how quick you pick up the smell of animal. The focus really is on farming and agriculture, and it is radically different from Perryville. They do not eat the rabbit, but they do have the kids move the animals from pen to pen, feed the goats/chickens, do milking, take care of rabbits, etc. They do not have a week long global village event, but instead, a two day global village with a wide variety of houses. Here are some pictures of my husband petting animals.
Pig

Goat

Red Calf

Iamou the Inbred Baby Bull. Iamou= I am my own uncle.
Well, we have our first round of chores in about fifteen minutes so I do not have time to upload any more pictures. I took quite a few and will be putting them on this blog periodically. It's so gorgeous up here. There are ferns everywhere, tons of very friendly animals that are used to the attention of people, and great folks. Our home is beautiful and wood on the outside, I will put a picture of it later. We are actually the first of the fall volunteers to arrive, but we will be starting work anyway. I am happy and excited right now!