Wonderful Pumpkin Season

Our first year was SUPER!!! The pumpkin season is over now. The patch was successful, we had several different types of pumpkin and squash plus beautiful mums. We worked hard to fight the squash bugs, cucumber beetles, powdery mildew, and wilt. We learned a lot about pumpkins and mums and are already planning for next year.

One the agenda for next year we have 9 varieties of garlic to plant, 10 new types of mums and at least 30 different types of pumpkins and squash. We will continue our attempts to grow seasonal heirloom veggies.

Until then we will continue to post our cleaned fibers and yarns on our etsy site. Our winter will be full of spinning, dyeing and felting.

Enjoy some of our pictures of the pumpkin stand and the small events that we had, such as community day, with pumpkin painting, petting zoo and guess the weight, and the pumpkin carving day.

Here's Johnny! New Goat on the farm!!

Well, the weekend began with a Friday night of fleece sorting in preparation of our trip to MD Sheep and Wool Festival in West Friendship, MD. We ended up with a total of 35 pounds of fleece to take to have processed. There will be a nice 50/50 Mohair/Wool blend, a nice black and a soft fluffy white wool. I use a guy out of New York to get the fleeces done and he sets up at the show, it's a great way to save on shipping.

Early on Saturday morning we woke up to the roosters alarming like crazy. There was a fox in the hen house. Since we just hatched 8 chicks last week the chickens were going insane over this. Mike chased off the fox, and we all were up and ready to go early Saturday.

At the MD Sheep and Wool Festival we purchased a beautiful little cashmere goat. He is chocolate brown and such a sweetie. We are super excited and he has been welcomed into the barn.

The New Year with a New Focus

We have successfully set up our farm as a business. Dusty Bottom Acres, LLC. We have a goal for the year and that is to plant, grow and harvest some of the oddest and coolest veggies and pumpkins in the area. We have redirected our blog from being just our crafts and everyday life to what we call confessions of a first year farmer. See, we have no experience with growing much of anything. So, this is going to be our diary as we learn, grow and mess up.

Our farm includes fiber animals, so we have plenty of wool and mohair for sale. We are currently working on the Etsy store now.

The Blacksmith might find some time to post a project or two, but who knows because of his ambitions to grow the largest pumpkin. It looks like the largest is over 1600 pounds!!! I think he will be happy with anything over 200 pounds. But still that is a huge pumpkin!!!

Join us in our adventure for 2010!!!

Fiber Swap month 2

This was my beautiful package for month 2 of the Ravelry fiber swap.

fiber swap

It's been a while, but with the new baby and all.

Anyways, here's my score from the fiber swap on Ravelry

Snow Day = Dye Day

Since it's one great big sheet of ice outside, we have a no school day!!! I'm taking advantage of it by dying a whole bunch of fiber I have lying around.

I used kool-aid for all of these except the bottom right, I used a synthetic to try and get a "dark green/olive green". It turned out more blue then I like.

From the top left down

On Curly Wool

1. Strawberry

2. Mad Scientist

3. Mango

Row 2

On Dorset Wool

1. Grape

2. Cherry

Row 3

On Mohair

1. Cherry

2. Lemonade

3. Strawberry/Kiwi

Row 4

On Mohair

1. Grape

2. Tropical Punch

R0w 5

On Mohair

1. Lime

2. Synthetic Dye - Dark Green

New Addition!!!

Our newest addition to the family!! This is Adder. She is just about 5 months old. She came from the farm on the other side of our lane.

She is a little sad and confused about the move. She's trying to play with the goats, but they aren't really sure of her.

The pups are very interested, as she is with them. They were nose to nose through the fence, checkin' each other out.

Now, if you're wondering about the name....See the goats are all named after white flowers, Snowdrop, Cosmo & Hawthorn. We wanted to carry that tradition along with the sheep too and what better name for a black sheep than Adder, now we have the Black Adder. ( That is totally for the BBC fans!!)