Needle Felting a Portrait of Ewe

Timmy, a sheep at A Wrinkle in Thyme Farm

This is Timmy, a needle felted portrait.  People who have seen my art on display often ask, how is that done?

Needle felting is actually quite easy.  It begins with a photograph.  I then transfer a line drawing onto a piece of commercial felt that is 100% wool (not easy to find here, so I order it from away by the bolt).  I use wool from our sheep that has been washed, carded, and hand dyed and in this casse I use wool locks (uncarded long curls of wool).  The tools needed include a firm sponge 10x10x2 inches and special felting needles.  The needles, available in various sizes and shapes, all have barbs and a sharp point.  The process involves placing the colors and wool pieces where you want them, a bit like coloring with wool.  You secure them in place by punching repeatedly with the needle until it looks and feels right. To do larger areas you may choose to use a handle that holds several needles.  Much faster!

If you would like to learn more, I will be demonstrating this at our booth on May 11 and 12 at New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festival.

 If you would like to try doing a sheep portrait something like this, register now for a class I will teach on Sunday, Mothers Day, May 12 at 9:30am at the NH Sheep and Wool festival.

To register contact us at info@awrinkleinthymefarm.com.

The class is $75, including the pattern and all the materials needed to complete the project.  You will need a sponge, $38 needles, and a multi needle holder (available for purchase if you don't have them).   This art is really easy and goes pretty fast....no counting, and using natural materials.  Try it...you will like it!

Maine Maple Weekend 2013

This year we had over 200 people come through the sugar house, many of them here for the first time to see the wood fired evaporator in operation with a gravity feed system.  Over the weekend Mary Ann made over 2 gallons of syrup while explaining how the evaporator works.

Wood Fired Evaporator in action

Collecting sap along the road

Overall this year has been a much better sap year than last. The main problem this year was ice in the buckets.  We had to gather ice from the buckets on Thursday and Friday and put the ice in blue barrels inside the Tesseract where the radient heat from the solar panels melted it over a couple of days…this in order to have sap to use for the demonstrations.  We have a bigger holding tank for gathering sap from buckets along the road with the truck, but it is not good for the ice.  

New big sap tank in the pcikup

 A big thanks to Lee Ann, our regular farm hand, and Sophie and Renee, our WOOFers.  Sophie and Renee came to us through our connection with Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), an organization that links willing workers with host farms, facilitating the sharing of knowledge and skills in exchange for room and board on the farm.  For weeks they helped us prepare for the weekend event, tapping trees, gathering sap, making and bottling and tagging maple syrup, cleaning inside the barn, outside, in the sugar house, and in the Tesseract. 

Everyone seemed to lambs in the barn, where Renee, Anna, and Sophrinia offered information and tours to include petting baby lambs just a few days old. 

 

Bubba, the draft horse stood out back, grateful for the carrots and apples offered to him. 

The yearlings, also behind the barn, a week later are still waiting to give birth to their Finn cross lambs.  

Thanks to Barbara, here on her spring break, who  made the kitchen and workshop area ready for guests to enjoy the pancakes and sausage breakfast. 

Thanks also to Jen, who periodically transforms our store into a beautiful sight to behold. 

Both days our fiber CSA members were here to help out. Wendy served by greeting people and organizing parking. At one point on Sunday there were over 20 cars here.Priscilla and Kathleen did an awesome job as cashier in the store while Marty demonstrated spinning and needle felting and answered customer’s questions.

Jan, Edith, Cheryl, Lee, Marianne, and Diane kept the sausage and pancakes coming fresh and hot and washed dishes. We made several 8 big batches of Master Mix for the pancakes.  I guess we need to get more plates from the free store since there were times when all the plates we had were in use.  We planned to serve 20 at a time, and ended up setting up an extra table for more to be seated.

Kathleen’s hubby, Kevin built an awesome fire in the earth oven, our new addition for 2012.  After lunch we enjoyed fresh biscuits baked in 4 minutes flat, and later in the day on Sunday delicious pizza filled our appetites.  Maybe next time we will be able to feed more people.

We appreciated Robin and Patty, friends who were here throughout the weekend to help with whatever needed to be done from splitting wood for the wood fired evaporator to mixing pancake batter and serving tables.

After lunch visitors, including a group of eager children went out into the orchard field and around the stone walls to collect sap.  Everyone seemed to enjoy that.  People seemed comfortable here….sitting around with an extra cup of hot sap tea or maple coffee and chatting with friends.

At the end of the day Sunday, after we gathered up a pair of boots, a jacket, and sunglasses. Guess we need a lost and found department now. If you are missing personal belongings from the weekend call us.

As the Farm event signs came down we evaluated the weekend….make more pancake mix next year, how much sausage to thaw, a sign up sheet so we know how many people come, take more pictures…..by the way, if you got a good picture of your family or children needle felting, gathering sap,  petting lambs, or Bubba, or just being cute we would love to share them on our web site.

We wondered how people found us, heard about us, and decided to come. We appreciate  that so many people came here to help and to enjoy the spring ritual making of maple syrup in Maine. Our thanks to all who made it a great weekend to remember.

The Sugar House

Tapping our Maple Trees ~ A Team Effort

Might be some snow today, and the sap is running!


This week we have been tapping trees in earnest.  Our goal is about 400 taps, and we don't want to miss a run, so we are starting earlier than usual.  For sap to run it must be below freezing at night and in the high 30's or 40's during the day.

We have WWOOF World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farm participants here. Two young women who are here for a few weeks to help with whatever needs to be done.  They have been eager to learn about producing maple syrup.

We first tapped trees with good sun exposure, which are likely to run the most.  This was trees along both sides of the road.  On the road we used the 2 wheel cart to haul tools and buckets. Christine, one of the participants at our Yarn and Yoga event, and Lee Ann, our regular helper both came to help for the day on Wednesday.  They both agred  it was loads of fun being outside on a beautiful sunny day treking through the snow to the maple trees.

We actually had two teams of 3 the first day.  One to drill the hole and insert the tap, another to hammer it snugly into place, and a third to put on the bucket and the lid.

Next we tapped the cow lane trees and the mid wall, along the edge of the fields. For this we used the sleds to carry what we needed.  Some of these trees are in clusters so we use tubing so that several trees drain into a single 5 gallon bucket.

And today it is snowing. This is a good thing as Bubba will be pulling the pung with the sap tank.  The pung is an antique rig with 2 sets of runners and a box and shaves. The box is big enough for 2 seats, but we take one of them off to make room for the tank.

The next day we did trees more into the woods and along stone walls.  To date we have put in over 300 taps.


Soon we will fire up our wood fired evaporator.  Here is a picture of Mary Ann last year showing a youngster how she keeps the fire fed. 








Maine Maple Sunday will be here before long....it is the 4th Sunday in March each year, so for 2013 it will be March 24.  We will be open at 8am for a pancake breakfast featuring fresh maple syrup and our own maple lamb sausage.  We expect another great team of helpers in the kitchen, lambs in the barn, and helpers to collect sap.

 This is a picture of the Maple Breakfast from 2012.  Good turnout indeed!

Our Sheep Needed a Haircut

Shearing Day 

Wednesday, February 27, 2013
10am to 4pm
All are welcome, no experience required
Pot luck lunch. 

 RSVP info@awrinkleinthymefarm.com
 Dress for the weather.

Shearing is, if possible, in the spring before lambing which results in a cleaner environment for baby lambs…. and in the fall when fleeces are extremely clean. In a short time the fleece grows long enough to keep the sheep warm in cold weather.  Also, lambs like to climb on their mother's backs, which makes the wool much dirtier when it is long. 
 
Cutting or shaving the wool off of a sheep is called shearing. It's just like getting a hair cut and shearing doesn't hurt a sheep.  Some sheep are sheared manually with scissors or hand blades. Usually electric shears are used because it is faster.

 A professional shearer can shear a sheep in less than 2 minutes and will remove the fleece in one piece. The world record for shearing sheep is 839 lambs in 9 hours by Rodney Sutton of New Zealand (2000).  In many countries, including the United States, there is a growing shortage of qualified sheep shearers.

Sometime we shear our own sheep, but when there are more than twenty to do we have Jeff, a professional sheep shearer.  We usually shear about every eight months because our sheep fleeces would be too long for local mills to spin if we sheared once a year as was traditionally done. 



Mary Ann shears a few sheep at a time in between when fleeces are too short on shearing day and will get too long before the next one. This time our shearer, Jeff Burchstead, arrived around 10am, cleaned his boots with a bleach solution and cleaned his shears with a disinfectant. He takes this work very seriously and pays careful attention to biosecurity.

 
On shearing day this time rounded the sheep up into the back of the barn and had sorted the white ones out to a separate area (white sheep are usually done before gray, and gray before black).  We also had cleaned up the hind ends and picked the sticks and hay off their fleeces.  Because our sheep have been rotationally grazed on pasture and out in the rain their fleeces were very clean this time.

We had a great team of fiber people to help. In the barn Kalyn and Barbara guided the over to the shearing area.  Kathy recorded the number and name of the sheep.









Jeff shears sheep very efficiently with electric shears. Jeff likes to establish a rhythm with the shearing and enjoys connecting with each sheep and the process.


  

After each sheep was shorn Mary Ann guided them to the back of the barn, put betadyne solution on any small nicks that were noted. Because our shearer is skilled and careful it takes a little more time and nicks are few and small. As each sheep was returned to the flock there was lots of talking amongst themselves.  I think maybe they don’t recognize each other as the look so different without their fleeces.


Robyn swept up the undesirable wool including bellies, top knots, and manure tags.  This wool is set aside to be used to make manure tea for the garden or mulch for the blueberries.  Janet labeled the bags with the date and name of the sheep. At one point she commented about how organized and calm the shearing process is at our farm. 


It is nice when the fleeces come off the sheep’s back in a single piece though some of our fleeces are very open and end up as separate locks.    Marty carried the fleece to the skirting table where a team of 4-5 people skirted the wool and put it in a labeled paper bag. 







Skirting
It was hot!  Over 90 degrees, and the sun would have been brutal without the tent we used to make shade. To produce high quality fleeces are skirted fresh of the sheep’s back. Skirting involves removing undesirable parts of the fleece.  

  VM vegetable matter or hay and chaff. The VM is picked out by hand. Second cuts (pieces too short to spin), wool that has been rubbed felted, matted or "cotted" is removed too.  are also removed.  After the neck wool is removed, you look for the tail end. The wool with manure is removed and placed in a bag to be used in the garden as manure tea. As this was done each fleece was evaluated for length of staple, softness, crimp, cleanliness, and other qualities


At the end of the day
By 3 pm we had shorn 25 and the fleeces were all nicely skirted and each one in a labeled bag.  The sheep in the field looked much more comfortable on such a hot day.

The next step is to determine weigh the fleeces (our sheep produced 88 pounds of wool this time), evaluate which are best for hand spinners, roving or yarn and washing the fleeces using solar hot water.  I have to say, our sheep have produced incredibly soft and beautiful fleeces.  

Book Signing and Trunk Show with Kristen TenDyke

We got to know Kristen TenDyke last fall when she participated in our fall Yarn and Yoga Retreat. (By the way, our Winter Retreat is this coming weekend, February 1-3, Friday thru Sunday.  We have a couple of openings still so contact us asap if you would like to join us.)  FMI go to www.awrinkleinthymefarm.com

We learned that Kristen, who lives in Rumford, Maine is a designer of knitting patterns and her book "Finish Free Knits" was about to be published by Interweave Press.  We realized how her mind is able to see the math in just about anything you are knitting, and her gentle approach to helping others with their knitting is awesome.  She knitted some of the sweaters herself, and others she designed in the computer to be knitted by comissioned knitters.

This afternoon Kristen will be here at the Tesseract from 1-4 with a trunk full of the sweaters included in her book so you can touch and feel, and even try on the ones you like the best.  She will have books on hand (available for $20/each-cash/check), and her pen ready to sign one for you.

We have sweater lots available including natural ivory and colored wool.
Hope you can join us.

Who Said Farmers are less busy in the winter?

All is well with the sheep.  The lambs are nestled into their own space in the pole barn. Our old girls have a separate space from the larger group that we hope will have lambs come March and April.  The snow is beautiful, though rain and ice in the dooryard was not so welcome yesterday.  Spent the past two days dyeing yarn and working in the Tesseract with Meredith, who turned out 4 beautiful batts to spin, Cheryl who is an expert with color selection, and Denise, who has adopted Anita and comes twice a month to help with whatever needs to be done.

This Sunday is Simple Shrug Sunday, that promises that 15 people will go home with a good start on a shrug using farm yarn from the store, hence a reason to round out the yarn color wheel in the store.

 It all began when a year ago at our Yarn and Yoga retreat I was wearing one of mine (I have made 3), done in purple bulky wool and lavendar and purple angora.  It was a chilly weekend, but with the wood stove going I slipped it off and set it down on a chair.  Someone picked it up, and said, may I try this on?  It looked great on her slender body. She wore it for a while when another asked to give it a try.  It looked wonderful on her robust body...and so it traveled from person to person until I decided to write up the pattern. Soon enough people were wanting the pattern, so I wrote it up.  It is really pretty organic....use a variety of yarn including very some bulky wool, soft angora blend, alpaca, or mohair, big needles, knits up quickly....

Here is a display of farm yarn that was already here...noticed not much purple, very little blue, and no greens.


 








A nice collection of seafoam, turquoise, and blue spruce...

Into the dye pot a variety of 100% wool both white and gray to create more choices.





Tomorrow we will see what diversity we can create when 15 women gather to each create their own.

Specialty yarns like mohair blend, boucle, 100% alpaca, and some blues and greens to dye for....