Monday, March 13

Daily Farm Photo: 3/13/06


I'm Gonna Need Something More Than Spun Gold For Breakfast

11 comments:

  1. Our old pony highly recommends half of a peanut butter sandwich (preferably mooched from a child)on wheat bread for Dan. It's the most delicious treat, in his estimation!

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  2. My donkey friend says he recommends and half eaten apple, and some floppy half dead carrots that some city broad brings out to the country thinking it's called a bribe.

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  3. LOL! Your titles are wondeful (and my daughter still wants to visit)!

    I plan on trying your cheese scone recipe this week - yum!

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  4. I don't know which is more entertaining at this point... your comments or the ones they trigger from your audience!

    I happen to know that apple fritters are a choice delight among the equine crowd. Or at least my gelding, Chic, thought they were.

    Have a great afternoon, Farmgirl

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  5. just a nosy question... what do you do with the wool from sheep and the llamas( do they call it llama wool?)?

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  6. The donkey from the cute movie Shrek prefers Waffles. *giggles*
    We have some new baby donkeys down the road from us I need to get some pics of and share. I think they are so darn cute.

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  7. Maybe some chicken tenderz... =:o

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  8. I want my own donkey! Try some braised carrots! Yum!

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  9. Uncle Dan has a strange glow.

    Weird things may happen, Jeff, to those who dine on chicken tenders.
    We're just saying......

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  10. Hi Friends,
    Okay, my response to many of your comments can be found by clicking here.

    As for the rest. . .

    Hi Catherine,
    Thanks so much. Okay, I think your daugher has put me onto a brilliant idea--I will implement a "kids only" farm stay plan. I, of course, have NO experience with children, but I figure they will be much less likely to notice the lack of such luxurious amenities as reliable plumbing, insulated walls, and smooth floors and ceilings. They probably wouldn't even care about that piece of the house that fell off a while back. Plus it'd probably be easier to convince them that the farm "work" was fun, fun, fun! Or maybe I'm getting in way over my head. I think I'm probably overwhelmed enough as it is with 60-whatever critters we have running around (I've lost count, which probably isn't a good sign, as I would no doubt have to keep very close track of all the visiting children.) : )

    Hi Heather,
    I know I've said it numerous times--the comments section is one of my greatest sources of entertainment. Between the critters and my crazy (and I mean that in a good way) readers, who needs TV?

    Hi Koolbreeze,
    Oh, that's not a nosy question at all. You should see some of the ones I get, LOL. : )

    Hmmmm. The wool. Well, at this point, the llama wool is going to stay on the llamas. I think the female was sheared before we got her, as hers is rather short. The male is very woolly, and since I don't have plans in the near future to learn to spin wool (nor the desire to cough up big bucks to have someone shear my totally wild llama), I'm just going to leave the wool attached and enjoy looking at him.

    As for the sheep, they need to be sheared every year. Sometimes we are lucky enough to find someone to do it for us, and sometimes we spend WAY TOO MUCH TIME shearing them ourselves. That's because, although we can do the job, we totally suck at it.

    Since we raise meat sheep, the sheared wool is fairly coarse and not prized among spinners. Also, since we don't put little coats on our sheep to keep them clean (I'm serious), the wool is sometimes fairly dirty.

    I used to sell all the wool (even the icky tags) to my shearer. He would collect it from all his customers and then sell it (hundreds and hundreds of pounds) to a large wool buyer. I was getting over 30 cents a pound for the wool (after his cut) and even 10 cents a pound for the scraps and "tags" which were at least half manure. Then the price plummeted, and the wool buyers were only offering my shearer THREE CENTS A POUND for wool. He couldn't handle it for that little amount.

    So now there are lots of small sheep producers like us who either burn their wool (ick) or have huge sacks of it sitting around somewhere.

    Last year a friend of mine who has started spinning said she would be interested in our wool for making some saddle blankets (coarse wool would be fine for those). So I had it all bagged up nicely for her, and then her house burned to the ground. Not wanting to bother her about picking up her wool, I set it out of the weather (in what I thought was a safe place) until she was ready for it. Meanwhile, this is what happened. Yep, the sheep found it.

    So, using my infinite creative resources, LOL, I FINALLY thought to make wool beds for the outside critters. You can check out my handiwork here. Robin has two in her doghouse and absolutely loves them.

    I also implemented an experiment a few weeks ago that I have named "The Walk Of Wool." Wool can be used as a permanent mulch (in places like orchards), so I took a whole bunch of wool and lined a narrow passageway between the north side of my greenhouse and a wire fence (that is the back end of a long wooden shed) with it. You can't fit the mower in there, and the grass grows up and encroaches on the raspberries I have planted along the edge of the greenhouse. I figure this is going to be either a huge success or a really big mess. We shall see!

    Um, was that too much information? : )

    Hi Kaliblue,
    Baby donkeys? Baby donkeys! Be sure to let me know when you put up the pictures!

    Hi Jeff,
    Oh, City Boy, even you should know that Dan and the sheep and llamas are vegetarians. And we really don't need to be giving any ideas to the dogs and cats now do we? (Think of the backlash from Lindy The Chicken.) In fact, I think I see some already just a few comments below this one!

    Hi Stacey,
    I heard it through the grapevine that you can find cute donkeys in need of rescuing at Petfinder.com. Supposedly they have an entire "barnyard animal" section, but I don't know for sure. For some reason there is a block to those kind of sites on my computer. . . : )

    Hi Lindy The Chicken,
    Now you just cut that out. Donkey Doodle Dandy does NOT have a strange glow. I don't even think you see colors and things the same way we do. Of course I can't vouch for Jeff. He might glow. He does live in Arizona after all.

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  11. I don't know whether this is a good idea at all, but besides spinning, you can also make felt from wool by rubbing it with soapy water (however I never tried myself).

    Also, as you write you've got no insulated walls: why not use it for this? I heard of sheeps wool being sold over here to be stuffed between the rafters of your roof to keep the heat from escaping. Not sure whether you would need to clean the wool before you do so.

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December 2015 update: Hi! For some reason I can't figure out, Blogger hasn't been letting me leave comments on my own blog (!) for the last several months, so I've been unable to respond to your comments and questions. My apologies for any inconvenience! You're always welcome to email me: farmgirlfare AT gmail DOT com.

Hi! Thanks for visiting Farmgirl Fare and taking the time to write. While I'm not always able to reply to every comment, I receive and enjoy reading them all.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated, and I especially love hearing about your experiences with my recipes. Comments on older posts are always welcome!

Please note that I moderate comments, so if I'm away from the computer it may be a while before yours appears.

I try my best to answer all questions, though sometimes it takes me a few days. And sometimes, I'm sorry to say, they fall through the cracks, and for that I sincerely apologize.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope you enjoy your e-visits to our farm!