Shearing day

We finished shearing this last weekend and the fleeces are soooo nice!! If anyone wants one, they are $15 a lb for adults and $18 a lb. for lambs. Let me tempt you…these fleeces deserve to be spun up into something sumptious, not sit in my studio waiting and waiting….for me to do something to them.

Here are the fleeces available. I don’t have photos or weights yet, perhaps I’ll get to that this weekend. These are all Icelandic.

Black:
Orange: Orange’s fleece is a dark black with only a small amount of grey in it. It is extremely long and thick. It’s medium in texture. This is a big fleece.
Shakti: Shakti’s fleece is a silvery black/grey, extremely curly and fluffy. It’s medium in texture.
Aurora lamb: THICK! and CURLY! This fleece is a black that is tinted a slight reddish/purple. Think about that shade of hair dye, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. This is an amazing lamb fleece, although it is slightly coarser than the greys. She’s mouflon, so there might be a tiny bit of lighter color around the belly and neck, but I think that got skirted away.
Grey:
Lamb Amidala: Oh, what a soft, soft fleece. Brown/grey, like butter. This is probably my favorite fleece of the whole group. She’s a decent sized lamb, but her fleece is very soft and fluffy, so there’s not a ton of it. This fleece is fine in texture.Lamb Aladdin: Amidala’s half brother, with virtually the same fleece. Aladdin’s a little boy though, so it’s a very small fleece. He's the brown/grey lamb in the photo.
Lamb Alonzo: Alonzo has a luscious fleece, fluffy black/grey.  He's the black/grey lamb in the photo. You can see how the outer coat is dark and the inner coat is very light grey.  Very pretty. He grew a lot of fleece with a lot of thel. Very fine fleece. This fleece is a very light silvery grey with black tog.

Brown:
Chewie: Chewbacca’s fleece matches her namesake. It’s a rich chocolatey brown, very long and thick. It’s somewhat on the coarser side of the adults, but still an exceptionally nice fleece.

White:
Bambi: Bambi’s fleece is ultra white, thick and dense. This one would be perfect for dying. There’s a lot of very nice fleece here. Her fleece is medium texture.
Aries lamb: Long and silky, with black spots. You could either separate the black and white parts or mix them. Very pretty fleece with ringlets. Medium-fine.
Sebastian: Lordy, what a fleece. Sebastian is our ram, and his fleece is immense. It’s white and brown spotted. VERY long staple. His fleece is somewhat coarse, because he’s a ram, but it’s exceptionally long and thick and lustrous.
Alpha lamb: Alpha’s fleece is like an angel’s feathers. That would be great except that earlier in the fall she stuck her entire body into a plant that was full of seeds, so quite a bit of it is going to have to be pitched. There’s a small amount of creamy white, ultra fine lambs fleece left.Leuci: Leuci was very sick early in the summer after her lambs were born, and we thought her fleece would be poor. She proved us very wrong. She grew a gorgeous, cream colored fleece any sheep would be proud of. Her fleece is medium fine and medium staple.

Store's Up!!

(Sort of...)

Check out Unplanned Peacock Studio - the beta version of my hand dyed yarn and fiber store!  Let me know what you think.  Granted, right now there's not a ton of yarns on there - YET.   I have dyed NINETY FIVE skeins of yarn in the last month that are just sitting in the studio, waiting to have someone adopt them and knit them into beautiful objets d'art.  It is going to take me until the middle of next week to add them all to the store and then make it all beautiful.  So anticipate many changes to this website, and my main website (which will be a new one that will link to this blog), and whatever else I can come up with.

If you have comments, don't be shy - I'm flying by the seat of my pants on all of this online business stuff.  

I promise it will all get more exciting as time goes on!!

Dye your Own Socks Day!

I'm pleased to announce that the second Sunday of each month will be the Unplanned Peacock Studio Dye your Own Socks Day!  It will be $20 for a 500 yard skein of superwash merino/nylon sock yarn and the non-toxic yarn to dye it.  Dyeing fun will begin at 1 pm.  Knitters who aren't interested in dyeing are perfectly welcome to hang out as well.  Here's the flyer.  Please RSVP because the studio is small, and only a limited number of people will be able to come per month.

Dyeing for You

I've been extremely busy either mixing up color concoctions, skeining yarn and trying to use my small web design skills to get a website up advertising my new creations.  Here are a few of the yarns that will soon be up for sale on www.unplannedpeacock.com. (don't go there yet!  It's not active!)  Here are just a few sample batches...

FeedBurner

Hey all, I've got an RSS feed set up correctly now.  If you want to keep up to date on all the farm and fiber goings on, it's ready for you!

(Tzaddi's just here to look cute!)

One Licked Chick

Most of the chickens on our farm are Dorkings, an ancient and beautiful breed. We also have a few Norwegian Jaerhons. Our most recent chicken acquisition are a group of day old Silkies, who are growing into ridiculous powder puffs. There is one other chicken on our farm who doesn’t fit into any of these groups, a Leghorn rooster named Foghorn (what else could we have named him?).

Leghorn chickens are also an ancient breed of chickens, originating from southern Europe in the middle ages. However, their main claim to “fame” is that they are now the most popular group of laying birds in industrial, factory style agriculture. Leghorn hens are kept in inhumane layer cages in most of the egg producing facilities in the United States. Foghorn is a rarity amongst Leghorns, simply because he is a rooster. Most chicken hatcheries kill most of the male chicks of laying breeds when they are a day old. If you are interested in finding out more about chicken welfare, visit United Poultry Concerns. Another issue surrounding the Leghorn chicken is that since the vast majority of the laying chickens in the US are Leghorns, US chickens have a very small gene pool making them less adaptable and more susceptible to disease. There are literally hundreds of other types of chickens, and many of them are in danger of becoming extinct breeds. To put it simply, the fewer breeds of an animal you have, the shallower the gene pool is, and the more likely disease can decimate a population. The genetic diversity of all species is important, and critical to their adaptability. If you are interested in rare breeds of farm animals, visit the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Foghorn was given to us with a little Rhode Island Red hen who we named Rosie. Some friends of ours, Robert and Debra Raab, were keeping chickens as a hobby. Unfortunately, someone dumped a pregnant pit bull in their neck of the woods. She had a big litter, and the pups grew up feral. They spent their time raiding the farms in the area. Unfortunately, one place they ransacked was Robert and Debra’s chicken house. Robert and Debra thought that all the chickens had been killed. A few weeks later, Rosie and Foghorn returned from hiding, and they were given to Mark and I for safekeeping. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, Rosie was found dead in the pasture, seemingly from a hawk or fox attack. Foghorn has been enjoying his free ranging life amongst the Dorkings since then.  

When I first met him, I was worried that Foghorn would be aggressive. He had the longest spurs I’d ever seen on a chicken. They were over 2 inches long and very sharp. Roosters use their spurs as weapons during their constant daily battle for supremacy of the barnyard. I was concerned that he would injure my beautiful Dorkings, but I need not have worried. Foghorn is the largest rooster in my flock, but he is hefty. He is so heavily built that he does not move very quickly. His feet are huge, and he seems to have some degree of stiffness or even pain while walking. The Dorkings are heavy bodied, but they are athletic. They flap, run and forage constantly. Foghorn loves exploring, but since he can’t fly, and isn’t very fast, his range is limited. He isn’t aggressive at all, and even if he was, he wouldn’t be able to catch a Dorking.

Foghorn’s life proceeded peacefully until two days ago. I was shifting sheep and dogs around the pasture, and somehow I didn’t latch the back gate as securely as I should have. Our two Great Pyrenees dogs, Odin and Scout, ran out into the back pasture, and somehow worked their way around to the back yard. I didn’t notice anything amiss until too late. I was sitting at my desk, working on my computer. It was dusk. I heard a chicken calling the “Someone’s laying eggs” cluck right outside the window. I thought, “Hmm, that’s strange.” Normally, they only lay eggs in the chicken house during the day. I went outside to investigate. Immediately, 100 pound puppy Scout bounds up to me. My immediate thought was “oooooh @#$%”. I grabbed him, and drug him up to the pasture. The back gate was open. I groaned, knowing that Odin was probably in the next county by now. (That’s not an exaggeration, we live right near the county line!). The sheep immediately ran into the small pasture to see me, hoping to get food. Scout ran out the back gate. I shut the gate, assuming I could deal with him later. I headed to the house to get the car keys.

Seconds later, I exited the back door of my house, only to see Odin in the creek, covered with mud. I sighed in relief, because I didn’t fancy a cross country chase at night. I called him. He immediately came to me. When he emerged, I noticed that he had been shielding a sodden, prone, bundle of feathers. I drug him to the pasture and let him go, praying the whole time that the chicken was not dead. This dog has been around chickens constantly for a year, and he has never killed one. He had caught a hen recently and was sniffing and licking her, but he did not harm her. Great Pyrenees are not supposed to have a strong prey drive which is part of what makes them successful livestock guardians, so it completely surprised me that he had hurt this chicken.

Once the dog was safely contained, I went down into the creek bed. The chicken was panting, so at least he was still alive. I knew immediately that it was Foghorn, because he is our only solid creamy white colored chicken. He looked terrible. He was utterly soaked in Great Pyrenees saliva. Every feather he had looked like it had been stripped of its fluff.

Luckily, Mark came home right at that minute, so I yelled at him, and he helped me get the bird out of the creek safely. Foghorn was gasping for breath and limp. I didn’t want to stress him any more, so I didn’t do much of a physical examination. I didn’t notice any blood or gaping wounds. We quickly put him in a pet carrier with a heating panel designed for parrots aimed right at him. Birds can die easily from stress and shock so I wanted to make sure that he was put in a warm and quiet area as soon as possible.  

Wet, greasy feathers are deadly for a bird, because they have a difficult time regulating their own body heat without the insulative feathers. If a bird gets wet in plain water, the feathers will dry quickly, but this wasn’t water, it was crusty, nasty dog saliva. Odin must have licked him for an hour to get him this soaked. What was amazing was that Odin obviously did not intend to hurt this chicken. If he had, Foghorn would have been long dead. Instead, he just wanted to lick and lick and lick... It was an “Of Mice and Men” moment. It made us feel better that our “Guardian” dog hadn’t gone over to the chicken slaughtering dark side.

Foghorn looked terrible, but he didn’t seem hopeless. Initially, he was limp and lay on his chest, but he soon started to hold up his head. By bed time, he was standing. He had a glazed over look in his eyes, and he was panting heavily, but he seemed to be recovering.

The next day, he was lying down again, but he was still alive. I couldn’t tell if he was eating or drinking in the carrier, or if he’d just knocked the food around a bit. A stressed animal might not eat or drink, and that could be fatal as easily as an injury. I decided to see what would happen if he had the chance to be with the other chickens. As soon as the carrier door was open, he immediately walked out. The other roosters looked at him inquisitively. He was still a sorry mess, with all of his feathers disheveled and plucked. One of the roosters tried to attack him, but Foghorn bravely defended himself and won the challenge. He stiffly started flapping his wings and crowed over and over again, as if to say “Look out World, I’m Back!!”. Hopefully, he’ll be the big old man of the barn yard for a long time to come, and stay away from overly affectionate dogs.

Single Black Ewe searching for Gorgeous Teddy Bear of a Ram

Horny guys need not apply...

Our little black Icelandic polled (no horns) ewe Orange needs a boyfriend. She's all alone in the world (other than her two beautiful sons, of course). She's trying to find someone who has really long, beautiful, multicolored fleece, a quiet, considerate temperament, and who wants to have lots of kids (ummm, I mean lambs).

Local boys would work out best...She has a crush on Freyr of Ingleside Icelandics, but we don't know if they are compatible yet.

In order to help Orange realize her dreams of having a big family of wooly lambs, I am offering my services as a yarn dyer. I will dye any quantity of yarn for you in whatever colors you desire, on your choice of fiber, your choice of weight of yarn (or roving). I will be headed off to purchase mass quantities of undyed fiber in a few days, so if you are interested, put your request in now. By the end of the week, I should be rolling in yarn, ready to dye for your projects. My goal is to be able to mail your freshly dyed yarn to you in about a week from the day you order it. I am anticipating selling the yarn for between $12 and $20 a 100 g. skein, depending on the fiber content (of course, I'll quote you a price before I dye the yarn). I'll also post photos of yarn I have already dyed so that you can pick from those skeins if you'd rather.

The possibilities are truly endless! You could get yarn based on the colors of your favorite pet, your wedding colors, or your sweetie's eyes! The yarn can be subtly kettle dyed, crazy and wild, or self patterning. I want someone to ask me to do colorways based on their Amazon Parrot's tail feathers.

So, if you want to help Orange realize her dream of finding the perfect man, (and produce some curly and fluffy Icelandic lambs in the spring), email me and let me know what you are looking for! This is your opportunity to get some truly one of a kind yarn, in a colorway designed just for you.

The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

Although I adore all the animals on my farm, the least appealing HAVE to be the guinea fowl. In deciding what animals I wanted to get for the farm, guineas were on my list because they are great at eating lots of insects. Since Virginia = lots of bugs, any defense would be helpful. (I’m debating getting some rescue turkeys for the same reason - they are supposedly good for Japanese Beetle control.) Realistically, we don't see a reduction in ticks or other insects because of the guineas and chickens. It is rather like taking a teacupful of water out of the ocean. You've removed some water, but there's still an awful lot there.

I purchased 6 guineas from Sand Hill Preservation Center. One of the keets (guinea chicks) had an injured or deformed foot, and he died at about 4 days old. The other five grew up and ruled the farmyard. In the spring, the birds decided that foraging along the road was a great pastime. Unfortunately, two guineas got hit by cars this year. We live on a very rural road, but people like to pretend they are in Nascar, and they will run over anything in their way.The only way we can solve the "guineas on the road" problem is to completely contain them. A fence wouldn’t work. Guineas fly quite well for ground birds, and they would fly right over a fence. We could clip their wings, but then they’d be vulnerable to predators. We could build them a big aviary, but they would be unhappy. Enclosed guineas wouldn’t be able to eat nearly as many bugs.

About 3 weeks ago, we noticed that our guinea total was now down to two. Needless to say, we were saddened by this. However, we hadn’t found a body. We figured that it had been eaten by a predator, and we hadn’t found the remains. Two days ago, I went outside and noticed that we once again had two pearl guineas and one albino guinea. I was amazed. Apparently, one had just taken an extended vacation. I watched them for a bit, and pretty soon the bolt of cuteness hit me. They had a tiny guinea keet scrambling to keep up with them.

Guinea fowl are really homely birds. They have bald, speckled heads with strange wattles. Guinea fowl keets are a vortex of amazing cuteness. It is like they use up all their cute moments in the first three weeks of life. They are teeny tiny. They are about the size of a large marshmallow. They have striped heads and bodies. They cheep almost constantly to keep in contact with mom.

This little guy was doing his darndest to keep up with the adults. He would tumble down hills and get knocked over, and he’d still run right along. The adults were trying to look out for him. They would fight off any living thing that was close by. One was staring into the creek bed and shrieking. I went to see if there might be another keet. Instead, I found myself face to face with a black snake. They were trying very hard to do a good job. However, guinea fowl are not very smart at all. They are not very good at parenting, although their hearts are in the right place. Just leading this guy near the creek was endangering his life. Small keets are so delicate that walking through wet grass can kill them. They get wet, and they cannot maintain their body temperature. They will die of hypothermia. It has been in the fifties here at night recently, and I knew this keet’s hours were numbered. If the wet grass and cold weather didn’t get him, the snakes, dogs, other birds or cats would get him. It is quite likely that this guinea hen mom had many babies and this lone keet was the only survivor of the trek from their nesting area to the barnyard. The next day, I found a guinea keet corpse on a rock in the stream, so there were more chicks at one time.

Still, I did not want to take this little guy away from his mom. I even caught him up,
birdnapping him for his own good. I kept changing my mind. He was very frightened by being caught. The adults were very upset, so I let him go. Finally, I talked to my husband, who said “Do you want him to live? Then catch him!” That was the reality of the situation, so I caught him and put him in a makeshift brooder. The problem is that he is all by himself, and he is very lonely.

Today, I will be getting some day old chicks from a local farmer to put in the same brooder with him, which should solve the isolation issue. It has been breaking my heart to hear him calling and calling his mom. I keep telling myself that he’s getting a few weeks of loneliness, but he’s gaining a full life of hanging out with his parents. Once he gets his real feathers rather than his down, he should have no problem hanging out with the adults. Wish this little guy luck!!

If you are considering getting a guinea as a pet, check out Jeanette Ferguson’s Gardening with Guineas book and website. Think hard before you make the leap, however. Guineas are LOUD, and your neighbors may not appreciate it. Often people have to get rid of their guineas when they get constant complaints from the neighbors. Also, guineas tend to roam. We have 18 chickens. The guineas roam about ten times the diameter that the chickens do. Your guineas are likely to explore all of your neighbors’ yards. Guineas are amazingly unafraid of cars, which leads to their death. We cannot even purposely herd our guineas with the car. They just don’t move.

The guineas pick on the chickens terribly. We have had them gang up on chickens that were not feeling well. The guineas chase the chickens relentlessly until the chicken finds somewhere completely isolated to hide. The guineas latch onto the chickens’ tails and hang on. This ruins the chickens’ tails, and the chickens hate the constant harassment. There have been incidents where the guineas would have killed the chicken if I had not intervened. The only good part of this behavior is that the guineas tend to act as referees if the chickens start to fight amongst themselves. The chickens start to fight, the guineas step in and beat both of the arguing chickens up.

We insist that our guineas roost in the chicken house at night. If we didn’t, they certainly would have been coyote food by now. We enclosed all of the young birds in the chicken house for a month when they were just out of the brooder, so the instinct to return there is very strong. Guinea hens will lay small but edible eggs. They will sometimes lay eggs in the chickens’ nest boxes, but we also find guinea eggs all over the place. Our beagle, Tzaddi, will run to us with guinea eggs held delicately in her mouth. We eat the eggs that have been laid in the nest boxes, but we don’t dare try to break open the eggs found outside.

Our birds are from Sand Hill Preservation Center. We got them there because we were also ordering a rare breed of chicken, and it was convenient to get all the chicks at the same age. While the birds from Sand Hill did fine, I would highly recommend getting your birds from a local source. You can eliminate the whole chick shipping process. Hatcheries swear up and down that there is no problem shipping day old chicks, but it is not uncommon for chicks to get delayed in transit and die. If you are patient, you can get guineas from people who have to get rid of them for one reason or another. Keep your eye on Craigslist. Eventually, you'll find just such a situation. Just remember, no matter which age bird you get, you've got to keep them enclosed for at least a month so they can learn where their home is. Otherwise, you'll have guineas trying to make their way back to their old territory.

We weren’t planning on breeding our guinea fowl. We weren’t intending to get any more guineas, because of the hit by car problem. Since the guineas are from the same hatchery, they are probably related to each other. This little chick is an unplanned bonus. Hopefully, he’ll survive and thrive, and stay out of the road.

Addendum: I just got home with a box full of 10 day old silky chicks. I put them in with the little baby guinea. For the first five seconds he was scared, and then he happily joined them in the pile of chick fluff, happy and relaxed at last.

PS: I'm sorry about the grainy quality of these photos - I only have a digital camera on the weekends, otherwise I have to use a Flip video recorder and cut and paste from there.

Woolie Wonders

Animals have always been my favorite things. Some would say that my life has revolved around my pets against all reason. That’s just the way I like it. When I was a kid, I’d pick out my clothes based on what animal was on them. My grandmother, smartly started sewing animal patches on everything I owned. When we decided to move to the farm, the primary reason was to give the animals we already cared for a better life and to enable us to get more critters.

When we bought the farm, I started to daydream about what animals I would like to have. I’ve always been a fiber junkie, so I knew I had to have sheep. Now, I didn’t spin or knit at the time, but I liked the idea of having all the wool I could craft. There would be time to figure out what to do with it later. In looking around at sheep books and the internet, I found ISBONA which is the Icelandic Sheep Breeders of North America. One look at the gorgeous creatures on their website sold me on the breed. When I found out their other characteristics, I knew I had made the right choice.

Icelandic sheep are a hardy, primitive breed of sheep found naturally in - Iceland!! They are best known for their contribution to the world of knitting in the form of lopi yarn. This yarn is a barely spun single ply bulky weight yarn. In Iceland, these sheep are allowed to run wild for part of the year, so they have developed into a smart and tough breed. They are only brought in to be sheared and lamb. They live with a minimum of human intervention which allowed only the strongest to survive. They have had this sort of life since ancient times, when they were imported onto the island. A herd of Icelandic Sheep were imported into Canada in the eighties, and they have become increasingly popular in North America as a milk/meat/fleece sheep since then.

Icelandic sheep come in many different colors, like moorit (brown), grey, black, white, and spotted. They can be bred with or without horns. Both rams and ewes can have horns. Their fleeces are very long and they need to be sheared twice a year. They are smart and unafraid of other animals. They do not “herd” in the same way as other sheep. If confronted with a Border Collie, they would most likely stamp their feet at the dog instead of being intimidated. Since Iceland has no natural predators, these sheep have not learned to be afraid of our wolves in dogs clothing. They also do not bunch up the way other sheep do. Instead, they spread out across the pasture. Some sheep are explorers. Our ram, Sebastian, and one of our ewes, Shakti, enjoy escaping and looking for greener pastures. They will crawl under fences, and through holes that the farmer didn’t even know was there. They are utterly nonplussed at being alone. This independent streak can make it difficult to move and protect the herd. Guardian dogs rely on the flocking instinct of sheep to move them away from danger. The guardian dogs also prefer the sheep to stay in the same general area so they can keep track of the entire group. This is often impossible with the Icelandics. They like to stick together as family groups, but rarely do they feel the need to stay in a larger herd.

We have not needed to get any sort of driving dog (one that barks to move the sheep) for our farm. The sheep are very food motivated, and they come running as soon as they hear the food bucket clank. We can also call “Sheepie sheepie sheepie” and generally they will come flying down the hill, baa-ing all the way. My husband calls this the "Stampede of Cuteness". We feed the sheep hay, corn, minerals, sunflower seeds and processed sheep pellets. Some people only feed Icelandics hay, but we have had problems with our animals becoming too skinny when they are nursing on a hay only diet. Maybe in the future, when our pastures are better, we can achieve that goal. The sheep graze in a large pasture every day. We move them to different fenced off areas every 2 weeks to keep the pasture fresh and the worm load down.

These sheep can be very affectionate, and each of them has a very distinct personality. Ours vary from Leuci who is the shy sweet pretty girl to Ananda who is the big cuddly lump to Bambi who WANTS FOOD NOW and can’t be bothered by formalities like the other sheep or her own babies. Our ram, Sebastian, is a big peaceful guy who loves to be scratched in between his horns. He’s sweet until you show him a grain tub, and then he’ll use his sheer mass to throw everyone else out of the way.

The biggest problem the sheep have had have been predation by neighborhood dogs and barberpole worm. The dog attack was fatal to four animals, and someday, maybe I’ll write about it. The barberpole worm is a parasite that attaches to the inside of their intestinal tract and sucks their blood. They can become so anemic that they die. Any sheep that is old enough to eat grass will pick up this parasite. It is a huge scourge on anyone who has sheep, but it is especially bad in the South. We have been fighting it all summer long, and many of the ISBONA sheep farmers have had a horrible experience with it this year. Hopefully, next year, we’ll have more experience and be able to confront the problem even more head on.

Our sheep were purchased from Heartsease Farm, Ingleside Icelandics, and Green Fence Farm. These animals are fascinating and charming, and I would recommend the breed highly to anyone who would like to raise sheep.

A Farm for All Reasons

Two years ago, my husband, Mark, and I decided that we wanted a change from our urban surroundings. We were living in Denver, Colorado. I was employed as the Director of Education of The Gabriel Foundation (a parrot welfare organization) and attending the University of Colorado. We were relatively happy with our lifestyle in Denver, but I was a nature girl at heart. I started to half heartedly peruse the "For Sale" ads on websites such as Land and Farm. Much to my surprise, there were quite a few affordable options available to us if we wished to move to a more rural setting.

Both my husband and I had tossed around the idea of living in an intentional community/eco-village in the past. All of the co-housing projects we had looked at were either extremely pricey or in a location that he could not move to and keep the same job. We were concerned about the looming Peak Oil crisis, and we wanted to start to work on a degree of self-sufficiency. Even though it would be years before we had to be self reliant, we knew it would take time before we could even hope to achieve this goal. I also wanted to live somewhere that I could not help but feel intimately connected to nature. Denver is a nice city with lots of parks and open space, but nothing beats being able to watch twenty plus species of birds from your living room window.

Mark and I made a magical list of all our desires for our perfect piece of property. I wanted to be able to keep chickens, sheep and other farm animals. Mark wanted to be located in the mountains. We both loved the idea of a house near water. We wanted an older home that didn't require an immense amount of "fixer-upper" work. Ideally, the house would have a unique character that was suited to our personalities. We wanted a wood heated home with the potential for more alternative energy projects. We knew the climate would be one of the critical factors in our ability to support ourselves, so we asked for a place with a temperate climate and a long growing season. Mature fruit trees would be a nice bonus. I would LOVE to have a studio. Of course, this all had to be within our price range.

In only a few weeks after starting to look at property, we found a farm advertised online in Ferrum, Virginia. It had a house built in 1905 which was thoughtfully restored in the nineties. There were plum, pear and walnut trees. There was a little creek that ran down the mountain valley right next to the house. There were barns, both ancient and modern. There was a lovely little guest house which would be ideal to either rent out or use as a studio. The property was fenced for horses in a way that was perfect for sheep! Ferrum is a microscopically small community, but it is close enough to Rocky Mount, Virginia for any necessities. There is even a very nice small college in town.

In August, 2 years ago, I flew out to Baltimore to do a driving tour of Virginia. The last stop was Ferrum. I looked at real estate along the way, but my heart was set on this farm. I was trying to be realistic and honestly compare prices and options, but the Ferrum Farm always showed itself to be the most suitable and desirable place. Little omens kept popping up indicating it was the right place for us. It was located on Stanley Branch Road, and the original builders of the farm were the Stanley family. Both my grandfather and my parrot's name was Stanley.

I play the harp. When I mentioned that to the house's former owner, she almost flipped. Apparently, when the original Stanley family lived there, they had a music room that included a large harp. The seller strongly felt that the ancestors of the house would dearly love to have another harp staying there. We bought the house, and we made our moving plans.

The preparation and trip to move 11 pets (5 parrots, 1 dove, 3 cats, 2 dogs), two people, and our junk from Colorado to Virginia was brutal and endless. We pulled up to the farm at 2 am the day before Christmas. The first thing we noticed was the overwhelming sound of rushing water and complete silence. No cars, no people, no animals, just the creek next to our front porch. Seeing anything but the stars was impossible. There were no lights anywhere. It was heavenly.

It seemed crazy to give up our lives in Denver for a completely unknown future in small town Virginia. However, I felt completely drawn to this farm and this gorgeous, sacred land. We had to make the leap. Luckily, Mark and I love it here. We are currently raising Icelandic sheep, chickens, a peacock, our parrots, guinea hens, cats, and dogs. There is never a dull moment with all of the critters around. We have a large garden and are going to continually expand it. Mark has begun to retrofit this home with solar technology. I am starting a business making hand dyed fibers, art and crafts. We have met lots of new Virginia friends. Things are looking up for this little farm.