Monday, April 16, 2018

 Portland Press Herald — Staff photo by Gregory Rec

The story of Nugget McFluffyhead

Nugget was born in Maine on March 22nd this year, one of three East Friesian lambs. Being the last of the three born, his siblings were already adept at nursing and he just could not push his way to one of his mother's two teats. It was cold and he was not getting enough to eat, a downward spiral began and he got weaker and weaker. As he weakened his mom favored his stronger siblings so a decision had to be made about his fate. He would not make it until the next morning without some human intervention. You can see from the picture below how the rest of the story goes. Nugget stays close to his new parents and even runs errands with them as they run their farm and participate in the farmer's markets. When not in the baby sling he wears a sweater and diapers. You can imagine that he has made quite a hit with those he meets along the way. To read his whole story and see some cute photos of Nugget go to the Portland Press Herald.


Heide Purinton-Brown of Toddy Pond Farm talks with a customer 
at the market while Nugget snoozes in a sling bag. 
Portland Press Herald — Staff photo by Gregory Rec

Monday, April 9, 2018

Taking a stab at needle felting

There are so many cool needle felted landscapes, portraits, bags, you name it.....amazing what you can do with wool. After being inspired by all of these wonderful projects on Pinterest I decided to take a stab at it myself, literally.  Decided to start with what is close to my heart, our animals. Meet Woodstock, one of our first llamas and here is his story.


Woodstock arrived at our farm 20 years ago along with 5 other llamas. He lived his life out on our farm as an intact stud and helped to produce three beautiful babies, Cappachina, Comet and Blue Moon.  Their mother was Countenance who arrived on the farm with Woodstock. Woodstock was a fine fiber animal as well as one of our best ambassadors. He traveled to many events and participated in the Maine Llama Drill Team, a story for another day.  My felting of him makes him look a bit standoffish, but he was the opposite, a sweet gentleman and I miss him.


Monday, April 2, 2018

What's the buzz about?

This is our first year with our honey bees and I am getting anxious to see the bees after a long, cold and windy winter.  The only way I could keep track of them was with a stethoscope and a cool gadget from FLIR which plugs into my iPhone. (A model is also available for Android devices).
The stethoscope helped me track their location and a good guess about their activity from the noise volume, but I needed a visual. With the FLIR One I can see where the ball of bees are hanging out and how big the ball is.





Even better, there were a the few warm and sunny days in February when quite a few bees ventured out to clean out their systems and get fresh air. Unless bees are sick they do not defecate in the hive, otherwise they would contaminate their own food.



Beeutiful bees!

From the Dye Pot Just out of the dye pots this week inspired while raking fallen oak leaves.............. From plants in our fields ...