Friday, August 9

Time Marches On...With Us or Without Us...It Doesn't Really Matter...







Yikes, we’re working on the ninth day of August already and soon all the fairs will be coming. We will partake of the ones we enjoy this year, missing them last year for whatever…or multiple reasons. This year, there isn’t anything pressing that will cause us to miss one that t to attend, so we’re looking forward to the first one, which will be the Washington County Fair which is in Greenwich, starting the nineteenth to the twenty-fifth. We enjoy this fair over the Dutchess County Fair because of the size. The one in Rhinebeck is so large, it is hard to enjoy, with thousands of people crowding everything there.
We will hit the Washington County Fair and the Southern Adirondack Sheep and Wool Festival for sure…and possibly the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck in September or October. We will most likely hit a few of the Oktoberfest celebrations this year too if all is going well.
We went the other day to pick up about 90 boards from the saw mill for the outside wall covering of the new tractor shed we will be building. Since it is raining cats and dogs today, we will spend our time designing and placing the posts on paper so we can make the material list for the treated lumber and kiln dried roofing materials. We have plenty of baton boards for the roof purlings and wall board runners, so it will be pretty easy to figure it out. Vick already got pricing on metal roofing, which is a fortune, but like everything else….what are ya gonna do?
The barn looks really great after placing the boards over the plywood we installed for stability. It’s looking really great and will really “POP” when painted or stained oxblood red. I got into a large nest of those long yellow jackets that look like a cross between wasps and the traditional yellow jackets. Instead of nesting in the ground or old logs, these guys make paper nests just like the wasps do, but man, they are nasty! I got a little too close to a nest measuring six inches across that held about a hundred bees. I only got nailed once, but it was a shame to kill that many bees because I infringed on their turf, but as a human, we must destroy…so I did.

 We're pleased with the way the boards came out...

 Doing it this way gave us upper stability and beauty...

We are processing fiber like it is going out of style (or I should properly say Vick is processing it). She is washing, picking, separating and drying fiber and then dying it on the rear deck and drying it all over again. She already has a great batch of Suri ready for spinning and today, since it is raining…we will get out the loom and load it up, making it ready to go for Vick to run off a scarf with her fancy art yarns.
We have decided the gift shop is not going to make it, so we will reconfigure our plans to use the building as a farm store and spinning/knitting store. We’ll market our farm products and fiber there and still give 15% of all sales to a different “Organization of the Month”, helping our own local families as much as possible. In this way we can support the many different programs in need of funding, while helping our nearby neighbors.  
Considering the lousy support the hospice people gave us, we will probably be raising more with this venture by keeping it closer to home and helping our own needy neighbors instead of the entire seven county region the hospice program now serves. I’m not saying we will not give to the hospice program any longer…because we surely will, but not exclusively as we did before, when so many others need help too.
The rain is nice…the air refreshing and cool…and I want to sit on the porch and listen to the raindrops gently tapping  on the tin roof…maybe I’ll even snooze a little. Life is good.     

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070209 Cluckin' "A" Critter Farm, LLC

1 comment:

  1. I think its a great idea to give locally, especially after reading in earlier blogs about how Hospice treated you. I usually try to give locally by going to the local produce stands and buying farm fresh eggs from down the road instead of from the grocery stores. I also like going to the little "Mom & Pop" stores instead of the big retail stores. We have a lot of Amish where I live and I would gladly spend a little extra for certain things from their stores than support the retail chains. I love what you are doing, keep up the good work.

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