The 2025 Bluegrass Yarn And Fiber Crawl

It's time for the Bluegrass Yarn and Fiber Crawl and the farm and Wool House will be open for the following dates and times and can also be "open" at other times, but please email to make an appointment.  If you show up without checking first, you'll probably just get put to work ;-).

 

Saturday and Sunday July 26th and 27th from 11:-00 to 4:00

Wednesday July 30th from 4:00 - 7:00

Saturday and Sunday August 2nd and 3rd from 11:-00 to 4:00

So what can you do if you come out to the farm?  

Obviously bring cookies or crackers to treat the sheep and meet the flock :-D.

Bring your spinning wheel or current project and find a shady spot to sit and visit...or not visit if you'd prefer to just relax and not be social.  We understand.

Bring a picnic lunch or a bottle of wine and snacks and enjoy relaxing on the farm.

Wear work clothes and clean stalls or run the weed eater.  Just kidding...sort of... ;-).

Do a little shopping.  We have raw and washed fleeces, roving, batts, yarn, spindle kits, gift items...

Take a free spinning lesson - bring your own wheel or borrow one of mine. I can also help with basic knitting questions or problems...or teach you some new ones ;-).  I'm also happy to talk about how to process wool or take care of sheep.  What would you like to learn?

Get your passport stamped and try to win some prizes from the Kentucky Fiber Trail! 

There will should be cake on both Sunday afternoons.  Wednesday evening...I might make some fresh sourdough bread and have a bowl of bruschetta topping.

 

If you need directions or have any questions, just shoot me an email!

June Was A Pretty Good Month

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Nobody Died

 Or why you might not want to eat one of my cakes ;-).

I'd watched enough Bake Off to learn that store bought jam is too sweet for cake filling so I decided to buy fresh raspberries and cook my own.  After it's finished on the stove, you need to push it through a fine sieve to remove all the seeds.  This was harder than it looked on tv.

I had a small strainer I'd planned to use, but quickly realized I needed a larger one.  Well, that's not a problem.  I have one up at the barn.  I use them to scoop hay and other detritus from the water tanks.  A thorough washing with soap and hot water and it was sparkling clean.

After working all the seeds out of the raspberries, I had just as much trouble washing the seeds from the strainer.  I washed and scrubbed and finally took the spray nozzle to it...and a bunch of hay (and possibly other detritus) flushed out from under the shiny clean rim (!).

There was no way I was going to waste re-make the fresh raspberries.  It had boiled on the stove.  Surely there's a five minute rule if boiling is involved.  I kept my mouth shut...and no one died.

I have since bought a set of dedicated kitchen strainers ;-).

About All The Cakes

Back in the winter when life really got extra mean and depressing, several friends told me "You need to watch you some Great British Bake Off!"

I don't like to cook and I'm not really a baking person.  I don't watch much tv and definitely not reality tv.  Why would I want to waste time watching a reality tv show about baking?

"Just try it."

So Tim and I sat down one night to watch one episode to shut everyone up...and now have binge watched 11 seasons.  If you're having a bad day...go watch you some British Bake Off :-).

Cakes are not my favorite dessert.  I like them (if they are good), but I don't love them.  I only marginally like frosting (if it's good).  I would probably never order a piece of cake at a restaurant.  

Cakes started showing up on my IG feed.  Usually when something shows up that I'm not interested in, I flag it as such and "like" some new sheep or fiber account and my feed stays fun and focused.  One day I saw a picture of a beautiful robin egg Easter cake...and I clicked on it.

Hmmm, that's really pretty...

At this point we'd watched maybe two seasons of GBBO and I'd so thoroughly enjoyed watching everyone bake cakes together, helping each other, cheering each other on, being nice and learning new techniques (sort of like fiber arts, eh?) that I sent the post to Auntie Reg and told her I wanted to try to make that cake.  

It looked a little like this cake.  Or I should say this cake looked a little like that cake.  It was nerve wracking to say the least, but with Reg's help, the cake was edible and the icing...mostly stayed on the cake.  It wasn't super fun, but I knew/hoped I could learn to do better, so the following week I tried another cake.

This was a lemon cake with lemon curd inside and on top and the flowers really made it pretty.

Rhubarb upside down cake...from our garden!

A flourless chocolate roulade, straight from one of Mary Berry's books :-).

This Surprise Lemon Pudding was too and I would definitely make this again now that I know I need to weigh my eggs.  I learned that from The Cake Bible.  Yes, I bought that.  Now, if my baking doesn't kill you, I can always bean you with a nearly 700 page book ;-D.

Chocolate inside and outside and even on top.  I'd like to re-make this cake just to do it better, but like seldom knitting a pattern more than once, I'll probably not repeat it just out of spite.  There's not a shortage of chocolate cake recipes out there.

I was pretty happy with this one.  Still not getting where I want icing-wise, but getting better.

I highly recommend placing some mint leaves on top of lemon cream cheese frosting.  It infuses (?) into the frosting where it touches and it gives it a fabulous minty flavor.  

Angle food cake with the whites and lemon curd with the yolks.  Raspberry frosting...that I should have made a note about because I don't remember which recipe I used, but I think it was a whipped cream frosting, not butter cream.

That was the best lemon curd I've even tasted - from The Cake Bible. 

Lavender blackberry cake with ermine frosting.  I didn't harvest our lavender to make this, but I did want a picture with it while the bees and butterflies worked away.

This was the first cake I wasn't just thoroughly panicked making.  There was lavender infused milk in the recipe and lavender syrup brushed on each layer before frosting.  I wasn't sure how much I could add to the layers so I erred on the side of caution.  It could probably have used a little more to increase the lavender flavor, but it was still really good.  

The reason I wasn't sure how much to add is because I got smart and put the third layer of the cake in the freezer so I was working a bit off recipe.  Now if I don't feel like baking a new cake some week I can pull it out and make a trifle and tick that check box ;-).

So now that I'm pretty into trying to learn how to make cakes, I've decided it can be my summer "thing".  I'm calling it Scratch Cake Summer.

Anyone have a good cake to recommend?

 

And April...

The big story in April was shearing.  We traditionally have shorn around the middle to end of March, but after two years of horrible cold snaps afterwards, I decided to hold off until the first week of April and then it poured rain for days and we postponed until the second week of April.  The time lapse video of the afternoon was very fun.

The best part of April were that everyone was still here.  Frail old Burrnie had moved into Eazy Breezy and loved being able to get some extra treats and still be able to go out to graze with some of his friends.  We knew Kaala wasn't feeling well, but she was doing okay and still happy to hang out with her friends, eat treats and enjoy the tall grass in the side field.

Pinot dug a big hole under one of the huge sidewalk rocks.  A big hole.  I think it measured to something like 32 or 34 inches deep.  I'd go out and re-measure it...but he turned right around and filled it back in.  His fur is still stained brown on his back.  He was a hard working bunny, day and night, and the hole was impressive.

Frankie and I did quite a bit of riding and I was pretty encouraged by our progress, especially working over ground poles.  Tim made me a set of short cavaletti blocks.

The late winter/early spring sun was enjoyed by everyone.  When it was not warm and sunny, the wool sweaters and winter coats kept everyone comfortable.

Betsy enjoyed the shearing party and a couple spinning parties.  Betsy loves a party :-).

Lots of wool pictures.  The fleeces were in better shape than I was afraid they might be with the long winter and delay in shearing.  Maisie had picked up a chicken feather somewhere along the line and it made it through shearing so I tucked it in her wool bag.

Bullseye helped with skirting and became quite a lap sitter.  He loves the barn and has several favorite spots in and around and sits out front at night. 

The cake baking started.  More about that to come.

Rebecca brought her bottle lamb over one afternoon and managed to get him back in the car to go home.  

Gato arrived/returned and the other two horses lost their ever loving minds.  I'm probably not going to add anything to that story (!).

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