The 2026 Bluegrass Yarn And Fiber Crawl

This summer feels like it's crawling, but in reality...or altered reality...it's time once again for the Bluegrass Yarn and Fiber Crawl.

There are over 20 farms and yarn shops participating in the crawl this year so there is something for everyone!  Our farm will have some retail offerings with yarn, roving and raw fleeces, but what I'm hoping to make the feature of our stop this year is education.  

Would you like to learn how to spin - spindle or wheel?  Maybe you bought a raw fleece in the spring and need to learn what to do next?  Interested in how yarn is "grown"?  Thinking about starting a fiber flock?  Just want to come out and meet some sheep...and get mugged for cookies?  

Our crawl hours are July 25 11:00 to 4:00....July 29 4:00 to 8:00...and August 1 11:00 to 4:00, but our farm can always be open at other times if you make an appointment. 

Come see us!  And the sheep would love if you brought some cookies ;-).

How's Your Tour Going?

I got off to a slow really slow start, but I haven't given up and neither should you...in case you are thinking about it.

Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that spinning is fun, especially with your friends :-).

June...In July

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The 2026 Tour de Fleece

 

The 2026 Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow!  

For anyone who's new here, this is a world wide spinning challenge that runs alongside the Tour de France race.  In 25 words or less, when the bike wheels are spinning, our wheels or spindles are spinning.  Some people set specific challenges (I'm going to spin a pound of wool) and some set general challenges (I'm going to spin 15 minutes every day).

There is an official site for the Tour de Fleece and Punkin's Patch is one of the Wild Card Teams.  There are some really fun sounding Wild Card Teams and you can join as many as you'd like.  Follow the links for more information.  

The Punkin's Patch - My Favorite Sheep team is a very laid back, but fun group of spinners of all skill levels.  Several spinners also follow the race pretty closely and I've learned to really enjoy the race because of the discussions in our group.  

You don't need to join a team if you don't want to.  You can just set your own challenge and  play quietly by yourself :-).  If you'd like to report in with successes and struggles without joining the group, you can leave a comment(s) on this post or shoot me an email.  If I can't help you, I can find someone who can!

Who's spinning this year?

Everybody Gets A Pergola!

The weather has been ridiculous.  We are currently in a stretch of mid to upper 90s and the sheep are hot, the horses are hot, the cats are hot, Pinot's hiding in the air conditioning and I'm...trying not to cry.  The bees are hot too.

Bees work very hard to keep their hives warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  They do this by working together to generate heat when it's cold or try to fan it out when it's hot.  There are lots of interesting articles online about this.  Here is a good one.

Stella and I had the good fortune of having a small building and some trees to provide afternoon shade for our bees when they were up on the hill.  Here's a link to a great Stella and the bees story and also a picture of our set up.  She also had an old leaky cistern and the bees gathered water there every day.  I'm not sure if I have any pictures of that.

There's no shade down here for the new hive and I had been thinking about how I would handle that.  Sure, the bees could probably take care of things on their own, but why add any extra stress to an insect that is already facing so many stressors these days.

I started with just a lattice back and top, but that really didn't help much.  I added the small shade cloth and while it looks a bit janky, it did the trick.  The front porch of the hive had been covered in bees trying to help fan cool air up into the box.  The numbers went way down almost immediately.

This picture was just after I added the cloth, but it's not very clear.  You might be able to biggify it to see more bees.

The other issue in high heat is water.  The tank I've had sitting out in the B Garden to provide water for birds, bees and plants was getting super hot and soupy really quickly.  I've tried to keep it clean and I've seen birds and wasps drinking from it, but never any bees.  I added a shade top to that as well and changed the safety landing to something hopefully more bee friendly.  We'll see.

Ideally it would be great if the weather could just cool off a bit...