News

  • Spring is really here!

    After all our cold and dreary winter, I think sping is finally here.  I'm feeding the animals in the morning with only a sweatshirt rather than a warm jacket to keep me warm and am down to my jeans and t-shirt by the evening feeding.  Even the plants seem to agree.  The Buckeye is blooming as well as the Pansies and the roses.

     

  • Bast Fibers

    Ever since I discovered now much I love linen, I have wanted to learn now to spin it.  Flax is the plant that produces the fiber and it becomes linen when it's spun into yarn and woven into cloth.  Other bast fibers include hemp, ramie and some bamboo.  A bast fiber comes from a plant and is usually inside the inner bark of the stems.  It's a cellulose fiber, similar to cotton, so it doesn't have any elasticity or memory like most animal (protein) fibers.

  • We have woad!!

    Woad is a wonderful plant.  It is the historic Northern European source for indigo, grown there for hundreds of years until other sources of indigo made their way westward from the far east.  Woad doesn't have an much indigo in it as the Japanese and far eastern indigo plants but is a hardier grower in northern climes.