Crafting without the Algorithm

Hello friends! I have been off Instagram for a few months and, while I don’t miss that specific platform, I do miss interacting with you! Some of you send me delightful emails with photos, but I know that can be an undertaking. So, I’ve created a Discord server and would love for you to come chat! Here is the invite link: Knit Spin Farm: all crafts community. (this link expires in late May. Drop me an email at jsmoskal@gmail.com if you need an updated invite!)

If you see this photo of Ginger welcoming you to the barn, then you are in the right place.

Discord is a pretty basic online message board sort of place. You can share photos and links, as well as chat and read along. I’ve created spaces for many common crafts and I think it would be a great place to host snail mail swaps and makealongs. I have a few starter ideas and would love to hear your suggestions too.

If you are interested in chatting, or just lurking, please join us. It is an All Crafts space, meaning I hope you’ll share all the making you are working on, and it is a craft-only space. I know we are whole people with more in our lives than just making, but I’d like to keep this space specific to crafting. If that sounds fun to you, stop on by!

Just a quick reminder that the shop is mostly shut down for the summer as we focus on farming, but there are a few things available now, including striping yarn, semi-solids, variegated experiments, and project bags. Orders of $75 or more get free US shipping until the end of the month. Thank you!!

Friends, we have been focusing on farming, and - this might just be the spring weather talking but…it’s been so great. By pausing the clubs and yarn dyeing, our schedule has allowed us to accomplish a lot of things - mostly fencing, but also potatoes!

Tearing out the goat-destroyed garden fence, and replacing it with a convincing barrier has been a lot of work, but it is now nearly done and we feel really good about it. Bill prepared this potato plot a few days ago, and we planted 100+ pounds of seed while listening to the Mets lose a baseball game (again) on the radio.

I’ve been long considering that my next tattoo would be a quote from The Lord of the Rings, “peace and quiet and good tilled earth,” but, honestly, baseball on the radio is my favorite summer working soundtrack. If I can have dirt under my fingernails, birds flying around my garden, and just a bit of physical work with Bill by my side and a ballgame in the background, I consider it a perfect day.

Ok, there would also be cookies. We have a bunch of these in our freezer when we need a boost after working hard. We omit the white sugar and find them to be sweet enough with just the brown sugar and cranberries, and we also make them quite a bit smaller. In the summer, we eat them frozen. As they are mostly oats, they don’t freeze hard and make a refreshing treat. (It’s possible that 65% of my enjoyment of working outside comes from knowing I’ll get a cookie when we’re done.)

We also planted mushrooms! It’s crazy easy - have you ever done it? We get our supplies from North Spore, but Fedco Seeds is another great source, especially if you need some garden seeds too. (I also recommend Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Both Fedco and SESE are small entities which have a demonstrated respect for humans and small scale agriculture. They are worker run cooperatives - not multinational corporations, and we love the seeds we get from them.)

We started lion’s mane and shitake mushrooms in maple logs. This wonderful maple tree protected our house from the giant mulberry that fell on it last summer. The maple tree cushioned the blow from the falling mulberry and saved our roof from destruction. We are delighted that we will get to honor the maple tree for a few more years by using it to grow mushrooms.

To use the mushroom plugs, you drill holes in the log, hammer in the plugs, and then cover with wax (to keep the log from drying too quickly). Then, you set the logs in a suitable location and wait for mushrooms to appear. It can take a while, but it’s lot of fun. In theory, these maple logs should support five years of mushroom growth.

In goat news, Mocha Butt/Mort has been working through his fear of our back pasture. Last spring our back pasture hosted a mama deer and her doeling (ever since Bill rescued a newborn deer from the creek, we’ve assumed all local deer are related to her in some way. The doeling in our pasture was referred to as Lola the Seventeenth). The mama deer would jump over the pasture fence and spend her day wandering fields, but Lola 17 would hang out with the sheep and goats, or hide in the tall grass, until her legs were long enough to hop the barrier herself.

We think that, at some point last summer, Mocha Butt was spooked by the tiny deer and developed a fear of our back pasture. At first, we thought he was sick, as he stayed in the barn and whined while the rest of the herd foraged out back. But, finding nothing wrong with him, we soon realized he was just afraid of the area. We explained that Lola 17 was an herbivore, like Mocha himself, and also that she was way smaller than him and lacked horns, but he remained skeptical.

We just reopened the back pasture this week, and Mocha resumed his isolation when the herd ventures into the spooky land of the bright, wide-open grassland. We’ve been guiding him out back and having help from our steadfast ram, Other Barry, who frequently returns to the barn to check on Mocha and has escorted the scaredy goat into the pasture himself. For a few days, Mocha was testing out the pasture, but didn’t seem to be eating much. But, last night, as we worked in the garden, we saw him munching on grass, firmly in the middle of a circle of goats. Good job, working through your fear, buddy!

I think that’s all the news I have! Unless you are interested in the wren nest that was built in a pile of barn garbage? I pop into this part of the barn every night to collect chicken eggs that get laid in there. The mama wren and I had come to an understanding that if I didn’t poke my nose into her nest too closely, she wouldn’t fly into my face and startle me. At one point, she had four tiny eggs in this beautiful nest. They are gone now, and I suspect Squirtle the Raccoon is the culprit. I don’t know if the wren will move back in and try again, but I will keep checking nightly anyway.

Thank you so much for your interest in our farm! I hope to see you on the Discord server. Be well, fiber friends.

KnitSpinFarm