Happy New Year!

I don't know where to start; it's been so long since I posted. I was having problems getting pictures to upload so I would shut everything down, thinking I'll try again later.

So here we are the first day of 2013 and I just want to wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year and will attempt to upload some of the pics that I couldn't get to post last time. While I haven't blogged much, there has been quite a lot going on here on the farm.

First, this is Russet our Scottish Blackfaced ram. We found him not too far away. Who would have guessed that there was another SBF breeder so close! We're keeping our fingers crossed that we'll have a bunch of little lambs in March.

You know last year when I said I'd been doing some stone work? Well this is the wall I've been working on: (It's still in progress) Don't forget to click on the pics to see them larger.

Before and after....

The driveway, before...

The beginnings of the wall

Ta Daaa!

 Not finished yet though. Just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit. 

I still can't believe that I managed to find most of the stone just laying around in the pastures. Some came out of the creek bed and some was given to me by a neighbor. He had it left over from a retaining wall he'd had built and just wanted to get rid of the left overs. He still has some more and wants me to go and get it out of his way so I should be able to make more progress in the near future. 

Once it's done, I'm thinking of trying my hand at building a timber-frame lytch gate in the gap between the two walls.

I also finished the other side of the culvert:

So far we haven't had any torrential rains that raised to creek level. That will be the true test of it's integrity! In the past, we've seen the water way higher than the top of the culvert!

What a summer!

Gosh, I don't know where the time has gone to this summer. Lots of things have been going on on the farm so I'm going to yet again, attempt to update the old blog, and as usual try to keep it updated!

So; we had a great six weeks with Dad. At almost 80 he didn't want to be on the go all the time but he got to see some of the local tourist attractions. Some kind person took this picture of us both at Mabry Mill over on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Ken and Josh were up ahead of us somewhere. This is the most photographed spot on the Parkway and it's a really neat place to visit with not only the working grist mill but other old log buildings and demonstrations of Appalachian rural life as it was for the early settlers.

Dad likes antiques and "junk" so having him here was a good excuse to go to Black Dog Salvage in Roanoke. I've been wanting to go there for so long but we never got around to it. Lots of  cool architectural salvage but a bit too expensive for us. 

So we moved on to the Irish Pub!

This is Annie Moore's in Roanoke. It's excellent!

Not long before Dad came someone dropped off a pregnant cat. We took her in, of course. She's the nicest, most docile cat we've ever had. We named her Patchouli. Here she is, very pregnant, soaking up the warmth from the lamp in the chicken brooder!

She just lay there purring while the chicks hopped all over her.

She gave birth to four beautiful little kittens. This is Dad's favorite. He named her  "Millie" after my Mum.

Getting a clear picture of them all together was next to impossible.

                                           
                                                  It was nice having someone to walk the dog!

Long faces all around when he had to leave.

Seventeen

Dad had intended to be here for Joshua's seventeenth birthday but that didn't work out. It was just the three of us and Birthday cake:

I can't believe it's seventeen years since we brought home that precious little bundle. Now he's all grown up and taller than both of us. Last year we came to the decision that he should go to the local public high school for his last three years. There are no kids his age for miles and really no activities going on for his age group either. It seems like every time he made a friend the family moved away. So, last September, after 8 years of being home schooled, he started 10th grade 20 miles away. I was so worried that he would have trouble adjusting. Worried that perhaps he would be behind - though he always did well on the end of year tests. Thankfully, he settled right in and made Honor Student. His overall  average is 100! We're so proud of him.

One of his birthday gifts was a two day Beginning Blacksmith course at The Jacksonville Center for the Arts in Floyd. It's something he's been wanting to do for a long time. Now he plans to build his own coal fired  forge, like the ones they use there:

Apparently they're not that difficult to build and Ken can get the parts easily.

My Dad's Here!

A lot happening here on the homestead. My Dad's here for six weeks. Actually, he's already been here for 3. I just haven't had much chance to blog about it.

First, I was busy getting his room ready:

I love this room. It's bright and colorful. The walls are a pale sage/apple green. It doesn't have a name. We mixed it ourselves from lots of left over paint we had under the stairs. The comforter and other furnishings are in blue, orange, raspberry, yellow and violet! Sounds atrocious but amazingly, it all works together.

And here's Dad enjoying a bit of fishing up at the pond.

Afraid our fish are still small as you can see!  Ken took him over to a neighbor's pond the following week where the fishing was much better.

More new faces on the farm

We've been talking about getting sheep for quite a while but I couldn't make up my mind what breed to get. It's strange but I had a very set image in my mind of what to me, constituted a "real" sheep. When I was in England last year I found out that the sheep I was thinking of were the Herdwick breed. The ones you see running wild up on the high fells in Cumberland, shrouded in mist and fog. Alas, no Herdwicks to be had in these parts. Then just before Easter I saw a for sale ad for three Scottish Blackface ewes! Now they are also my idea of "real" sheep. They're the ones you see up in the Highlands, also shrouded in mist and fog, or standing in the middle of the road stopping traffic- no fences up there. Wild, ancient, extremely hardy, curly horns. Yes! real sheep!

We drove 4 hours to go and get them.

First, they had to be caught. 

Then pointed in the direction of the stock trailer. 

"I'm not going, I'm not go-iiing Really, I'm not!"

 Phew, all loaded up.

From left to right: Cornelia, Morag and Kirsty.

Our route home took us through Appomattox, a place steeped in civil war history. We decided to take a break and stop at the restored village of Appomattox Court House, the site of Lee's surrender.

So, we parked the trailer.

And left the sheep...

to go sight-seeing.

And what a nice afternoon it was.

Dry Stone Wall Pics, finally!

Oh it was so nice to see comments from you guys when I signed on just now! I thought I'd lost any followers long ago. Thank you so much for waiting for me. Hugs to you all.

Well, we have had the strangest mildest winter imaginable. I think we only had one snow storm. It dropped about 6 inches of snow that lasted two days and was gone. We hardly used the woodstove. I tried tapping the maple trees but didn't get enough sap to be worth boiling down for syrup. But it's been a great winter for working outside. And here at last, are some pictures. Click on them to make them bigger.

Ok, here's Damascus. It wasn't the picture I intended to post but for some reason Blogger insited on loading it. Isn't she beautiful?

There we go. Here's the creek that runs down the length of our "holler". So many times I've looked at that ugly culvert and thought: Surely there's something I could do to that thing" Well, one day in October, inspiration struck and  I got busy.

I thought of the lovely stone bridges back home in the Lake District. Removing the culvert and building a bridge wasn't something I was ready to tackle so instead, I decided to rock in around it. Which led to other things like steps and hmm, why not dig the creek wider and have an island in the middle? With a tree on it... and daffodils ... and oh, I know, it could become a memorial garden for my Mum! So that's what it's slowly evolving into.

Here it is with the coping stones added.

As you can see we'd had a storm during the night and the stream was in spate.

This little Redbud sappling was growing in the woods. Ken dug it up for me last weekend and we planted it by the bridge. That pool is quite deep. It was full of little minnows today. -Sorry about the sagging electic tape in the background.

That's another Redbud we planted on the island. We bought that one - before I spotted the wild one growing in the woods. We also found Daffodils growing by the big creek across the road so we dug those up also and transplanted them.

It's coming along