T-shirts and gifts for Seed Savers

I was messing around with an eraser carving in PhotoImpact and came up with this.

You can read a bit more about it at Ikki-Pokki Arts or click on it and you'll see how it looks on the items in the shop.

So much squash!

For my mum who has no idea what I'm talking about when I mention squash. Well, this is it. We planted it around the dog pen to give her bit more shade.

It's prolific to say the least. You have to pick it everyday and it ends up piled up all over the kitchen. It's good fried up with onions but there's only so much you can eat before you get sick of it. My mother in law says it doesn't freeze well but I'm going to give it a try. You can buy it frozen at the supermarket so there must be a way.

This is yellow squash and some zucchini I found growing in with it. I didn't plant zucchini! It must have somehow got mixed in with the squash seed at the nursery. I made a couple of loaves of zucchini bread with it. Ken's calling it "choke bread" because it came out a bit dry.

A view of the house from the creek

Our house form a different angle. The creek bank here is constantly eroding and large chunks break away and fall into the stream. The dark layer is clay. Josh collected some of it to try his hand at making pots. It seems to be good clay with no debris in it. I thought we might try pit firing our creations as an experiment.

Our New Herdsire!

As some of you may remember we lost our lovely big buck Jeremiah just before we were about to bring him up here in May 2005. It really set us back since no daddy goat = no baby goats = no milk!

So, this spring we went looking for a new herd sire. We finally found him along with many more absolutely beautiful nubian kids not too far away at Faithful Farm.

That's him on the right. His name is Jaquemo and that's his -fixed- little brother Pepper on the left. Pepper should grow much larger and heavier due to being castrated. I'm going to train him to be a pack and harness goat. He'll be able to pull a cart or carry a few neccessary items like bottled water and rain gear when we go out for a hike.

For anyone looking to buy nubian dairy goats in south west Virginia please take a look at the Faithful Farm website. The Coordes family LOVE their goats and it shows!

I think Jaquemo is going to produce some wonderful kids for us next spring. Not to mention I won't need to run 5 miles to the store just for milk anymore!

Where are the Eraser Carvings!?!

I know I haven't posted pictures of any eraser carvings for a long long time. There's been so much to do around the farm and I wanted family and friends to be able to follow our progress. The Inky Spinnery has morphed into more of a farming and homesteading blog and I've been feeling very guilty about it.

Well, now that Ken's home full time I'm not the sole animal waitress, poop picker-uper, we now have the animal waiter! So, I finally have time to create.

I've been really wanting to do something with my eraser carvings and wanted to get them out there for people to enjoy. Some I mounted as rubber stamps with fancy handles ready to list on eBay but I love them so much I can't let them go!

Well, I found the solution...

Check out The Official Inky Spinnery Shop Ikki-Pokki Arts! There you'll be able to see the new designs I've been working on and even purchase them on t-shirts, caps, mugs and other gift items.

And please leave a comment over there. I'm looking for lots of feed back, ideas and suggestions.

The Flood

Potato Patch Island.

That's a deer with her twin fawns. The little fawns were having a great time splashing around and running in circles.

Well, as you can see we've been having a bit of excitement here over the last week or so. We got over 11 inches of rain in 24 hours! I looked out of the kitchen window just as the creek burst it's banks and a new creek was heading down the farm yard! Within a few minutes the water was up to the back steps. It washed out one side of the driveway leaving some 3ft holes. The potato patch was completely surounded but we didn't lose any plants thank goodness.