With Apologies to My Male Readership...

Last September I had the good fortune to sit next to a woman named Nancy Aronie at an animal communication workshop I was attending. I say good fortune because Nancy is an absolutely fabulous woman. She's a wonderful writer and gives a very famous workshop on the Vineyard called Writing from the Heart.  Everyone at the workshop we were attending had to go around the room and introduce themselves and Nancy laughed deeply and wept openly in the same sentence. She is brilliant, and brimming over with life, and, lucky for me, she is freezing all the time.

Lucky for me, because the other reason I was so fortunate to be sitting next to Nancy was that she brought a hot water bottle with her to the workshop. Turns out she takes it everywhere she goes to keep her warm. During a break in the morning session Nancy refilled her water bottle from the tea kettle. At first I thought the whole thing was kind of bizarre, but when she stuck it in between us I was instantly converted. "You'll have to get one," Nancy said. To which I replied,  "Nancy, I am 38-years-old. I cannot start carrying a hot water bottle around with me." 

Which turned out to be totally untrue. Even as I write this I have my trusty hot water bottle by my side, keeping me toasty. Oh, I don't carry it around with me. Not out of the house anyway. Unless I'm going up to Patrick's parent's house across the street. Or for a long car ride. Or to the movies. Not that we ever go to the movies, but if we did, I'd take my hot water bottle with me.

The only problem with the hot water bottle is that I can't take it with me when I'm doing chores outside cause you have to hold it. I actually considered getting one of those baby slings to hold it in place against my chest while I'm feeding or working the livestock but it seemed kind of impractical.

The thing is, I am cold all the time. Well, not all the time. I'm warmish from May through September. But winters in the Northeast kick my ass. I hate being cold, and as a result, I dread doing all of the everyday tasks that I so enjoy doing when it's warm.

And, if I may be frank with you, (and I think I can speak frankly with you) the worst thing in the world is when my breasts get cold. It's beyond uncomfortable- it's painful. And, short of taking a hot shower, I find it very, very difficult to recover from cold breasts.

Until today that is. Today, I came up with the idea for which I will become famous. Forget the whole "started the first Fiber CSA" business. If and when my obit appears in the New York Times, it will be because of the discovery I made at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 4th.

And it never would have occurred to me to share this particular piece of awesome if Patrick, upon hearing the news of my miraculous invention, hadn't groaned and said "I can't wait the hear what the blog readers think of this!" That's when I realized it would be wrong for me to keep this discovery to myself. As wrong as wrong can be.

I was getting ready to go out and work sheep and goats with Patrick and Erin this afternoon. "Working" livestock means trimming hooves, worming and delousing all the animals in a particular pen and it. takes. for. ever. Like hours. Outside. In the cold.  As usual, I was dragging my feet and stalling because I was already cold, and I really didn't want my boobs to get any colder or more painful. So right before I left the house, I grabbed two of those "Hot Hands" hand warmers from the kitchen drawer. You know, those little packets that you shake up to cause some kind of chemical reaction and then stick in your gloves? Only I stuck them in my bra. And it was magic, my friends.

I worked outside for two hours without getting cold. At all. I don't think it's overstating it to say that this may very well have changed my life. 

I think ya'll know me well enough to know that I don't regularly talk about my breasts in public, and I truly hope I haven't offended anyone with my immodesty, but if even one of you suffers from the distress of cold breasts and is helped by my discovery, it will all be worth it.

We happened to have bought a whole passel of hand warmers for our Solstice party, and I think they cost around $2 a dozen at Walmart. Of course it means having to step foot in Walmart- an errand I put right up there with being water boarded- but believe me my friends, it will be worth it.

The Week in Pictures

Every year after Christmas we give our tree to the sheep and goats for a treat. As you can see, they strip it like a school of piranas strips a wildebeest.

Squall and Roquefort have become good buddies in the last couple of weeks. They're inseparable, like George Bush and Dick Cheney. It worries me...

Just cause Cini doesn't want to eat his food doesn't mean he wants anyone else to eat it.

See that look on Squall's face? It's like he knows something about me and he's considering going public with the information.Can you believe we still haven't named all of the new ewes? As soon as Erin gets home tomorrow we are naming them!

It was 11 degrees this morning, people. 11. Degrees. Lucky for me, Patrick was in town and he helped me with chores this morning. I needed his brute strength to break the foot of ice on the water tanks.  

As always, the goats and sheep were grateful.

Remember that little creek I told you about?

Northeast winters...

Apparently winter days up here (the up being from Texas from whence I came) come in two equally wretched flavors: ridiculously, absurdly cold and dry or warmish with buckets of rain falling from the sky. 

Please believe me when I say that I am not in favor of global warming, but I thought the silver lining behind that black cloud would be that I could leave the house to do morning chores without putting on every single thing I own? I am literally impervious to knife attack in my work clothes. 

I know I'm whining and it's not even January yet and it's gonna get a lot colder and blah, blah, blah. Fine. I'm a big ole baby. But, unlike most people, I am out in the weather. A lot. Not just while I'm waiting for the train (which I remember totally sucking) or while walking the dog around the block twice a day. Not between the house and the car and the car and the office. 

I am out in this mess for hours, people.  

This morning we woke up to find that the wee creek in our backyard had become a raging river suitable for whitewater rafting.  The water was really powerful and loud as it rushed under our tiny foot bridge, pictured above. Funny story: Erin suggested that I not walk on the bridge, but I really wanted to get a picture of the waterfall above it, so I smiled and nodded and ignored her. Not 20 seconds later I slipped on a wet leaf and nearly found myself in the drink. And as I fell I thought, "Erin is never gonna let me hear the end of this."  Thanks heavens I did not fall in the water because wet and stupid is no way to start the day.

My Worst/Best Day as a Shepherd

Dear Friends,
You know, I have spent my whole career as a writer. I have written radio and television spots, network news pieces and hundreds of freelance magazine and newspaper articles. But I don't have the words to describe how spectacularly bad my day was yesterday.

I don't want to bore you with all the nasty details so I'll summarize:
It took me FOUR HOURS to feed and water all the animals, in the pouring rain, during which time every tiny and enormous thing that could go wrong did. By the time I got home I was completely defeated. I kept thinking "This is just too hard. I can't do this by myself."

When I finally got home I was so deeply cold that I got immediately into a hot bath but I was so deeply tired that I didn't realize I still had my bra and underwear on until I had been in the tub for five minutes. I went straight from the bath to bed, hoping to be able to take a nap for a couple of hours before I had to go out for barn check, but I was so strung out I couldn't fall asleep. I decided to check the etsy store, the blog and ravelry group to see if there was anything that needed my immediate attention. That's when I found this, posted by Glassneedles to the ravelry group:

"Please remember the name is “Community Supported Agriculture”. This group can be very important to our investment. We might not be able to stop in to help with the chores but our dsicussions might let Susan know we haven’t forgot her."

and this, posted by Jenibug:
"You are a hit Susieshepard and your blog is great."

And then I read through the email I keep on my desktop in a folder called "Happy Mail" and poured over all of the kind words you've sent me over the last few months. Admonishments to take better care of myself. Notes telling me how proud someone was of my work. Excitement over the birth of our first kid.

I had tears running down my cheeks and I suddenly realized I have a fan club. Surely I am the only shepherd in the world with more than 140 cheerleaders, amazing, successful women (and a few men) that believe in me and think I can do this. It may sound silly, but it was a revelation to me. Needless to say, my day did a fast 180.

Thank you. I don't say it enough. Thank you for believing in me and what I'm doing.

This morning I woke up to skies as sunny as my new attitude. I spent the whole day feeding, watering and hanging out with the animals and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Watering the animals became infinitely easier today thanks to the invention of the wheel. I had been carrying 5 five-gallon buckets of water the 1/8 from the truck to the pen since they moved to Felix Neck a couple of weeks ago when I got the brilliant (if belated) idea to use a cart. My local feed store didn't have any in stock but they ordered one for me. In the meantime, I borrowed one from my friend Mark Defeo and it may very well have changed my life.



Isn't is beautiful? I used it today to haul 85 gallons of water. That's 700 pounds of water!

I spent most of the day just being with the flock. I sat down in the pasture and scratched ears, petted dogs and took pictures. It was heavenly. Here are some photos I took.

Beatrice and her kid Peppermint Patty


Sicily, one of our Cormo ewes


Jack, one of last year's bottle babies. Jack is my favorite goat of all time. Next year he will be our breeding buck.


Fettuncini


Cosmo, one of the Babydoll Southdowns. Cosmo gave me a scare this week when I got to the field to feed and found him flipped over on his back. This can be deadly for sheep. If they are flipped over for too long and can't right themselves they will stop breathing. Cosmo doesn't have the best fleece but he was one of my first four sheep and he is a love bug.


Cini and Sabine


Buck Fifty looking handsome.


I also spent some time talking to people who read the article in the Vineyard Gazette and came to see the flock. Then I headed back over to the kidding barn for some time with the nannies and kids.













We should start seeing some new babies tonight or tomorrow. I will send out an email as soon as one is born. In the meantime, start thinking of at least six more herb names. I suspect we will have a couple of sets of twins but I'm trying to keep my expectations low.

Things are shaping up well for the Martha's Vineyard Fiber Fest on April 19th. I am planning a couple of special "shareholders only" events and surprises, so I'll need to know how many of you are planning to come when we get a little closer. Please invite your family and friends, and any knitters you run into. I really want the other fiber farms on the Island to have the opportunity to show off what they do and we need to get the word out.

There is a thread about ride sharing on the ravelry fan club group but if you aren't a ravelry member yet and you need transportation from Boston or NYC, shoot me an email and I'll post for you.

Have a great week and check back here occasionally for mini-updates. And please email me if you have any questions you don't want to post here. Your emails mean the world to me.

Susie

NOTE TO MARGARET AND EDWINA: I tried to answer your email but my emails to your address keep bouncing back! Do you have a new email address? If so please send it to me.

Farm Update 2/19

My friends, what a wonderful and exhausting week it has been here on the farm.

We have had the full range of Vineyard weather on the Island in the past seven or eight days- fleeting snow, torrential down pours, winds so fierce and powerful that the ferries couldn't run, and beautiful blue-sky-days with bone-chilling tempurtures. Today was sunny and warmish, but I don't trust it to last. I am counting the minutes till spring when I don't have to fight the elements and the entire flock is on pasture.

The new kids are absolutely thriving- there is just no other word for it. Little Basil's eye problem has completely cleared up, whether from the antibiotic cream I put in it or not I don't know. He is a tiny little peewee though, so I am leaving him in the kidding pen with his mom a little longer than usual just to be sure he is bonded and strong. He has been eating from his mom without my help since Sunday and he is a very hungry little guy!




I am so happy that we are able to keep the kids in the warmth of the hoop house for awhile after they are born. We are supposed to be moving out of the hoop house at the beginning of March, so I really want the remaining six nannies to have their kids so they can also benefit from the warm surroundings. Andrew Woodruff, the owner of the veggie CSA that is lending us the barn, is a wonderful man, very generous and kind. I know he would probably let us extend our stay a bit, but I really don't want to take advantage of the situation. We would like to be good guest so that we get invited back next year.

Not having a proper farm is wearing on me this week. In New York we were positively spoiled. We had more than 35 acres that we were reclaiming as pasture land, cutting down the trees a few at a time so the flock could strip the leaves off, then cutting them for firewood. It isn't a perfect set-up- the land is adjacent to the Taconic Parkway (a busy highway that connects NYC to the rest of the state)- but it is ours. Being guest on the land of others is hard, because we could be asked to leave at any time and that is always in the back of my mind.

Unfortunately, it is the reality of life on Martha's Vineyard. Real estate prices have sky rocketed here since 2000 when the first house sold for $1 million. I read an ad in the paper last week with the headline "Price Drastically Reduced" that was for a two bedroom mobile home on 1/4 of an acre and was "drastically reduced" to $249,000!

Patrick and I are lucky to own a home here. We bought it as a summer rental before we moved up full-time, and without it we probably wouldn't have taken jobs here. It's on the market now while we look for a place that might someday accommodate a fiber mill and Bed and Breakfast.

The animals at Felix Neck seem to be adapting to their new home. They have already made a dent in the invasive bittersweet and they will be in heaven there when green things start to come out. Last fall, I pointed to a rolling green pasture and told Patrick that, in a few months, that kind of green would seem impossible, and it does.

Our Shearing Day Fiber Festival plans are well under way. The fun will begin on Saturday, April 19th at 10 a.m. I hope you can come because it's really a party thrown in your honor. I am so grateful to all of you and it will be nice to get to thank some of you in person.

I had two Shareholder visitors this weekend and it was so nice to get to show off the flock. Beth was here on Sunday with her beautiful baby Aubrey and they spent an hour oohing and awing over the kids. Beth started a great thread over at the ravelry group about he visit if you want to check it out.

Christine and her husband Brian spent the weekend on the Vineyard and visited both the babies and the rest of the flock on Sunday. Our insane rooster Dan Rather really didn't like Brian much and relentlessly attacked him in the kidding barn. It was terribly embarrassing and a tiny but funny, but only because Brian was such a great sport about it. It did reenforce my decision to do something about that rooster.




Our flock will be expanding by one this weekend when Mark and Melinda bring their sheep Daisy over to Felix Neck to join the others. Daisy is an Icelandic/Navajo Churro cross that Mark rescued from being sent to auction this fall. She is a sweetheart of a sheep and has a nice fleece as well. It will be interesting to see what kind of lambs she and our Cormo lamb Lincoln produce.

Adding one sheep to an existing flock is a tricky thing. The other sheep (not so much the goats) will often bully and butt a new sheep, so I am planning to put Daisy in an adjacent pen for a couple of days with Jack and Roquefort (last year's bottle babies and all around good guy goats) until everyone else gets used to her being around.

We actually already have a Daisy in our flock so the new Daisy will be known as Daisy2 from now on. The original Daisy was one of my original four sheep and, while she doesn't exactly come when you call her, she deserves a little respect. She is a Babydoll Southdown, a sheep not exactly known for their fine wool, but I had no idea what I was doing when I bought four of them. I am looking into having their wool turned into quilting batts, so if there are any quilters among you let me know.

The article in the Vineyard Gazette is definitely bringing visitors to Felix Neck to check out the sheep and goats. In fact, two couple s came by to see them while I was showing Christine and Brian around, but their attention very quickly turned to the dogs. Our dogs are just such amazing creatures. They are beautiful, fun and funny, and absolutely loyal. Cini has more than once protected me from our mean, charging ram, Lincoln.

These two pictures of Cini are my absolute favorites. He is such a gentle giant. In the first pic, Cini is licking Buster's ear. In the second he is checking out the hours-old FDR.




The picture below is one of the nannies who hasn't kidded yet. She has the very best horns I've ever seen (remind you of Marlo Thomas in That Girl?) but she also has a really cool personality. We will be needing a really good name for her.