What's brewing at the farm...

Happy Spring! Early May brought some glorious happenings at the farm. Our planting efforts in the fall have paid off!

Garlic was up in late March and continued to grow strongly through May (the green growth in the foreground.) Behind the garlic, you can barely glimpse the low, blue grape hyacinth that was a big hit at the Boston Wholesale Market. And just behind them are the purple alliums that remind me of grape blow pops! They smell divine.

We also hailed the arrival of over 40 baby chicks in April. I ordered mostly laying hens: Rhode Island Reds, Black Australorps, and Aracaunas. The Aracaunas are the chickens that lay the green and blue eggs. Looking forward to that! I also ordered a handful of beautiful bantams that i spied at the Topsfield Fair last year: Silver Seabrights, a Mille Fleur, and some red Old English Bantams. They have been a lot of fun to watch grow.

My stash revealed.

Yes, I am a little mortified. It's been hiding in three cabinets in the hallway. As I don't live in the hallway, I have been happily ignoring the growing stash of yarn that has existed there for the past three or four years.

My stash has told me a few things about me:

1. My taste is not as stellar as I thought. Evidence: the oh so soft but furry red and orange yarn in the upper right corner. (what was I thinking?)

2. I am a slow learner. I have many ones and twos of skeins that I bought early in my knitting career (8 plus years ago.) We all know you can't make much with one or two skeins. I am assuming I bought the one-sies and two-sies just because I liked the yarn, with no real plan in mind for them. Jeez.

3. I like a bargain. With many trips over the year to craft stores like Michael's for various other needs, like art supplies, I could never resist a trip down the yarn aisle. Thus, the handful of synthetic type yarns. I also went through this phase of :oh, I'm gonna make a huge blanket and therefore will need a lot of inexpensive skeins. I'll buy three skeins to start and then head back for the other 83.

I think my favorite bargain in the group is the black cotton bagged skeins that reads: "Factory Mill Ends." But hey, it's black cotton. I can figure out something to knit with that, right?

For all you fellow stashers out there, I hope this is somewhat comforting? And hey, if you see any of the onesies, twosies, or threesies here that you are interested in, please contact me. My next move is to cull this pile. I'd like to get rid of about a quarter of this.

Lastly, I'll share a little of the chaos going on in our apartment right now...I am nursing a chicken's legs back to health after a nasty bout with scaley leg mites. She doesn't want her cage and insists on living in the bathroom. The cats have abandonned their beds and now take turns sleeping in the hay of the chicken bed or the lobster trap that one of the neighborhood kids built for us. (Doesn't everyone need a lobster trap? huh?) And our bulldog has stolen the couch. Good thing I don't need to sit down today, as it will take me forever to put back this stash.