Our Babydoll ram has been losing some of his fleece. Our oldest son decided to collect it and wash it.
Steps to follow when washing Babydoll sheep wool:
1. Filled the sink with hot, hot water. He said he got it up to 180′ F.
2. Then stir wool around.
3. Put a tiny bit of dish soap or laundry detergent in the water. Keep stirring. Not too hard.
4. Change the water. Repeat the process.
5. Lay out to dry on top of dryer.
Here is what it looked like:
Kind of disgusting, isn’t it?
About three weeks ago my husband borrowed a Case mini loader to move moldy hay and manure. He had fun but said it was difficult to keep it stable at times as it wanted to tip over. So there was a bit of a learning curve for him! Men and their toys!
What kind of toys does your significant other like to “play” with?
You all know we are on this farming journey. Well, it is not yet a profitable venture, so we try to conserve, save and reuse. Someone suggested a DIY goat stall from wood pallets. Usually wood pallets are easy enough to find and many times are even free. Gotta love free stuff! There’s a subdivision not far from us on a busy road, which we pass all the time. One house has had a pile of wood pallets there for what seems like years. My husband decided to drop buy and ask if he could have some….just a few days before the goats were due to arrive home! To our delight the man said yes and gave them to us for free! I don’t remember how many pallets my husband and son brought home but they’ve built two stalls so far and have a couple more yet to build. These photos are not the greatest since our barn is so dark but it gives you and idea of how hubby did it. It was our oldest son’s idea to have the goat stall gate swing two ways to save on building another gate.
We just found another source for free wood pallets and we are hoping they still have some left! With the warmer weather coming this weekend (we hope!) it would be nice to get a little pasture fenced off for the goats, another stall done for the sheep and ?????
Our version of fencing!
Fencing supplies from Premier One.
Hubby pounding t-posts.
Baby boy helping. Sorry the photo is blurry. I was disappointed when I went to download it. 
End product – fenced in pasture for Miss Moo! And we need to move it again since she has just about sufficiently cut this pasture down. Since she respects the electric fencing, we only needed to put up one strand of fencing compared to three strands or 4-7 strands for escapee horses and goats!
If you click on the photo it’s not so blurry. I don’t know why the editing program does that to photos!
This post was inspired by http://www.repeatcrafterme.com/2013/05/wooden-pallet-herb-garden.html?showComment=1372278599739&m=1 but I did not originally hear about it from her. I can’t even remember where I learned of this unique way to recycle pallet and plant a wood pallet herb garden. All I remember is seeing the idea and liking it. Then when we got our bags of soil, still on a wood pallet, I told the family I wanted to keep the wood pallet for an herb garden.
This was very easy to do. I just took a small roll of landscaping fabric and stapled it to the bottom of the wood pallet. Then my husband and I filled it up with about 2.5 bags of organic soil mix (sorry cannot remember the size of the bags right now), added some perlite and then planted our herbs.
We planted from left to right: rosemary, chives, curly leaf parsley, oregano and basil in the last two rows. These plants all came from a friend’s farm. She specializes in transplants, has a greenhouse; and since we never got our herbs planted from seed we got these from her. I’ll have to let you know how well the plants grow in this wood pallet herb garden, as this is the first time we’ve tried growing something this way.
We still have fennel, more parsley and oregano to plant, as well as all our fall planting…amidst everything else – one monthly market, a weekly market and possibly a corporate market for just five weeks this summer. Oy!
So much to do and so little time….We cannot wait to cook with our own herbs and share them with our CSA members (Consumer Supported Agriculture) and customers! Here’s to hoping the plants yield enough for all.
