Babydoll Southdown Sheep Yarn

These lovely all natural colored skeins of wool yarn were made from the wool of our own Babydoll Southdown sheep! Babydoll Southdown sheep fleeces can be made into beautiful wool for lots of different kinds of wool projects. When we started our small flock, we were definitely thinking ahead to the future wool we would be crafting with. Like everyone on the farm, the babydolls have many jobs on the farm, including mowing between the grapevines and fertilizing as they munch. Their wool is a bonus for us, and I am thinking particularly welcomed for them, as they get pretty wooly and need fresh hair cuts each spring.

First, of course, is the shearing. We knew we wouldn't have time to do this ourselves (or the time to learn how to shear). We were lucky enough to have friends who led us to a family owned, "we come to you" sheep shearing service . The father of the business was teaching his sons the trade. This year, two of the sons came to shear our six lovely ladies. I was working at the Farm Store that morning when they stopped by and asked if they could drive up and start the shearing. They headed up, and came right back down a few minutes later. I knew they couldn't possibly be done already. One of the kids looked at me and said, "is the dog going to let us touch the sheep?". I had forgotten that Hughy was in the pen with the sheep instead of being right outside. Of course, Hughy is a ferocious dog when it comes to bears and coyotes, but for humans, he is just one big white teddy bear. Of course Hughy will let them touch and shear the sheep! He just might want to nuzzle and snuggle all the while.

The Babydolls get pretty woolly come spring. Their eyes are almost not visible through all of the fleece.  Babydoll sheep are very gentle and not aggressive. In order to shear them, the shearers sit them up and lean them back like they are sitting in a lounge chair. Immediately, the baby dolls practically go to sleep and let the shearers move them all around and do the business of shearing off their fleeces. They might not like the process of getting the wool removed from their skin, but when it is over, they must feel like a million bucks!

Babydoll sheep are short and small in stature, about 18-24 inches tall. We saved their fleeces for a number of years, before we had enough to bring to the mill for cleaning, carding and spinning. We researched small family owned mills for the perfect fit. We needed a small mill that would procees our fleeces seperate from others so that we only received our own sheep wool. Larger fiber companies can't guarantee that they can keep your fleece seperate. This was important to us. We wanted to be able to label our crafts as being fashioned with the wool from our sheep. 

Still River Mill in Eastford Connecticut 

Still River Mill's Cashmere Goat

We found Still River Mill. The Still River in Eastford Connecticut has historically serviced many woolen mills, starting in the 1800's. The Still River Mill is a family owned business started in 2004. Greg and Deirdre, the owners, raise sheep and goats on their small farm in the village of Eastford and have over 15 years of experience working with a number of different animal fibers. 

Greg and Deirdre wrote, "Our aim is to conform to organic wool processing practices and standards. This means using environmentally friendly, low impact and organic detergents for scouring, organic processing oils, water soluble grease and oil to lubricate the machines and using appropriate treatment of waste water."

We knew that our wool would be safe and be safe for us to use in their trusted hands. They also take care to keep fleeces seperate as they work with them, so we knew that this was the mill for us!

Carding Machine at Still River Mills

To process the wool, the fibers are first cleaned and then carded. The carding machine basically combs the wool to remove any additional dirt or twigs missed during the cleaning process. The carding machine keeps combing the fibers until the fleece is turned into fluffy fiber roving or batts. The roving can then be spun into skeins of yarn. Baby doll wool is in the 19 to 22 micron range, very near to that of cashmere, so it can be used for wool projects which can be worn close to the skin and won't be itchy or uncomfortable. Some of our wool from the baby dolls was not of very high quality, so taking their advice, we elected to keep some as batting which can be used to stuff our handmade wool crocheted animals or can be used in our needle felting projects- our animal on a pinecone series of Christmas ornaments. Some of the wool was kept its natural color and spun into thick, beautiful yarn skeins. Other wool, suitable for spinning, was left as roving. This roving, I am hoping will allow for my friend to teach me the art of spinning!

Strand of Yarn at Still River Mills

Strand Machine at Still River Mills

Not only am I excited for trying my hand at dyeing and spinning the wool, but I am also thrilled to be able to craft using the wool from our baby doll sheep. I look forward to crocheting and needle felting using our wool all winter long. It may not seem like anything too exciting, but for us, growing something from seed, making something from scratch, or crafting with something that we have taken care of, nurtured, helped birth, fed, watered and sheared is pretty cool.

Everybody Loves Blueberries!

Everybody loves blueberries. It is one of our favorite times of the year! Blueberry Time!  We of course, wait with bated breath for the blueberries to ripen. There are many days of waiting once the little green berries appear. We love wandering through the bushes looking at all the beautiful bunches of blueberries, dying for them to ripen. This year we had some fabulous bunches of blueberries that almost looked like bunches of grapes hanging from the bush. We love the fact that we have to protect the bushes from our song bird friends just like we did for the cherry trees. Everyone is waiting for the blueberries to arrive!

Once they ripen, we love picking them and dropping them into our little tin pails (and then rereading our most beloved childrens stories, Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey). We love snacking on them as we move along the blueberry patch. One thing we did not expect however was how much our Australian Shepard Jake would love them. So much in fact that we have caught him snacking on blueberries right off the bushes when he thought no one was looking! Who can blame him?  Apparently, that is my fault, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. Jake not only likes blueberries, but also loves snacking on carrots and green beans (he hasn't figured out how to self pick those out of the garden, yet). One afternoon while I was making lunch, I slipped him a blueberry so he would stop begging, and his love of blueberries began!

We love to put our fresh blueberries in many of our baked goods in the bakery, including these scrumptious hand pies.We use a simple all butter crust, concoct a sweetly seasoned blueberry filling and then smother them in raw sugar to obtain the perfect hand held blueberry pie! We often use any kind of berry we have around the farm. A few weeks ago we had plenty of blackberries from a neighbor and threw those in with some raspberries and blueberries for a mixed berry hand pie. These fly off the shelf at the Farm Store and Farmers Market! They are absolutely the perfect size to eat right out of your hand while you shop at the market.

Putting together a classic blueberry pie is a skill that takes time to develop. There were many failed, runny pies in our past! A couple of tricks that we have used include making the pie crust the night before you want to make the pie, so that the flour, butter and liquid have time to blend together and the gluten has time to rest. The filling needs a little bit of precooking so that it gels and comes together as well. Once the pie is filled, and your top crust is perfectly placed, then we let the whole thing rest in the fridge while the oven preheats. That final resting and cooling, I believe is what helps hold the pie together.

Classic Blueberry Pie

Recipe adapted from The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book by the Elsen Sisters

The Classic All Butter Crust

(Recipe makes enough for a 9 or 10 inch double crust pie - make the night before you want to make the pie, so the gluten has time to rest and the flavor of the vinegar has time to develop)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1 cup cold water

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1 cup ice

Stir dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add butter pieces, toss to coat and using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour misture until the butter is the size of peas

Combine water, vinegar and ice (helps to keep the mixture cold- heat is the enemy- you want the butter to stay whole, not melt into the flour). Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons over the flour mixture and cut it in using a scraper or spatula. Slowly add more of the liquid mixture until the dough comes together in a ball with some dry bits still visible. Shape the ball into two discs, flatten each disc in between its own plastic wrap- at this stage, I like to use the rolling pin to flatten the ball inside the plastic wrap, then place in the fridge.

The Blueberry Filling

On pie making day, roll out one disc of dough for the bottom crust, place in your pie pan and put back in the fridge while you prepare the inside of the pie.

1 small baking apple (shredded with a large hole box grater)

6 cups blueberries

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup granulated sugar (we use an organic raw sugar)

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3 tablespoons ground arrowroot or corn starch

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss till all berries are coated. Take about 2-3 cups of the berry mixture and place in a sauce pan over medium heat until the berries start to break down and the mixture thickens. Once thickened, combine with the other berries. Now, you can fill your pie shell and dress the top of your pie however you would like. We enjoy the weave patterns, sometimes with very thin strips, sometimes with very thick strips of dough. We like a more rustic looking farm pie, so we have very pinched sides that offer up solid, eat with your hand crusts.

Once your pie is together, place back in the fridge for 10-15 minutes as you preheat the oven to 425 F.

Once the oven is ready, brush your pie with one egg wisked with a little water and pinch of salt and sprinkle the entire pie with raw sugar until you think the pie can't take any more sugar on top (trust us- it is fabulous!).

Place the pie on a baking sheet on the lowest rack of the oven for 15 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 375 F, move the pie up to a middle rack and bake for another 20-30 minutes, or until the desired deep golden brown. Again, we like a more rustic looking pie, so we tend to have some edges be very brown.

Completely cool on a wire rack for 2 to 3 hours. Serve warm or at room temperature (preferably with a vanilla bean ice cream- oh! we made that once! Another blog post...). The pie will keep refridgerated for 3 days or at room temperature for 2 days.

I hope that you enjoy making your blueberry pie as much as we do. Enjoy the taste of summer!

Last one to the house has to shovel the sheep barn!

We care for a flock of baby doll sheep. One of the dirtiest, smelliest jobs on the farm is cleaning out the sheep barn, hence the joke, "last one to the house has to shovel the sheep barn!". When we were thinking about what types of animals to have on the farm, we had in mind the idea that "everyone on the farm has a job". Everyone and everything on the farm, including its humans, have a purpose, reason and job on the farm. We knew we wanted grazing animals, not only for their manure which could be used, once composted, as a natural fertilizer, but also for their help with mowing the grass on our grassy knoll.

For the first few years of the farm, we had piglets for this use- we moved their pens around as they cleared the property- not only would they graze on the greenery, but they would also start rooting around with their snouts into the ground, effectively bull dozing an entire area in a couple of weeks. Some of you will remember our first escapade with a baby piglet being lost in the woods, and me tackling it to the ground. We have many more stories about our piglets, but for now though, we are talking about our sheepies. 

Once the land was cleared by the piglets, and we passed through a season to composte their droppings into beautiful dark rich soil, we planted wine grapes. Once we trelissed the vines, we realized that we needed a short stature grazer that would be able to graze beneath the grape vines or else we would be doing a lot of mowing! Their grazing would help in a number of ways- we would not have to mow, we really wanted to be less reliant on fossil fuels (nor pollute with them!) and we would have a grazer who would mow between  the vines, but not eat the vines (or eventual wine grapes!) and their poop would fertilize the grapes! 

We did a lot of research about sheep. Most sheep are somewhat tall in stature, and may focus on eating the tender shoots of the new grape vines instead of the grass between them. Baby doll sheep are short and small, and by the way, cute!!!!!! Check out this smile!

Once we knew what kind of sheep we wanted, we set out to find some! That proved to be more difficult, until a farm in the southern part of the state was looking to downsize and had three adult females and one young male baby doll sheep for sale. Our flock was started! The excitement that we felt when we were going to meet them was palbable. This was the first big step for our farm and we were excited to meet them! 

Jason and I headed out to the farm in southern CT one Saturday in early spring. We were thrilled to be possibly bringing new friends home with us to the farm. The owner met us and led us out to a far pasture where the baby dolls were grazing. We started walking through the barn area and near by pasture. A friendly llama started walking with us. As we walked, the llama became very interested in Jason. She was walking very close to him, and nuzzling his neck with her nose every chance she got. She was enchanted by Jason. Jason and I were caught off guard- we had never been around a llama so closely before- the owner assured us that "this was just how she was" and spoke to the llama telling her to back off a bit. That llama would not budge from Jason's neck. The entire walk to the far pasture, Jason had a llama breathing down his neck. It was hysterically funny! As we walked closer to the baby doll sheep, they of course moved father away, so we had ample time to spend with the llama lover and her hot breath on Jason's neck!

 Eventually, we met the baby dolls and fell in love with them and decided to take them home with us. Taking them home was a whole other story, perhaps one that will grace this blog soon! (there is also a pretty funny story of how we got our first piglet, Penelope home, but I will hold on to that one for a  bit too- can't wait to share that one with you!).

Our flock has upsized and downsized over the years. We have been through three lambing seasons, and now for the health of the flock, we have moved our adult male baby dolls to another farm to give the females a break with pregnancy and lambing. Sadly though, we lost two baby doll lambs our first spring of lambing.

We had had a successful lambing that first spring, two of the females had a pair of twins, and one new mom had a singelton. One night, a few months after they were born, the sheep pushed their way out of the barn door and were wandering around the yard in a non fenced in area. A wild animal came silently and stole away two lambs, one of each of the twins. It was a sad morning when we realized what had happened. The mothers were bahhing for their babies and looking around for them. We searched the woods for the babies, but couldn't find any signs of them, no blood, guts, nothing. We determined that it was probably a bear that came and took the lambs for eating near their den. We know that bears live in the woods all around our farm. We realized that despite our fencing being pretty secure, the baby dolls needed an animal for protection. The obvious choices that came to mind were llamas and Great Pyrennes. Fortunately, we were able to find the best sheep protector and the cuddiliest Great Pyreenes to ever live on a farm. Hugh has delighted us with his bearlike snuggles and his ferocious bear bark. He has treed a number of bears and frightened coyotes away from the baby doll sheep, and he is such a love, especially with Ella.

The baby doll sheep have continued to do their job on the farm through all these seasons. They are a joy to have on the farm, and have even contributed to the Farm Store, by allowing us to shear them and have their wool made into yarn and roving which we use for my countless crocheting projects and our Felted Friend Christmas ornaments. 

The baby doll sheep and new lambs feasting on grass in one of the vineyards.

Goat antics- this year,  a new feeder has inspired the goats to jump into the hay feeder for a snack. We thought that was hysterical and snapped many pictures.

Hugh, ready for action guarding a new lamb. Our fenced in area includes electric fencing, and keeps the sheep inside the pen, and predators out. Hughy, as he is affectionately known is extra protection for the sheep and because he grew up wtih them since a pup, they are his friends, and they tolerate him! 

Greetings! Welcome to our new farm blog!

So... I would like to welcome you to our new farm blog at The Grassy Knoll Farm! My name is Teresa, and before I became a part time farmer, baker, mother and now blogger, I was an ICU nurse in a Manhattan hospital. I worked hard and played hard as well. Then, I fell in love with my husband Jason and moved to the country of Northwestern CT giving up my NYC apartment. One day, out for a run in my new neighborhood I realized that I wasn't dodging taxis and sidewalks full of people I didn't know and I was comfortably breathing in clean crisp air. It was a revelation to me- I was an embodiment of "Green Acres"! 

The feeling of trading in my heels for muck boots became more real to me when we had secured our first baby piglet in its new home on the farm. My husband went back to doing some work in the garden, and I went out to a store. When I returned to go check on the baby piglet, it was not in its pen. It was so tiny, it had slipped out of the wire hog fencing and was nowhere in sight. My husband and his friend and I split up and all went running through the farm and woods to try to find the lost piglet. I was in a skirt, with my muck boots of course, and I was the first to come across the frightened piglet in the woods. It was atop a large rock, staring at me, and shivering despite the summer heat. I approached slowly and then jumped on top of the piglet and started screaming for help. It may surprise some of you that I jumped on top of the piglet. They are surprisingly strong, all muscle, I knew from trying to hold on to her when we put her in her new home. I knew it would take my whole body weight to hold down the piglet until helped arrived.

My husband and his friend found me laying on top of a screaming piglet, on top of a rock and they started laughing. I was most concerned about the fact that we were NOT going to lose our first piglet, it cost 75 dollars and it was not going to become bear food in the forest. They reluctantly grabbed the piglet out from underneath me and carried it screaming back to the pen. We secured the pen with more wood and fencing so that it would not escape again. I worried for weeks about the piglet until it was big enough to scare our Australian Shepherd, and then I relaxed and learned that despite my tackling it in the woods, and despite the fact that eventually this piglet would be our dinner, we had a deep affection for each other. A friendship that I won't ever forget. Our first piglet, Penelope was a love, and I often tell stories about her.

But why am I writing to you? Now after 6 years of owning and running a farm, and 4 years of running a bakery, I want to share our stories and adventures with you! I have a lot to say about the type of food we put in our mouths (the reason we started an organic produce and fruit producing farm) and the type of products we spread on our bodies (the reason why we started making our own bath and body products and selling them in our farm store), but it is even more than that. I want to share with you how we do what we do, why we do what we do, and how it often turns out. There are many blogs that talk about seasonal eating, cooking and baking, but what about all the time that you WAIT for things to grow and ripen and be ready for harvest? What about all of the TIME that it takes to actually harvest and process and then actually be able to eat the food?

I would love to share with you my family's experiences in growing organic food in northwestern CT, waiting for it to ripen and be ready for harvest and then cooking or baking with the ingredient in our small commercial bakery to bring it full circle. I would love to share with you our experiences in farming and raising animals, including baby doll sheep, goats and occasionally chickens. I would love to share with you how I actually do what I do- spreading my time between a full time job as a nurse executive, raising a 5 year old, farming, baking, being a "stuffed animal maker" (my daughters exact words for my ferocious amigurumi crocheting habit that always envelopes me over the winter) and running a small farm bakery business with my husband, Jason. I would love to share all of that with you and more. Will you join me? I hope so. It has been quite a ride so far, and there are bound to be more stories that give you a sense of farming, running a bakery and the business and busyness of life.

Speaking of waiting, check out this pic of one of our Montmorency Cherry trees! Despite being transplanted last fall, the cherries are growing fast and furious and we are looking forward to a bumper harvest this year from only three trees! Now, we have to wait for them to ripen, and with bated breath we hang tight awaiting the day when we have to quickly cover the trees with bird netting to prevent the songbirds who are also, yes, you guessed it, waiting for the cherries to ripen, from eating all of the cherries, so that we can pit them all by hand (takes an agonizingly long time, but all the while you get to smell cherries, be enveloped by so much cherry juice that you can practically taste the cherry jam) and then throw them in a pot with some sugar to create masterful small batch jam that is so well known by our community! I am honored to share our farm and our trial and error, our success and failure and some pretty cool tasty treat recipes along the way. I hope you will join us!

Waiting patiently for cherry ripening, picking under the bird netting on a beautiful sunny bright morning and a big garden bowl of cherries ready for pitting!