Soothing the Soul

I have so many activities that soothe my soul, that really make my heart sing.

A row of canning jars full of something yummy that I made for my family.

New lambs that arrived without help or incident. (Cascades, of course!)

Spinning fleece into yarn.

Watching geese protect their newly hatched goslings.

Monitoring my bees as they build their colony and create honey.

Watching my garden grow, and won't that be nice once my Jon has put up some fencing to keep the sheep and chickens out of it?

Watching my son flourish at school; he's Salutatorian, and just a few days ago received an acceptance letter from his first choice University!

Making quilts that warm our hearts as well as our bodies.

But today's "Soothe the Soul" is about spinning fleece into wool. I have to admit that I have not done much spinning of our Cascade Farmstead fleeces. While the Cascade fleeces are far superior to the breeds we've had in the past, I'm so caught up in quilting at this time in my life that I just have not been able to get back into spinning for the time being. Someday.

However, I'm hoping that "someday" comes a little sooner... I have the bags of fleece from Greener Pastures Lavender that are truly gorgeous and so nice that after my attempts to spin last year, I decided I needed to refine my spinning skills a bit before working on a fleece this nice. Maybe this summer when it's too hot to have a quilt draped over and around me during the quilting process!

I keep telling myself that, while I want to do everything, I need to whittle down the "want to do" list into a very practical "these are the things I want to do MOST" list, so that I have finished projects to show for my efforts. This seems to be the stumbling block for creative people, but I'm working on it.

I Miss My Geese!

My husband and I were cooking dinner together the other night (leftover turkey from the freezer, that was actually pretty juicy for turkey), and I just had to say it. “I miss eating roast goose!” He does, too.

We made the difficult decision last spring to sell all of our geese, with the promise from Husband that I could have geese again in a couple years. (We have other projects going on right now that require every blade of grass we have at this time on our tiny farm.)

But still, I miss my “grazing doorbells.” Geese have such keen eyesight that they can see jets flying so high that I can barely see them. They have good hearing, too, and let us know when anything or anybody enters our farm. And boy, do they taste good! I prefer roast goose over a turkey for the holidays.
We are all about hardiness, productivity and easy-to-manage on a small farm. So Pilgrim Geese will make a comeback here at Greener Pastures, for certain!