“Do you eat Kale?” Liz asked and handed me a second paper shopping bag filled halfway with fresh kale. She also had a jar of cut flowers from her garden, Maple syrup from her neighbor, big red beets, and two packages of her own chopped lamb meat.
It’s tonight’s dinner, complete with flowers for the table, all from Liz’s farm.
Since Liz isn’t shearing sheep anymore and isn’t one for emailing or texting, it’s good to be able to keep in touch with her by visiting her farm when we drop off my wool in Brandon, Vermont.
Also, she has a couple of Romney lambs she thought I might be interested in.
Vermont is booming. The roads were busier than I’ve ever seen them, and the small mom-and-pop diner we usually stop at was so busy it made us 45 minutes late getting to our appointment at the Vermont Fiber Mill. Luckily Deb who owns the mill with her husband was working so it wasn’t a problem.
I chose some of the same colors I used before to dye most of the gray wool, leaving some natural. In the fall I’ll have three colors of yarn, teal, blue, and pink. I’ll also have black wool from Issachar and roving from Asher.
Deb told me that she’s working with Darn Tough Socks, a Vermont company that is trying to produce little if any waste from creating their socks. She showed me a tub full of leftover stands of wool that she’s figuring out how to use. She’s already felted some of it and mixed some with her own Alpaca wool to make yarn.
I’ll be curious to see what else she comes up with when I pick up my wool in the fall.
Liz was already out the door, with her new Border Collie puppy Jim, when we pulled into her driveway. After fussing over Jim we went across the road to where the sheep were grazing in two large fields.
Last fall Liz bought a bunch of pregnant Ewes from a sick friend who has since died. Now Liz had sixty sheep, many of them lambs. That’s forty sheep too many, she’s like to bring her flock down to twenty.
She had two pure breed Romneys picked out for me. A white one and a silver one. But she also has some beautiful Blueface Leicester’s and Blueface Leicester/Cormo mixes. If anyone reading this is looking for lambs or sheep, you can email me and I’ll put you in touch with Liz.
The two Romneys will be a good addition to my flock. Since Sock, Suzy and Biddy are all about nine years old, they give less wool than they used to. And even Liam and Pumpkin are slowing down when it comes to growing wool. Kim is the only one who still had plenty. With two more Romney lambs, I’ll have eight sheep under three years old.
That’s a good future flock.
We told Liz about our neighbor Moise Miller is looking to buy sheep for meat and maybe wool too. She said that if he bred the Blueface Leicester/Cormo sheep that she has, with a Dorset Ram they’d be good for meat and wool. Jon’s going to talk to Moise to see if he’s interested.
Smitten with the four-month-old Border Collie, Jon held Jim’s leash and the puppy settled down at his feet as we sat on the wall in front of Liz’s house and talked.
One day in the next month or so, Liz will deliver two lambs to the farm. Maybe she’ll stay for dinner and we’ll get to spend some more time together. I enjoy Liz’s company. She’s smart, ambitious and impressive and now that she’s not shearing anymore, we’ll have to make more of an effort to stay in touch.
Luckily there will be the opportunity at least four times a year when we drop off and pick up wool. This is a friendship I hope to keep growing.
A silver one?! I can’t wait to see him/her, sounding already well-dressed for its glamour photo. Are these two new ones relatives of some of your others – Rosemary, or Robin? It will be fun to watch the little ones interact, after they have passed the Donkey inspection team, of course.
These will be bigger when I get them Amy, like Merricat and Constance when I got them last fall. I don’t think they’re related. Liz always tells me about so many of the sheep when I’m there, I get confused who’s who by the end of the visit!