Show me/ tell me abt your micro/mini homestead

[Hedgeland Farms]

Yall are making me want sheep now

But I've gotta remember...
I am a micro homesteader...and each animal deserves the appropriate amount of space.

This is a surprisingly easy, yet surprisingly hard thing to do....

Maybe one day we'll move somewhere bigger, but for now this is where we are gonna be forever...and I am learning to love it.


@Sally PB I'd love to see some of your work!?!?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Wool for hand spinning....

As a hand spinner, if you put jackets over their coats, the wool stays MUCH cleaner. Cleaner wool fetches a premium price.

I don't know what breeds are meat breeds; I'm more familiar with the ones raised for wool.

As a somewhat bendable rule, white faced breeds are wool, black faced are meat, along with hair sheep. Obviously any wool sheep can be used for wool though.

 

[Sally PB]

I'd love to see some of your work!?!?

I will have dig out some of my sweaters for pictures. I had a small business for a short time, but haven't done any spinning or knitting in several years.

I once had a woman ask me at a show why I charged so much for my sweaters, because, "You like what you do."

'Scuse me??? I bought the wool and the dye. I washed and dyed the wool, paid for the processing, spun the yarn. I designed and hand knit a one-of-a-kind sweater that you will not find anywhere else. I think I made a whopping 30 cents an hour.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

We're dying like 100 4oz braids this summer to put online and to take to festivals

 

[Sally PB]

Obviously any wool sheep can be used for wool though.

Sure! As long as the fiber is long enough to spin, you can make yarn. The difference is what you want to make with it. There is wool to make rugs with, and super fine wool to make something you'd wear next to your skin. And everything in between.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Here's the 10 we have now. I'm in charge of the names for them

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Sure! As long as the fiber is long enough to spin, you can make yarn. The difference is what you want to make with it. There is wool to make rugs with, and super fine wool to make something you'd wear next to your skin. And everything in between.

Yeah. My grandmother likes Icelandic a lot. My mom prefers merino and Jacobs.

I'll be practicing on the hand dreydle later this summer with some roving I got a few months ago

 

[Sally PB]

Yeah. My grandmother likes Icelandic a lot. My mom prefers merino and Jacobs.

I'll be practicing on the hand dreydle later this summer with some roving I got a few months ago

I remember Corriedale being the easiest wool to spin. It's also a very common breed to grow in this area for wool, so there was a lot of it for sale at shows and fairs.

Merino took a bit of practice to "get the hang of," since the fiber is much shorter. I learned to spin cotton (even shorter fiber) and it made going back to merino a piece of cake.

 

[Hedgeland Farms]

Here's the 10 we have now. I'm in charge of the names for themView attachment 3552238View attachment 3552241

These are beautiful!!!

 

[Predoggg]

Here's the 10 we have now. I'm in charge of the names for themView attachment 3552238View attachment 3552241

I love it. Are you maybe offering some for sale here?