Homesteadin': Sterling Day 9

So I noticed something this morning on my pasture walk for Intro to Grazing. It doesn't sound to me like sheep and goats say "Baaaaa." It sounds to me like they say "Maaaaaaatt." I keep looking around to see who's calling my name because some of their voices sound eerily human.

Here's a few of the culprits

Then I noticed that Odin, their llama guardian, had a single stalk of grass hanging out of his mouth like he was a farmer or something. Kinda funny

In Whole Farm Thinking we watched a film of a presentation done by Anne and Eric Nordell. They have a horse-powered farm in North-Central Pennsylvania that is a model for the old-way Amish farming technique. They explained how to reduce weed pressure, stay out of debt, limit the scale of a farm to a 2 person operation, rely on internal resources to limit outside inputs, integrate rotational crops, rotational grazing, cover cropping, winter kill cropping, and summer fallow periods into a farm plan while minimizing labor, and generally taking a whole farm, bioextensive approach. Most of it is very good, practical information.

In Farmstead Arts we began weaving our baskets. You start by cleaning, soaking, and sizing your splints using a neat ripping tool (about 1/2" wide and a few mm thick). We are making very small baskets to start out so we cut our splints into 9" lenghts. You then use a block of wood as a mold for the basket. We used a square block and weaved the bottom of the basket on top of the block so that the upright pieces are hanging evenly over the edge of the block on all four sides. Then you attach some little wood block braces onto the bottom of the basket by nailing between the weaves to keep the bottom tight to the block. next you bend all the uprights around the block and brace them with nailed blocks so they stay tight against the sides. It doesn't matter if the tips of the uprights are at different heights, they will be evened out and shortened later. Next put the block in the sun so the uprights dry in the position you want them in. After 30 minutes or so the uprights should be dry and the basket frame can be removed from the mold block. I didn't have time to put the weavers, rim, or handles on yet so I will post that sometime later this week when we cover it.

Neat ripping tool