Lots has been going on over here. The garden is finally starting to bloom and I love going out every day and seeing what’s there.

Libby came this past weekend and we did some epic cooking. We started Saturday with roasting a chicken from Blood Farm while Jeremy smoked a second chicken and a turkey wing. We then made some beet-filled caramelle pasta with a gorgonzola sauce inspired by my favorite dish at La Taverna in Perugia for dinner.

The filling wasn’t perfect, but we used Sunday to make up for that. We started Sunday with canoeing on the pond nearby, and then had a nice second breakfast spread of fruit, cheese, and ricotta pie from farms in Concord.

Dinner on Sunday was the magnum opus – homemade chicken broth including the smoked bones for a really light, smokey broth which was the base for our herbed ricotta, pecorino and apricot jam ravioli. AMAZING. We also made a snow pea, snap pea and radish salad with a lemon vinaigrette a la Tallula. After dinner we still had more dough, so we made a ton more caramelle in both flavors and I’m addicted.

We then got talking about dreams of becoming inn-keepers and restauranteurs along the central MA rail trail offering sliding scale experiences from barebones to lux. I sent her Coyote Cafe at Worlds End and she was like oh my god this is it. Maybe one day. Keeping the dream alive!!

In all reality I think that is the dream. Some combo of open farm, wool, food and flowers. I just want to dye my own wool from my own plants and eat my own peas. I’m only just starting!!

Towards all that, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by some decisions I want to make. For example, do I want to do any crop rot for flowers next year? Dye flowers/plants? Cut flowers? Libby brought me a bouquet so I generated a plan based on that bouquet for 1 of the possible flower rows.

Then I found another bouquet from Worlds End TV but it contained a lot more longer term flowers, which are all on my list anyway, but had me going back to some of the other things I want to do.

I would love to build out a pergola in the backyard to have a shaded area right outside the house where I can work and spin, etc. and I would love to have some white clematis and honeysuckle. Maybe some light purple clematis too so it isn’t “too wedding” as Jeremy pointed out. The passion flower looks sick too.

I also want to start some apple trees, so figuring out the exact spots for those will be important so I can determine how many I’m going to start with and place an order this fall/winter.

And the biggest must is building out the fence for the sheep! We have to clean out the paddock area of the barn, fix up the old wood “shed” for storing hay, and then get the (semi-)permanent fence in by the paddock. I say semi because in a perfect world I would have enough $ to build an indoor lap pool along the backside of the barn and we’d build a new little barn for the sheep down closer to the woods/back corner of the pasture.

I also want to spend some time getting “reacquainted” with my stash and planning out projects/sharing that inspiration. I’ve been thinking about the Na Craga I want to make out of Nutiden in DRAKEN a lot.

I’m also participating in the Artist’s Way group with allwoolfiber and should be doing my morning pages right now, but I had the sudden urge to write more of a blog post so I’m kind of breaking the rules/mixing 

We’ve also been talking about what are other things we can do or make inline with the farm to add more creativity and (frankly) income-generating ways to be creative in our lives. I’m really excited about refurbishing spinning wheels, including painting them, and maybe even getting into making them from scratch. Jeremy’s loosely interested in making them too. Another thought I just had watching Sawyer almost fall off the cat tree – What about making NICE cat towers (I feel like anyone who has a cat and has any interest in interior design has this thought and then moves on). I’ve been craving weaving, but haven’t had the time. I’m hoping to take a week off next month to dedicate to that. I also definitely need to look into a residency when $$ permits.

And batt making. I LOVE it. I could do that all day. Again, when funds are available, I’m hoping to upgrade to an electric carder and continue producing batts for sale. It would be great to start a fiber CSA this fall/winter.

Lots in the works! I have to keep going and documenting.