He ran over to me and gave me a kiss…I fell in love. “This is the llama for me!” I thought. Our neighbors had bought two llamas many years back right before we sold our farm and they were fascinating to me and Dick too. We now lived up the hill from our old farm…
Kate Austin-Avon has been helping me for years and recently we’ve been working together on getting a store on Art of Where, where I can offer my batik art on clothing! I was excited to get my first purchase on my birthday. Kate helped me transfer many of my batik images to the shop where…
Natasha lay very still, barely breathing. She looked dead. When an older cow calves, she can easily develop something called “milk fever” which is not a fever at all, more like a diabetic coma. The shock of coming into milk causes calcium levels in the cow to drop drastically, and she will become cold, muscles…
Dick and I had searched for a farm for almost a year before finding this one in Washington County NY. We had traveled through the great snowstorm of 1978, driving out of Massachusetts before Boston was shut down in the heavy snow and wind. We drove into Maine as quickly as we could just in…
In 2009 I was trying to feed and capture a young calico cat. I named her Champion for surviving the winter outside; snow, wind and cold! Champion was an inquisitive kitten that was raised off away from the barn on the farm that I help raise calves on. She would climb to the top of a…
“I think I have found a horse for you, Carol,” the old horse trader and trainer, Leo, said to me. My heart jumped for joy. I had been riding and helping with chores at riding stables all through my teens and just lived for the day that I could have my own horse. Finally, my…
Nature has a frightening and powerful aspect to it that is also fascinating. How small we are in the plan of Mother Nature, here on Earth. How much we are at her mercy, despite all of our efforts to outsmart her. Back on the farm, thunderstorms brought a lot of fear into my life. There…
The cow is such a generous and peaceful animal. I got to know them on our farm, Amity Farm, that we had in Hartford, New York, for 28 years and these were Jersey cows. We grazed them over the fields for the warm months of the year and sheltered them in our barn and exercise…
It was many years ago that I was at the barn with my two horses grooming my mare Amity to go riding, when fifteen Jersey cows showed up. My friend Joanna was nearby and helped me to get them back to a farm nearby. She had told me there was a new young farmer in…
People ask how to start batik without making a big investment in supplies. I will have to recommend getting some old sheets, some RIT dye or ready-mixed dye at your local craft store, along with paraffin wax and cheap brushes. (DharmaTrading.com has extensive supplies and that is where I purchased my tjanting tool.) Buy the…