by Carol Conklin | Apr 5, 2017
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...
by advokate | Mar 8, 2017
The morning on pasture gave a renewal to our spirits, even though each day was long and left us with the feeling that we had accomplished little. I felt happy to be alive when I went to get the cows from the pasture covered with sparkling drops of dew. (There were...
by advokate | Feb 22, 2017
I’ve been dreaming a lot about my horses, which I think I’ve spoken about — missing them so much. And I began to go back and read one of the books that I’ve had for almost 50 years now, The Morgan Horse by Jeanne Mellin. Jeanne is an equine artist...
by advokate | Dec 14, 2016
As winter approaches, the days get shorter and grey. I find myself often staring into a sunset and being swept up in a wave of melancholy. The angle of the sun seems to shines into my eyes and pierce my brain, I can almost taste it. I go about my chores but not with...
by advokate | Oct 26, 2016
I have been collecting photos of what others have created with my batik fabric art and have been thinking over the year that it would be nice to share what can be done with it with the rest of the world. There are many folks who have sent me pictures of what they have...
by advokate | Sep 7, 2016
Sometimes I have tried a different approach to a batik and I have started working with the black fabric and gone through many stages of bleaching out and re-dyeing color in. This first photo shows a picture of the wax on the black fabric in the beginning of my...
by advokate | Aug 31, 2016
Light as a feather, her hooves barely touched the ground as she stepped out of the trailer to my home in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. Amity the filly had arrived from Green Meads Farm in the Berkshire hills. I had longed for a registered Morgan that I could ride, show...
by advokate | Jul 20, 2016
The yard outside our old house has been bursting with daylilies and other flowers, and I have just been swept away with the beauty of them. My favorite time to take a walk is at sunset time, and the light here comes in from the West and bathes everything in the golden...
by advokate | Jun 22, 2016
People ask me all the time, “How do you do batik?” I used to try to write summaries, but now I can just say go to my website! Last Friday, Maria Wulf of Bedlam Farm came and took video of me doing batik. She wrote some beautiful blog posts about each part...
by advokate | Jun 2, 2016
It is said you have to love farming to keep doing it and we did. It was not a job but a way of life, a ritual repeated day in day out with exciting and unexpected events both good and bad. We loved the animals and loved the land. Here is the memory of our arrival to...