Sheep house and Sprouts

The weather has been telling us for a while now that it is winter and this means that there has been some construction going on around the farm. What is that construction you ask? Well of course a fresh straw house for the sheep. I as usual have failed to provide a photograph but I will post some later (perhaps tomorrow). The house is similar in design to last years but larger and outside the pen giving the sheep a lot more outside room than they had last year. This of course makes us happy because we want to give our animals as much room as possible.
Yesterday held a trip to the butcher, our last one for a while. We took our remaining meat chickens (11) and a few ducks (3) that missed the Christmas butcher run. Overall going to the butcher usually goes pretty smoothly but it does take a long time there. They always seem mildly disorganized which is a bit frustrating but they do a good job so I am not one to complain. After we pick them up from the butcher we package them into freezer bags and promptly freeze them to maintain freshness.
Today I picked up some new containers to plant sprouts in. We gave out sprouts two weeks ago in our CSA they sure tasted great but I have to say that I was not 100% satisfied with the containers we used. Last time we did sprouts they were planted in four packs and now they are going to be in 1.5 l containers. I believe this will be much nicer for everyone involved. This time we are also trying two new kinds of sprouts: broccoli and corn. I am excited to see how each of these turns out. A note to anyone interested in growing sprouts at home it is important to make sure you get seed that has not been treated with any kind of chemical! Always read the package.

What did happen to that wool?

Well last year i posted about the process of cleaning the sheep wool (see post What do you get form a sheep?) but i was not specific about where that wool was going. Well it went to a quilting project which was a gift for my cousin who is an avid reader so I could not post about it on the blog. The process of turning the wool into usable quilt batting was a lot of work but worth it all in the end. After the cleaning and drying process, which took a few days, the wool then needs to be carded to remove any left over debris. Carding is the process of pulling the wool between two "cards" which have metal teeth and cause the debris to fall out. After this is done the wool can be laid out to be used as quilt batting. Overall a lengthy process but I would do it again because there is nothing like quilting through wool.