Meat Availability!

Hey everyone,

We have lamb!    Right now its up on monroefarmmarket.com.  Ordering there is every Sunday from 8pm till Tuesday at 12:00 for delivery on Thursdays to Charleston, Union, and Lewisburg, WV/

Also, here in a few days check out our store http://www.mountainmeadowsfarmwv.com/shop/ to see what we have available and order for delivery to Lewisburg or Beckley.

We also sell our lamb at various regional markets and be sure to sign up for our mailing list to get notifications for when we'll be there!

Happy Monday! 

-Mountain Meadows Farm

Washing Wool and Farm Fest Preparations

Music for the farm fest and a woolly summer evening

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Liz's wool yarn that she spun back in the day! 

Another beautiful day on the farm!  Today our daughter came out to help process a fleece for our fiber demonstration at the Greenbrier Valley Pasture Network Farm Fest this coming Saturday.    If you're in town stop on by!  John, Liz and Annie will be playing some music, and we'll have a table set up with a spinning demonstration, some raw fleeces, and (MAYBE! if its ready in time) some fresh lamb back from Allegheny Meats!   

Washing a raw fleece:

We actually had our camera out today so here is a little overview of how to wash a raw fleece(unwashed) in preparation for spinning or other wool crafts.

First, we pulled out one of our new fleeces from this year's shearing.   Annie and John sorted the nicest and highest quality ones out a few weeks ago.

This fleece was small so we were able to wash it all at once- for larger fleeces you want to split it in half so you don't have too much wool all at once!

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Fleece before washing (also known as "fleece in the grease" or a "raw fleece"

Next, we filled a tub with warm (not hot!) water and some soap to wash the fleece. Its important to be very gentle in the washing process!

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Fleece about to go in the water

You put the fleece in and very gently push down on it so that the water passes through the fibers.   This is a part where you want to be careful not to agitate the fleece too much! Otherwise you could end up with felted bits of fleece instead! As much as possible you want the fleece to avoid sudden temperature changes since that can cause felting to occur as well.

Let the fleece soak in the warm water for a while (until the water cools down) and then get another tub ready for the first rinse!

After the fleece and water have cooled, slowly raise it up, let it drain, and place it into a tub with clean water(room temperature or cool) to rinse.   

In the clean water, slowly press on the fleece so the water passes through like you did the first time around.

Then, after your first rinsing, fill your other tub up again with clean water.  Try to make the water temp. as close to the same temperature of the water the fleece is leaving as you can (to avoid the sudden temperature change).

Do your last rinse, drain, and find a place to let your fleece dry! 

Look how white it is compared to before washing! (photo near the top)

When your fleeces dry you want to lay them on a sweater net, or a towel or something so they don't fall through! We improvised tonight with towels and clothing racks...worked out well!

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Fleece drying

After the fleece was washed we had a little time for some music practice!  John, Liz and Annie are all playing  on Saturday Sept. 6th for the GVPN Farm Fest in Lewisburg and we've been having a great time getting ready.   Hope to see you there!

-Mountain Meadows Farm

John tuning the hammered dulcimers in the yard

Hay Season At Mountain Meadows

Hello Everyone,

Its been a busy summer and we're just starting to get back into our regular schedule!   We've had a great summer with lots of family visiting, trips to see other family and fun activities.

We keep busy on the farm too this summer! This year we made hay (thanks to the abundance of spring rain!) in our large hayfield for the first time in almost 20 years!   Our reliable Massey Ferguson tractor did great.

John pulled out our old New Holland Baler and Vicon Acrobat side rake to make our own Mountain Meadows Farm grown square bales!  Not bad for 30 year old equipment!

Here are a few photos that our son Cal took of the Hay-making in early July: 

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Close look at the Massey Ferguson and Vicon Acrobat rake

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Getting ready for baling in the big hayfield, July 2014

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John raking the mowed hay into rows for baling

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In this one you can really see how the rake works to make even lines of grass for the baler to pick up

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And then, here is the baler going along those rows of grass to produce nice local square bales! 

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Getting close to the end of baling for 2014! New Holland baler still working great.

We have one or two more trips (have to take son Cal back up to college!), Liz starts teaching French at the local high school, and the WV State Fair is about to start http://statefairofwv.com/ so we will be semi-busy for the next little bit but keep an eye out for our first meat dates this year! We should be able to let you know when we'll have lamb available again here shortly!

Take care and happy August,

-Mountain Meadows Farm

Shearing time!

Spring is definitely here, in fact with the current temps its felt more like summer!   We had our sheep shearer out a few days ago to shear the winter wool off the herd.  They always look so funny afterwards but you know they're much more comfortable!

We're thinking about saving a few of the fleeces and offering them for sale this year. Haven't decided yet though.  North Country Cheviots have good wool, it isn't as fine or as soft as some of the specialty wool breeds but John has a nice knitted wool hat from our sheep that is certainly soft enough and has lasted a good long time!   Traditionally it was a good wool used for rugs and blankets. 

That's all for now. We'll try to get some photos of the summer hairdos on the Ewes up soon!

Mountain Meadows Farm has a website!

We are excited to announce that we now have a farm website!  We had some great marketing and design help from VC2 and now we're all set. Check back to this page for updated information about how we're doing!