A potato tragedy

The bitter cold has finally found its way down to sunny Sarasota. Everything has done well so far (except our pathetic little eggplant that we haven't had the heart to pull up), but last night's chilly temperatures found our potatoes down and out.

They'd been in the ground a little while, so we decided to dig them up and see what we had. There was no way they were going to recover from the cold anyways.

To our surprise, we actually found a little potato under one of the plants we dug up. We decided to go ahead and pull up the rest, and what we found was pretty awesome.

There were four or five handfuls of dark, dirty potatoes hiding under the plants. We took them in, cleaned them off, and we'll cook them up with some rosemary and butter for dinner.

A brown one!

After months of waiting, we finally have a brown egg! We're up to three chickens laying eggs now (Prius and Spyker, our two Americaunas lay blue eggs). Our latest layer?

Evora has finally started laying eggs. She was one of the first two chickens we got, way back in September. She was 12 weeks old when we got her, which sets her at around 25 weeks. We expect Esprit, another hen exactly her age, to lay soon too.

A lovely brown egg among our blue ones

Our newest project

So after spending my Christmas break spinning yarn, I decided to try another project. On our trip, we stopped at a wonderful place called Rising Fawn Fibers. Brenda, the owner/shepherd, sold us some lovely roving, but my favorite purchase?

I paid about $25 for this raw fleece, still caked with manure, vegetable matter, twigs, dirt, and sheep sweat.

It took about eight rinses in a bathtub under cool water, vinegar, and Ivory soap to get it even remotely clean.

The five-pound fleece weighed about 50 pounds when it was drenched with water. It took forever for all of the water to drain out when we picked it up out of the bath.

We still haven't finished getting all of the oils or dirt out of it. I plan to finish cleaning it, and then dye it and spin it raw, without really carding it.

Hand spun yarn

This is about two ounces, or seventy grams, of knitted correidale wool knitting at a sport/worsted weight. It took about six hours total to spin the singles and then ply them together.

I picked up some brown and scarlet RIT dye, which I used to give it some color (I hardly ever wear white). I'm not sure what I'm going to knit out of this, but it's very exciting.

Overally, I'm pretty impressed for my first go at spinning, and I'm already super addicted. I spent all day dying more roving to give it another go.

More beautyberry jam

After making our fruit leather, we decided to use up the leftover beautyberries we had in the fridge. We rinsed them, pulled out anything that wasn't berries, and boiled them down with some sugar until it got thick. It's canned, and will make some wonderful presents.

A world of food

I got these photos in an email earlier this week, and wanted to share them. The photos are all created with nothing but food.

My favorite christmas present

This Christmas was full of wonderful surprises. One of my favorites? This beautifully illustrated children's alphabet book about gardening. The illustrations are amazing, and my mother even got the author to write a personal message to Taylor and I on the inside cover.

Every page is absolutely gorgeous, and the writing is quirky and cute. I'd highly recommend it for anyone of any age.