Learning the Ropes: An Intern's Perspective (Kristi)

Hello from intern #1! About me: My name is Kristi, I'm 28, teach high school English in Kansas, and am covered in freckles. This is me, hiking the trails at Acadia, on a day off from the farm.

 

A month ago, I had never seen an alpaca or been to Maine. I wanted to learn more about both, so I drafted myself to Good Karma Farm, to intern for June and July. It's been a fun and fibery education so far. Amy and Jim are wonderful teachers and knitting/yarn/fiber realm is a whole new world. This blog is picking up mid-internship and June's adventures could fill a novel. For the sake of brevity, here is the hyper-abridged novel version of June on the farm:

Moved into an adorable barn apartment with an adorable roommate (Emma, intern #2).

Met and fell in love with alpacas:

Got hooked on Contra dancing:

Crash courses in knitting, felting, and all things fiber:

Onto July! The 1st of July, summer finally came to Maine. Which means animals permanently adorned in wool sweaters have to be hosed down daily. Prevents heat exhaustion and brain damage and such. Fortunately, alpacas LOVE to be hosed down. They're like toddlers in a sprinkler.

To derail temporarily: it’s important to introduce Delilah, the deaf alpaca, to these narratives. As an educator, I’ve found that it’s imperative to always choose a favorite. Delilah is the teacher’s pet this summer. Partly because she’s deaf and I always love an underdog. And she’s just hilarious and sweet. This is Delilah.

Yesterday, Delilah had a little trouble figuring out the spray down system.

Delilah and Georgia like to drink right out of the hose while being sprayed. 

In other animal happenings, Stella the duck -- a new addition to the farm -- has been getting swimming lessons from Amy and growing fast.

A good portion of June's activity (not included in hyper-abridged novel) involved moving electric fence for the Icelandic sheep to do rotational grazing. Part of the challenge was keeping Violet, sheep escape artist extraordinaire, in the fence. I call her Houdini. We spent hours trying to outsmart and outfence our little Houdini and everyday was an exercise in futility. She always got out. This is an action shot of Violet leaping back IN with the herd after being chased by Amy and interns. Maybe white sheep can't jump.

 

Our attempts to outfence Violet-Houdini have proven more fruitful this week, after we doubled up the electric fencing. But Violet has found other, more passive ways to express her defiance. Now, while the rest of the herd goes out to graze, she stands defiantly in a part of the barn she’s supposed to be fenced OUT of and gloats (or glowers? It’s hard to tell what sheep eyes are doing) while we poop scoop in the barn. I got through school relatively unscathed by bullying. I’m 28 now and being bullied daily by a deranged Icelandic sheep. Too bad this bully can’t escape to better pasture or turn off the electric fence with her little hooves.  We win. For now.

Maine Media Workshop Comes to Good Karma Farm!

A couple of weeks ago, we received a phone call from Maine Media Workshops in Rockport Maine.  They had a class of 8 people who were learning about storytelling through short documentary type film and they wanted to use our farm to tell their stories.  So of course we said "Absolutely!".  Four films were made that day and we are happy to present the first one.  Enjoy!

Knit and Crochet Away the Winter Blahs CONTEST!!!

It seems like a good time for another contest!!!  This time we're asking you to knit or crochet a hat from any pattern you like.  You can use any of our yarns: the 60/40 worsted, the Secret Island 6-color or even Edna's yarn.  Once you are finished with your hat you need to get creative!  Find a cool location or model to display your finished project and take a picture of it.  Email us the picture to info@goodkarmafarm.com and we'll choose ten finalists based upon the creativity and originality of the photo.  We won't be judging your hat!  From the ten finalists a winner and a runner up will be picked by our fans on Facebook.  The winner will receive a $50 Good Karma Farm Gift Certificate and the runner-up, $25 certificate.  Limited to one entry per person.  The Contest will run from Groundhog's Day (2/2/2012) to April Fool's Day (4/1/2012) so get your needles and hooks working!
You can use Good Karma Farm yarn from your stash, order it through our website, or buy it from any of our retailers.  If your LYS isn't carrying our yarn, ask them to! 

We can't wait to see what your creative minds come up with!  Have Fun!!!!

A Blogging Resolution

With 2011 winding down we have a week or so to kind of catch our breath.  This is the time that we spend making lists of all the things that we wished we had done in 2011 so that we don't forget to do them in 2012.  Top of the list is to do a better job keeping up with this blog.  This picture kind of sums up that resolution.

We have been keeping bees for over 10 years.  Some years we harvest the honey and sometimes we leave it all for the bees.  Our bees worked very hard this year and therefore produced a surplus.  Did we blog about the extraction process?  Nope.  We took lots of pictures that day and there they sit on the hard drive.  Next year we'll do better.

Same story for so many things.  Next year we'll do better.  

It's your turn to pick a winner!

One lucky person will receive this lovely yarn bowl made by local Belfast potter, Mary Trotochaud.

Please peruse the contest entries on our Facebook photo album, and "like" your favorites. Whoever gets the most votes by August 30th will win this bowl!

And the second winner is. . .

Oh dear. This photo is too lo-res for anyone to read. We could, in person, though, and the second winner is Jan Tricarico!

Congratulations, Jan!

A second chance!

Oops! Seems that Ingrid Ellison's entry was in our spam folder, and she wasn't entered into the drawing. We scratched our heads and wondered what to do!

The solution? A second drawing! Everyone (except our first winner, Linda Hanford) will get a second  chance to win eight skeins of custom dyed yarn! Woo hoo!

Oh, and here's Ingrid's cow, knit up in Seafoam:

The drawing will be on Thursday, July 21st. Who will be our lucky second winner?