WORLD OF COLOR
Farm prepares yarn for spring events
Carole Foster pulls the lid off a kettle boiling away in her farmstead’s cozy kitchen and checks to see how the dyeing process is coming along.
It has nothing to do with Easter eggs.
Instead, she’s preparing a kaleidoscope of different colored yarns, which will soon be in high demand at events far and wide.
“I’m dyeing bright spring colors for people to knit with,” Foster said. “They’ve been cooped up all winter and they’re ready for a little spring. I use primary colors and mix the colors myself. I just love throwing colors in a pot and seeing what I get. Sometimes it’s a good surprise.”
Fiber comes from the
purebred registered Romneys, Wensleydale and Wensleydale-cross sheep that she and her husband, Tom, raise at their West River Road farm.
Oh yes, there’s a llama named Leopold, too.
One of the first events on Carole’s calendar is the Chancellor’s Sheep & Wool Showcase, scheduled for Saturday, April 21 at Clermont State Historic Site overlooking the Hudson River in Columbia County. The familyfriendly event has more than two dozen vendors, skilled artisans and crafts people; spinning, weaving, herding and sheep shearing demonstrations; and 18th century re-enactors.
The following weekend, Saturday and Sunday, April 28-29, Foster will host a retreat for people taking part in the 26th annual Washington County Fiber Tour, which allows people to visit nearly a dozen area farms.
Then it will be time to hit the road for the large Maryland and New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festivals, during the first two weekends in May, respectively.
However, neither Carole nor Tom will have time to rest up for any of these events as the spring lambing season is in full swing.
“We love the lambs, we love them bouncing around the barn,” Carole said. “I like lambs being born. I don’t like staying up nights, but that’s part of it. You have to stay up and watch them, to make sure everything goes okay. We have cameras in the barn so we can check on them from the house.”
In a typical year, many lambs are sold through a broker to New York City customers who celebrate Easter with this type of meat. But last year’s breeding period, which starts in late August, was delayed because rams the Fosters wanted weren’t readily available.
So spring lambing is a bit later than normal and babies haven’t reached their full market size. Also, Easter falls on Sunday, April 1, a week or two earlier than some years.
“Usually after 10 weeks they’ll be up to a marketing weight of 40 pounds, which is where they want them for Easter lambs,” Tom Foster said last week. “However, if they don’t make the Easter market, they’re not free and clear, We just market them in the fall at a heavier weight.”
“But they get to enjoy summer,” he said, smiling.