Spring Happiness

Our farmer's market started last week. Hooray! It was cold and rainy, though, so the kids and I didn't stay long. I was very excited to bring home a large dill plant (for making pickles) and four strawberry plants that are supposed to bear all summer long. I am very excited for that!

We went again today and I couldn't help but buy a hanging cherry tomato plant called Tumbling Tom to hang from our back porch overhang. It even already has green tomatoes on it which means in a few weeks we'll have delicious fresh tomatoes! I think this year I'm taking a break from growing tomatoes. For some reason I have such a hard time growing them in containers. The past couple years have been dismal. I guess I just need to learn a bit more and probably rig up a drip irrigation line for the pots.

A Karakul Sheep

Also, last Saturday was the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival - rumored to be the largest on the east coast. I volunteered to help with t-shirt sales. I seriously thought it would be slow. I mean, t-shirts? Really? Boy was I ever wrong! I got there at 8 am and the county fairground parking field already had a lot of cars in it. There was a line of people waiting outside the 4-H building where the festival gift shop was when I walked up. We had a cryptic briefing by the head of the volunteers, and at 9 am they opened the flood gates and the building was instantly full of waiting people. There were about 12 of us volunteers and we were busy pretty much the whole first 3-hour shift.

I was so tired after working that I barely had enough energy to look around the festival! haha! I did get to see some beautiful sheep and picked up a business card for a local felting company. There were bags of wool and skeins of yarn everywhere you looked! A few workshops were going on as well. I'll have to come up with a different game plan for next year so that I'll actually have enough energy to enjoy the festival. Volunteering was fun though. I wouldn't mind doing it again - especially since I got a free t-shirt!

:-) And when I left, the parking field was totally full of cars with people parking across the street in another field. Whoa!

Look at that beautiful curling wool from the Karakuls sheep!
(It's good for making rugs and ropes apparently.)

Getting a trimming.

This little sheep has 4 horns! I love the dual colors.