Market Day

There won't be too many more market days.  I hesitated to go with so much to do for Sheep and Wool and sat in the driveway for five minutes before deciding to just go on and do it.  Matt was staying back to do some work on the farm.  I hate to miss the market when I know people come by to see if I'm there (thank you, friends).   I took a skeleton booth and no tent.  I needn't have worried as the Pettingills and Tennants, my wonderful booth neighbors, jumped up to help me unload.  I even got a curb parking space in front of my little patch of lawn.  The market was slow and steady.  I scored a dozen of the fabulous mugs I need for shaving soap from Susanne Farrington.  She likes to trade mugs for wool she can use for her beautiful, and warm, felted garments.  The morning was cloudy and cool, with market friends stopping by to say hello.  Robin Mizrahi's son, Nathan, is now raising English Angora rabbits.  She was delighted to see that I have a buck for him to use on his doe.  We decided to trade for her delicious granola.  Bartering is very popular around here and makes perfect sense when we raise or make products we all can use.  I got a lot of soap wrapped while sitting behind my table.  Home to the farm where I stopped at the upper field to check on the sheep.  They were lying so comfortably on the hillside, sunning themselves and chewing their cud.  The flock is so used to me chasing them back down to the barnyard they got up and started in that direction.  Tanner, Bertha and Reba heard me up top and came running up to greet me.  I couldn't go back on the road with them following me so I slowly drove the Honda van down the hill.  Matt showed me the flood lights he put up in the hay mow with another shining on the north side barnyard.  The mow won't be quite so spooky this winter.  I'll have to climb up there to put the barnyard light on, which is inconvenient, but here we are. New wiring in an old barn is tricky and expensive.  When the farm was in it's former glory, and the giant mow was filled with thousands of square bales, Sister Bernadette would climb up to the roof and replace the bulbs on the existing lights.  With the round bales I'm using now, and the gamboled roof, I can't get up that high.  We're talking 30 feet up.  Times have changed and life goes on.  On deck for today...working very hard to get ready for sheep and wool.  That "other Maggie" seems to be showing up a lot lately, the one who stays up late, stirring pots, spinning wool and running the machine.  She looks a little rough around the edges at work the next day, but the farm, it's own living entity, has to be sustained by whatever grist the mill requires, as Captain Jack would say.