The Boys Are Back In Town

        Our three boys have been busy! Last fall we let The Damon out with Eglantine and Rosie to see if he couldn't do his duty as the herd sire. Turns out, he accomplished the task!

We're proud to announce that Eglantine and Rosie are both pregnant with TWINS!!

        We didn't have The Damon breed with Kikki or Eva. Kikki was still weening Eva at the time, and Eva is much too young to have kids. Even though she is physically able to have kids, there are a lot of complications associated with a tiny goat getting pregnant. So to be on the safe side, we kept Kikki and Eva inside on the big day.

The Damon: proud soon-to-be daddy goat!

Sammy: excited to have more (hopefully) does around.

        The jury is still out on whether or not Star has been living up to his potential. The only things we've seen him mount are the Gator (a six wheeled farm utility vehicle), and the walk behind mower. We're hoping he's just very secretive about the deed and isn't really into mechanical objects only. Time will tell! Soon we will give a call to the vet to have some ultrasounds taken.

Starlight

Starlight

   

        For the passed several months, we have been graced with the presence of Starlight! Star (for short) is a beautiful championship pedigreed Lincoln Longwool English Ram decsending from 5 generations of champions. He was about 8 months old when he arrived to our farm all the way from Ithaca, NY. Our friend Malou Stark purchased Starlight at the Maryland Fiber Festival in May and they immediately bonded. After purchase, Malou drove to NY to pick him up farther upstate along the Canadian border in a small town called Brennan where he was brown. We've brought Star to our flock to breed with our ewes! If all goes well, we will be expecting lambs in the spring!

 

      Starlight's only visiting our farm for a short time, so if you haven't had a chance to meet him yet, come on up for a visit! I know you'll find him to be the most pleasant ram you've ever met.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Part I

        Christmas at Cair Paravel is celebrated with the gathering of family, incredible food, and huge trees.  Every year for the passed who-knows-how-many Christmases the Ledford family Christmas tree has gotten bigger and bigger.  This year was no exception.  We decided to support a local business, so Whitt, Martha, Maddie, Mia, our good friend and farm-helper-extraordinaire Max, and I headed to Spruce Rock Farm Inc. in Madison, Va just north of Stanardsville.  There we had a great selection of trees ranging all sizes.  Tim, the owner of the farm, was more than helpful and gave us the grand tour of the tree selection, and pricing.

Mia ready to tree hunt!

Max enjoying some hot cider as he waits for the search to begin!

        After looking through the selection (and a lot of convincing) Maddie chose the biggest tree available for the Ledford family tree: a nineteen foot monster of a douglas fir. Mia and I were excited to choose our second tree together as a married couple, and our first tree living up on the farm. We don't have quite as much space for a tree as Whitt and Martha do in the main house, so we settled on a measly little eleven foot tall tree.

Whitt standing in front of the chosen tree!

Mia and my choice!

         Out with the chainsaws and our selected trees came tumbling down. Usually yelling "timber" is a bit unnecessary when it comes to Christmas trees, but these two were the exception. The video below is Mia and my tree being cut down.

        With the trees felled all we had to do was load them up and off we were for home! Fortunately Tim let Whitt drive the truck to the tree as opposed to having to carry the tree all the way back up to the parking area.  With the help of the farm owner, we were able to carry the smaller tree over to be loaded onto our car.

The tree all loaded up.

Maddie, Max, and Mia showing off the great feat!

Mia and I before the journey home.

        Next Christmas keep Spruce Rock Farm in mind! Their prices cannot be beat!

Tim & Doris Williams

Spruce Rock Farm Inc.

P.O. Box 789

Madison, Va 22727

Happy New Year!

    Happy New Year from Cair Paravel! We're looking forward to 2012 and all it has to offer! Just in the passed week and a half our planning for the year has shown this year to be a busy one. With the new year come some fun changes to our blog to help it and us become more interactive with you the reader. A new "tab" feature has been added to the top of the blog to act as a handbook for the farm. It's our hope that these tabs will help to make our blog a hub for all things Cair Paravel so that our day-to-day activities, BnB availability and reservations, food we make, animals we tend, even the current weather conditions and forecasts for the farm are all a click away from our blog home page.

    At the top of the screen just below our title picture and e-mail subscription bar, you'll see tabs across your screen. Click on any of these tabs and it will take you there! More and more tabs will be added in the next few weeks so feel free to explore! What better way to keep up with the farm then adding our blog as your home screen? These tabs will help our blog be a more useful tool.

Thank you for all the support in making 2011 a great year! 

 

Thanksgiving: In Review!

    Thanksgiving this year was a fun-packed weekend-long undertaking filled with incredible food, awesome friends and family, warm fires, and merriment. Whitt and Martha had the usual suspects up for Thanksgiving dinner aside from Grethcen and Austin. Unfortunately they were unable to make it up from Asheville, NC.
    The meal consisted of three (yes, three!) of our turkeys prepared in different ways. Two birds had been brined by Mia and Martha prior to cooking: one in a water and salt mixture, the other in a mixture of water, milk, salt, and various spices. The third was relatively untouched prior to cooking. The idea behind brining is that the salt and liquid mixture will coat the skin and form a protective coating that holds in the moisture of the bird while being cooked with minimum basting required. The two brined birds were grilled while the third was cooked as normal in the oven. Howard and Whitt spear-headed the grilling of the turkeys.

Howard sprinkling on some magic.

A couple swipes of goodness...

And viola!

Whitt and Howard talking about the boring view.

In goes the bird!

Annie doing one last nose check before the lid is closed to make sure it smells good.

     According to all present, every bird was unbelievable, but the grilled birds where exceptionally good. Of course the birds were merely the center piece to the meal. All of the sides and desserts were also, as normal, incredible.

This Is Ground Control to Major Tom

Hello blog followers!

As many of you may have expected, the holidays on top of our regular work schedule have been swallowing us whole. Thanksgiving is always a blast at the farm because not only do we celebrate on Thursday, but we also have Thanksgiving Pt. II! The barn was in dire need of a re-vamping with the influx of animals in need of storage. I'm glad to say we have finished most of that project up. We've been able to get Christmas trees, decorate for the season, throw a holiday party, host lot's of visitors, AND rent a ram to breed our ewes. Needless to say, the blog will not be neglected for the next few weeks.

There's so much to tell you about! Stay tuned!

-Brendan and the whole Cair Paravel Family!

Hunting

    As most of you may know, it is hunting season here in Virginia. For you hunters, it's the season for waking up early, stocking the truck with bullets and beer, and sitting in a tree for hours and hours on end. For us non-hunters in the middle of the action, the season consists of our loveable dogs bringing back all the pieces the hunters didn't want one disgusting piece at a time, and constantly being worried someone is going to shoot them. So, we have come up with an attempt at a practical, yet fashionable, way to help prevent buck shot from finding our dogs.

    Here we have Tsuki modeling a dog safety vest complete with a handy pocket for treats or anything else she wants to put in there. Actual dog vests run a surprising amount of money, so I just ended up making these with 97¢ human vests and a 47¢ spool of thread. Hurray for safety!