Blog
New Focus in 2019
It has been a long hiatus, precipitated by California’s four year drought early in the decade, which was followed by the year of loss and suffering (2017), in which several important people in my life left this earthly plane, and my husband and I decided to re-tool our lives, downsize and leave our jobs. We want to spend more time with our grandchildren and what remains of those over 50 in our family (including ourselves). The farm at Slate Range Camp has been gradually emptied out, the 1854 ranch house has had some sprucing up and...
read moreNew CSA Offering – The Drought Share
It is time to open the 2014 CSA Share subscriptions! I have just re-tooled my Fibershed Marketplace listing to offer a Drought Share this year. As I discussed a few weeks ago, the prospect for adequate water here in California during the 2014 growing season is dire. Last week, my own water district put into place a rate structure that includes water overage rates four times higher than last year, and the option of dramatically reducing what is provided to customers if a ‘drought emergency’ (meaning dramatically low water in...
read moreDrought
As many of you know, California has suffered one of the worst droughts in its recorded history over the past two years. This photo shows the main launching harbor at Bullards Bar, our nearby reservoir. It was taken in January, a month with no rain. There have been a few storms, but the snowpack on April 1st was only one third of normal, meaning there won’t be spring runoff to recharge our springs and rivers. I face an uncertain, but definitely reduced, amount of water to work with as planting time approaches. Those who have dropped...
read moreMy Fibershed Wardrobe
I have been getting ready to head off to Stitches West at the end of this week and wondering why my excitement level isn’t any higher. My bestest Fiber Trash Girls have been begging me to join them for the party, for the past several years. This is my group of friends who knit and spin together (sometimes frequently!) here in the northern Sierra foothill, as well as join me for an annual rustic retreat every summer at my high country cabin (where I raised my children and hiked through the snow every winter day for 13 years). They have...
read moreA Summer of Dye Plants
The summer has just flown by this year, as I try and balance both running the dye CSA and working full-time at a new job. I have been thrilled and delighted by how prolific my black hollyhocks, marigolds and zinnias have been producing, and also managed to gather up yarrow, Vulpina Letharia lichen, tansy, bronze fennel, lodgepole pine bark and other plants over the warm months. I also managed to plant a large bed of Japanese Indigo, although these sweet, tender plants are hard to start in my climate, even under lights. Once in the ground,...
read moreThe Gift of Aspen
Aspen trees are one of the highlights of fall in my part of the world, and I was overjoyed to find that the leaves produce a true, brilliant gold dye. Last week, I promised that the next CSA sign-up would result in adding an additional contest prize, a 200-yard skein of Nature’s Cauldron Farm yarn dyed in Aspen….. this weekend, I was out playing and came home to discover a new sign-up through the Fibershed Marketplace, so I am adding another prize to the contest! Here’s a hat I knitted up in December, using my hand-dyed...
read moreUpdate on More Prizes!
I had announced earlier this week that I would add another prize to the contest if my Facebook business page got up to 200 likes… and it did overnight! Whoo, hoo!! Thanks, everyone, for boosting my spirits and spreading the word about natural dyeing. I am adding two undyed skeins of Romney wool from Mary Vega’s flock in Newcastle, California… she donated most of her wool clip to my fledgling CSA last season, and I had the wool cleaned and processed into 2-ply sport weight yarn by Yolo Wool Mills. It is in the bag shown on...
read moreNew CSA Subscription Season Underway!
I am pleased to announce that I am now accepting subscribers for the 2012 CSA season, through the Fibershed Marketplace. I will be offering a similar season as last year, and you can find more details here on the website. I have chosen to collaborate with Fibershed because we share common goals, and also to reach a wider audience in promoting natural dyes to artisans. The collaboration of myself and other regional artistans will lead to eventual construction of a regional cotton mill, a mill for producing finer weight wool yarns, and an...
read moreIndigo Composting Floor Workshop
Last month, I had the great good fortune to participate in a workshop with Rowland Ricketts, who is probably one of very few people in the US who understand and employ the traditional composting floor method of processing Japanese indigo plants into a lasting dye powder. This workshop was sponsored by the Fibershed Project and hosted on Marin Carbon Project land, where there is now a fabulous building, incorporating two containers for walls that have storage, and a roofed composting floor for regional processing capabilities. Rowland is THE...
read moreFun with Fungi
Back in the fall, our local mycological expert Daniel Nicholson asked for some help in preparing for the first-ever Nevada City Wild Mushroom Exposition. This new event would mark the 14th anniversary of the Fungus Foray hosted by Yuba Watershed Instituteand would engage more of the public in the magic of the fungal world. Daniel provided me with several dried samples and I began to simmer up some dye results. I put together a display board for him and attended the Foray, being totally amazed and sucked in to the world of ‘shroom...
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