Real Life Farm

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Real Life Farm Offering yarn, roving & raw fleece.

Small farm in middle Tennessee raising critically endangered Gulf Coast Native sheep, Shetland sheep, a few random goats, and more chickens than I'm comfortable admitting to.

10/18/2026

We had a 20°+ temperature drop on Friday, and I woke up to the first frost of the season this morning. That means that it's finally chilly enough for me to wear my 'sheep to sweater' for the first time. It was 3 1/2 years in the making, and is from the first shearing of Grandma Peaches first twin lambs Honey & Harmony. I had them professionally sheared, but then I skirted,scoured, combed, spun, dyed & knitted all the yarn for the sweater. It brought new meaning to the term 'slow fashion'. It was more like glacial 🤣 It's my first sweater ever, and it woud have been done years sooner if I hadn't been so intimidated about knitting a sweater. In reality, it's no big thing, and I have big plans for my next... several sweaters.
October is Wool Month! Show me your projects- finished or not, what's on or off your needles?

10/17/2026

I love it when a project goes smoothly. For the last couple of years I've been using my electronet to keep the rams from destroying the permanent fence between them & the ewes for a large part of the year. Which means that I wasn't able to use it to properly rotationally graze the main flock.
This morning we pulled up the electronet, and with the help of a good friend who knows what he's doing, The Guy Who Builds stuff & I ran polyrope hotwire and and installed a permanent solar charger along the common fence for the ram's field.
It might be one of the quickest & easiest 'big' projects we've done. It was a chilly, blustery start, but the only snags we hit were that a mouse had destroyed my fence tester, and at some point one of the rope hopped out of an insulator, so I had to walk the fence line to figure out where it was grounding out.
Now I just have to hope that I picked good heights for rams of very different sizes to keep their heads off the fence 🤞

10/16/2026

It's a beautiful Fall(ish) morning and the gang is headed up to the woods to snack on crispy maple leaves while I get the shed mucked out. We have an important project planned for tomorrow, and the cold front moving in will keep us from getting cooked doing it. We may actually have our first chance for frost on Sunday morning!

10/14/2026

Having a spoiled front porch goat is normal, right? Right??

It's a little early for trick or treating, but cute costume 🤣🐑🎃
10/14/2026

It's a little early for trick or treating, but cute costume 🤣🐑🎃

Tell me it's breeding season without saying it 🤣
10/13/2026

Tell me it's breeding season without saying it 🤣

10/12/2026

When I came home from PT today, all of the sheep were napping in the shade of the house (it's 90° here again today). It was immediately obvious that Meadow had gotten herself snarled in a greenbriar vine at some point earlier.
Depending on the sheep, I can either walk up and untangle it from them, or at least sidle up close & step on it & it will pull out as they walk away. Meadow is not the most...cooperative ewe in the flock. Quite the opposite, really. Even with the vine dragging 6 ft behind her I wasn't able to get close enough in the open field to do anything but mumble bad words. And as soon as she started quick hobbling away I could tell that she was well & truly snarled & very uncomfortable.
She was just hobbled enough that I didn't want to have Shy try to bring her to the barn for fear that she would hurt herself. So we played a waiting game. I watched from a distance as they moseyed, to make sure that she didn't go down in the woods where I might not be able to spot her. Eventually we made our way to the barn where I was able to get her into a small pen & finally get my hands on her. I thought for sure that her leg and belly would be torn to shreds, but when I finally got her flipped over there wasn't a mark on her. Hurray for super thick wool! As you can see at the end, she was super appreciative for the help 🤣

The wandering prince has returned, and all daily activities have been canceled until further notice (or until he decides...
10/12/2026

The wandering prince has returned, and all daily activities have been canceled until further notice (or until he decides he's had his fill of lap time).
Evinrude is our first, and failed, barn cat. We found him in the garden center of the local big box store filthy, skin & bones and with chemical burns on his face from trying to eat who knows what to stay alive. He was laying in the sun making air biscuits despite the fact that he was suffering & obviously starving.
We dropped what we were doing to run home to get a carrier for him, and brought him back to the farm. He was quarantined in the feed room until his first vet visit, and in those first few days I thought he might have a neurological issue because of the way he walked. Nope, he was just so ridiculously affectionate that he was constantly trying to do 'happy feet' even while he was walking'.
His barn cat job lasted 10 days before he got moved to the snuggle department. He now lives the life of a gypsy king and comes and goes as he pleases. And when he is home, we stop whatever we're doing and grit our teeth as he lovingly (and painfully) makes biscuits of our legs, sometimes for hours. And he's quite the talker, he tells us all about his adventures ❤️

It's a lovely, lazy, cool grey morning. I was woken up at 5AM to the sound of Isaias arriving in our neck of the woods. ...
10/10/2026

It's a lovely, lazy, cool grey morning. I was woken up at 5AM to the sound of Isaias arriving in our neck of the woods. It started out as a heavy downpour & has settled into a nice soaking rain that we desperately need. We're supposed to get 30-40mph winds too, but so far they haven't materialized.
The barn cats, chickens, and of course the goats have already filed formal complaint. Misty is going with her standard protocol of 'nap until conditions improve or a threat needs elimination'. The guinea fowl have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on, because in their short existence we've had exactly 2 incidents of the 'sky is falling', and they were both at night. Waylon volunteered to monitor safety in the garage since Misty has things handled at the barn.
And Chester? Well, he made sure that no one would be at risk of sneak attack from the toilet paper in the hall bathroom 🙄🤬

I took a road trip into east Tennessee yesterday to pick up some hatching eggs for Ashlyn Chapman & myself (as if eithe...
10/09/2026

I took a road trip into east Tennessee yesterday to pick up some hatching eggs for Ashlyn Chapman & myself (as if either of us need more chickens).
Thank you Sweet Hill Farm & Cindy's Mosaic Chickens, I can't wait for these nuggets to hatch, and I'm even more excited to see what they'll be laying in the spring!

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Shelbyville, TN

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