Farm Sewing Projects

I wanted to have this post up before the first fair, but since I only just finished the projects in time to get them to the fair, that obviously didn't happen.  However, since I am rather proud of them, and they worked out well, I thought I would post them anyway.

My first project was to make a sign for our farm.  Since I do a lot of sewing, and have lots and lots of fabrics lying around, this is what I came up with:

The fabric paint that I used was rather old, so it's a little hard to see in the picture, but it does say "Button Brook Farm" in the corners of the sign.  I just couldn't squeeze out enough to put "Fawn Grove, PA" in the last corner. Still, I think it looks pretty cute.  The buttons on the tree are all old buttons that I got from a jar of buttons that came from somewhere.  Recycling!

And now, more recycling....

At a show, you need to be able to feed your goats hay.  However, goats are very good at wasting hay. At home, we have homemade wooden hay feeders that work somewhat well, until the baby and adolescent goats decide to get into them.  However, they are not portable.  And we do not have any metal hay racks that most people take to shows.  We do have a hay net leftover from when the previous owners had horses, but I was worried that our goats would get their heads caught and hurt themselves.  So, I made some of my own hay bags.

The first one is from a laundry bag that I found at a Goodwill (by way of Ikea).  I added 2 holes with windows (again, to keep the goats from getting their heads stuck).  This one has a nice strap on the back which allows you to sling it over your shoulder for easy transport with or without hay in it.  We tied them up with bailer twine, which was free.  Total cost: $4.00.

The second one was completely free, since I made it out of old pairs of jeans (for durability) and scrap fabric.  Again, I put little windows in it, added some loops and straps, and along with the bailer twine, we were in business. The goats seemed to figure it out pretty quickly.

Of course, that didn't stop them from helping themselves to anything in another goat's pen that they could get to.  This was true of all the goats though, so I didn't feel particularly bad when our goats did it.  One of the young goats belonging to someone else actually got through the bars into the wrong pen, and then couldn't get back! One of the other competitors made the comment that "Whoever coined the phrase, 'The grass is always greener on the other side' must have had goats." So true!