Local Farm

Local Farm 2008
11 x 14
$450 with mat and frame

Local Farm is the real name of this Cornwall Connecticut Farm. My family visits every October for an apple pressing. I took many pictures in October 2007, including the two displayed below. (Jeff may have taken the one on the left.) In January, I took some cows from the photo on the right, and used the view of the barn from the photo on the left to help create this painting.

















Local farm is a wonderful place. As Debra Tyler puts it on the home page of their web site:

"Local Farm is a small raw milk dairy dedicated to providing fresh wholesome milk to our friends and neighbors in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. Local Farm encourages developing a more intimate relationship with the food we eat, and backyard farming." Go to their web site at
http://www.rlocalfarm.com/ to find out more about their cows and the benefits of raw milk.


My family raises goats. It was my husband's idea. When there is a lot of work to be done they are "his" goats. I milk some of the time and so does Acacia. How I got wrangled in to milking "his" goats would be another rather long post. It is very nice having fresh somewhat organic raw goat milk to drink. We feed the milking goat organic grain, but she and the other goats eat hay that isn't organic, purchased from local farms. These "local farms" are not to be confused with Local Farm, but are just farms that happen to me near us. One of our goats is pregnant and due May 8. We also have chickens. The March 20 post shows a watercolor painting of Cha Cha, one of Jeff's original goats.

Our son, Leif, is six now. He has been drinking about a quart a day of goat milk for 4 - 5 years . He occasionally says "M-a-a-a--a-a", but is otherwise extremely strong and healthy. We sometimes make cheese and yogurt. I make LOTS of ice cream. I usually make a not very creamy, but super healthy and yummy vanilla ice cream using only: our raw goat milk, raw eggs from our chickens, maple syrup and vanilla. I just bought some maple syrup from our neighbor around the corner. If I could just grow some vanilla beans I'd be all set.


People often ask us if we live on a farm. Jeff has resolved the dilemma of answering that question by claiming the name Wanna BEE Farm for our homestead. (He will actually be getting honey bees next month.) Jeff was so proud of me when I started this blog last month. He must of thought, if Sharon can do it, it must be pretty easy. So now he has one too. http://wannabeefarm.blogspot.com/ He doesn't have any posts on it yet but there is a nice picture of him and the cat. He is too busy digging holes to plant more trees and preparing for his bees. He did find time to create a video and put it on Youtube, about milking a goat the Wanna BEE Farm way.

Hope you like the painting and now you know where to get your raw cow milk!

Cha Cha, the loose goat

Cha Cha

8 x 10

Sold

People ask us if we live on a farm. I don't know whether it is a farm or not, but we do have 3 goats and 9 chickens as of now, plus a dog and a "barn cat". (The barn cat prefers my daughter's bed.) At one time we had 17 ducks and soon we will have bees. My husband calls our home Wanna Bee Farm, but that might change after he gets them.

Cha Cha was one of our first goats. In this painting she is lounging on a rock behind our house. I started this painting sometime in late 2006, or maybe early 2007. I used masking fluid on Cha Cha and painted the background and some of the rock. (Masking fluid is put on to watercolor painting to prevent the paint from going there while you paint around and over it.) I lost interest in the painting and put it away for months.

I came back to the Cha Cha painting one day. I removed the masking fluid and realized it hadn't worked so well, or maybe it didn't age well. Cha Cha had green on her face. Brian, my old watercolor teacher suggested that I make her a brown and white goat. I couldn't do that to Cha Cha. She is a pure bred Saanan and needed to be white.

I thought, "what do I have to lose?", and loosened up. I splashed a little more green paint on her and some pink to balance it out. The rest was much easier than my usual paintings because I wasn't invested in painting a perfect realistic goat. I had fun and worked quicker than usual and it was done. I kind of like it! Overall I think that loose is overrated, but it can be fun and it sure is easier!

Epilogue: Cha Chas was bred and gave birth to a buck. She had a huge udder with lots of milk and was nearly impossible to milk. After a couple weeks of goat wrestling we dried her off and later sold her to a farm in Western Connecticut where they use milking machines. I still have the painting.