Farm tour: Bees and fiber

In addition to giving my love to all of the farm animals, two farm highlights were beekeeping and weaving.

When I learned of all the things that needed to be done around the farm, one of my bucket list farm to-do's was to dress up in a beekeeping outfit and see the bees at work. Mission accomplished.

The only downside to this was that within one-hour of arriving to the farm, I got stung by a wasp on my wrist. Not only was my hand in a lot of pain, but as the day went on (and for the next 72 hours), my hand continued to swell - big time. I could barely use my hand.

While my allergy to stings/bites is incredibly uncomfortable, I wasn't going to pass up on the opportunity to see the magic life of bees.

Julie is extremely passionate about fiber spinning and weaving. She has several looms around the farm property and plenty of furry animals to help her pursue her love of spinning fiber into yarn. Inside the Sheppard's Croft (where we stayed) there was a large floor loom. Within 30-minutes of teaching me how to use it, I was well on my way to creating my own wall hanging from a variety of fibers from the farm animals. I totally got into it and spent the rest of the evening - and the next morning - finishing my piece. It took me about 3 hours total to make my wall hanging.

Julie gave me full creativity to make it my own - making sure I had lots of shades of my favorite color pink. We even took grapevines from the farm to add to the wall hanging. I loved the process of using the loom and seeing how the final product turned out.