SheepPigs

Oct 11, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose

Across the road in Hope there is a farm that has a most unusual breed of sheep. The first time I saw them I thought they were pigs because of their spots but then I noticed the horns on some of them and realized that there was no way a pig would sport those!

Recently, my wonderful neighbor and friend Maria Menegus went to upstate NY to visit her sister CeCe and brought back some terrific undyed wool from her sheep. In fact the wool is so untreated it still had bits of straw to pick out while knitting. My father, who was visiting at the time, took one look at the wool and asked me to knit a scarf. And no sooner had I announced I had finished the scarf he asked for a matching hat! I made the scarf with all knit rows (i.e. purl) as it is thicker and warmer that way but the hat, which has a double layer around the ears when you turn it up, I did in ribbing.

The wool was fun to work with as it had a natural spring to it, no doubt from the lanolin which processing tends to destroy. I was so pleased with the results I signed it at the bottom with some left over red wool from a previous project.

Maria told me that her sister’s sheep actually came from the very farm where I first spied them. Maria and her son drove them up to upstate NY. It’s kind of funny to think of the traveling wool which started on the sheep in Hope, then continued to reside there in upstate NY until shearing, then was carded and spun into yarn and returned to Hope, and then knitted into the scarf and hat and returned to upstate NY!

Maria doesn’t raise sheep but she and her family do have a wonderful farm and roadside stand and her father-in-law Joe, across the road, has chickens and the most delicious eggs which have spoiled me for any other.

This is a photo of Maria’s recent harvest. And the photo below it is a recent breakfast Elliott and I enjoyed on a Sunday in Hope. We called it the boy/girl breakfast—note the difference even in the color of the plates! His was sausage on my filone bread; mine Menegus tomatoes, grilled Vermont bacon, Menegus cast iron fried egg, on lightly grilled Ricotta Bliss Bread.

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