Meet Our Instructors:

Farm Pickings

News and Updates from Sanborn Mills Farm

— March 15, 2023 —

Winter’s Last Call

A late winter snowstorm such as the nor’easter that just passed through New England will test the patience of even the hardiest resident. Elsewhere spring is unfolding; friends and family out west send us photos of green hills and wildflowers. Meanwhile, we’re pulling the cord to start the snowblower once again. March snow is typically wet and heavy, and too much of it will damage trees, power lines, and even buildings. It’s not much fun.

But a good March snow has its virtues. The ski season, so critical to New Hampshire’s winter economy, will last another week or two and mud season is postponed just a bit. Perhaps more than that, a March snow is often winter’s last call, the last guest to leave the frostbite party. And the longer, warmer days of March mean the new snow disappears all the more quickly.

Here at the Farm, a March snow means we can get out into the woods to log one more time with the oxen and horses before mud season. The sheep, preparing to lamb in a week, maybe two, are cozy in a barn. There’s an opportunity to get a few last things fixed and shined up in the shop before putting them to use in the warm months.

Meet Our Instructors:

Kathy Hattori

Kathy Hattori, who has worked with textiles for more than 40 years, is deeply involved in working with colors from natural sources as well as the history of natural dyes and their modern day uses and applications. She has traveled extensively to learn natural dye and textile techniques from treasured mentors. She is the founder of Botanical Colors, an important commercial source of natural dyes, dye plant seeds, dye inks, and fabrics.

This year at Sanborn Mills Farm, Kathy will teach the Conjuring Colors: Color Blends workshop from August 16 to 20. This is a course on how to blend colors using natural dyes in unexpected combinations to create beautiful results. The palette will be developed on natural fabrics including hemp, cotton, silk and wool. This is an immersion dye workshop but many of these techniques may be adapted for painting, printing and surface design.

To register for Conjuring Colors: Color Blends, click here. And for more about Kathy and Botanical Colors, visit her website.

Mark Your Calendar: Fibershed Roundtable, May 20

Don’t forget to register for the inaugural New England Fibershed Round Table Event this spring on , to be held at Sanborn Mills Farm on Saturday, May 20, 2023. Breakout sessions will cover topics such as animal health and fiber quality, the future of bast fibers in New England, supporting young fiber farmers/ sustaining local wool production, and so much more. A light breakfast and a farm-to-table lunch prepared by Chef Kelly Fahey is included in the cost of admission.

More information can be found on the Round Table Event Page. Please email info.nnefibershed@gmail.com if you have any questions.

What We’re Reading

Book of the Month

March in New England is sugaring season. While there are plenty of books available that cover everything from the fine details of sugarmaking to poetic descriptions of maple trees ornamented with hanging sap buckets and the tap-tap-tap of maple sap dripping into through the spiles, our favorite book about sugaring is this brief volume by Noel Perrin, who was a professor of English at Dartmouth College. His first goal: building a sugarhouse that would cost less than Henry Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond (trading fence posts for supplies turned out to be an important transaction). Then there’s the problem of what to do when the sugar maples start producing too much sap rather than too little.

“His celebration of simple, hard work to produce a ‘quite wonderful, maybe even sacred article’ has not been diminished by plastic tubing, thrip infestations, and the strange new market for Vermont sap water,” describes the University of Chicago Press.

To purchase Amateur Sugarmaker from the UCP, click here.

Photo Credits

Top photo by Marsha Grizwin.

Photo of Kathy Hattori courtesy Kathy Hattori.

Fibershed Roundtable illustration by Jenn Merrill.

Photo of Amateur Sugarmaker courtesy University of Chicago Press.

All other photos by Steve Bjerklie.