Fickle June

April and even May are supposed to be the months with big temperature swings.  This year June followed along.  Last weekend was the Central New York Fiber Arts Festival  and I took a day and trekked out there to investigate.  It was gray, rainy, very windy and in the low (low) 50s.  I ended up wearing four layers and lunching on hot sausage with peppers and onions topped off with hot coffee to try to keep warm.

The venue is very nice.  Long tents of vendors were laid out facing other tents that had a fleece sale, workshops, kids' area and sheep shearing trailer.  Despite heavy rain Saturday the grounds were not muddy and the vendor booths inside were fine.  The tents were high and quite bright inside despite the gray day.

There were supplies for spinners, knitters and other fiber artists and also a lot of finished goods for non-fiber people.  I picked up a couple of well-crafted items that are destined to be Christmas presents.  (Ha!  Got started on that  list!)

There were several vendors with fiber animals in their space and one farm brought one of their LGDs (livestock guard dog) along too.  This sweetie is Aziza (I think that's right) and she's an Akbash.   She's nine years old and is built tall and long bodied with a very coarse, short hair coat. She was a great ambassador.

She was unfailingly polite and friendly to everyone and people were petting her all day.  She never seemed concerned at the strangers petting 'her' lambs, but she did bark a deep bark when a border collie went past the end of her tent.  These little Tunis lambs were her charges for the day.

Another fun attraction was The Gypsy Tinker's wagon.  I must admit, it's a mighty seductive way to travel to shows - cuter and less costly than a commercial camper and the owner built the entire thing herself on a good old Tractor Supply trailer bed.

Apparently, Gypsy wagons are a 'thing' and popular with people who have construction ability and a nomadic bent.

Wow, if you could just pack all your vendor materials in the back of your pickup with some extras in the wagon and hit the road.......

All in all it was a fun day!

That was Sunday.  Tuesday it was sunny and 70 at home and Andy turned this....

...into this.

We unloaded three wagons last night and two this morning and he finished the field before 1 PM this afternoon.  That made somewhere over 900 bales, so we're off to a good start. We haven't been able to bale hay in June in some years - it's been wet until July.  We need rain, but if we can't have rain we'll sure take hay!