What happened in Michigan

Okay, I'm trying to be better. Two weekends ago, DH and I went to Michigan. On the way out we dropped off a ewe lamb to Kara. Our main mission for going out to Michigan was genetics! We have a number of rams on the farm that all link back to Wilkins, our lovable head ram. We were looking at two ram lambs from Gail Former and at the time a ram lamb and adult ewe from Stephen Rouse.

We looked at all of Stephen's sheep and it was like being a kid in a candy store. I want that one, and that one, and that one. Restraint prevailed and a bit of common sense (do we really need another unrelated ewe, even though she's awfully cute?) and so we left at the end of the weekend with a black gul ram lamb from Stephen and a nicely crimped moorit/fawn ram lamb. So far, they're not named and we're calling the one gul boy and the other uber crimpy. Any suggestions out there??

From Gail, we were looking at a mioget ram lamb (which we purchased) named Bach. We also leased a moorit ram lamb who carries the modifier gene named Coltrane. This second guy, if I'm remembering correctly, doesn't have iset in his background. That's a nice bonus.

While there we also enjoyed the MFF (Michigan Fiber Fest - for those of you not in the know). It was a nice event. Got to see more Shetlands and Shetland people. Enjoyed putting faces to the names that are out in cyberspace. Also did a bit of shopping, not too much, since the big shopping was the ram lambs! More about that little shopping later.

At the end of the trip we went home with 9 sheep and 1 French Angora bunny in the truck and trailer. Two Shetlands were dropped off to Rich Johnson in New York, Nadine Chounet picked up one Shetland, and Becky Colpitts picked up two ENORMOUS sheep (one BFL yearling and a UK Suffolk yearling). Ruth Ticknor was the proud owner of the FA rabbit, that she came to pick up, too.

That was some trip and I'm still exhausted thinking of it. We left Michigan on Sunday around noon and got home Monday morning at 5 to 5:30am. Lots of gas stops and bathroom breaks (checking on the sheep the whole time) and the one stop to give Rich his sheep.

Getting back into the groove

Okay, so I'm bad about blogging. There are only so many hours in the day to do stuff and my life is kind of busy. I had intended on blogging on a regular basis, but got out of the habit. Then I thought that it'd be fun to blog when there are only lambs on the ground. We all know that lambs are the cutest thing in the world, but I didn't get to that this year because we were in Hawaii during lambing. Okay, not during the whole time, but pretty much. We missed two out of four births because we were away.

We also got chicks this year and they arrived in the mail (from Texas) the day after we got back home. The picture below shows the Partridge Chanteclers. We have 6 pullets and 2 roos of that breed and also got the Barred Hollands with the same pullet and roo numbers.

Now for the why I'm getting back in the groove. One reason - guilt. Tim and I went to Michigan during the MFF (Michigan Fiber Festival) and met a bunch of Shetland people. We went to get different ram genetics and managed to pick up 4 new boys (3 purchased and one rental). While there, we spent time with some Shetland folks we hadn't seen in at least two years, if not longer and got to meet others that we only knew through the web. One of those people was Garrett Ramsay, a fellow Sagittarian, who's blog resides here. He made my first and only comment on the blog and told me to update this thing. So here goes, Garrett, this blog post is for you. :-)