North East Shetland Meeting

Tim and I went to Linda Doane's house on Saturday, October 4th for the annual North East Shetland Meeting. This meeting I know that I always look forward to going to. It's nice to see familiar faces, and sometimes we see new faces. We've been going to the meeting since we got Shetland sheep (perhaps it was one year prior to them??). Each year, we met new faces and always felt welcomed by all. I always suggest to people new to Shetlands to go to the meeting. You learn a wealth of information and get to meet like minded folks. They have to be like minded to love Shetlands!

We gathered in the house first to talk Shetlands. It was a small group with Tim and me, Scott Bailey, Libby James, and of course, Linda Doane. We started by working on sorting the latest color study sample submissions into the 11 colors. The submissions had been previously placed in bags with a barcoded sticker, so nobody could identify who the samples came from. After a bit of sorting, Libby needed to leave, but it was nice to see her again. Faye Whitney showed up just in time to take Libby's place in the sorting. We also discussed the computer portion of the study. We also discussed the 2011 AGM that we'll be hosting. I'd tell you what we discussed, but that would ruin the AGM and I'd also have to kill you! :-)

After sorting and chatting about colors and sheep in general, we ate a nice potluck lunch. When we finished lunch, we started on our way to see the sheep. Pictured below shows Scott, me, Faye and Linda (behind jeep).
The first sheep we encountered was the ewe flock. True to form, Ginger (I think that was her name) marched up to say hello and ask for scritches. She's Linda's flock greeter and a nice older ewe.We were also eyeballed by the flock guardian. We all passed muster and continued on our way. Excuse me, but I think you have something stuck between your teeth.
We looked at different ewes with different facial markings. Like the ewe pictured below. Moget faced??
This ewe had a lovely face and markings, too.
Then we went on to see the lambs. Linda showed us the organic pellets she's been trying with the sheep which are Aloe Vera with garlic and kelp. They looked interesting and the lambs ran up to the feeders to gobble them down.
After finishing with the lambs, we went back up to the house and said our goodbyes. It was a nice day to talk "shop" and we can't wait for the next meeting next year. For those of you who didn't come, I missed seeing you again. Hope to see some of you there next year.

To stay up to date on when we next meet, or anything else of interest to those in the NE region, sign up for the NE Shetland Yahoo Group.