The girls prior to lambing

Here's a video of the girls that I took about one week ago when Tim was cleaning out their pen in anticipation of lambing. They can go any day now.

Shearing time

On Sunday, February 1st, our shearer, David Hinman, came to the farm to shear our 25 sheep. We shear in order of color, white first and then continuing on the other colors until we're down to black. Here are a few pictures of the shearing day. All pictures are courtesy of Bryn's DH, Nick. Thanks so much! I tried getting the video camera to work, but it really takes better videos if you hit record! Can you tell I don't use it much?? We'll Nick saved my bacon and allowed me to have some pictures to share with you all.

Sabrina being sheared. She was the second to be done.
One of my kat twins with a good shot of David. He was concerned that the video camera was going to point at his rear end, so now he can breathe a sigh of relief.

Viveka coming through the door. Good to see the wool off of them as she and her twin, Rakel were rubbing against the doorway in their pen every time they would go through. Add a bit of snow and they made a horrible scratchy sound.

Here's a shot of Minard (red - in front) with Pat getting the fleece ready to be bundled and Oren in the blue coat. I have them bundle my fleeces in bed sheets and I then skirt and figure out what happens with them later. Minard pitched in and helped by taking the fleeces over to Pat and Oren to bundle. This was his first time seeing sheep being sheared and when we were done, he took some of the belly wool to take into his kindergarten class for show and tell.

This is Balder waiting his turn to be sheared.

Here's another shot where you can see Oren in the background while Mulan, I believe, is being sheared.

After they get sheared, each one gets a coat on them. This shot shows Arcturus (blue snuggly) and Wilkins (rust snuggly). You can see that they weren't all done as Gulliver's toosh is still looking very wooly! Some tend to shrug off their snugglies after a little bit, but some stayed on for a while.

This picture shows David shearing a lamb with Ruth (in the pink shirt) and I'm next to her in the elf/hershey kiss hat. Ruth and my job is to get the sheared sheep and put the snugglies on them and then take them out back to be put back in their pens.

We keep them indoors for a good solid week, then remove any snugglies that have stayed on and then normally another week to "harden them off". Then they're released to the elements. This time, Tim was chomping at the bit and they went outside a few days earlier than I was figuring. The girls had fun running and cavorting like lambs. You can see some baby bellies now. April here we come!

We'll miss you, Wilkins

Today is a sad day. Wilkins has passed away. He was born in 2001 and I was fortunate to have purchased him from Nadine Chounet back in 2005. For those who've never met him, he was a wonderful ram. He was very gentle and was a great way for me to get used to rams, even though in the beginning I was very nervous about his size. He was very good about not letting one ram pick on another by either stepping in the way or just pushing the "bad boy" out of the way. He was VERY good about converting poor quality hay into a "beer gut"!

I think he was taken out by one of the yearlings that was trying to establish dominance. I've called the Federal Vet to report the death and may have to call the local vet for necropsy sampling to be done. Yipee.

I know that he's now frolicking around the fields just beyond the rainbow bridge and looking for all the ewes he can find.

I'll post tomorrow or another day soon about the shearing that happened on February 1st. Just got the pictures yesterday evening.

Do we have quail or chickens??

Today Tim came in after giving the chickens a little veggie snack and said that he had a special egg for me. I waited as he pulled out six different eggs from both the Chanteclers and the Hollands until he showed me the "special egg". It came from the Chanteclers, but I could have sworn it was a quail egg. Below is the picture of the crazy egg next to a nickel.




Here's another picture with it next to some of the normal sized eggs we've been getting.




We decided this wouldn't make much of a scrambled egg, so we decided to crack it open to give to Adrienne (aka Boober). The shell was very thick and took a good whack to get it to crack. Only a small portion of the top (or the bottom - if you're so inclined) came off. Try cracking a grape and you'll understand! It was very interesting looking with what appeared to be a fairly colorless yolk with only a smidgen of color that was comma shaped. How bizarre! Boober enjoyed it and downed it in one slurp.



On the sheep side of things, Bergelmir was placed in with the ewes for clean up duty. We figured that if he settled his mother or any of the other Wilkins children we have (Helle and Rafn) that the offspring would go into little white packages. Bergelmir is an old chip off the block, and was walking around with his neck stretched out looking for all the world like he's been walking around following his chin. On a side note, it will give Wilkins a break as the two of them have been trying to determine who is king of the farm. Wilkins wants to keep his crown and Bergel is trying to dethrone him. Arrgh! Why can't boys just behave??

Catching up on all the details

Okay. I know mea culpa. I've been away for a while. First things first. Lots have been going on/happening around here.

1) I had a birthday that another Shetland shepherd shares with me (hint: he's got a blog with Shetland sheep and his passel of dogs). It wasn't a big milestone birthday, just a normal another year older and hopefully wiser day. Tim got me a kitchen towel weaving kit for my Leclerc Artisat I've had taking up a bit of space upstairs. He's okay about enabling me with my fibery goodness as long as I do at least one thing on it. This is my first thing on my own loom. I took a class where I wove a scarf back about 2 years ago. So far so good. The edges are not even, but for a second time at a loom, it doesn't look too bad. What do you think?



2) A nasty ice storm came through brought a little ice and bit of snow. Even though we had not so much ice around here, we ended up losing our electricity from that Friday morning until close to mid-afternoon on Sunday. Our pellet stove requires electricity, so we were relying on a Mr. Heater that kept the place a balmy 60 degrees. I like it much warmer, so needless to say, I was bundled to the hilt! Tim kept looking every day for a generator, not knowing how much longer we'd be without power and wouldn't you know it, he found one on Sunday and was cresting the slight rise in the road to the house when the power came on. Murphy sure has a sense of humor. We're keeping the generator even so. Never know when we'll need it again. To water the sheep, we had to haul water from a spring house/collection point. Luckily we have a stream that runs by the property and a spring house on our property that are both downhill from the sheep and house. We opted to get water from this one that is right next to the road and on a much flatter surface. The picture was taken while I stood on the road looking at it. The water level is that dark area. The first time we took water from it, I had to break the small layer of ice and dip the water out bucket by bucket. It dropped the level down a bit, but by the next day, the level was back up to it's normal amount.


3) We split up the breeding groups the weekend after the ice storm. Round one done! We'll be using Bergelmir for cleanup around January 10th. Hopefully he'll not be cleaning up anyone, but if so, then so be it. Rams were put together and as Tim always puts it, it smelled like a bordello in there for a while. We do the scent and stuff technique which works for us. Here's a picture of the girls enjoying a sunny day today. All 14 are there. Can you pick them out?



4) We added lights into our chicken coop prior to the ice storm and wouldn't you know it, during the ice storm (when the lights weren't turning on or off) they seemed to kicked it into gear. They started laying much more prolifically and so now we're getting anywhere from 6 to 10 eggs a day. Woo hoo. I am an office supply freak, so I purchased some half dozen cartons and a stamper for the cartons that identifies our farm. No, the cartons aren't exactly office supplies, but you should have seen the stamper they sent with the rubber stamp. It's the biggest one I've ever seen. I can ink the whole stamper at one time. Yes, a bit over the top, but I really like the stamper and envision other uses for it too.



5) The holidays are upon us. So far we've survived Christmas unscathed. We opted to stay home and not travel to either parental unit household. New Year's Day will find us once again on the road to visit my folks.


I think that's all the major details for now. I keep trying to squeeze in some spinning, knitting and dyeing. I finished Tim's Freya mittens, so now he has matching (meaning the same sheep) hat and mittens. I just overdyed some musket roving to a nice blue color. It looks good if I do say so myself!

Take care and talk to you in the new year.

Rams for Sale

Adrienne's on the run to tell you it's time to find new homes for some rams we have.

First, we have Contented Bergelmir. To see his pedigree, just click here. He's an Ag grey ram who carries wild spotting. Just look at the post when he was born and you'll see what I mean. He's really coming into his own and looking like a a great ram. If he doesn't find a new home shortly, we'll be using him for clean up of all the ewes in January. At this juncture, he's unproven.

Secondly, we have Contented Theobroma. To see his pedigree, just click here. Theo is a proven moorit ram. He's a gentle ram that understands his place around humans. We used him last year on two of our ewes (to figure out what they were genetically) and he threw twins both times. I just love the light patches he has on his face. Very striking. They were also visible when he was a lamb.
The third and final ram we have available is Contented #15. He's just waiting for the right home to name him. He is also unproven. He is unregistered at this moment, but is the offspring of Contented Theobroma and Islandfleece Rakel. He was born April 14, 2008. You can see Rakel's pedigree here. He has a nice intermediate fleece. At this point, I don't see any registration faults with him. He's got real nice looking horns and everything else seems to be in the right place. :-)

If any of these rams catch your fancy, just give us an email or post a comment to the blog and we'll get right back to you. Our prices are reasonable ($150 for unproven and $200 for proven) and we figure registration or transfer costs are ones that we should absorb. We do have a discount when you buy two or more. Lambs, like #15 also come with a horn guarantee. If for some reason, his horns turn wrong we'll refund half the purchase price.

Thanksgiving Wishes

May your day be filled with good food, great family and friends, and so many things to be thankful for that you need to borrow your family and friends fingers and toes to count off your blessings.