Catching up ... again

Once again I suffered from blogunattentionitis. A truly serious disease where one forgets to do blog posts on a regular basis. This tends to happen to me over the winter. Anyone else have this horrible affliction which not only has the unintentional disadvantage of making others kept in the dark about farm happenings?


Many things have happened and so once again, into the breech to fill in the happenings on the farm.


NOVEMBER
November started breeding season for us. A tad later than normal, but what's one week among friends? I kept my breeding groups notoriously small to try to keep an eye on our flock numbers. Here's the rundown of the breeding groups:



SheltrgPines Uber (shown above enjoying a lovely pumpkin thanks to Riverview Farm) was given three lovely ladies: LaughingRiver Rosemary, Contented Darby, and Contented Helle



Contented Fimtan (being ever so gentlemanly and sharing his pumpkin with Mildri) was given four lovely ladies: Contented Brisingamen, Contented Rotinn, Contented Mildri and Contented Thyme.

DECEMBER
December came and Brisingamen was still in the breeding group but acting very funky and looking bloated. So, out she was pulled and put in with last years lambs. I consulted the vet via the phone and we gave her some therabloat, because we were thinking it was a frothy bloat. She responded well and so we kept her with the lambs; her breeding group having come to a premature end.




JANUARY
Since the sheep were starting to get fuzzy looking, we called the shearer, Gwen Hinman, to schedule a time to shear. We picked an early January day that surprisingly was nice and not freezing! We, and when I say that I mean she, sheared a total of 33 sheep (four from Missing Mountain Farm aka the Rice family). First on deck was Sabrina shown below.
Then we continue down the color continuum from light to dark until we're done.

The lower picture you can see Gwen getting ready to shear one of our smallest sheep, Contented Ingrid (from Underhill Mulan and Underhill Bach). Got to love those tiny Underhill sheep! Although, I'm sure she was cursing them under her breath!


Here's a better shot of more of the gang working away. It was funny because we had a 4 year old who when he saw that a sheep had been nicked kept saying that she sheep had and owwie. Gwen, jokingly said "That kid has got to go!" After that, they left because he was getting bored, she didn't see them go and got concerned that they took her seriously!
All shearing pictures are courtesy of Missing Mountain Farm, specifically Pam Rice. Thanks a bunch for sharing them with me.

Once all the sheep were sheared, I noticed that Brisingamen (the one pulled early from the breeding group) looked fairly skinny. I made a mental note to start supplementing her with extra feed. Unfortunately, within five days she was looking extremely bloated again and was down, not wanting to get up. Once again we sequestered her and tried to get her back on track again with another therabloat dose. The next day, she was still down, so we called our vet. They came out to look at her and said that something more was wrong since she was trying to bring up a cud and when she couldn't she would grind her teeth. I opted for euthanasia since she was "on the chopping block" since lambing last year. Her lamb last year lasted for a few days and then with no warning died. We were re-breeding her to see if this was a chronic issue with her. We necropsied her and found that her rumen was 3 times the normal size. All other organs looked normal. Once everything else was examined, the rumen was opened and we found it was full of dry foodstuffs. There was no liquid in there, nor the fiber mat that separates the liquid from the dry. It seems as if she lost her bacteria a while ago and I never noticed. Some of the contents included pumpkin seeds that we had stopped feeding about a month prior. She had approximately 20 pounds of food in her stomach and was essentially starving to death. On top of it all, when necropsied, the vet noticed that she had become pregnant (with how many I didn't want to know). More than likely, had I decided to try to fix her, the fetus would have been reabsorbed to concentrate her energy on living. That day I felt like a failure.

FEBRUARY
Nothing new with the sheep, but the chickens were slowly starting to lay more eggs. We also received our seed order from FEDCO seeds, so thoughts of spring were abound!

MARCH
Now we're more or less up to date. The ewes that took are looking nice and pregnant. There's at least one that has twins in her as she's looking very saddlebaggy. The black pussy willow is out and crocus are trying to peek their heads out of the snow. The promise of spring is coming!

The Great Delivery

Okay all, sorry for the delay, but my camera has crapped out on me and since I haven't had a chance to get a new one, I'll have to rely on pictures that were sent to me when I was searching for that right ... thing.

With regard to my hints, you could have assumed a number of different things ... no?

The item in question could have been a guard llama.

They come in brown and white.

The item in question could have been a herding dog.

They also come in brown and white.

How about if it was a cow?

They also come in brown and white.
Maybe another sheep?
Yes! Drum roll, please.

Now introducing Windswept Goshawk. The newest addition to our breeding stock.
Okay, so you were right. Lets not try to be too smug about it!

Stay tuned. Breeding groups are up next. Can't November 11th come fast enough? No,, I can wait, still haven't decided who's going with whom.

Exciting news aka The Great Delivery

In case you've been reading my posts on Facebook (not on it? Don't fret, there's a side bar here with all the farm's posts so you don't miss out!), there's some news on the horizon. Saturday Tim and I will be heading to the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival, not to look around, but we'll be having something delivered to us to take back home.

Here's some hints:
1) The item is brown and white.
2) It's coming from Michigan.
3) It's for the farm.

Any guesses out there? Can't think of what it could be? Don't despair, by the end of the weekend I'll post on the Great Delivery.

9th Annual Jefferson County Fiber Festival

This year I decided to try out the 9th Annual Jefferson County Fiber Festival in New York. It's located at the Stone Mills Museum, in LaFargeville. LaFargeville is just north of Watertown, NY. Since Tim's folks still live in Potsdam (about 1 1/2 hours away), we stayed with them and drove down to the festival. The festival is pretty small, so it's the same weekend as the Old Farm and Home Days and everything seems to fit in pretty well.


We were able to set up in the pavilion, which was nicely located so that vehicles driving by could see what was going on. We had our usual items for sale, wool rovings, wine socks, spinning tools, etc. In the two upper pictures I was still working on setting up. After I moved some things around, Tim took a few more pictures of the "finalized" booth.

Close up of the cedar sachets and wine socks.

Here's a shot of the overall booth. I need to work on getting some material to make a nice skirt for the tables. Not too bad, if I do say so myself. It's a two day event, but we opted to only vend on Saturday becuase Sunday was pouring rain and there was some talk about possible flooding. No need to get stuck in a flood with items that will absorb water!

There were some nice fiber folk also vending there and we enjoyed chatting with them. One lady had two angora goats for sale and they were adorable and friendly! The only few things that saved Tim from me purchasing one was the fact that we didn't have any room in the truck with all the fibery stuff as well as the fact I'm not sure how goats are involved with the Voluntary Scrapie Program. Perhaps in time, I will add an angora goat to the mix ... but not today.

Summer Lambs

Gullison, our musket gulmoget ram lamb. We'll be keeping him.

Alendil, our white ewe lamb. We'll be keeping her.

Mulan's grey ewe lamb by Bach. For Sale.

Mulan's black scurred ewe lamb by Bach. Mulan's black scurred ewe lamb's back end. For Sale

Viveka's moorit katmoget ram lamb by Bach. Nice horns so far, as well as a not bad tail. For Sale.

Viveka's other moorit katmoget ram lamb with scurs. Unfortunately, his scurs are not looking like they're going to clear. This is, in my opinion, a fault and he will more than likely turn into little white packages.

Last, but not least is a beautiful moorit gulmoget from Arwen (right next to her). She's absolutely gorgeous and will be a keeper at the farm. Any ideas on a name?

Bittersweet

On Wednesday, April 28th, I woke to the strains of Tim calling, "Jen, can you come help me?" Brisingamen, our black ewe had just given birth to a brown gulmoget ewe lamb. She had been bred to Gulliver. This is our third gulmoget of the year. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the newest birth, and the last one for this year. Lambing season officially ended with that birth.

On Friday, I picked up my friend, Ruth, and we traveled to Maryland to attend the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The largest and I believe longest running festival in the US. Ruth had been to it many times before, this was my first time. It was lots of fun, although a bit hot. Crazy me had packed a nice heavy sweater just in case it was chilly. Glad I had also packed tee shirts, as that was all that was needed. Was amazed that there were announcements to folks who decided to leave their dog in the car. What are they, whackos? Anywho, I bought a few things and Ruth bought a few things, including a BFL ewe lamb! Since we drove down in my Prius, we had to find a pet store to buy a crate. Luckily in Columbia, we located a PetSmart and they were fairly understanding about the fact that we needed to make sure that the carrier would fit in the hatchback. Needless to say, I've done this before (remember we brought Mulan home that way). Great time there and came back Sunday.

First stop was Ruth's where we offloaded all her purchases, including the ewe lamb. Then I got home. First thing Tim tells me is that we had a loss. Seems as if Brisingamen's lamb, the one just born on Wednesday, was found lying on her side dead at 2pm. She was doing great as far as feeding, but I kept thinking she was lying down an awful lot. Tim remarked that she was looking/acting funny on Saturday. She was also still lying down quite a bit and evidently leaning against the barn. He's wondering if she may have also been blind in one eye. Needless to say, something was wrong and she decided to cross that rainbow bridge.

I'm so sad about it. Think I might go out and spend some time with the bouncy lambs.

The singleton

On Tuesday, April 27th, at around 6pm Arwen started to go into full labor. I was on my way to knitting group, when I got the call from Tim. I immediately turned around and came back to watch/help out (or as Tim would say, worry incessantly). Arwen did a good job and delivered a healthy brown gulmoget ewe lamb.

Arwen was bred to Gulliver, our black gulmoget ram that we lost due to hypothermia. Such a sweet looking little baby. Makes the loss of Gulliver a bit easier.