Goodbye to Esau

Our dear Border Leicester ram Esau has made his way to a new home. We have many of his offspring and they have all been our favorites, large, good-natured and this year... mostly black! We will miss him greatly, but he has gone to a wonderful new home and it is time for a new boy! We are now on the look out for another perfect Border Leicester ram!

More new lambs!

We now have 9 healthy lambs born this year - 3 more ewes to go. We finally got a white lamb (and a ewe lamb too!) So far 2011 has been a success!

New Lambs!

As I knew this would happen, the one day we had company staying with us is the morning we found the first lambs! Five in total on Tuesday morning, a set of triplets and a set of twins! All are black so far, including the 2 that were born last night around 8pm, my husband was lucky enough to witness one of these births. We have 5 little ram lambs and 2 ewe lambs. All mama's have been perfect, which is quite lucky since the ewe who lambed last night is a brand new mom with twins were first time! We have had one little ram lamb who will need to be bottle fed, for some reason he was uninterested in nursing from his mom. Ugh. So Stella and I spent a day with him in the yarn shop, and he is at a homeschooling day with my mom and a few other families today and will be taken home by a wonderful family who will have much more time than I in the next month or two to feed and take care of him. They also have a couple sheep and he will fit in perfect! We hope this is the only problem lamb this year! Although normally I don't mind an adventure or two during lambing season, with my own due date getting ever closer I'm crossing my fingers to keep it easy this year!

Maybe tonight we will have more! I will keep you updated!

Sunny Winter Day

It was a gorgeous day on Sunday (pre-snowstorm!), the two horses Tess and Diva were so warm from the sun their fur was almost to hot to touch! The sheep were happy to be outside all day, although they might have been even a bit too warm with that deep woolly fleece! The average staple length so far this winter seems to be about 4-5 inches, perfect since the fiber mill's machines cannot process yarn with fiber over 6-7 inches!

Britta

I must introduce Britta. She is a Great Pyrenees that we got as a guard dog for the sheep. Of course with our luck she was terrified of the sheep as a pup and although will now come to the pasture and wait patiently for us (outside the pasture) she does not do much guarding per say for the woolly beasts. She does however guard the farm overall and is possibly the best dog in the world with young children. Although she loves coming inside and laying with her head almost wedged underneath the wood stove, she is also quite happy outside and especially on a high perch, like our large round bales or this massive iceberg-like mound of snow in our front yard.

Ahh January

Greetings! A new year! The last few mornings have been so beautiful with thick hoar frost on all the trees, and even the sheep! Those silly sheep LOVE this time of year, they have thick woolly coats, which must make laying in the snow quite enjoyable since they are cushioned AND insulated! The girls in the above picture are a couple of our merino's Magnolia and Betsy. I have been put on the list at the local fiber mill already, even though the sheep haven't been sheared! Fiber mills get very busy in the spring with all the shearing going on and most are already behind unfortunately. I'm hoping by being on the list now our fiber will be processed around late May for a mid-June, early July ship date.

For now the farm is quite and the sheep are lazy. But come March life will be quite busy around here with lambs coming in early March and shearing in late March... not to mention a new baby due mid-March in the big ol' farm house as well!

Wonderful fall days

The sheep and llama Zinnia have been moved over to a new pasture! They are very pastoral in the green of the new field with the yellowing corn field as a back drop. The apples have been ripening and canning applesauce has taken precedence over house cleaning.

We have been "cleaning house" though with our sheep, our dear BFL ram (Giddeon) has found a new home near Fennimore. He produced many nice lambs this year, but since Border Leicesters seem to be faster growing and hardier we have decided to go with them and keep a few other breeds and crossbreds for fleece.