Out to pasture

The flocks were reunited this week and are out to pasture. We let the mothers wean the lambs naturally; less stressful all the way around and quieter too! With all the rain we have had this month the grass is growing faster than they can eat it. By August I'll be bemoaning how slowly it is recovering, but for now the sheep have full bellies! For the past few weeks they had pretty much eaten their spring pastures down to a couple of inches and there was ALOT of baaaing going on for new pastures, it was relentless at times! Sheep are definitely food driven.

Smile!

Smile!
Charlotte loves you!!

Sheep for sale!

We currently have CVM/Romeldale sheep for sale; adult ewes, wethers and lambs are available. Please contact us for particulars! Each has excellent fleece, disposition and conformation.

Come to Jamaica!

Jamaica, VT that is! Saturday 5/20 come to the 3rd Annual Jamaica Fiber Festival from 10-5 for all the fiber fun you can have in one day! From live music to sheep shearing to lots of vendors selling everything fiber related and food too. The fun is up and down Main St and inside the town hall and church. I will be set up in the church showcasing the Earthues product line of natural dyes along with fleeces from this year's shear. So make it a destination for this Saturday and come support the fiber arts! For info click on www.margiesmuse.com/pages/fiberfest.htm

Wet and wooly Festival

The show must go on and it did at the NH Sheep and Wool Festival despite the torrential rains in New England since Friday. It broke the record books! These are pictures of part of the fairgrounds Sunday morning. I found 6 sheep in pens in this barn on Saturday evening and checked in on them Sunday AM and they were pretty soggy, the water creeping in around them. I broke open one of our bales of hay and fed them and then some of the 4-H kids moved them to higher ground. The fiber fans did come out in decent numbers and there were mostly smiling faces all around. My friend Cathy Connor of Ibiwisi Alpacas www.alpacanation.com/ibiwisialpacas.asp and I spent Friday night in her livestock trailer, then the rain came at about 10PM and it was a bit chilly and wet! But we toughed it out. Saturday night found us at the Marriot in Concord, NH, warm dry and comfortable! We were able to dry out our boots and coats and hats, shower and get back to the festival refreshed! All in all, not bad, not bad at all!

Festival time!

The NH Sheep and Wool festival is this coming weekend... are you coming to visit? It's really a great festival, for anyone interested in fiber and fiber producing livestock. The weather does not look perfect, but that is normal! In fact, it's a great event to come to if the weather isn't perfect, an excuse to not garden or do errands or mow the lawn. I have been madly packing up our fiber and all the Earthues products, dyeing sample skeins, raw fleece, getting our fleeces ready for the judging on Saturday and still working my regular job. It's a lot of work to get ready, but come Saturday morning, the fun begins! So come on over to the Hopkinton Fairgrounds in Contoocook, May 13th and 14th 9-4, do some shopping, eat a lamb sandwich, watch the sheep dog trials, visit the alpaca tents, watch the junior sheep show, see how sheep are sheared! It's a wooly good time!

On Farming...

"You must want this more than anything and love it totally. It is a 24/7 commitment and is way too difficult and too heart-breaking to do if you don't want it and love it completely." "What It Takes To Be a Shepherd" Liz Volker

As I was doing the chores tonight after work I thought about this quote of Liz Volker's. I thought back across the last 60 + days, the loss of our ewe, the countless hours in the barn at inconvenient hours during lambing, the added countless hours in the barn milking out Memphis' injured udder and bottle feeding the lamb and all the meds we had to give. But now, all are well and the lambs are growing, the grass is growing and the hard part is just a memory. I can even imagine next lambing season with a growing excitement! But Liz Volker hit it on the head with this quote, and in thinking about raising livestock, we do love it with a 24/7 commitment.

Rainy day, nothing to do

We are in the midst of a nice spring rainy spell, so needed this year (thought I'd never say that after the past few years!). The lambs are not too rambuctious in this weather, they instinctively just wait it out. Trinity, absent from this picture, prefers to rest in the creep. She is still on bottle feeds but really quite normal in all respects!Yesterday was Jack's and my 25th wedding anniversary and although the day was basically routine in fashion, we did spend some time after chores in the lamb creep with the lambs. They LOVE to have us on the floor at their level so they can chew on our collar, hat brim, pull at our hair, you name it. But they also love to just stand and shmooze. It's great socailization for them, they will enjoy the human hand with enough early handling. Each of these lambs is a winner. Both in conformation and personality. I have chosen to keep a couple, and regretably will have to sell a couple also. I know the limit of adult sheep I choose to keep on the farm, both from what the pastures can handle here as well as labor during the winter months. But for right now, we are loading them up with love and affection and good grub! There is nothing more entertaining than a troop of lambs playing tag with each other on pasture!