Sheepy goodbyes

We've sold a lot of sheep in the past week-- Ten! A year ago I sold off the sheep who never liked us, so selling any of our remaining sheep brings twinges of regret-- even when it's for all the right reasons. Like, that we can't support 50 sheep here! Or, that we don't want horns in our flock anymore-- or too many offspring from a certain ewe.
So sadly, we sold 5 old friends and 5 spring lambs.
Here's old Bramble Elsie, the big white ewe who ran to you, smiling, if you sat or kneeled down. Elsie and her friends, Bramble Bess, Minwawe Chicklet and my own Little Red Oak Mullein went to Rochester, MN to live with a kindly older shepherd. Elsie's little ewe lamb, Elise, is staying here. Her other lamb, Lizzie, is living 5 miles south of here, with a wonderful young family new to this area.
My friend, LRO April, the first friendly lamb born here, went, along with Minwawe PandaBear's ewe lamb, to live with Stephanie and her charming daughter Colleen in Hammond, WI.
I hope they are all happy in their new homes, although all the people who bought sheep clearly loved them as much as we do.
On a funnier note, I have wanted to post this June photo of the ewes n lambs in the morning-- Maple is peering out of the barn, Catnip, her brown lamb and another are nearby. What I love is (click on the picture to biggify it)Catnip's brown and pink polka dotted udder! So funny!

Rose-breasted Grosbeak story

Last week, a very loud THUMP hit my 2nd story bedroom window. Poor bird. I looked out to the porch roof just below, and watched a small, stunned bird roll and shake its head repeatedly.
We took the little bird in and put it in a box, thinking that more restful, for her, than balancing on an angled roof.
She clutched a finger tightly, so we knew she was strong--
and we put her in the backyard maple tree. She sat there all day, and later, flew away, with a squawk at us!
The next day, we saw the rest of her family, on the birdfeeder outside our kitchen window, where a sunflower, sprung from a dropped seed, grew.

Her sleek Mama, and brighter colored Daddy.

There were at least two offspring, learning to eat from the feeder and presumably, to fly a little better!

Back home

The first produce of the garden (not counting volunteer cilantro) were big green kohlrabi (we've eaten our fill!) and these tie-dyed beets! I have fallen in love with them! Roasted, steamed, grilled-- not just pickled!


These lambies are Eino, the Finn ram lamb, and January, a little katmoget ewe lamb. See Eino's little scur horn buds? He broke them both off, now. Eino went home with his new owner on Saturday, and I'm hoping January will find another home, soon!
I haven't focused on selling sheep this summer, and need to, now-- my pastures can't support so many.
January has a full poll brother, a moorit who I am keeping to use. I can sell either January's mom or January herself-- but I've grown rather attached to her mom, Minwawe November. January's dad is Kimberwood Leonardo, a smooth poll ram.
I'll post better pictures of her soon.

Is this the last of Washington, already?

Ruby Beach, on the Western Pacific Coast:
Quinalt rainforest, without rain:
Salmonberries:

Are these salmonberries too? Or blackberries?

Random flowers in the lush green:

What else did you see on your summer vacation?

A Happy Harp Seal at the Seattle Aquarium:
Sub-Alpine flowers on the looonnnggg walk up Hurricane Ridge, near Port Angeles, on the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula:

DH on the looonggg walk down the mountain

Tide Pools at Salt Creek, 10 miles W of Port Angeles:

A quiet starfish hoping to go unnoticed:

Back on the farm, catching up. . .

Yoiks, I wrote the last blog post in Washington, 3 weeks ago!
Of course, when we came home, the weeds had taken over the gardens, so we were busy taming them-- and the other usual stuff took my time.
However, sorting through a few hundred digital vacation photos --
can't we just click so much faster now, no worry--
was daunting.
Here are a few-- I'll do this in installments:

Dungeness-- that's the "spit" going out to sea. . .

Driftwood was the main attraction here, and the stones. . .

Washington in pure sunshine

We visited old friends in Kirkland who gave us all their time and help devising a travel plan, and even a place to stay for a few days!

We delivered a finn fleece to someone in Renton-- it would've been easier to mail it, but it was a kick to be going to the state, right near where the fleece needed to go! So we saw a very nice suburban neighborhood, with lovely plantings.

We saw Pike Street Market, bought great fresh produce, ate salmon for lunch. . . and toured the Seattle Aquarium.

We took a ferry across Puget Sound from Edmonds to Kingston, then drove up to the top of the Olympic Peninsula, to Port Angeles. I KNOW we saw sheep farms, or evidence of such critter care. I suggested to DH that we move there and do the same; the green growth everywhere was just so beautiful.

A day on Dungeness Spit fooling around with the masses of driftwood; Dungeness crab for lunch-- a day hiking up Hurricane Ridge--
all in sunshine.

More to follow. . .
Have to learn how to load the new camera's photos into the new laptop!

Mt. Rainier from the plane, coming in

Going to Washington

The state. For fun, soon!
Any of you sheep bloggers who see this, or even people who just TRAVEL and have good ideas, email me your suggestions about what to see, where to go, please? It will save me research time, and I'll think of you while I try your suggestion.

I spent a winter in Washington, once. Warm and rainy, much better than Minnesota's winter! I remember a rain forest in the north, somewhere. . . and picking shells on a beach in Puget Sound. . . and how people would say "the Mountain is Out today", meaning the skies were clear and Mt. Rainier was visible-- as though a mountain could ever be "in".

I prefer natural wonders more than museums or stores-- way more.
I could drag my fellow travelers to a sheep farm or festival, if I had one in mind.
I might fly there and buy camping eqpt. and donate it all before flying back! It'd be cheaper than hotels, and I LIKE the outdoors.

And what's the weather like now? What do I need to pack?

Thanks!
gvonbargen@aol dot com

New Camera!

DH is the real camera man here, so he bought me a new little camera with 10x zoom. He went out this morning to photograph sheep and sunlight and chickens, just a test run:
Poppy and Lily the orphan twins, almost 10 weeks old, down to a watered-down bottle of milk a day. Darling girls:


Our fine rooster. We used to have two; he won.

He's americauna: a crossbred chicken who sires green-egg laying chicks. I am still waiting for one of our golden Buff Orpington hens to go broody this summer. We need her to hatch some Ancona ducklings for us!

I'm off, now, to do farm chores. It's a beautiful day for working, and I swear, if you aren't cutting it, trimming it, weeding it or painting it on the farm, nature takes it all back while you nap!

A Drenching Rain. . .

. . .Came this weekend, with cool, cool temps in the 50s. The heat is back on in the house, hard to believe. Emily is out of school for the summer and is an enthusiastic gardener, so on Friday, her first day off, she and I finished putting in the vegetable garden, at a leisurely pace, like this:
Peppers and tomatoes in, weeds pulled, beets thinned and replanted; let's take a break and pet sheep.
Bottle babies fed, let's put in two rows of peas. Now beans.
Emily loves to weed and putz. Thin kohlrabi, see if we can replant the little ones in a new row! More carrots in, too.
Husband's home. Now let's have dinner. Home-grown chicken that stewed in the crock pot all afternoon, with potatoes and carrots added, gravy made on the stove, umm-mm. Howard will help us pound in fenceposts to prop up a cute picket fence section to let cucumbers crawl UP on, to save room. How about zucchini over here, yellow squash there?
Take in chicken eggs, refill ducks' water.
Finish putting in a long row of wax beans.
Water vegetable garden, admire its orderliness and our hard work.
All Done!
Then the rain came while we slept Friday night. A soaking, quiet rain from the middle of the night throughout Saturday. Perfect.
Sunday, we three unloaded a hay wagon filled last weekend when it was dry. Our next-door neighbor is baling the hay from our land for us this year, so unloading was the easy part we had to do. We unloaded 80 bales last Sunday and moved a new wagon-full into the hay shed, and got around to unloading it this Sunday. 50 degree weather for unloading hay: it never happens. It's always 90 degrees, and at the top of the barn, where the hay is going, it's 100!
This was a blessing, and so nice to see and smell a big wall of that sweet alfalfa/grass hay that will carry over our sheep next winter.
We'll need to put up as much, again, and more, but we're on our way.
I saw another neighbor cutting hay last week and asked him if he wanted to cut and keep the meadow grass hay I have on about 3 acres, along with our ditch hay. He said he'd sure like that-- and I asked if he'd trade us for some time with his bobcat, cleaning out my sheep's lean-to. He agreed. I am so happy! These neighborly trades are just the best, feel-good arrangements when they work.
In order to get the entire north meadow free for haying, I next had to empty an over-large pasture that had two rams in it. My big-horned guys, the only two I have. Four other small-or-no-horns rams were in another pasture for their own protection.

I quickly made a butcher date for one of the horned yearling rams, July, and found two buyers for the meat. . . I took July in this morning, and tonight found me salting his hide for tanning. My husband was working nearby, and I said, "If you'd have told me 7 years ago that I'd be fleshing out a hide thrown over a fence, here, like it was just normal, I don't know if I'd believed it".
He smiled and kept an eye on the last big-horned ram, who found his place in the social order of the new pasture peaceably. Big horns = Top ram.
The sun came out just then, after 3 cloudy, cool days. I'm looking forward to summer and what our gardens will grow.


I'll close with pictures of Finnsheep, Lassi and Eino the ram lamb. Lassi lost her only (first) baby this spring, a crying shame. A pretty ewe with bolder splashes of her light brown color-- piebald, they call it in Finns. Lassi's gone on to be the nice auntie to all the lambs this spring. We really like her, but she is shy of us.

The Taming o' the Lambs

We don't do it with cookies. . . we've just never caught on to that method. . . nor do we use grain. . .
we just sit on the grass and let them climb all over us.
Once you get a hand under their chins or chests and start to scratch, they fall into a trance. . . the petting trance, we call it. . .

This was Saturday night. Emily loves to let the lambs frolic on her. I had the orphans on leads (fashioned from shoestrings when they were a week old) and was just giving up that lesson.
Dear Husband (DH), who now has the sickness I passed on to him, was commissioned to bring a camera outside with him, and he obliged.

So here, in addition to a couple of lambs, we have the yearling, LittleRedOak Catnip, who was in need of some mothering herself after this past, exhausting month of BEING a mother to twins. She hung her head on Emily's shoulder for petting.

The sweetest thing. Both of them. All of them.
>Sigh< I guess I do like living in the country.

May 19th, the day of record-breaking heat in MN

We're trying to wean these bottle babies. Opinions, anyone? They were born April 9th, so. . . they are 5+ weeks old? The Premier catalog says, cut 'em off, water only, at 5 weeks. The Storey Guide to Raising Sheep says only "days. . . 18?-35" feed 3x day, a pint. . . no more data. Implied, no more bottle after 35 days? I couldn't cut 'em off, not yet-- they're getting a baby bottle--8oz, twice a day, with a bottle of water in between. Of course they have a great grass/alfalfa pasture. And they are fat. But they still look like little lambs, knee high-- a week or two older than all my other lambs, some of whom have nearly caught up to them! Let me know your thoughts, thanks.
This is, you know, what happens when you try to photograph overly friendly sheep-- they come running and fill the camera frame:

These next two pics are now a week to two weeks old. Did I mention I've been sick? REALLY sick, like, was that the swine flu? Or just bronchitis? A whole week, plus.
Here's Little Red Oak Catnip again, a smallish spotted ewe out of LRO Yarrow and Minwawe Equator. Laid-back, friendly. A good mama. Her ewe lambs are starting to like being petted. Splash and Smudge, for the marks on their heads.

And the pack of brown lamb-boys. Many are sprouting horn buds-- which I'll keep an eye on. I'm hoping for one good polled or scurred rammy to use on some ewes this year. Probably the twin to January, the katmoget in my last post. His name is March, or Mars. . . and he's the alert little guy on the right, with the white wisps on top. But gee, that middle lamb looks pretty good. . . time will tell.

Lambs a week later. . .

I'm all better!

Thus cries Ash, the little scrawny lamb who had scours last week. He gave it to his twin, too, but by then we were ready with the tetracycline and icky black paste (Tri-pectate, for you home vet care enthusiasts) and she came through it quicker.

Now twins and mom, Maple, are out cruisin' the pastures.

I spent some time stalking Minwawe November and her lamb, LittleRedOak January. November used to love me, grew distant with advancing age, and last year, protected her baby from me. But right after this photo today, she came over to get petted. Yay--she'll teach January that I'm ok. January has a brown ram twin, March. He's off with the boys somewhere.


LRO Yarrow has this beautiful, crimpy-coated musket (oatmeal-colored as an adult, like she is) ewe lamb. The facial markings are a more dramatic version of her own when she was a lamb. Yarrow has the thickest fleece-- she's a Bluebell daughter-- but little crimp. And Yarrow throws wildly spotted lambs-- so I think this baby will, too. We called her Betony.

Hmmm, all the lambs shown above were sired by Kimberwood Leonardo, a polled ram. I'm so happy there's a ram twin in each pair, to show me whether the mating produced horns or not!
* * *
Apparently, I've stunned the lamb pack, who got caught playing alone without their mommies:

Remember to click on a picture to see it BIG on your screen.

Lambs on Monday

Poppy and Lily at 3 weeks. Who could not love these two?

I have a tiny lamb with scours (diarrhea). I doubt he weighs four pounds. His little rump is maybe 12 inches high. His twin sister is twice his size. He's been vigorous enough, only now he has scours, and mom, Maple, would just as soon get on with life outside the lambing jug and let him lag or fall behind.
So I spent monday feeding him tiny squirts of the foulest black paste one could be asked to ingest-- and he acted like I killed him, each time. Then a few hours later, he'd be bouncing around!
I think he's much improved today-- and we are taking turns. Now I don't feel so well.
No black paste, please.

Lamb photos~
Here's Bramble Elsie, who threw a scurred ram last year that I used this year. This year she had twin girls, Elise and Lizzy.


Cement block as pillow, LittleRedOak Junie and Tuesday, her babe:


Not a great shot of Yarrow's twins, but who could ask sleeping babies to move? She's standing watch over them. The girl, behind, is a lighter musket color with SUPER Crimp. Friendly from the start, as Yarrow's lambs always are.


My friend, Mary's, favorite new lamb, Ivan:

New lamb photos 09

Night and Day,
actually Ivan and Ivy, out of HH Bluebell and Kimberwood Leonardo. Bluebell (you can see) is white; the sire, Leo is brown-- Bluebell's boy, here, is splashed black and white (he will turn gray as he matures) and her girl, Ivy, is another white ewe with total crimp and speckled legs, just like mom.
The surprise is that Bluebell threw black. That means she is genetically a black sheep with the White pattern masking her base (black) color! I didn't know! She's always thrown brown before this, when mated with brown.
The sheep color genetics puzzle is actually a rather simple one, but it still can make your head spin when you first encounter the possibilities.
Now, Ivy, the little girl, has a blackish spot above one knee and under her tail-- I'll save that question (of Spottedness) for another day, with better photos.
For now,I am thrilled to have these new, bright splashes of color and pattern in my flock.


Then, out in the pasture, the week-old lambs Smudge and Splash, out of LRO Catnip and pollie Leonardo:

And now Smudge, Eeno the finn ram lamb and Catnip, Smudge's mom:

LRO June's solid brown little, crimpy brown ewe and ram lamb, with Eeno (isn't he long legged?)

Monday's to be another gorgeous spring day. More pretty baby pictures to come.

Six lambs, 3 ewes, 4 hours. Done!

OMG, what a surprising finish-- Bluebell and both daughters lambed twins, a boy and girl to each-- all within 4 hours of each other. In fact, Bluebell and Yarrow were in two different shelters pushing out babies at exactly the same time, at dinnertime tonight.
I'd seen both Maple and Yarrow off by themselves today, nosing around-- and that is unusual. Those sheepies generally like to stay with the flock. And I thought I could see, on Yarrow, the hollow that forms below the hip bones when the babies "drop", right before lambing. Still, all ewes ate heartily at 9am this morning, and were resting in the lean-to when I checked them at noon.

I left at 2 and returned at 5:30. Emily went out to hold November's new lambs in her lambing pen (the "jug") and called me from the barn (ah-- cell phones!). She told me Yarrow was in labor-- pawing, laying down, groaning, getting up. I said, fine, thanks, come on in for dinner-- but Em wanted to stay. We ate and I went out, trading watch with Emily. I walked in to see Yarrow's first brown lamb on the ground.

Knowing a second baby could take a while, I went out to check the lean-to.
Maple was cozily tucked into the corner with two tiny, fluffy brown lambs curled up near her. June's, I thought. Tiny, perfect, solid brown-- but wait! She's looking at me like. . . they're hers!
And then, look again! Bluebell was 6 feet away, with two wet lambs on the ground!
A white one and a black and white (bersugget?) mottled lamb. OMG!

I called Howard (ah! cell phones!) and told him we needed all the troops, with towels, iodine, scissors for umbilical cords--
first we needed to clean out two lambing jugs for the new occupants, and what the heck, let's clean out the rest of the lambing barn!

And so we did. The four jugs are full, the maternity ward is abuzz for the last time this year.
Photos to follow, another day.


I leave you with this silly guy. Twin Brooks Palisade's son. Bersugget pattern? Simply a grey lamb whose mom is black smirslet? You decide.
Bluebell's got a new boy who looks a lot like him, only with wilder splashes (and pinch me, a white ewe, just like her!)