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!)

Twelve down, three to go

Ewes left to lamb, that is.
Every night, I go to bed at midnight or later, after feeding little orphan lambs & making one last barn check for late-night lamb-ers. Then I get up at 3 or 4 a.m. and do it again--every night since Easter. I know, I shouldn't whine. Some people have HUGE flocks, mine is tiny. I do get tired, though.
I lost two ewe lambs simply because I wasn't THERE at the birth, this year. It's made me hypervigilant. Last year I lost no lambs.

Bluebell and her two daughters are still holding out. Maple will wait a loonnng time, while Bluebell & Yarrow could go within a few days.

In the meantime, let's admire Minwawe Panda with her lookalike daughter and coal-black son:


And one of LRO April's little brown boys (April ALWAYS has perfect little brown lambs.)

And one of me in the barn, watching a ewe lamb, while Lily the orphan practiced jumping up on my bench.

And more lambs

The orphan babies continue to amuse. Poppy here, with Papa's bootlace. Their bottle feedings went from every 3 hours to every 4 to 6, and both girls also started eating hay and drinking from a pail today, like big sheep. They are 2 weeks old now, and are just delightful. It looks like they may go to the county fair in August. Never before have we had the time or patience to teach lambs to lead on halter, but these are with us all the time-- a natural.

I like this photo Howard shot; I think of it as "Catnip, Spring Pastoral". Here, she has one lamb at her side, while the other is off playing somewhere. Her brown, curly-fleeced ewe lambs have white on their heads-- Splash and Smudge, I'm calling them. Click on the image to enlarge it-- the spring green on the budding trees is nice.

There are another dozen lambs-- only a few are rams (nature's making up for last year, my 14:8 ram year). Ten ewes done, 5 to go. I'm relaxing about this, now. Today, Bramble Elsie delivered a black and a white ewe lamb, which Howard and Emily got to watch up close. The lambs are up and doing fine.

More later!

Lambing LaLa Land

Whoo hoo!
Today I got to take a bath-- and clean a few places-- house, barn, porch--and bake bread--
because only one ewe lambed this morning, and the orphan babies can be left unattended for hours at a time now.
They went out to live in the barn on Sunday night.
The weekend went like this: the little, cold, Finn ewe lamb found 6pm Saturday, nursed through the night, died Sunday a.m. Howard gave her a grave in the pines, and we were all sad.
Also on Sunday a.m., we noticed that Catnip the friendly HST ewe (pictured a few blog posts ago, standing on Howard in the pasture)had hidden away at pen-in time the night before so she could lamb in private, elsewhere. She delivered two little brown ewes all by herself and we brought them to a lambing jug.
So we were down one ewe lamb, up two more. These two ewes are out of my smooth- polled ram, Kimberwood Leonardo.
On Monday, Minwawe Chicklet, the gray flecket, lambed a brown ram and a black ewe out of my LRO Shawn, the scurred mioget with beautiful wool.
So these babies begin the new wave of breeding at Little Red Oak: toward polled rams.
Tuesday morning, LRO April presented two brown ram lambs, also out of Leonardo. We can see what their horns or foreheads look like in coming weeks--
No more babies today, so I got caught up somewhat.

I sat in the barn for hours this morning, letting the orphan babies play all around, and I let Catnip and her babes out of the lambing jug.
Orphan Lily tried to play with Catnip's lambs but was not appreciated by their mother. She persists, though.
They'll be running together by tomorrow, I predict.
And about 3 more ewes will lamb within 48 hours.

Arrghhh, Lambing!

I know Nancy at Bluff Country reports annual anxiety at lambing time; maybe I will develop more. . . we have a lamb, tonight, that won't likely make it until morning.

Let me first tell you, the orphan babies are FINE. Kindergarten naughty monkeys, that's what they are. . . still living in luxury in the laundry room (that's 3 wash loads of floor quilts & towels this week). I'll end with their picture.

No, the little lamb that has our heart saddened tonight is our own first born lamb of the season, a Finn lamb out of my colored Finn ewe, Lassi.

I was in the Twin Cities all day with my family, doing good deeds for aged parents, sittin' in coffeeshops, visiting the Minnesota Textile Center and the Weavers' Guild-- while my child was in Cool Science at the U of M. I knew there was a risk we'd get our first lamb today, but no ewes looked "ready" when we left at 9am.

When we came home at 6, Lassi stood in the field over her barely moving, fawn flecket ewe lamb. Lassi's a first time mother-- anything could've gone wrong, or nothing.
All I know is, the lamb was chilled and sluggish. We gave up on Lassi, who was acting helpless about her lamb-- and brought it inside to warm and try to feed. We ended up trying to tube feed the baby-- and it surely doesn't seem to have worked.

More later, I'd better go hold her awhile.

So for now, here are the little laundry room rascals, Poppy and Easter Lily. Poppy's the favorite, in front.

Orphan HST ewes, oh my.

We helped Kim and Bob at Kimberwood with their shearing all day today. We workers were looking forward to hot baths, had changed out of filthy barn clothes, and then I checked the phone messages. Our neighbors, the ones who are new at raising Shetlands, had left a distress message on our answering machine telling us a ewe had died after lambing, as well as one lamb, and the caller feared for the second.

To make a long story short, guess who's living in our laundry room?

It was true, the ewe did die, a sad shame. Probably a retained placenta. But both lambs were alive and lively, and apparently a few days old. I guess one lamb was sleeping when they gave it up as dead. The other wasn't drinking, but soon came around to the bottle. Spotted moorit and musket ewe lambs. We offered to care for the lambs as our neighbors didn't think they could do it, so they told us they'd be ours if we would.
We fed them little bottles of milk replacer, gave them CDT shots and settled them into our laundry area for the night. I hope they make it, and that we don't go crazy taking care of them.

Tomorrow's Easter! We'll bring lambs to my folks for the afternoon in the city!

Wow-- wool!

This is Little Red Oak Maple before shearing:

And here she is, lithely leading the pack, the day after!


She's a musket (usually oatmeal color?)meaning a "grayed" brown sheep-- but she's
nearly white at the skin. A mioget golden base, I swear.
And a six and a half pound lamb fleece!
Just like her mother, Bluebell, her brother Mullein, her sister Yarrow.
Nice crimp, amazing length, sofffftt fleece.
Amazing.

The ewes are sheared, lambs on the way. . .

And our neighbor showed us "our grandchildren", twin ewe lambs born to Little Red Oak Mallow and Anders, sheep that we sold to them last fall. Anders and Mallow are both solid brown, and from them, he got this little HST and a solid brown ewe. All are healthy and doing fine!

At Little Red Oak today, we got our 15, apparently pregnant ewes sheared by Mike Anderson out of Frederick, WI-- the rams couldn't be kept dry for shearing and will have to wait. Mike and his nephew, the trainee, drove several hours to get here through an early morning snow.
What misery for them! I hope they got more out of the trip to Minnesota than the little check they got for shearing here-- but that seems to be a shearers' life.

I'll get some freshly-shorn sheep photos soon. My sister, as well as Handspinners/flockowner Kim and Angie and their husbands came to help me sort sheep and fleeces for the third year in a row, now. It is such a pleasure to work and share time with them.
I'm hoping to return the favor at Kim's Kimberwood Shetlands soon.

We found the Finn fleeces to be amazingly crimpy-- Angie wanted to spirit away the fawn colored one that is already promised, but she did get to take home the white Finn fleece. It'll be fun to see what she makes from it this year.

Okay, gotta go look at lamb photos on other blogs, now!

April Fools!

April fools!
The weather turned back on us, with a coating of snow that's sure to make shearing, this Sunday, a wetter business. We'll keep our fingers crossed.
This past week, poor Minwawe PandaBear got an owie and some nice red vet-wrap to cover it while it healed. She caught it on the edge of a pallet while (I'm sure) running to join the ewe flock escaping out the lean-to back door. Wheee! We haven't been in THAT barnyard for a while!
But poor Panda, narrow ankle caught between two wooden slats on the pallet, went down, Whump! and laid there, in a dead sheep pose. I freed her foot. Still dead, by all appearances, except open eyes. Fear-frozen! That's our little Panda.
I rolled her completely over and away to convince her that the pallet didn't have her anymore. She found her feet, and limped away.
I freaked, thought she'd broken a bone-- 3 weeks before her lambs come--
But she's fine,now, and wearing her beautiful red bandaid until we shear on Sunday.


Dear Husand went out and laid in the field on Saturday, taking arty sheep pictures. There are a few overly friendly sheep, ahem, like this one, standing on him:

And then she and Mari the finn ewe fought over him:

Oh, fun news: My nearby neighbor, who bought a trio of my ewes and a ram to clear an old pasture (never mind what's happening to their lovely wool coats)let us know they have LAMBS! "One's black and one's black with white legs and face", she said. Now, I think they must be brown, but very dark, I'm sure: The ram and all 3 ewes were brown-based sheep. But it sounds like they got an HST-- and I wouldn't be surprised, as one of the ewes is. We want to go over and see them-- we won't have lambs for another two weeks!

March is half gone-- and Spring is half-here

There's even less snow now than on this day a week ago. . .

It took forever to get this new computer to make and post pictures, to get AOL working right. . . but we're here. Still learning. . .


And guess who is my new best friend. . . Little Red Oak Maple, the shy lamb!

Spring is coming; shearing, then LAMBS

I believe it's coming-- I see the lawn again-- spring is around the corner!
We had a heat wave last week in Minnesota-- it hit 40 degrees for several days and melted away piles and piles of snow. It did leave ice slicks on the driveways, but they'll go away soon enough. My mom said "in the old days" they tossed ashes on the driveway to melt the ice-- so I've done that. It's working-- I wonder if it will be a mess when the ice is gone.


First, I want to introduce Osmo the Finn ram. Beautiful fawn color and the mildest, sweet boy you could ever meet. These pics were after a bright white snowfall around February 1st. Click on any to "bigify" them.

Actually, all my boys are pretty sweet this winter. Most want a chin scratch and no-one charges me when I am in their yards. I like them all. Nancy H. in NY bought Little Red Oak Mullein's lamb fleece and wants to see what the big boy looks like now, so here he is at 21 months. He's BIG for shetland-- and his crimpy, silky gray fleece is so big he looks even larger.

My two horned rams, July and Mullein, shared a pen this winter. I kept them from the hornless or half-horned rams so that nobody'd get hurt- those 4 had their own yard.
Here are Osmo, the Finn, with mioget scurred-horn Shawn on the left-- lovely wool-- and little snail-scurred,gray Ulysses on the right. All sweet boys. Three different lines, so they all got some girls. Shawn's mom was (fawn) JustaLitl Sarah, dad was Little Red Oak Mullein.(Earlier, I'd said he was out of another, mioget ram. Wrong!) That tells me Mullein carries modified AND polled, since Shawn is so golden, and Ulysses is so scurred. Ulysses is Mullein's son, too, and his mom was Sheltering Pines Ferah, a moorit. Kimberwood Leonardo, my polled Shetland ram, is still in with the girls.
I worry because I don't want to send any to the butcher this summer, and I'll have to if no-one else needs their services. So anyone who wants ANY of these rams this year, talk to me, I'm reasonable. My breeding strategy, with such a small flock of ewes, is to simply move the older rams out every year and get a new one.

I had to toss in this flock picture-- the beautiful blue sky, the crisp white snow, the incredibly rusty, beat up lean to that the ewes live in all winter till lambing time. . . is actually a lovely old straw filled haven inside, with a heated water pail and Christmas lights giving light. ..
And do notice what the horned guys did to the lower left wall of that building last year. Tsk Tsk.

Monday I'm going to the Weaver's Guild (MN Textile Center) in St Paul for a fun fiber day, meeting 4 women who all have different aims for going there. So fun.

And now, for sure, Shearing day is April 5th, Palm Sunday. Sorry you church-goers, the shearer didn't have a better day available. Come to watch, help, or pick your favorite fleece.

February sun

This is Kimberwood Leonardo and (we hope) his girlfriend, LittleRedOak Catnip. Leonardo's claim to fame is his handsome, hornless forehead. See that? It's the wave of (our) future. We love the horned look, truly we do-- but my buildings are made of tin foil, it seems, and those boys gave them a a beating.

Woo Hoo, we had a thaw on Saturday! 42 degrees and sunny, so good Minnesotans, we ran outside with just sweatshirts on and shoveled slush and ice away so we could celebrate dry sidewalks again, and hauled in firewood before the melting snow got it all wet, took photos of lovely sheep, and skirted fleeces shorn last fall so they can go to the mill. (Skirting, you non-shepherds, means removing the undesirable stuff from a sheep's fleece-- the stuff one wouldn't want in the wash water, like barnyard debris and hay). I only have brown and black balls of roving available for sale, now, but soon will have white, oatmeal and gray again.

I got a shearing date, tentatively, Sunday April 5th, 9 a.m. So if you want to come out to watch or join the work party, drop me an email.

Two weeks later, the lambs will start coming.

Our new computer has "had its moments", including a week back at the Best Buy! It doesn't like our old laser printer/copier or our old Adobe Photodeluxe, so some tasks are still not done.
I'm going to paste in a picture here, but it may be a bazillion pixels. We'll get that fixed soon, really. . . sorry, you dial-up folks.