Animal Update

In the top picture, there's a deer grazing in the yard in the background.  I forgot to post pictures of all of the chicks...some I hatched and some I bought from the feed store. There are some Blue COchins, Speckled Sussex, Welsummer, Ameraucana, and mixed Marans.

The five older lambs are in the barn now, weaned a few weeks ago.  The other sheep and goats are happy grazing.  Ida does crazy moves to reach any branches she can.

In the Shop

I listed 4 sheepskins in the Purl & June etsy shop.  These came from sheep born and raised here.  If you've never had a sheepskin as a rug or seat cushion, you're missing out!

Thanks to my friend Nancy for lending her house for the photos!

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2016

Kylee and I went to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival a few weekends ago.  We were lucky that even though it had been very rainy leading up to the festival, it wasn't raining the day we went.

We got there pretty early and made a beeline for the fleece sale barn.  I was on a mission to find a fleece with curly locks that I could dye.  I wanted a Bluefaced Leicester fleece, because they typically have nice curly locks.  The sale barn was PACKED, with both people and fleeces.

We managed to find a fleece after looking through several dozen, and then we got in line. There were volunteers taking turns holding a sign up so people could find the end of the line.


We waited....and waited...and waited.  The line was moving fairly slowly, and we ended up waiting for over an hour to pay for the fleece.  We looked at lots of neat knitted items while we waited, because everyone wears their best knitting things to Sheep & Wool.  I saw this really great knitted then fulled (felted) bag.

Waiting-in-line selfie!

After we found a fleece, we started making our rounds.

We went by the Sarafina Fiber Art booth and saw some amazing felted animals.

We saw some alpacas.

Kylee picked out some roving so she can spin some custom yarn.

We took a rest and took a few more selfies. We were feeling pretty punch drunk by then.

On the way home, we stopped at my friend's house to meet her new baby boy.

Here's what we ended up bringing home. We got some roving, a t-shirt for Kylee, a Border Leicester fleece, some washed curls, a pound of wool batting for wet felting (a pound is a good bit), a pound of BFL roving, a pound of Merino roving, and some kettle corn.

Here's a picture of a sample lock from the fleece I bought.  The funniest part? There were fleeces there from flocks from all over the state, and the fleece I bought came from my neighbor's sheep!

Lamb Updates

The last lambs of the year were born yesterday.  Dixie had twins, a ewe and a ram. They're all healthy and doing great.














The other lambs are really getting big.

The ewe lamb on the far left is really impressing me.  She's the biggest of all of the older lambs, and she's a triplet.  I hope the kids decide to take her to the fair so I can see how she does.

Here are the three triplets together.

The Suffolk influence gives a few of these lambs an interesting face...I'm used to the woolly faces of the Southdowns and Romneys, and these lambs have woolly faces but they've got bigger patches of hair around their eyes and mouths than I'm used to.

Here's the ram, below.  He sure is a long boy.  And see how big Dixie was (in front of him) before she lambed?

Sheared

The dark lamb is Barley's, a triplet and a ram.

Barley's lamb, the only ewe of the trio.  She's the biggest lamb of all 5, and a nice looking girl.

The lamb above on the left (Split Ear) is Darla's ram lamb.  He lost his tag. The one on the right is Barley's ram lamb.

Darla on the left, and Dixie on the right. It's harder to tell them apart now they're sheared.  Dixie has another couple of weeks until she lambs.

Barley, above.

Darla left, Dixie right.

Dragline, the ram. He could use some fattening up this summer.  He's grown height and lengthwise, but now he needs to fill out.

Split Ear

Darla's ewe lamb above (right).

Healthy Lambs

So, to quote Paul Harvey, here's the rest of the story (of lambing).  After I lost Bean and her triplets, I was convinced my other ewes would all have horrible times lambing.  I had to leave last Friday (the 4th) to go to the Outer Banks (NC) for a knitting retreat.  I was scheduled to teach a felting class on Sunday, so canceling was not an option!  David was home, and I had a few friends I could call if he needed help, so really I should have been confident everything would be ok...but in my sleep deprived state, I was convinced there would be trouble.

The handy thing I added this year is a barn camera that has it's own IP address, which means I can log in on my phone or on any computer and check on the sheep.  Two hours into my drive to NC, I pulled over and checked on the sheep.  I saw Darla was in labor. Crap!  I called David, and he went out to check to see that the lamb was coming in the normal position, which it was.  I drive another 20 minutes, and pulled over again, and checked the camera just in time to see the lamb being born.  I was SO relieved to see a normal birth!  Darla ended up having twins, a ram and a ewe.  A friend of mine was able to stop by that night to dip the lambs' navels (David's not familiar with how to do that).

The rest of the weekend I was obsessed with checking the camera.  I'd wake up every 2 hours and check, but there wasn't any action until Sunday morning when I was teaching my class.  Of course!  My sister was monitoring the computer while I taught, which was so helpful because I didn't need to worry about it as much.

I could tell Barley was restless and seemed like she was starting to go into labor, but after a couple of hours she hadn't really made any progress and it was time to get on the road to head home.  While I was driving home, she ended up having two healthy lambs.  I asked my friend Nancy to go over to help David dip their navels in iodine, and they were surprised to find a third lambs!  Barley had two rams and a ewe lamb.

The ewes and lambs spent a few days in the barn in jugs, and then they went outside.

I've got one last ewe to lamb, but she's not due until around early May.  Luckily I don't have any trips planned around that time!