Yearly Archives 2010

Announcing this year’s theme (drumroll please. . .)

March 12, 2010 | 13 Comments

Memphis, Cormo cross ewe lamb from 2007 (theme: U.S. towns & cities) Tough choice. First of all, thank you to everyone who took the time to offer a suggestion. While I always enjoy hearing from the world beyond the farm, your feedback is especially welcome at this season where the work here gets more intense and my occasions for interacting with the real world more limited as my focus is on the farm.Your thoughts, questions and input are welcome and I enjoy hearing from you. I've waffled a bit in choosing this year's theme. Some of you have chimed
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The Naming of Lambs

March 10, 2010 | 3 Comments

I spent an hour reading through the suggestions that came in last week for naming our lambs and have narrowed the field after much deliberation. Although I loved so many of the ideas I've boiled it down to a handful and will let you all know on Friday which theme we've chosen. If you'd like to see the contenders, hop over to Ravelry and follow the thread "Help Name the Lambs" in the Foxfire Fiber Friends group. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time help me out by sharing an idea. With lambing just two weeks away
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Ewe Tube

March 6, 2010 | 5 Comments

The t.v. in the bedroom is tuned to barn cam 1 most of the time now, which gives me this view of the flock. I looked up from my reading last night to spy on the girls, occasionally toggling over to camera 2. Would you believe, Crackerjack now sleeps across the barn threshold as if to say, "no one gets by me!" At one point I saw his head go straight up with his ears alert, pointing down toward the dell. Then I heard the coyotes yipping in the distance. He caught it first. Good llama. There were no picky
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Shearing Day 3 – Contest: Name the Lambs

March 3, 2010 | 119 Comments

The pregnant ewes are now all shorn. Whew! It's the group I fret over the most so I am hugely relieved that they're all now freshly coiffed and dressed in clean frocks. Without their ten pound fleeces, it's much easier to see if any ewes are over conditioned or under conditioned. The group looks just right. Carrera is the only one who looks as though she might possibly be eating pickles and ice cream on the sly. This afternoon as Andy finished shearing Galveston and while she was still seated on the board, Holly and I patted her tummy to
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Brown and White and Wooly all Over

March 2, 2010 | 10 Comments

I am so enjoying the different colored fleeces in the wool clip this year! Thought you'd like to see these photos of Latte's first shearing. Such a peanut, Gabriel scooped him right out of the holding pen and sat him down on the board. He and his sister Bailey have the finest wool of the four moorit yearlings. I am loving every second of comparing the shades of brown, the different textures and varying lengths of the wool staples. Since the fleeces are now snugly wrapped like "wool burritos", I haven't snatched any lock samples for close-up shots, but
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Men at Work

March 2, 2010 | 10 Comments

Day two of shearing and we're still not done. Finished the boys today and made good progress with the bred ewes. Will finish that group on Wednesday and then on to more ewes next Monday. Looks like shearing will span more than a week this year. A little bit like the winter Olympics, minus spandex tights . . . Decided to change things up a bit with a new skirting technique this year. I hate bagging fresh fleece in plastic. A steamy, freshly shorn fleece exudes sheepy moisture and needs a chance to breathe. And I hate the way a
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Cilantro’s Awesome Fleece

February 28, 2010 | 20 Comments

Cilantro is a handful. If you're a regular here, I'm not telling you anything you haven't heard before. Although he was wethered at an early age, he is just as combative as any ram. The bad boy of the big boys, we give him plenty of room. One of the things I like about shearing day is working closely with each animal. In the confines of the holding pen, there's no room for a ram to draw a bead on you. I enjoyed wrapping my arms around Cilantro's wooly head to extract him from the pen, and he didn't give
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Ready, Set, Shear!

February 27, 2010 | 9 Comments

I so look forward to shearing season, but two feet of snow two days before shearing nearly caused a major snafu this week. With shearing dates are booked months in advance, a shearer's dance card is pretty darn full at this time of year. If you're unprepared or if the sheep aren't dry, good luck trying to reschedule at the last minute. Tuesday night's storm dumped two feet of heavy, wet snow taking out the power lines for a day and half. On Wednesday, Mike and I melted pots snow over a burner and trucked it down to the flock.
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White Out

February 23, 2010 | 11 Comments

Holly took the hoggets for a stroll in the snow today – moving them to the big barn for their very big date with the shearer on Friday. Since fleeces need to be absolutely dry for shearing, we moved them as early as possible this morning to get them tucked into the most protected building before the storm really got cranking. Which it is right now. I can barely make out the barn from my window. It's suppose to storm all night and we could get as much as a foot here in the hills before it's over.
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Early Arrival

February 22, 2010 | 12 Comments

My game plan was to immerse myself in working on my book this weekend. And while I got quite a lot of that accomplished, a call from a neighbor Saturday morning put a different spin on the weekend. My neighbor Barbara (another Barbara; funny, there are three shepherds living here in the Patten, all Barbaras) had a newborn lamb in her kitchen when I arrived with my lamb emergency kit. Her eldest ewe surprised her with an early delivery of a seemingly healthy set of triplets on Friday night. Oddly enough, by Saturday morning one had died and another, a white
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