Lambs’ Frolic

This morning I discovered I had several mornings' worth of lambs frolic stored on the memory card of my camcorder. The following clip is actually a compilation from  both today and a few different days last week. 

But before you press play, a word about the color contest celebrating my book, Teach Yourself Visually Hand-dyeing. First of all, I was truly touched and impressed by the stories that were shared. It's amazing how colors trigger feelings and memories – and many of your stories triggered my own color memories. I enjoyed reading every entry and thank everyone who took the time to visit and to write. Early this morning, I drew the winning name; congratulations go to  Laurie who wins of a copy of my book and 2 skeins of custom hand-dyed yarn in her colors, seaside blues and periwinkles. 

While I'm on the topic of contests, I have an update on my "Name the Lamb" contest held back in March. Some of you asked me last weekend about the status of our new flock of CVMs, and I confess, with the hectic pace of lambing over the last 5 weeks, I haven't had the time to share news of my difficult decision not to add a new breed to our flock this year. 

Mainly, this is a sheep management decision. Every bit of hay fed to our flock is grown right here on the farm. For the first time ever, we found ourselves out of hay in early April, forcing us to purchase several hundred bales to get through lamb time while waiting for our pastures to green. Our pasture fencing is the second half of the problem. As many of you know, we took quite a hit from last December's ice storm and we're still in the process of removing huge trunks and limbs from our fields and fence lines. It's been really challenging so far this spring, keeping the flock moving in our standard grazing pattern with so many fields still unusable. 

Given these challenges, we felt it best to postpone adding stock to the farm, at least for the time being. It was really hard to make this call and to let go of such beautiful little animals, but we felt it was truly the best plan for all sheep involved. Sometimes it's really hard to make the right decision.

So, what about the seven terrific names that were given to those pretty CVM lambs? We've decided to use each of those names for our new Cormo lambs instead. Dune, Tumbleweed, Java, Kona, Biscuit, Rufous, and Cinder are all frolicking about the pasture as I type (and you can see a close up of Cinder, Helena's black ram, in the following video clip). 

Enjoy – and thank you again to everyone for helping me celebrate the launch of my new book.