A ram lamb with a nice horn spread.
Hudson surrounded by the young rams.
A ewe lamb.
Amaryllis
More amaryllis
Paulette and her lambs born at State Fair.
Just another pretty face.
Stephanie.
The youngest ram lamb born in the spring and Clint’s only son. He would have gone to the State Fair except that he injured his mouth and lost three front teeth the week before.
Faulkner.
Black Sheep Gathering is coming up at the end of next week so it’s time to halter break lambs. A few friends came to help.
The lambs behaved fairly well for their first time on halters.
Bottle-baby Nellie had other ideas.
She was a true drama queen. Halter breaking-Day 2 is today.
I sent an e-mail Friday to the Farm Club in which I said I was going to vaccinate lambs today and did anyone want to help? Dona and Tina were already planning on being here for a spinning class in the morning so they said that they would stay. Jacki, Shelby, and Allison came too. Wow! What great response with only 24 hours’ notice.
I bought a new tool. For years I have been vaccinating with single dose syringes. That means that you have to reload the syringe each time you give an injection.
I just never thought about doing it differently, but I was at Higby’s Country Feed Store (my favorite store) and saw this syringe. There is a bit of a learning curve (remember to tighten needle, make sure you depress the handle part all the way, don’t drop because the barrel is glass–OOPS!), but what a huge difference it will make after I replace the glass part that broke about a third of the way into the job.
I appreciate all the Farm Club members (who are now friends) who show up for projects like this. Shelby manned the camera, as well as caught lambs and played with the loose chicken.
Alison, Jackie, Tina, and Dona all helped catch and mark lambs and…
fill syringes (after the unfortunate incident with the new one).
Shelby took the following portraits.
After vaccinating I let all the sheep out but then needed to catch one more lamb.
So Rusty had a chance to get involved also.
Thanks to all of you for helping. Wait until you hear about the next unscheduled Farm Day. I think it’s coming up soon.
I’ve written a lot of blog posts in my head, but none of them have made it to the computer. How about some photos?
After a very wet winter, we welcomed fabulous weather (and our first dry weekend) for Meet the Sheep, our annual Open House. Even with the great weather it would not have been such a success without all my friends helping.
Julie set up a dying and drum carding demo area and also brought…
her cute Pygora goats.
Colleen skipped Saturday at he Farmer’s Market to bring her Fiber Confections booth here.
Jackie had her booth here and helped people learn to needle-felt.
I don’t have photos of everyone but I am grateful to Farm Club members for helping as well as to my friend Chris who worked in the shop.
There were a lot of visitors.
This is Marissa who modeled her first sweater made of handspun yarn, from Jacob wool of course.
New weavers enjoyed the weather, their wine, and a new weaving book.
At the end of an exhausting day Laura finally decided it was time to lamb. Most of the Farm Club members were here watching.
There was relief after Laura delivered a healthy set of twins.
Because the grass was greener?
Farm Club members braved stormy weather to make the March Farm Day a fun and productive day. As usual I had more tasks on the list than we could hope to accomplish in the morning but we made good progress.
First on the list was a lesson on using a halter and tying a rope, using a knot that can be easily released. I didn’t mean that the people had to wear halters, but Shelby is always ready for anything.
Everyone helped catch lambs and record the number of horns and whether or not there were any eyelid defects. (Split eyelids are not uncommon in 4-horn sheep.)
Next task: Empty this wagon that has been accumulating electric fence parts and who-knows-what-else for a could of years and sort it.
Good job, ladies! Now the trick is to throw out the true garbage and keep everything else sorted.
Tina, Shelby, and Lily cleaned lambing jugs.
Shelby volunteered to brave the lake and dump the loads.
Can you see the rain coming down in the background?
Shelby holding Shelby, the sheep’s, lamb.
Tina’s turn.
Dona holding her favorite.
Here is the crew ready to have lunch and spend the afternoon in visiting in the warm, dry shop.
Thanks to all of you for your help and cheerful attitude!
Are you tired of new lambs photos?
This is the wet butterfly look. The ears remind me of recently-emerged butterfly wings.
This is the “Jacobs come in all colors” look.
Weigh-in of new lambs. I don’t usually weigh lambs, but to be able to answer the question, “How much do they weigh?”, I’m weighing them all this year. My guess is an average of 7.5-8 pounds but I’ll report back when it’s all over.
Today Meridian Jacobs hosted a knitting class taught by superb knitter, Nancy Jane Campbell. The purpose of this class was to evaluate our current knitting habits and work to “Knit Better’. There was pre-class homework.
These are two garter stitch swatches. The difference is that one is the result of knitting every row and the other is knit by purling every row. There is a difference. Nancy pointed out that my purl sample is much more even than the knit sample. The stockinette sample (no photo) also showed that I knit and purl with different tensions, resulting in subtle ridges and uneven stitches.
Lunchtime. We went to the barn so I could feed Nellie. Yes, I named the bottle baby.
We found more lambs.
Soliloquy had twins–smallest lambs so far this year at 5-6 pounds and Victoria had triplets. I dealt with all of them and went back to the shop for the afternoon session of the class.
Before lunch we had measured and evaluated our samples. After lunch we started working on changing our habits and learning new techniques. The sample above may not be too impressive, but notice the very cool knitted cable cast-on edge. It looks much neater than my long-tail cast-on. And notice the inch or so closest to the needles. There is a a big difference in the knitting for that inch than the couple of inches below. At the risk of knitting too tightly I have been knitting way too loose. It’s a lot easier to be consistent when there is a little more tension on the yarn and the added benefit is that the stitches aren’t always falling off the needle. This was a great class and Nancy is going to come back and teach a color knitting class later in the year.
Babe lambed this morning.
Not the prettiest sight at this stage.
It gets better. This is one of Fran’s twins, born last night.
Ebony and her lambs born a week ago.
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