Weekly Top Shot

Purity, Patience's girl, waits her turn in the barn 'spa'.  Breeding preparations are underway.  Two groups down, the biggest one yet to go. 
joining Madge at The View From Right Here for Weekly Top Shot

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.

A single photo - no words - capturing a single moment from the week

A simple, special extraordinary moment.

A moment to pause, savor and remember.

Participating with the SouleMama blog.

Introducing Strider

We are very pleased to introduce you to Strider, the ram lamb formerly known as Mister 1225.  He is out of Serenity and Aragorn; a pure Border Leicester.  He has been wormed only once, at weaning, and has an exceptional health record.  He is a twin, and both he and his sister have an excellent growth rate. We have him in with four ewes, and we may sell him next summer as a proven ram. 

The lovely ladies in Strider's group are

41    Hera    Coopworth-Border Leicester

821  Siar     Border Leicester-Cotswald-Coopworth-Wensleydale

910  Julie    Coopworth-Border Leicester-Blue-faced Leicester

930  Havva  Coopworth-Border Leicester-Blue-faced Leicester-Wensleydale

Pasture Buddies

Although it seems to be hard to capture these moments of camaraderie... they are both so spoiled if they see you near the fence they come running... Liam and Samson have developed a mututal respect.   It is neat to watch them in the field, spending time in the same area, respecting each other's boundaries but obviously enjoying each other's company. 

No Maintenance Beyond This Point

After last week's Tuesday and Wednesday snowfall, we had some pretty warm weather the rest of the week.  So Saturday on the way back from the feed store in Eglon, we decided to come home the back way, possibly for the last time until Spring.  Here we found some very pretty drifts, and you can see why this section of road becomes No Maintenance Beyond This Point  once winter settles in.  The state road crews plow either end but this turn at the top of a small hill normally blows closed and stays that way until snow-melt.

In other news, we have found the Ultimate Flickr Group - Obsessive Sheep Photographers - 1,952 members strong and 11,318 photos in the pool.  Oops... gotta go... off to make this photo of the lovely Juliet number 11,319! 

Two more lambs to share

Wednesday afternoon Princess delivered a beautiful little ewe which we are excited about. Her lambs are always the fastest growers, and this is her first ewe so we shall see if she grows as well as her ram lambs did. She is still damp in this picture so it is not the best:

Then, early this morn, around 1 a.m., we got our first purebred border leicester… a ram lamb from Kelly:

A rather handsome little fellow who will hopefully be a great stud ram for someone’s fiber farm.

Our First Lamb of 2010 has Arrived

Our first lamb was born last night: a robust little 9 lb 12 oz ram lamb who is three-quarters border leicester and has the sweetest little face and quiet Baaaa!

After the challenging winter and amidst our healing...how fitting is it that our first lamb #1001 is the son of #801 Patience, and grandson of #21 Hope?

We may have to break our "Do Not Name the Rams" rule for this little guy.

Anyone have name suggestions?

Juliet Loves Company

Juliet has an open-air condo where she can enjoy the outdoors safely. (Thank you Jonathan!) She seems to like it even better when she has company. It is a very popular hang-out.

Kinsey came to visit Juliet and got to help feed her

and play in her condo.

Rufus the Naked Mole Rat Rabbit has been spending the days with her and really enjoys the exercise and green refreshments.

Lena and Harley stop by quite often for some ‘tent time’.

Juliet loves all the attention.

Hebe's Boys

These two good looking fellas are out of our three year old ewe, Hebe, and our stud ram, Goliath. Hebe is a lovely silver/black Coopworth-Border Leicester-Wensleydale cross that produces a wonderful, long, heavy fleece. Goliath is a Coopworth-Blue-faced Leicester cross who also produces a really nice, soft fleece. It will be great fun to watch the wool grow on these two little fellas during the summer months.

Sarah in Relation to Sally

This is Sarah. There is much excitement about Sarah! She is a Border Leicester out of Abby and Saul. The cause for excitement is that she is the grand-daughter of our old girl, Sally Ann.

We were given Sally when we bought some other registered Border Leicester ewes several years ago. Already an 'older' ewe, she was just kind of thrown in for good measure... you know. Well, Sally became a beloved member of our flock and gave us three good years of ram lambs before dying last summer. All summer we talked about how disappointed we were that we had no ewe lamb to carry on Sally's lineage. But, we held on to Sally's '07 ram lamb and decided to use him this year on some of the BL ewes. We are so happy we did.

The second cause for excitement is that for five days we thought that Abby had a ram lamb... no excuse other than punch-drunk exhaustion. So... we are pretty darn excited that she actually had this 9 lb beauty of a ewe! Still thinking there might have been some kind of divine intervention happening there...

Catching Up

Last week was a crazy one. We had lots of rain, a day of sleet and hail, followed by a day of this -



Thank goodness, bluer skies prevailed the rest of the week.



And we spent a lot of time doing this... in the 80+ degree weather that followed.



But, it was all worthwhile because we had a lot of rewards like this -



Meet Flora and Fauna, born to Sweet Pea (Lincoln cross) out of Liam (BL). Born around 5 a.m., Flora weighed 10 lbs 10 ozs and Fauna weighed 10 lbs. This was a cold, rainy morning, and Sweet Pea decided to have them half in, half out the open barn door. We put the little coats on to warm them up a bit after their chilly start.

Slowly, but surely, we are going to catch up with pictures of all the lambs, so stay tuned.

Meet Juliet

She is our little premie. Born around 8:30 a.m. yesterday, she did not even attempt to get up to nurse. She could not stand nor hold her head up. Even after hours of drying, massaging, etc. her back legs were still like wet noodles. We kept her under a heat lamp. We fed her lamb milk replacer, electrolytes and extra dextrose, calcium, etc. We even took turns sleeping on the floor next to her little box. So, after all this and a couple vitamin B shots.... TA DA!

We might actually have to name her Wonder Woman!

Serenity

“Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm”

Our new Border Leicester ewe, Serenity, resting with her momma, Hope.

Frosty Morning

 

The jonquils are cold and frosty in the morning snow,

The new spring grass is cold and frosty,

 

 

But Dawn’s new little baby ewe lamb born last night is warm and toasty in her bed of straw.

The Queen

This is Queen Elizabeth. In a Border Leicester frame of reference, she is a real beauty; from her lovely Roman nose to her even more lovely wool full of crimp and curl.

We have not had great luck breeding The Q Liz to Liam, our registered Border Leicester ram. We have everything crossed that this will be the year that everything works out.

Cinder's Carriage and Her Royal Majesty colorways

Shown above are two colorways we have developed from the lovely queen's wool. You can find them here in our etsy shop.

Kelly blessed us this morning with this precious little ewe lamb, and Lena has already named her Heather. She weighed 8 lbs 4 ozs, and is a registered Border Leicester.

Spring has Officially Arrived

With the arrival of the first lambs, Spring Is Here!! (The Long Awaited)

Hope, one of our registered Border Leicesters, gave us these bee-yoo-tee-ful twin ewe lambs this morning, to a cold day with bright sunshine peeking through the open barn doors.

They weigh in at a healthy 10 lb 5 oz and 9 lb 5 oz.

Finally! Liam's first lamb!

This afternoon Sally Ann finally had her lamb. We have been waiting impatiently; waiting with much anticipation because this is our first lamb sired by Liam, our registered Border Leicester ram.

He is a good looking ram lamb, weighing 8 lbs 12 ozs.