Showing skin!

April 17th was shearing day on the farm! What a wonderful day it was. For the first time in the years of raising Angora goats and hand shearing with scissors...I treated myself to a professional this year, and was it ever worth it! To watch a professional shearer work is like poetry in motion. To the left is Martin, our shearer, with Khalid - our five year old ram. Amazing! Martin sat them right down in a "sheep sit" made a few orchestrated passes with his shears, and presto! Within minutes, an intact fleece and a bare sheep, none the worse for wear. I am converted. There are some heritage farm skills worth learning to do yourself...and then there is shearing.

Khalid has won the shearer's title of "most favored ram." Despite his awe-inspiring appearance, and his intense ramming of his post expressly for that purpose...he was a true gentleman. Upon opening his pen, he trotted right to the shearing parlor (aka my husband's shop converted for the purpose) and sat down upon prompting, minding his manners throughout. Once he recovered his feet, he trotted through the barn right back to his pen...polka dots and all. Yes, under that two tone fleece are more spots than a dalmation! You can see him bare in the farm photo album - the link is in the right navigation at the top of the blog. I must add a note of caution - despite Khalid's behavior, he is still a ram, and rams cannot EVER be trusted, no matter how pleasant they seem. Never turn your back on one, or stand directly in their path - even on the opposite side of the fence. Rams cannot be pets, or "tamed" without dire consequences. We consider ourselves blessed by his good temperament, but use extreme caution around him nonetheless.

Not knowing the lambing dates for the new ewes presented a challenge. It was clear that some were quite close. We had already needed to trim the first ewes that lambed prior to shearing for the little ones to find the udder. Having the rest of them shorn has made lamb-watch much easier...I can see what I need to see as their time draws near without groping blindly to see what is developing. Polly lambed the day after shearing. Too close for my preference. It is said that shearing too close to lambing can impact the presentation of the lamb. In her case it may have. Whether it was from shearing or not, both lambs had one leg back, instead of nose on toes. All are doing well though! It seems everyone is expecting...so there will be frequent updates to the lamb photo album!

My worst fears were allayed. Having sheep shorn serves more than the purpose of harvesting fleece. It gives the sheep a break from the summer heat, and gives the shepherd a good view of the condition of the sheep, which isn't easy to determine under all of that fleece. I had feared that the sheep were thin because of the hard winter and a brief period of marginal hay...they are not. In fact, I would dare say they are a bit fat. So much for trusting their instincts...they kept saying they were hungry and I believed them...Don't believe a sheep. The other fear was sheep keds - a parasite that lives within the wool. Not only does it damage the wool, but it impacts the overall health of the sheep. Not one! Our sheep were 100% ked-free! We've never had them before...and the new sheep didn't bring any hitchhikers to our delight! No skin issues whatsoever.

Now the work begins. What do we do with all of that wool? The winter fleeces, with a few exceptions, are not suitable for handspinning, as they collect debris from bedding and feed. They also have a tendency to felt from the snow and rain. Winter clips are for the sheep - it is their cold-weather coat. For the most part, they will be washed and felted into rugs and dog beds, and some are sold for felting. The fall clip is the one we look forward to! That one is ours!!! Since they are out on clean, green grass, and stay dry, for the most part, fall clips are gloriously soft and open. Those are the clips that are spun, sold, and entered into competition.

So between lambings, we'll be staying quite busy felting this wonderful crop of wool!

Chickens in the Living Room

Indeed! There are 16 young Barred Rocks in our living room, as it is snowing outside. Already we are 100 inches over the average snowfall for the year. Will it ever stop? Is spring coming this year??? Can't spare the space in the barn...we need it for lambing, so we must brood our chicks inside.

Typically, our hens raise the chicks around here, but this year we are adding a new breed, so we started from hatchery stock. Having been around this block before, I did not succumb to the darling day old chicks - but waited for them to become awkward, gangly feathered creatures. Cute gets its mileage, yes, but the practicality of older chicks wins hands down for this farm girl. They are not as likely to "expire" as day olds, have alreday eaten a couple of weeks of food on someone else's tab, and are a bit more "thermoregulated" so the temperature fluctuation is not such a challenge in this old, drafty house whose wood furnace runs cold in the middle of the night.

Have learned a bit from experience. This year, and if-ever after, I am brooding in a wire rabbit cage, with the removeable tray. All of the mess falls through the floor to the shredded newspaper...and they haven't been able to pollute the water! Other than the bundles of chick fluff that accumulates like cottonwood tufts around the room - they've been no trouble at all. In fact, their incessant peeping and scampering is becoming quite endearing, now that there is no mess that results from them, and I might even miss them when they make the move to the great outdoors!