Fall Color

Sumac Trees

Apple tree

Ornamental grass, Virginia Creeper, and the orange color is a native bush. Not sure of it's name but we call it a Logan Berry. It is not a true Logan Berry but it did come from seed out of Mrs. Logan's yard!

A new area all turned, mulched and ready for garlic. If you biggify this picture you can see some red seed packs on the Asparagus plant. 

This picture was taken a few weeks back. The pumpkins are all orange now ready for Halloween.

 Ash tree and an Aspen Tree.

Ornamental grass.

Pretty little dwarf Cedar next to our house.

 Fall Crocus (Colchicum) are great fun. In the spring large green leaves fill their area dieing back in the hot summer. Come this time of year the flowers poop out. They are always a surprise to me.

Hattie and her lovely  moorit ewe lamb Betty. Shaela ewe is Limerick.

Mud Monkey

Casey and I were walking up on our mountain today and she found her first ever live Rattle Snake! She was ahead of me and was barking at a Sagebrush plant. When I got up to her and saw what was going on she learned a new lesson. Casey now understands very well what it means when I go into panic mode and scream "RUN AWAY!

Her favorite summer activity. Cooling off in the mud on a hot summers day!

Drama Queen

July here has been hot and wet. In one weeks time we had another inch of rain.Yesterday the clouds rolled in about 2 in the afternoon. This means thunder storms and the potential of range fires. Dry lighting is when the fires start and if your lucky you get the huge rains that come with the clouds and fire is not so likely if lighting hits near buy. So far so good and our area has been under the rain clouds.

I have some new additions to the farm. They came in June. Eight little Easter-egger chicks. Wynonna Wyandotte a three year old hen has taken over their care. I purchased the chicks at the feed store at what proved to be the perfect time. Wynonna had been broody for a few weeks so when the chicks were placed under her she was thrilled with a job well done!

Good Mother

Her three golf balls that she had tended to for almost three weeks had hatched into eight beautiful pullets.

Now the reason for the title of this post. Dear sweet Casey was snatched up bright and early last Thursday June 30th and taken to the vet to be spayed. I picked her up in the late afternoon. Literally. It took two of us to get her in the car in the morning and two helpers at the vets office to carry her back to the car for the ride home. Of course they weighted her, she was a whooping 80 pounds at 6 months old, and we had to carry her to the scale and then back to the kennel to wait for her surgery.

Drama Queen

Over the years I've seen several dogs and cats come home from the vets after a spay or neuter and marveled at the way they came out of such surgery's.  After the first day of sleeping off the anesthesia it seemed an effort to get them to rest and heal. They were always ready to get back into life. Not so Casey!

She wanted to hide in small spaces while she jumped up every few minutes to look at her belly then lick, lick lick!  I found that if I wrapped a small bath towel around her and duct taped it securely were it over lapped on her back she would settle down. She even let it stay around her and didn't try to get it off. About the third day she was resting much easier but only leaving her hiding place to go potty. She always ate good but she had to be fed in her "hole" never coming out to eat. Her wound never was infected or any of that bad stuff that could have caused her to be so upset. Now she has been dubbed "The Drama Queen" .

It took six full days for her to follow us on a walk up the mountain! Simon is thrilled his best buddy has returned to the act of living. He stayed back behind the barn those six days and kept a watch on Casey.  It is sure great to be back to normal!

June

This blog post starts with some lambs that were born in May. Oma has two ewe lambs (no picture). They were born May 5th nice looking little black girls.One will fade to grey.
Then on May 18th Kenick had one ram lamb, awesome little black guy with a short tight crimp, and one of my cull ewes with no name had one ram lamb. These lambs are the result of Watson getting out into the ewe's I did not want bred!! And it's just the beginning of another flock of lambs born in June.

Ceilia's ram lamb growing fast. His ram twin, solid black, went to California with Jorga's black ram to be part of Cissy's show string.

Stevie and Artie's ram.

One morning after a night of heavy rain I checked my rain gauge, a red wagon. It had over three inches of water in it. An extreme amount of rain for our area.  And the entire back half of my barn had two to three inches of water and muck! Poor ewe's were all standing around in the dry half. No room to lay down. That morning I fed the ewe's out side. It was still raining a bit but was dryer outside on the hill than in the barn.
Needless to say I spent the better part of the day cleaning out two large piles of wet heavy muck!

Now back to June lambs. Miryah started things off the first of this week with a YUMMY, AWESOME, ram lamb.She did very well being a small yearling who was suppose to wait till this fall to be bred.

Underneath this coppery brown coat is a dark grey, shaela? Or maybe since I see some lighter grey also maybe emsket. Time will tell no matter what he stays! I even gave him a name.

RIO

Miryah had her lamb before I went out in the morning on June 11th. In the afternoon I found Charlee with two lambs a ram and a ewe out in the field under the big Poplar trees. Then just before I came in from the evening chores another cull ewe had a ram lamb.

Monday the 13th Bella had one ram (above) and Siskin had two ewe lambs. Note Watson covered six ewe's in one outing!

OK, number six ewe Jilly Bean, another cull who would have been butchered last winter lambed this morning June 17th with one ewe lamb. The great thing about this birth was it is the first time I let the puppy's stay and be with a ewe as she lambed. Both puppy's and the ewe were very relaxed. The sheep are getting use to having the dogs close by and I think the main interest with the puppy's was soon if they wait patiently there would be an after birth as their reward!

Watching the New Baby

May Pictures

Casey on our mountain of green. "It's getting hot out here".

Thought I'd get some picture posted of the green mountain before it drys up for the summer.

Great time to climb the hill and watch the sheep grazing.

Two previous years the sheep started grazing grass in late February or early March.

This spring we had grass up here but between snows and cold days it wasn't growing much. They were not able to graze much till April.

Now it is all going to seed. The rich spring grass was lost to all the cold. Some of my ewe's that lambed are getting TOO thin from nursing their lambs without the rich spring grass to fatten them up before lambing.

Today it will be in the high 70's and Simon is feeling the heat.

New Stuff

And some of my favorite things!

Casey pup is now 4 months old and growing well. She adores her sheep and goats threw the fence. They don't have the same feelings for her yet. When I take her in with the sheep she sticks close to me or Simon for protection. I have a few evil sheep who would love to clobber her but everything is coming along well. The sheep are getting use to her and Simon little by little.

Thunderhead Argentina, I call her Jo, has other ideas when it comes to the dogs. She comes straight  at Casey to get a good look. If Casey doesn't stand still then the chase is on. Jo just has to get up close and personal and Casey is not sure it's very safe thing to be doing yet.

I don't have much in the way of fancy colorings in my Shetlands yet, so Jo is a favorite. She is a two tone gulmoget, my only gulmoget, that I picked up at Black Sheep Gathering last year. Friend and guild member Heidi bought a "Time Share" with my sheep and choose Jo's fleece as part of her share. Jo produced a great fleece that starts out black at the neck and faded to white at her britch. Heidi was thrilled with her new fleece, some lamb chops from the freezer and several buckets full of compost for her garden! Just part of the benefits of a "Time Share" at Desert Peach Farm!

Another pretty face is WSR Miryha. She came down with Jo from BSG last year. Calm and a born leader Miryha is a tiny well built katmoget.

She is just a little girl but she is built wide and is very correct from one end to the other.

We sheared 20 sheep a few weeks ago and here are two samples of some yearlings fleece. Shirley is on the left, a washed lock and in the center are the unwashed locks. The short locks are from another yearling ewe Kenick. I'm in love with the fleece I got from Shirley! LONG, tippy,  shiny and Oh so soft! I do like Kenicks fleece too. It is very soft not as shiny a bit felted at the tip so you lose the tippyness and it did wash up well.

The reason I'm showing the difference in the two fleeces is that when Shirley was born a few people felt it was wrong, or at least undesirable to have all those "Shirley Temple" curls on a new born Shetland. (picture of Shirley below) Seems a tight close crippy fleece is the goal. I love breeding for the 6 inch fleece as opposed to the three inch fleece as long as they are as soft and shiny as Shirley's!

Lambs and More Lambs

My goodness since the 7th of April things have been crazy here when it comes to lambs. We still have not sheared the sheep. Our last date was snowed out. We had another foot of snow two days before the date to shear so I canceled. I'm trying desperately to clean up around here since we will be shearing on Sunday the 17th. But the ewe's have other ideas.
I'll start from the beginning. This is Hattie with her two ewe lambs born on April 7th. Sired by Stonehaven Watson.

Hattie (Who)

Then in the afternoon I found Kess with two ram lambs. Sired by WSR Artie. (Whiteoak Shetland Ranch)
 One note for Kess she had a blind lamb last year when bred to Stonehaven Duncan. Good going Artie no blind lambs this year!!!

Kess

April 8th Jorja had one ewe and one ram. Sired by Watson. Jorja had a single lamb two years ago and was bred last year but slipped her lambs a month early. Good to see she's OK this year.

Jorja (Ray)

April 9th I went to a guild meeting in Reno. Before I left everyone, sheep that is,  looked normal out on the field grazing. When I got home I found Stevie and Hazel up on the hill each with their two new born lambs! Stevie below lost her little ewe lamb last year to a predator, coyote, eagle, neighbors dog? still not sure. She had a ram and a ewe this year. It was about an hour before this picture I found her ewe lamb dieing! I'm not sure what happened. She was laying by herself and soon after she was taking her last breath. Stevie's ewe was three days old and doing fine. At least she has her ram lamb. I'd hate for her to go two years in a row without a lamb of her own. I'm leaving her dead lamb with her for awhile so she understands what happen to her. Was she hit too hard by another ewe? Not sure. Stevie was bred to Artie.

Stevie

 This is Hazel below:

Hazel

and her two lambs. A ram in the feeder and her ewe lamb behind. Have you noticed a theme? Most everybody has a black lamb and a dark brown lamb! Hazel was bred to Watson.

On April 10th Valla was out in a snow storm and gave birth to her twins and ram and a ewe! It was not very cold, in the high thirty's, and the snow was not sticking but I was still surprised that they were nearly dry and not chilled! Valla (La) was bred to Artie.

 Now Pepper (Pots) had her two lambs on the same day as Valla another ewe and a ram.

Pepper

 Here she is with her two lambs. Both very black.

It was nice and quite here for two days. I was even able to good to town without coming home to any surprises. This morning Stonehaven Cielia gave birth to two ram lambs! One little guy has some white splashes of color on him. Cielia is marked the same. The sire to her lambs is Watson.

This is not the end of lambing yet. Evie is looking big and ready to lamb but after her God only knows!
Total count 8 ewe's 16 lambs  7 ewes, 9 rams and one ewe lamb died. All eight ewes had twins.