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.

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.

Fiber News

This is a long delayed post on some of the fiber news that has happened here in the last few months. First and foremost here is the fiber I won from Laura in her blog drawing. Beautiful spring bling BFL/silk roving! I have some felting ideas ready for this fiber.

A few months back I felted these scarves from some fiber I got at Black Sheep last summer. I bought it from Capistrano Fiber. I took them to show and tell at our guild meeting. Virva our president sent me to her friends shop in Reno "My Scandinavia" and Pia has them for sale in her store.

Another lady at the store saw my Tiny Sweaters and bought 7 of them. Her husband, now diseased, grew up on Gotland Island. She still visits his family every summer and is taking the sweaters as gifts. Most of her choices were the Shetland sweaters. I told her all about my sheep so she could let her friends and family know what type of wool the sweaters were made of. I also put in an order for a few Gotland Sheep fleeces! ;o)

Sharon made up a hat pattern so I gave it a test run with some of my hand spun Shetland yarn. The brown hat shows the complete pattern. I modified the gray hat a bit just because.We are going to make Hat Kits with our home spun yarn and Sharons hat patterns.  Sharons been doing most of the work, planning out how much yarn we need for each hat and finding jars to display our kits in. She has a nice looking plastic jar coming from a company on line. If this sample works we'll put three colors of hand spun and a pattern in each jar for a cool gift idea.

Another new fiber event that took place just last night was Hattie "Who" presented me with two ewe lambs this morning! Here we go! I have no idea how many ewe's will lamb this spring. I do know it's at least 12 and it should go on till June 24th. That date is according to the last time Watson made his escape into the ewe's pen on January 24th. YEEKS

New Lambs

Charlee... on Easter I left Charlee in a jug while we went to my brothers in town. When we got home she had lambed and gave me a ewe and a ram. He has white around his face and will fade,ag, like his Mom


Charlees ewe is katmoget, my first ever. Very light almost white with brown points. She has Shirly Temple curls so should have a wavy crimped fleece like Charlee.

Oma lambed on the morning of April 6th she also had twins, one ram and one ewe lamb. I was here to see the birth but there is 'trouble in paradise' reminiscent of my lambing in 2008! Excuse me but OH SHIT! I'll talk more about Oma in another post. This little guy is a katmoget also. His sister was a dark brown.

Hattie's lambs were born on the evening of April 5th. She had a black ram and a black ag ewe lamb. The ewe lamb has a white spot on each side of her body right by her front elbows. So she is spotted, but by the time her color all fades she won't show her spots!

"I see a goat Mom."

Camera Found

Pictures from yesterday. Yes I found the camera and it was safe and sound on the kitchen counter! At least in my forgetfulness I was careful with the camera. Ewe's on the hill.

White ewe in both these pictures is Tru. She is a yearly and not bred for this years lambings. This is the sort of fleece I've been getting after introducing some UK genetics. Enfield Greyling

Jake in a squirrel hole. Check out his fleece! Nice but no crimp!

Hattie "Who" on the lookout yesterday.

Hattie this morning!!!! And who's that? Her little ram lamb. She had given birth to him before I got out to check this morning. He was almost dry and I thought she might not be done lambing and sure enough she had a dead ewe lamb in her when I checked. Damn she was full term too. This ram will be Ag like Hattie and the ewe was different than any lamb I've had born here. Dark on her back and light brown from the front of her neck under her belly and around the inside of her legs?? Any guesses. I've never had a katmoget or gulmoget here.

Well I should be getting more lambs soon now. Several other ewe's looked like Hattie as far as udders and bums go.

Like Charlee here.