A special bond…

Posted by kenleighacres on June 10, 2011
Posted in: family, Farm Life, Uncategorized. 3 Comments

Here is a picture of my son with his ewe Dolly, shortly after she came to live here.  She quickly became his favorite sheep and their bond has continued to grow.

Hanging out in the summer time…

and the winter time.

He loves giving her hugs…

and telling her what a good girl she is.

She has had some very pretty babies for him…

and he always makes sure they have everything they need.  He gives Dolly’s lambs extra special attention and is so proud of her.

I took this picture last week and it really hit me how much they have changed.  Dolly is starting to show her years and my son is really growing up.

Dolly won’t be having any more lambs – they took a lot out of her this year, but she will live out the rest of her years getting hugs and special love from my son.


This is one of her ram lambs from this year.  His name is Clutch and he has the same sweet personality.  My son only had 2 lambs to show this year, so he is going to show him and then we are going to have him wethered.  He is excited about having a Dolly son as part of his flock.

Coursing Ability Test and lots of fun!

Posted by kenleighacres on June 3, 2011
Posted in: Dog Photography, Dogs, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments

I know blog posts are supposed to be timely and such, but does it count if it ‘feels’ like I took these pictures yesterday???

I recently took pictures at a lure coursing trial and it was the first trial held in Oregon that offered the new Coursing Ability Test  through AKC.  This event opens the world of lure coursing to all breeds of dogs instead of just sighthounds.  I am so glad AKC decided to do this because it was so much fun watching these dogs chase the plastic bunny.

Bedlington Terrier

Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever

German Shepherd

Vizsla

Husky

 and a very funny Bull Mastiff

She thought grabbing the cone at the end would be fun 🙂

Even the little dogs came out to play…

Pekingese

a tiny Chihuahua with a HUGE personality

This Doxie was my favorite 🙂

As always there were lots of sighthounds and they continue to take my breath when I watch them run!

Greyhound

Ibizan

Whippet

Pharaoh…almost catching the bunny

Rhodesian Ridgeback

All of the photos from the weekend can be seen on my That’ll Do Photography website.

Browsers or Grazers

Posted by kenleighacres on May 28, 2011
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , . 11 Comments

I am often asked if Jacobs are browsers or grazers.  Sheep are generally known as grazers and goats are usually known as browsers, but jacobs tend to do both.  Browsers eat mostly leaves and grazers eat mostly grass.

  

As the sheep head out to the pasture in the morning, they start out as one group but quickly break up into smaller groups.

Some start grazing,

while other start browsing.

You can watch them go back and forth throughout the day.

Magoo, our llama, grazes and browses right along beside them.  I think he likes the fact that he can reach the leaves they can’t.  All of them love the blackberry wall at the back of our property.  We are thankful for their ability to eat the blackberries because it keeps the wall where it should be.

Here is Tristan exhibiting that they will eat thistles too.  They love them in the fall, but they will eat small amounts right now.

Allegany says it is ALL good!

Moving the boys

Posted by kenleighacres on May 19, 2011
Posted in: Border Collie, Farm Life, Herding, Jacob Sheep. Tagged: , , . 11 Comments

Jacob ram lambs can be fertile at a very young age.  I try to have them weaned by 3 months, but some of them are now 4 months old and still with their moms.  Weaning them has been on my list of things that need to get done, but the weather has been so wet that I haven’t been very motivated.  The sun is now shining and there is grass growing EVERYWHERE, so moving the boys finally made it to the top of the ‘to do’ list.

I gathered my helpers…

  Kate, the best helper anyone could ask for and

Dreamer, the next best helper for moving reluctant lambs where I want them to go.

I sorted the ram lambs off and moved them out of the barn.  The plan was to move them to a pasture that needs to be grazed.  Dreamer was happy to follow me and Kate was happy to follow, giving a push when it was needed.

Unfortunately, the ram lambs weren’t sure about leaving their moms and sisters in the barn.  Kate wasn’t giving them an option though.

Little by little we headed in the right direction.  When the lambs stopped, Dreamer would stop and look at them and I swear I saw him roll his eyes once or twice.

A few of them tested Kate, but pretty soon they figured out that following Dreamer and moving forward was a good idea.

Pretty soon, they were settled in the new pasture.

Merlin, Lancelot, and Tristan

Kate really doesn’t like water and it took me a long time to teach her that getting in the stock tank really was ok, now she happily runs over and cools off after working.

and she tells me that nothing feels better than rolling around in the grass after a nice soak 😉

Moving the yearling boys also needed to be done because they were starting to drown in grass!

Now that is better, I can see their legs…kind of 😉

The ewes are now in the pasture they were in and I’m hoping they can get a handle on the grass.  Thanks to all of the rain we have had, mowing isn’t going to be an option for a long time!

Boy or Girl?

Posted by kenleighacres on May 14, 2011
Posted in: Chickens, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . 3 Comments

I have been staring at our chicks wondering if they are boys or girls.  This is the down side to hatching eggs and liking a breed that you can only buy straight run (unsexed).  There are inevitably going to be boys.  We have 6 Blue Laced Red Wyandottes and 2 Olive Eggers and I have been keeping my fingers crossed that the boy to girl ratio is better than it was last year.  Of the 4 Blue Laced Red chicks I ordered last year, 3 of them were boys.  I can finally see little clues and I am ‘tentatively’ happy with what I am seeing.

It looks like we have 1 Olive Egger girl and…

1 Olive Egger boy.  You can see subtle differences in their combs and waddles.


It looks like we have 4 Blue Laced Red hens – YAY!  I was really afraid we were going to end up with a bunch of boys again.  This is one of the hatchery chicks, a girl.

This is one of the chicks that was hatched by our hen, a girl.

and yet another pretty girl!

I am hoping this is a girl too, but I am not 100% sure.  It could be a late blooming boy – what do you think?

This one is definitely a boy.  I was kind of happy to see that this one was a boy because he doesn’t have very good lacing on his feathers.  A lot of his feathers are solid red instead of having the pretty blue edge on each feather.

The other boy is the black variety.  The Blue Laced Red is genetically the Andalusian type of blue – as a result, there are three possible colors on the lacing within the breed.  The colors are Blue Laced Red, Splash Laced Red, and Black Laced Red.  You can visit the Blue Laced Red Wyandotte page for more information and pictures of the three colors.

All of the other chicks that were ordered as girls, appear to be girls.  Here is one of my son’s Rhode Island Reds, he has 3 of them.

This striking lady is a Speckled Sussex.  She is one of the chicks we are raising for a neighbor.

I have no idea what the little Polish chick is – any ideas?  My son is really hoping it is a girl so it can stay and I must admit that it is growing on me too 🙂

Felt Valances

Posted by kenleighacres on May 13, 2011
Posted in: Felting. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

A friend recently contacted me and asked if I could make her felt valances.  She had a wallpaper border that she really liked the ‘feel’ of and asked if it would be possible to felt a similar scene.

I have to admit, I was a little overwhelmed to begin with, but after a bit of conversation I said ‘Yes’.  She said the background, the horses, and the dog were the important pieces.  We agreed to leave the riders off because they wouldn’t translate well in felt.

Here is the beginning with the wallpaper border sitting there for inspiration.  I used dark brown wool felt for the background, with a thick piece of felt made with our jacob wool for the base and then I felted the scene onto that.

I felted yarn on the edges to give it a nice finish.

Here are a couple of the horses.

and the finished valances!

I can’t wait to see pictures of them hanging in her office.

Right place at the right time

Posted by kenleighacres on May 8, 2011
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . 9 Comments

Being in the right place at the right time is such a big part of taking amazing photos.  A few weeks ago I was driving home after picking my son up from school and captured a bald eagle in our neighbor’s pasture…

It was incredible to see such a big bird up close.

What was even more incredible was to see that it had a small Canada goose in it’s talons.  My son made me laugh when he said ‘boy, you don’t see that everyday!’

Today, once again I was in the right place at the right time.  I saw a bunch of goldfinch in our garden and I wanted to take some photos of them, so I ran inside and grabbed my camera.  Unfortunately, they flew off when I came back out, but some movement in one of the pastures caught my attention.  It was a couple of the pheasant roosters that have been eluding me!  The chicken pen and our pump house gave me the cover I needed to sneak up on them.

To my delight, they put on quite the show for me.

It looked like they were having a territorial battle.  They were sizing each other up and making the craziest sounds.

They would go back and forth, growling and clucking at each other.

Then they would ruffle their feathers up…

stare each other down…

and pounce!!!

What a treat to see in person!

A good hiding spot

Posted by kenleighacres on May 5, 2011
Posted in: Ducks, Farm Life. Tagged: , . 3 Comments

While I was in California, our big duck hen disappeared.  She isn’t the only one that thought it would be fun to stir things up while my husband was doing chores.  We were both hoping that she had a nest somewhere and hadn’t been eaten by a raccoon.  Luckily, she returned later that night…confirming our thoughts that she had a nest somewhere.  My husband looked for a nest but was unsuccessful, when I got home I looked for a nest but was also unsuccessful.  She would disappear during the day and come out in the afternoon for food and a dip in the pond.

While I was doing chores yesterday, I thought I would look in the pile of concrete pieces to see if she was hiding in there.

 There are lots of crooks and crannies to hide in.  I thought maybe we had missed her when we looked previously.

This hole made a strange noise as I walked by…it hissed at me!

I took a closer look…

and found our hen!

She is so well hidden that I would have missed her again if she hadn’t hissed at me.

When she left her nest at feeding time I went back to see how many eggs she has and was shocked when I didn’t see any!

I was a little scared to put my hand in there, but curiosity got the better of my fear.  Way back in the back she has 12 eggs!!!

The mama duck is on the left.

She is so funny when she leaves the nest – talking, chatting, carrying on, telling her buddies all about the goings on asking about what she missed.

I hope the nest is hidden well enough to keep her safe for another two weeks!

A morning with the sheep

Posted by kenleighacres on May 3, 2011
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Lambing, sheep. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment

We woke up to blue skies and sunshine this morning.  You could hear everyone singing ‘HALLELUJAH’.

Mollala and I sat in it for a little while and just soaked it up.

I love hanging out with the sheep on mornings like this.

They were quiet, content, and serene.  A very peaceful way to start the day.

I had the usual girls hanging out with me and wanting scratches – Infiniti, Holly, and Patience.

I also had a few new friends – Precious, Dreamer, Mollala, and Clutch.  It isn’t a coincidence that two of these are my son’s lambs.  He spends a lot of time with them when they are little.  The other two are Holly’s lambs from previous years.  Dreamer is a wether and Mollala is one of my favorite girls.

Clutch is one of my son’s ram lambs and he has the silliest personality.  He decided that his mom wasn’t giving him enough to eat, so he would ask for a bottle along with our bottle lamb, Abbey.  I have never had a lamb do this.  He has become very friendly.  I am going to let my son show him and then we will have a vet castrate him later this year.

Here are some of the yearling girls – Canby, Precious, Allegany, Wren, and Mollala.

The yearlings were in another pasture for the winter and I just recently put them back with the ewes.  It didn’t take very long for them to start hanging out with their moms again.  Here is Echo with Petunia…

and here is a cute family photo of Lulu with Precious and her ewe lamb from this year, Morgan.

Holly and Emeline hope you are having a beautiful day too.

Now she is a frisbee dog!

Posted by kenleighacres on May 2, 2011
Posted in: Border Collie, family. Tagged: , . 10 Comments

I have said it before and I’m sure I will say it again and again…this is the best little boy’s dog ever!

My son and husband recently discovered that Rose LOVES to play frisbee.

A new/real frisbee is on the list to get, but she is more than happy to retrieve this one for now!

The benefit to this frisbee is that she can carry it by herself 😉

Her love borders on a bit of an obsession, but she is a border collie after all – they are a bit obsessive!

It was a beautiful day here and after doing some chores, we went to the park and enjoyed the sunshine.

After getting a few pointers from dad on how to throw the frisbee better for Rose, she started looking ‘up’ for the frisbee and jumping for it.

Then dad threw the frisbee for her…

I love the ‘reach’ you can see in this photo…

but this photo is by far my favorite.  What a funny girl she is!

After the frisbee session, we went down to the river and both of them got in the water.  No, it really wasn’t that warm out, but they are both a little water obsessed too.