This idea struck me after doing the ‘Wordless Wednesday’ post yesterday. I then did a search for ‘Thankful Thursday’ blogs and found ‘Grace Alone’ . Her words mirrored my sentiments…Why be thankful on Thursdays? We tend to just give thanks on Thanksgiving, why not share your blessings on a weekly basis? The road of life is hard, let us count our blessings as we travel this road.
There is so much to be thankful for and it is easy to go through this busy life and take it for granted.
Today I am thankful for friends.
Friendship isn’t a big thing – it’s a million little things. ~Author Unknown
The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend. ~Aristotle
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world. ~Thomas A. Edison
I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. ~Plutarch
Be thankful for your friends – today and everyday!
I was recently asked how many sheep we have named. I didn’t have a clue what the answer was! Of course, this question piqued my curiosity, so I counted and the total is 234!
Cypress was the first lamb we named.
This also got me thinking about the naming theme for the 2011 lambs.
Naming the lambs is something I really enjoy and I love putting together a list of names before the lambs start arriving. Well it is time to get my act together because the first lambs are due to arrive on January 4th. With how the time is flying, that day is going to be here very soon!
We used city names in Oregon for 2010 and I wanted to use a variation of this for 2011, so I am going to use river/stream/lake/creek names. The Oregon Atlas is full of fun names!
This boy also has a new name. I had a hard time calling him Albus, so he is now Ringo. His registered name is going to be Blue Ewe’s Ringoes Albus. Ringoes was the city in New Jersey where the AGM was held and where we picked him up. Ringo has a nice ring to it 🙂
You can see the whole breeding line-up, including pictures – here
We could not have asked for a nicer little dog for our son.
She absolutely adores him.
I was trying to get a cute picture of the two of them together. I got some cute pictures, but not quite what I was looking for 🙂
While I was looking through them, I realized just how much alike they are!
Very sweet and affectionate
Silly and goofy and funny…
with a great sense of humor.
Not afraid to roll around on the ground and get dirty.
Willing to help with any job. Rose thought behind his ears was a little dirty.
Moments of stillness that are treasured.
Our little piggies are no longer little or cute. They have become eating machines that are always hungry. When I step into their pen at feeding time, I think of the ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ movie and the big, bad plant saying ‘feed me, Seymour’!
They start grunting and squealing as soon as I turn the corner and they see me.
They just can’t contain their excitement!
The pink boy was very unhappy that the girl was standing on him – I would be too!
I love their noses and I still think they are cute, but going in the pen when they are so excited and hungry is a little scary…notice him trying to eat the metal pipe!
Now, don’t let them fool you – they have gone from this to…
this in 5 weeks. They are getting plenty of food!
Their favorite snack/treat is stale tortilla chips.
Standing on the gate isn’t so bad, it is in the next month or so when they start picking the gate up that gets a little interesting!
This has been my philosophy on setting up a good working system for the sheep. Each year I buy a few more panels or a new gate to add to what we have in the barn. Every year we redo the system to take advantage of the new piece of equipment and make it a little better. This year I added another piece of equipment and it didn’t make it a little better…it made it a LOT better!
Here, Amber is modeling the new 3-way sort chute that I picked up at Oregon Flock and Fiber. I had the opportunity to use it while doing the herding dog demonstration at Black Sheep Gathering and was hooked. We rearranged the barn and worked it into our system.
Delight is demonstrating how the sheep should walk single file through the alley into the small pen. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen. At first they don’t want to go and then it is like you opened a flood gate and they are all running at once.
The barn is set-up with several areas that go from big to small. We can have the barn completely open for them or we can shut gates and move them from one area to the next until they are in a pen that is appropriate for the number of sheep we are working. I vividly remember the good old days of running around trying to catch sheep…running around and around out in the pasture. Ah, such fun it was 😉
This way is so much better – for us and them!
We have the 3-way chute set-up so we can sort the sheep into 3 separate pens. It can also be used as a squeeze – very useful for routine sheep care. This wouldn’t be possible for big breeds, but it works well with our jacob sheep.
It will take a few more times of working the sheep through the system to get a really good feel for it, but I am envisioning so many possibilities.
Fall is here and the holiday season is just around the corner – both are great reasons to start teaching felting classes again! The first class is scheduled for next Wednesday and I am looking forward to it. In preparation, I ordered some roving from Sunset Fibers. I bought some of their dyed corriedale while I was at Oregon Flock and Fiber and it felts beautifully.
Look at what came in the mail yesterday…
an explosion of color!
I love my natural colored fiber, but sometimes you need a little color 🙂
I don’t have a plan for this yet, but I just love the colors!
Class information can be found here.
Amazing what a little sun, a little rain, and a few weeks can do…
before…
and after 🙂
In just 17 days!
Can you hear the excitement in my voice?
The sheep have been locked off the pasture and I have been feeding a lot of hay. With the rain and warm weather we have had, the grass in the big pasture was finally tall enough to turn the sheep out – I’m not sure who was happier, me or them. A very good thing! In addition to having green grass growing in the big pasture, my husband has been reworking a few of our smaller pastures. It has been on the ‘to do’ list for the last couple of years, but moved up in priority thanks to this stuff…
foxtail.
A horrible, vile plant that has slowly been taking over our place. It isn’t palatable for the sheep – but worse than that, it can work into the skin of animals and cause large abscesses. We have to mow, mow, mow to keep the foxtail low and out of the sheep’s eyes. It is also horrible for the fleeces – hard to pick out and very pokey.
I have been a little apprehensive to start…tearing up the ground just seemed scary! Luckily, my husband didn’t have those feelings 🙂 He started by plowing. Seeing the pasture like this really scared me! I just stayed inside and knew it would be ok.
The boys were happy because they got to borrow the neighbor’s big tractor!
After plowing he tried disking it, but the result wasn’t what he was looking for. So, he rototilled it and that helped a lot. The foxtail’s roots were so thick and entwined, that it looked like a 5 inch thick piece of root felt.
After plowing, rototilling, and disking – he drug it – a very dusty job!
Finally it was time to spread seeds – good seeds, seeds that are aggressive and can outgrow the foxtail. We planted chicory, annual ryegrass, white clover and a pasture mix with fescue, orchard, and ryegrass in it.
The weather cooperated and it started raining a couple days after the seed was spread. Little sprouts are so exciting!
And look at it now!!! The sheep are going to have to stay off for awhile to let it get established, but the idea of having GOOD grass for them to eat next year is AWESOME!
Magoo agrees 🙂
We are officially done showing sheep and attending fiber shows for 2010. This year’s Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival was a great way to finish the season. The sun was shining on Saturday and attendance was high.
All of these bags left early in the morning…
and most of these little buggers left on Saturday…
I love them, but making this many was a little overwhelming. I felt bad coming home with one lonely little sheep, so she is keeping me company in my office 🙂
I loved the comments I heard about the sheep and the bags – ‘I REALLY don’t need this, but I MUST have it’, ‘This looks just like the sheep I used to have’, ‘My friend just bought a new car and this little sheep is going to be so cute hanging from the mirror’, and many more that I forgot but enjoyed in the moment! In addition to all of these sheep finding new homes, quite a few people bought the kit so they could learn how to make themselves a little flock.
This year I found myself needing to show sheep and man my vendor booth all at the same time – WHAT??? I can multitask well, but not that well 🙂 Thanks to several good friends, I had plenty of help – this is one of my favorite things about fiber shows! While I was thinking about who I could ask to help me show sheep, I remembered that Kristine had offered her showing skills to me earlier this year. Although she had plans on Saturday afternoon, she gladly agreed to help. She hasn’t shown livestock in quite a few years, but it didn’t show. Since we were both showing, there aren’t very many pictures to show of the jacob show. So, I will just say that there were 4 breeders and some very nice sheep 🙂
Kenleigh’s Ironside came home as the Champion ram and Kenleigh’s Mollala was Reserve Champion ewe.
It has been 14 years since it rained at this event and that is amazing for the end of September in the Northwest. The sunny stretch ended on Sunday. We woke up to a drizzle and by mid-morning – it was POURING!!! About half of the vendors are outside on the lawn, including my booth! Thanks to some help from my husband, we were able to put walls on my canopy and everything got damp instead of wet 😉
Thanks to some more help from friends and my husband, we had the 7 sheep we brought to the show shorn and then I got to walk around and visit the other vendors! These two pieces weren’t for sale, but they were some of my favorite things that I saw…
and another one of my favorites…the blueface…
their ridiculously huge ears and eyes…
and their super shiny curls.
I only bought two fibery items…
this beautiful and super soft blueface roving…
and some colorful goodies.
You’ll have to wait to see the other item I came home with – I am so excited because it is going to make sheep work a lot easier and dare I say… maybe even fun!
Stories from the Farm 
