Getting Ready For Yarn Party Show

March 21st is the Ravelry Yarn Party in Savage,MD near DC. It was a great show last year! I am frantically dying BFL yarn and spinning Shetland skeins for the sale. Molly will be home on spring break so this year,so hopefully I'll have an assistant sales person. Lisa from Feederbrook Farm, who also has Shetland yarn, does the show with me. It's good to partner with an energetic young woman but she exhausts me! I come home feeling my age. Great thing about Lisa is we always end the show with a glass or 2 of wine. Raising sheep has gifted me with some of the best friends. It makes getting up every day exciting.

Tiny BFL Ewes

These 2 were born to a BFL yearling on Sunday. Wish mom had had one 10 pounder instead of 2 just barely 5 pounds each. They get cold easily so the felted sweater sleeve jackets keep them warm.

Baby Shetlands Everywhere!

Triplets this morning and twins this afternoon. Beautiful day to be born in the sun. Mom of the triplets helped clean the other ewe's twins off then tried to take them. Guess 3 wasn't enough for her. It was wonderful to be out there with them, sorting newly sheared fleeces and watching the activity in the pen. One of the triplets was leaping around the pen within 40 minutes of birth. Shetlands are great comic relief.

Sunny Shearing Day Finally 50 Degrees

Beautiful day for shearing the Shetlands. I let another shepherd take my original shearing date and this date was a little too close to lambing to suit me but my shearer, Nathan, is very gentle so I forged ahead. We saw some pretty full bags and breathed a sigh of relief when each ewe was done. With 2 more to go (21 sheared total) it happened. Half way through the shearing a water bag popped out. AAHH!!! Nate finished the job and the ewe wandered off. We watched her while we sheared the last 2 ewes but she was not pushing at all. Eventually, I had to pull the lambs but they were lively and strong. Up and nursing in minutes. Little shetlands are so cute and amazing. The Shetland lambing has begun!
Thank you Garrett for the suggestions about getting better results this year. Last year we had 20 Shetland ram lambs and 4 ewes. Another Shetland ewe lambed this AM and she also had a ram and a ewe. We are 50/50 so far. That's a lot better than last year.

Snowmageddon Part II

How can it be? Another blizzard just 2 weeks after the last one. This time I felt prepared. With my trusty cordless drill, I had patched holes in the barn, placed barriers in broken windows and installed a tarp above the gate where the wind and snow came in the last time. This time the snow would not invade the cozy, newly bedded areas in the barn. OR so I thought. When I went out at 2AM, the 50 mph wind was blowning snow everywhere and the tarp was like a sail lifting the gate to which it was tied right off its hinges. The noise it made had both the sheep and the llama cowering in one stall. It was as bad as the last blizzard. 2 ewes are due to lamb today so I instructed them to please NOT lamb til tomorrow as I added more dry straw. I have been lambing here for 23 years and have only ever had 1 blizzard in all that time. This is incredible. I cannot even get down to the Shetland barn til I can see it. Those little buggers will be just fine. They are so tough and funny.
One bright note.....the 2 ewes listened to me!!!! They did not have little lambcicles for me to carry into lambing pens freezing my hands even more. Would someone in Arizona or New Mexico please send me the real estate section?

Will It Ever End? Depressing

Winter is usually fine with me. I'd rather be cold than hot, but this winter has made me think about Arizona or New Mexico. (Never Florida!) We finally got down to mud...good squishy, slippery mud... on my path to the barn, when the weather forcast predicts more snow. AAHHH I tried to carry bales down to the Shetland barn on Tuesday. The mind was willing and the body wouldn't cooperate. Tim finally came to my rescue yesterday. Really feeling old this year.
In the midst of this physical stress, I went to get a new passport photo taken.Dumb idea. What a shock when I saw it. The woman who took it said, "Hey this is really good", so I guess that's what I really do look like. They say the camera doesn't lie but I would have appreciated a little white one at least OR air brushing. From there, I went shopping for my niece. Since I am missing the female shopping gene, this didn't take long. Stupidly, I tried something on for myself. Now I'm feeling not only old but FAT. It used to be that when I had a bad shopping day I bought shoes, claiming that shoes wouldn't make you look fat. Well....thanks to some slender chik on the Today Show, that idea is no longer correct. Do earrings make you look fat? Thinking not, I bought a pair. Now my neck looks short! Whatever!
When I got home, I dyed a few skeins of wool. My colors are usually bright and zippy, but these were drab and dull. A reflection of my day. I quit dying and called it a day. Come on Spring and bright colors!

UNCLE

Another 20 inches and drifts chest high. The wind blew snow into every part of the barn creating drifts in the sheep bedding.I have never seen it like this. Tim and I spent hours trying to block openings, put down dry straw, and move ready to lamb ewes to more protected pens. While working frantically, I heard grunting. A ewe was in labor with no place to lie down and push. Finding her a dry spot and getting the other sheep out of her spot was challenging but the worst was yet to come. I pulled the first lamb, long overdue and orange. Mom took over cleaning him while I waited for the second lamb. One foot appeared but that was it. When I went in, there were 2 legs but the lamb's head was no where to be found. Head back deliveries are a challenge. My arm was in the ewe up to my armpit when I found the head. Good thing too because I couldn't reach any further. What a relief to pull out another live baby. By this time I was soaking wet and frozen whith bottle babies sucking on my ears. Thankfully Mom bounced right up,taking care of both boys. The delivery didn't seem to phase her a bit. I seemed to be in worse shape. Wine time!