Lambing Chronicles – 1st Edition

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

We were so proud of ourselves (in terms of our higher than normal degree of organization) that I thought I would try to make short postings to the Ewe Turn before and during lambing. With that plan in mind, I planned to begin with a bit of a prologue, before the first lambs arrived. I should have known better!

Our breeding records are very accurate, at least in terms of the earliest possible breeding dates for the ewes. As such, we knew that the earliest possible due date for any of our ewes, (assuming a full gestation of 148 days) was today, March 7th. There were only two problems with that projection: Yuliya and Viva. They both got a head start on the calendar! The result is two sets of active, healthy twins, yesterday and the day before.

March 5th: We have learned from experience that we will almost always have a few ewes that deliver their lambs before the due dates. Last year was a prime example, with Whosits delivering a very premature lamb long before we started watching for lambs. Our usual routine is to begin periodically checking the barn about four days ahead of the first expected due date. Those initial checks are not as frequent as they later become. E.g. they do not entail the “standard” 2 AM barn check. Up to March 5th those checks produced only eating, ruminating or sleeping ewes. My lunch time visit on the 5th  revealed that Yuliya had just broken a bag of water. Labor had thus begun. This was to be her first lambing, so we wished to keep a more attentive eye on her. Over the next 1 hour and 40 minutes she relocated many times from one end of the barn to the other (thereby disturbing everyone’s mid-day naps). Finally, at 1:55 PM she delivered a white ewe lamb, followed within 15 minutes by a black ewe lamb. Buttons and Bunny had arrived. Yuliya did a wonderful job without needing any assistance from us. She willing followed me as I carried the lambs into a jug (a small private pen). The first lamb, Buttons, was a bit slow getting started learning to nurse. I milked Yuliya (without objection on her part) for a few ounces. We then tube fed Buttons and were about to do the same for Bunny when she beat us to the task and learned to nurse on her own. Since then the three of them have not looked back.Yuliya delivered 2 days early.

Buttons gets a drink; Bunny is too shy for a photo.

Thus, lambing for 2012 has officially begun, two days early. Of significance is Buttons assigned flock number: WBF2000. This is our 21st year of lambing. It is difficult to believe that there have been that many births since we started.

March 6th: Knowing that we were still “ahead of schedule” we opted to sleep through one final night. It probably would not have made any difference had I been in the barn this morning at 2 AM. When I showed up at 6 AM I was greeted by Viva and two lambs curled up together in the middle of the barn. The lambs had been nicely licked clean and I could tell, based upon Viva’s udder, that at least one of the two had already nursed. Since Viva had yet to pass her placenta, we could be pretty sure that the lambs were born closer to 6 AM than 2 AM. Viva had a black male, Bixby, and a smaller white ewe, Bianca. This is Viva’s third lambing, and her first set of twins. She was 1 day early. Again all three are doing well.

Viva with Bianca and Bixby

March 7th: This morning the alarm awoke me at 2 AM. My trip to the barn produced a very quiet, sleepy flock and no new lambs. At least the early morning trip to the barn was pleasant. It was over 40° (F) and beautifully lit by a near full moon. We are still waiting on three ewes who could be due today. From now on, until the last ewe has delivered, the visits to the barn are  going to be more frequent.

What do we do in between trips to the barn, when no one is in labor? Currently, Gretchen is sorting out fleeces, doing a final skirting on each one, and then making a preliminary evaluation before we price the fleece for sale. She has about 40 fleeces to go out of a total of 129. It is a slow and often tedious process. At least it can be stopped and started easily. I have gotten the big, double weave blanket project off the loom. For the first time a few days ago it was unfolded. It seems so much larger than I imagined. My current stage is to tie the fringe knots (all 244 of them) along both edges. It is also a good “start and stop” project. Pussa has decided that the blanket meets her approval. She and I promise a full, unfolded image, once it is finished.

Time for a barn check….

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Shearing, Lambing and other Flock News

Posted on March 5, 2012 by

Hello everyone. This is Queso writing. Those of you with good memories will remember me as the official flock photographer. Some of my flock mates also refer to me as the “sheep geek” (which I take as a compliment). Nanoo Nanoo has asked me to write a flock update for her. I am not much of a writer, but Nanoo Nanoo promised to proof this for me before I hit the “Publish” button. She has been a bit under the weather recently, but she seems to be getting better. That is good news, since all of us in the flock are always concerned about each other’s welfare. The shepherd guy and the nice lady have been fussing over her a lot too. You can tell they are concerned too: the bearded guy isn’t nearly as grumpy as he can be and the nice lady is being even nicer.

The first bit of news is that we all got sheared, just over two weeks ago. We suspected that it was coming, ’cause the  shepherd guy got busy cleaning out the area where we always get sheared. Then these other people we recognized from previous shearings, all of a sudden showed up together. I guess it all went well. At least a lot of us can see better, and the pregnant girls are happy to not be trucking around quite as much weight. It wasn’t too cold and the shepherds have kept the barn warm for us and upped our rations. The nice lady has apparently been busy sorting, skirting and processing our wool. She seems to mumble a lot about the work every time we see her. Of course, both of them do a lot of mumbling about how tired they were when shearing was over and how they don’t have all the energy they once had. They should try being in our hooves sometime!

A few days after shearing and all the equipment was gone again. We all had to gather together one day so that we could get our annual booster shots. (Some of us are better about that than others, but I won’t name names!) Believe it or not the shepherds were well enough organized that day that all of us who are not pregnant got fitted for new, clean jackets. That was kind of cool. Usually it takes them until lambing is nearly done before we are all dressed again. So here’s a picture I took of us during breakfast a few days ago. As you can see there are lots of us in our coats.

As I said, the pregnant girls get to go around without coats until a couple of days after they have their lambs. There aren’t as many of those ladies this year…only 34 by my count. I am told that this is another one of those “take pity of the aging shepherds programs”. In other words, they don’t want to work as hard as they used to do. I am pretty sure that the shepherds think that the lambs will be arriving soon. This morning they hooked up the “baby monitor” in the barn, something they always do before lambing. So we now have to be a bit more careful about what we say down here in our barn. The computer junky in me makes me want to juice up the power on that unit. If I could achieve that, I bet all the neighbors could listen to us on their radios whenever they wanted. (But I am digressing into techy stuff…sorry about that!) So, just to confirm that the shepherds are correct about lambing being near, here is the scene around the breakfast table this morning. If you can’t tell that these gals are due soon then you better go back to school.

What I can tell you is that we, in the flock, know pretty much exactly when the lambs will be arriving. We just don’t share that privileged information with the shepherds. But I do have permission to relate that lambing will begin on March 7th and should be over by March 26th. This of course assumes that some of the gals don’t become over-eager to get started or that some of them manage to keep their legs crossed.

On a sadder note, we lost one of our senior members yesterday. Rhett, who was our oldest ram passed away. He was such a handsome guy right to the very end. He spent the winter schooling the three ram lambs, a bit more peaceful environment that having to rumble with the  three other big guys. He got to spend the fall with a breeding group as he always has. I do know that he managed to successfully breed every ewe that was with him. That has pretty much been his history all along. In the last few years he mellowed down considerably. He was a favorite with the shepherds, and even though he was a ram we will all miss him a lot.

I can also tell you that we have had two major snow storms since shearing. It is the first time all winter that we have seen so much snow. I am glad that we don’t have to be out in it right now. It is sort of strange looking out the barn windows and seeing lots of snow. We get kind of used to it in January, but it gets a bit “old” when it happens in March. As you can see I am writing about the weather. That is probably a sign that I have just about expended the last of my literary potential. I better get this approved by NN, the editor in chief, and see if she feels it is suitable for publishing. Thanks for sticking with me on this!

—Queso

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Tale of Two Buckets*

Posted on February 26, 2012 by

*(My apologies to Charles Dickens for the title. It is as close as I will come to commemorating the 200 anniversary of his birth.)

Winter is a time when we get to observe some of the details and idiosyncrasies of flock behavior. Mostly this is due to the fact that we are closer to the flock for the entire day, since they are not spending time in some distant pasture. Especially while they are eating at their feeders in the barn, they are in a much more confined space. Just like us, most members of the flock have preferred places to eat dinner, or to stretch out during the day to relax. If we know that we have to catch up with a particular sheep to, for example change a jacket, we can easily guess where certain individuals will be found while eating. Lucy and Lady Harriet will always end up in at the feeder in the far northeast corner of the barn. Suzy is always at the feeder next to the “bay window” on the east. Kassia helps Hope sample the hay as Gretchen passes it over the fence to me for distribution. Before I get to the last three feeders, Kassia will abandon her sampling station and head for the third to last feeder. Hope, on the other hand, will wait until the last of the hay is served, just in case there might be an extra tasty handful still to come. Then she will cruise to which ever feeder offers extra head space without crowding.

Once the first bit of hay is consumed, the “drinkers” appear at the automatically filled waterer (which at that point has just been cleaned out). Winona is almost always there first, perhaps followed closely by Rice Krispy. Tessa and twin sister Tess are both slurpers. It could be pitch dark and we would know if they are drinking.

And so it goes with favorite lounging/sleeping spots. Some spaces are geographically preferred, other locations are dependent upon who is nearby. In some situations, if you look carefully one will notice extended generational groups. Even though Mindy is nearly 11 years old and her daughter, Nanno Nanoo, is 10, they will often be found within a general vicinity of each other with perhaps a granddaughter or two nearby. Other mothers and offspring could seemingly care little about each other. Here is a bunch, Wizzbang, Winona, Zahra, Windy and Nannoo Nanoo, just waiting for shearing to begin. Since pictures were being taken they would not reveal their lounging preferences.

Each year a couple of months before shearing, we place the previous spring’s lambs in a separate pen in the barn addition. This allows the pregnant ewes a little more space, peace and quiet toward the end of their pregnancies. It also permits us to change the lambs’ diet to aid their winter growth. It means that for a time mother and lamb will communicate with each other. After a while it does not seem so bad being just around the corner from each other. A few, like Winifred and her lamb, Alfred, still maintain communication.

This year there are 14 lambs in this group in the “new” barn. Each year they develop a unique group personality. This year’s group will always be associated with their water buckets.

This year we needed to replace the two heated buckets that we use in this portion of the barn. We purchased two identical buckets which now sit side by side. At nearly every feeding the right hand bucket has significantly more water left. My initial thought was that perhaps I failed to wash that one as well as the left hand bucket before first using them. Re-washing changed nothing. Out of curiosity I switched the two buckets. The next meal the right hand bucket was half-full and the left hand one nearly empty. And so it goes. This bunch of lambs have leftist drinking preference. You be the judge: Are these three lambs, Artemesia, Ainsley and Adelaide, and their buddies up to something? Is it a plot to confuse and confound the shepherds?

 

 

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Weaving and Waiting

Posted on February 12, 2012 by

We have experienced such a strange winter. To date our total snow fall has been miniscule. Temperatures have fluctuated abnormally and have tended to be on the high side as far as averages. We have had a couple of overnight lows below zero (our lowest so far has been -3° F (-19° C). On the other extreme, our high temperatures have reached into the mid 40° F (4°C) range. The biggest concerns for us, and probably for every other farmer in the area, are the overall lack of moisture, the lack of snow cover and the high temperatures. The lack of a blanket of snow threatens the safety of the alfalfa, especially if warm temperatures start to result in thawing and re-freezing of the upper levels of the soil. The warm temperatures also have come near to the point where fruit tree buds begin to break dormancy and swell. A following major drop in temperatures can damage the buds enough to compromise this spring’s cherry and apple blossoms and therefore the cherry and apple crop. The results from lack of moisture is virtually self evident. The greatest frustration is not being able to do anything to combat the problems caused by the weather.

On a personal side, there has been no snow for us to cross country ski or snowshoe. Outside fun and chores have been limited. It has meant that both Gretchen and I have had time for fiber projects. Hopefully, we will have lots of items finished before the gallery opens again in May. I currently have two projects going on two separate looms. My smaller Louët loom has been home for numerous scarves, most of which have, in someway, used some of our naturally dyed yarn.

Scarf and hat - all natural dyes

Weaving relatively narrow projects on the Louët also gives me a nice change of pace from the work on the larger Glimåkra loom. This winter I also tackled my largest ever weaving project. The project will end up as a blanket over 90″ wide. I do not have a loom that wide and if I did, my reach would not be great enough. To achieve that width I am weaving the blanket in “double weave”. For those not familiar with weaving, this process involves simultaneously weaving two layers, one above the other. On the right edge the upper weaving curls around and is connected to the lower level. The left edge is open. Once the blanket is off the loom it will unfold into one single piece. It is a weaving process that seems to go slowly (since two layers are being woven at a time). It is also a process that uses a prodigious amount of yarn. The picture below can only give an idea of half of the project. To see the other side one currently needs to crawl under the loom (which also makes it difficult to know if there are mistakes on that side).

The blanket will not be for sale, nor is it intended for our own use. It has a much more interesting history. It is a commission project for one of our long term wool customers. Commissions are something that I do not normally do. However, I was too intrigued to pass up the opportunity. The yarn is all handspun. The vast majority of the yarn is the product from many years of Quiche (one of our white sheep) and Uhlayla (one of our colored sheep). The wool is well traveled. Once the fleeces were shorn, they either went to the customer or directly to one of two fiber mills either in Wisconsin or California. There the wool was washed and carded into roving. It then went all the way to the east coast and the buyer. Over a number of years she has spun and blended the yarn. The next stage was to dye the yarn. Then it returned here, “home” again. Once here I measured the yarn, set it up on the loom, and have been weaving off and on this winter. I had to pause for a couple of weeks to wait for more yarn to be spun and dyed. With any luck I should have the blanket off the loom before we begin lambing next month.

Gretchen’s projects have been much more diverse than mine. She has been knitting, weaving on a rigid heddle loom and felting. The resulting output has included a large number of mittens and hats (some of which will go with my scarves), handwoven pillows…

Pillows from our natural colored wool

more pillows…

Pillows with hand-dyed yarns

and BEARS!

(Still waiting additional clothing before they dare venturing outside)

Shortly all of these projects will have to either be put on hold or fit into a different schedule. Weather permitting, the flock should be shorn before the month is out. Shortly thereafter, lambing begins again. The first expected due date is March 7th (five ewes). Even if the weather turns bad, lambing will not stop. That will be a good sign that spring is coming…sometime for sure.

 

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We’ve been on holiday (I think)

Posted on January 14, 2012 by

Hello fellow sheep and sheepy friends! If you have been wondering about us and our goings on I have returned to get you filled in. Ever since the shepherds started doing all sorts of electrical work for the farm I had been a bit concerned about trying to sneak into their computer. I figured that they were onto us or at least trying to set up some sort of security system to catch us. Queso assures me that it was nothing like that. She claims that they were just trying to make sure that the farm had a more secure electrical system.  For us that would mean, among other things, that we would not run out of water if the public power system went out. I guess that we will have to give those shepherds some credit in that regard. In any case, I figured I would try hacking into their computer again just to connect with the rest of sheepkind.

Since it is winter here, we have spent much of our time in the barn. A few weeks ago that was sort of spooky at times, what with all the construction noise just to the north of the barn. In addition we had frazzled electricians running downstairs into our quarters without warning us they were coming. Thankfully, that is now past history. We have been able to eat our breakfast hay in peace. The shepherds shook things up a bit a couple of weeks ago. It seems they figured that things were getting a little tight in our part of the barn. They were probably correct. We all have a lot of wool now and it does make us a bit bulkier. To remedy that situation the shepherd folks took all of this year’s lambs and made room for them in the “new” wing of the barn. The rams were of mixed emotions in that regard. They lost half of their cushy quarters, but they also got some company: 14 lambs. The boys are always excited about female company, even if it is across the fence! Come to think of it, I guess this rearranging happens at this time every year. We do not get to mingle with the young folks until after we are sheared, the next lambs are born and the pastures turn green. This is probably a sign that we should be getting ready to getting rid of all of our wool.

For quite a time now it has been hard to believe that shearing is getting close. Usually when that happens, it has been cold for a long time and there is a lot of snow on the ground outside. But aside from a couple of frigid days, life here has been pretty balmy. Because of the mild weather the grumpy old bearded guy has been willing to let us spend more time outside on the pastures. For a time we were starting to think that we were on holiday: lots of time in the sun and fresh air and no portable electric fences restricting us to small sections of pasture. It is difficult to believe that this is a picture of us way out on the first pasture, in mid-January.

The old guy neglected to tell us that the grass had not been growing. There was very little good to eat out there. You would think that the old guy could have done a better job of raising pasture for us! Nonetheless it was nice to be out there for all that time.

What the old guy does not know is that we had managed to figure out how to open the barn door and go out ourselves. (He thinks that he was just forgetful and did not get the door properly hooked. Little does he know….) Our only problem was that we have yet to figure out how to latch the door once we came back inside. We are still working on that issue. We may have to delay working out that problem since Mother Nature decided to take away our vacation weather. Yesterday it turned into winter. It has been blowing and snowing off and on. The temperature has dropped and it is nice to have the comforts of a clean barn into which to settle. (It seems the old guy and the nice lady did some real work for a change. They did quite a tidying up of our quarters while we were out.) So we are hunkered down and happy. Here is what our once warm pasture now looks like. It may disappear soon in the snow.

Repectfully submitted by Nanoo Nanoo

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