Hello sheep fans! This is Brie, your faithful scribe from Whitefish Bay Farm. The old bearded guy up at the B&B keeps talking about sharing the flock news, but it seems to have been a long time since he has followed through on his promises. Therefore, at the urging of the flock council, I have decided to fill you in on what is really going on here, instead of all this silliness of blooming flowers and bugs in trees.

The flock managed to make it through winter pretty well. It was colder than usual, but those shepherd folks kept us pretty comfortable. Sadly, we lost a few members of the flock this winter due to the complications of age. They are really missed by the rest of us. (I believe the shepherds also miss them too.) There are now 75 of us in the flock. We all got our hooves trimmed in December and January. At that time the old guy and the nice lady also got us changed into larger jackets. Some of us really needed a bit of breathing room. Of course that all changed in mid March, when we all got sheared. After that we all received clean, fresh jackets. Some of us have already put on some needed weight since shearing and produced enough wool to warrant a second jacket change. We were definitely ready for spring and grazing on fresh green grass, but somehow it just did not want to materialize like it usually does in May.

Finally it did start to look green looking out the barn doors and windows. We could tell that things were improving. The grumpy shepherd became grumpier because of all the repairs he had to make after the tough winter. But when we saw that he was taking the movable fence posts out of the barn we knew we were in luck.

On May 21st we finally made it out. It was a beautiful cool spring day with lots of sunshine. And here we were grazing for a first time in a long, long while!

First day of grazing in 2019 at Whitefish Bay Farm

We did remember to take Queso’s old camera with us, but we were too busy and happy eating that we did not get around to taking photos for a while. But eventual we decided it was time for pictures. Here is Ariel with a big mouth of grass and a smile on her face.Ariel with a mouthful of grassDorte took some time to just enjoy the sunshine and cool breezes. DorteAstrid, was her usual serious self and just kept on eating. Astrid

I forgot to tell you, but there are guests showing up at the B&B again and they of course are visiting. As you can see, that first day we were too busy to pay them much mind. The folk entaining humans But now we are also in our entertainment mode. We have had some good visits already. Now all we need is a string of days without heavy rain to keep us indoors! It was good to visit with all of you; we hope to see you soon!

Respectfully submitted by Brie