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I need some solace in my life, and that Katherine Matthews has created the 2008 Tour de Fleece is perfect for me now. (Thank you Nancy for pointing me in this direction.) Spinning from the zillion projects that call to me. An hour is quite a lot of time in a busy summertime day, but this is my challenge. And what I need right now, time committed to doing something I love. And I believe that this will serve me better than having a specific goal for my spinning….

Thich Nhat Hanh once said “Don’t just do something, sit there”. Sitting (and spinning) allows me to go deeply into who I am. To do this one thing. No thoughts, no pressures, no expectations of outcome.

to describe the angst and misery of the last two days. I have posted so little in the past 6 months, and too much of it has been about loss. I have so much to write about our recent trip to the Black Sheep Gathering, but all that seems far away and long ago…..

We lost our dear Lucy early yesterday morning and I still can’t believe that she is gone. Lucy and I have mowed, harrowed, raked together…she and I and her first team-mate, Lizzie, were the L-team. We understood each other and they knew that I would stop for them to rest whenever they were tired, that I would never ask anything that they couldn’t do….and there were always apple treats for them in my little box in the mower.

Lucy was a shy mare who was afraid of many things, who worried constantly, but who had learned to trust me…and I know that she felt the deep love that I had for her.

Lucy was the alpha mare….so healthy and vigorous, slick and fat as are all of the horses on our rich pastures. Not any sign of illness, eager to go out to the pasture in the morning, no inkling that anything was amiss….

Then Thursday afternoon, when the horses had come down from the pasture, we saw Lucy lying down and rolling. She was colicking…amazingly this happened when our vet was here (she came to see another horse who has been ill for months now).

Lucy had all the usual treatments immediately, but didn’t respond as she should have. Because of the nature of her colic, and the fact that the medications hadn’t completely eased her pain, our vet arranged for her to be seen at the Idaho Equine Center in Nampa, ID.

It took a long time to coax her on to the trailer; I am certain that it was because she was in so much pain. In the best of circumstances, the hospital is a dedicated 3 hour drive…we drove carefully, thus slower, to make the trip easier on Lucy. She could hardly walk once she got off the trailer, and so the examination took place in the open space between the hospital building and the barns. Her heart rate was elevated and there was a large amount of fluid in her abdomen, implying that some of her bowel had died…how much we couldn’t know. Everything pointed to a twist in the small bowel and therefore loss of its blood supply. She was too weak for an operation (the vet said there was a less than 5% chance that she would survive the anesthesia, let alone the surgery itself). Lucy was in terrible pain and in shock, and had to be euthanized. We were/are grief-stricken…too stunned to know how to cope.

When we came home last evening, all the horses ran down from the pasture, led by Bess (Lucy’s adopted daughter). Although we are always welcomed when we have been away from home ourselves, they have never been this intensely eager to see us. It was clear that they wanted Lucy, and were certain that we had brought her back….

I tried to explain to each of them, but I hardly understand what has happened myself.

We have been blessed with cool rainy days after the brief taste of hot weather last month. So the pressure of irrigating the hay fields is lessened, but most days, either the horses or one of the three groups of sheep need refencing into new grazing. Both Brook and I have been down with a persistent flu bug, and the two of us just manage to do one person’s work each day!

I have only recently taken some more lamb photos…I am always amazed at how fast they grow, even though I clearly remember how big the lambs have to be in June every year.

At one month of age, I can’t imagine weaning any of those little things until mid to late-summer….but we can’t wait that long for the lambs that are going to the Black Sheep Gathering. Now seeing most of them at two months of age, I feel so sorry for their mothers being nursed on by huge lambs, some of which are 2/3 their size!

Grace, of course, was our first lamb…she will be 3 months old at BSG time! Grace is going with me to Eugene, but will also be coming home! She and we are bonded too deeply for her to ever live anywhere else.

Every year this time, I have the unwelcome task of deciding who is on the sales list. Over the next little while, I will show some photos of lambs that are on it….today just ewe-lambs. This year we had lots of gulmoget ewe-lambs born, and I can come up with a reason to keep every one of them! So I had to approach by eliminating those who couldn’t be sold for sentimental or flock genetics reason (no, I don’t have a good business mind). That leaves three who are on the sales list now…two of these are spoken for.

Astrid has a beautifully soft frosty moorit fleece, lots of heathering. She is a bit shy now, but always near…Her mother is our Stonehaven Bess (MRSF breeding) and father Sheltering Pines Constantine.

Birgit is a daughter of Sheltering Pines Viole Conique and Cedar Haven Maximillian. She is a small compact ewe (like her beautiful mother) with a soft black fleece.

This is Runa, who is very hard to photograph! With Sacred Lily Towhee as her mother, and Constantine as her father, she got the “friendly gene”. Runa and her sister Hedda, are always there for attention (when some sheep jumps on my back, I know that it is one of those little monkey girls).

The last Constantine lamb that is for sale now is a solid moorit, Olga; at the most recent lamb evaluation, I almost took her off the sales list…her fleece is so amazingly soft….but we ARE keeping her twin. Their dam is our beautiful Leah.

There should be more ewe-lambs in this list!
I am trying…stay tuned.

Last week it was still spring…and chilly in the mornings and evenings.

Yesterday and today hot weather arrived, and the snowmelt from our mountains is roaring down into the creeks that stripe through our valley. There isn’t spot from which you can’t hear the water flowing! Soon the sound will intensify as rocks are tumbled along with the rushing water. So thrilling to see all that water; so distressing to be able to capture only a fraction of it for irrigation.

We have begun using that water (irrigation season began on May1), have already made the first watering cycle through our 5 hay fields, and are well into the second cycle. Lots of walking for us and for the dogs, but it is good useful exercise, and the green pastures and blooming trees are lovely.

We have just begun to sprinkle irrigate the sheep pastures, and are grazing all the sheep full-time. Such a good feeling….

The lambs were gradually and safely introduced to the electronet fencing, and all seem very respectful of it. Until last week, they had only seen the little green blades of grass around the periphery of their winter pen…now in grass up to their tummy-level, they are thrilled to be “sheep”. The first day they ran a bit, but now when they and their mothers are turned out each morning, they are “all business”!

This is my mother’s 88th year. It has been a tough one for her…last December she was diagnosed with ovarian carcinoma that was widely metastatic within her abdomen. She was in a great deal of pain and the prognosis wasn’t optimistic. But she decided to have chemotherapy, all from her own wish to try to fight. My brother and I told her we would support whatever decision she made, but felt so very helpless.

After 10 weks (on Valentine’s Day), a repeat CT scan showed that 95% of the tumor was gone! Mom is quite weak from the chemo, and of course, has lost all her hair, but she has maintained her strong will to live. She has wonderfully supportive friends, the dearest of whom is Ruth, who despite complexities in her own life, spends most of the daylight hours, and all nights with my mother…making sure that Mom eats well, sitting up with her when she can’t sleep. When Mom started to lose her hair, she and Ruth began knitting hats, and have had a creatively good time doing it!

We don’t know what the future will be, but my mother has had some good months that she didn’t expect to have. Yes, she is weak and tired (and lately has battled a virus that took advantage of a low ebb in her white blood cell count), but she is stolidly continuing the chemo through next month, and then will be treated with another medication. We knew at the outset that a complete cure was not likely, but her progress so far is miraculous. She is so brave and we are hopeful…

We have had some unsettled weather….today it snowed again, but didn’t stick. The March-like cold and wind are not what the pastures need!

But the past two days of bright haze have been perfect for photos…I went out with my trusty camera and took loads of lamb pictures. There are little ones who haven’t been photographed beyond the regular newborn documentation…and some who always get my attention.

This is Vega’s ewe-lamb. She is as well-marked as her mother, but will have Maximillian’s longer fleece. I think that she will be amazing…just what I was hoping for from this cross. Brook said with a sigh “well, there’s another one that isn’t leaving”.

Since I have posted one katmoget, it seems only right to show you the others. This big fellow is Sylva’s boy, who is getting more handsome by the day. He is Willym’s son and looks like another perfect cross. He has to be for sale though…the katmoget ram position is taken.

Hope and Willym’s tiny katmoget boy is still the smallest lamb, but perhaps the mightiest! Willym’s softness and the fineness of Nicolas’s line (Hope is a Nickel daughter) gave this little guy and his brother and sister beautiful fleeces. By the look of this little fellow’s muzzle, he got Hope’s Ag…and will likely fade as he grows.

Plein Jeu’s little ewe is the darkest katmoget we have ever had in our flock. Her ears are straighter now; I think that she is will be a very pretty ewe. And it feels like she is growing horn buds!

She is sweet and funny…and a bit of a monkey!

This is the promised photo of Hope’s triplet ewe-lamb who was adopted by Raven. She will be musket like her mother…and has the same soft silky fleece!

And here is Raven’s own lamb, a real beauty with a soft perfectly uniform fleece. She is going to be (is) a looker:

As I was taking photos, I realized that I hadn’t seen Grace in a while, so I went looking. She was trying to dominate the kelp feeder…but when she saw me, she was all innocence!

Better get on with the day…soon it will be time to go out and put the sheep in for the night. And to spend time sitting and schmoozing.

Here it is, now 12 days since the last lamb was born! So much catching up to do…on the farm, in the wool-room, in all aspects of our lives…and on our neglected blog. This post is something of a photo gallery, but only a smattering of the photos taken…more to come.

All the ewes and lambs are out in the winter pen (the pastures still haven’t grown enough for grazing), and there are wild lamb races morning and evening. Sweet mothers, so attached to their lambs at this stage, worrying about them, calling to them. We stand and watch spellbound; chores take much longer than usual these days!

Our eyes are always drawn to Hope’s little katmoget fellow, who is right in there with the larger lambs, running and playing. He was the tiniest of her triplets (born weighing 2#13oz), but is one of the most rowdy lambs we have. Hope is such a good mother; this is a typical scene…she gathers her two ramlings up, and puts them down in an out-of-the-way place for naps.

Raven is raising the third lamb, a beautiful little musket ewe….photos soon.

Sheltering Pines Plein Jeu gave birth to the darkest katmoget we have ever seen, but this is our first kat from UK genetics; we don’t have a standard of comparison. So far our katmogets have been from Dailley lines (this year, Hope’s kat ram and two others are of this breeding). Photos of Vega’s ewe-lamb (by Cedar Haven Maximillian) and Sylva’s ram-lamb (by our Willym) later in another post.

Jeu’s girl is a Maximillian daughter; her fleece is lovely, but her ears are still a bit rumpled…she was a very big girl and Jeu had no room to spare:

Sula’s lambs are exquisite (as usual), with more luster than we have ever seen. They are visible from across the paddock, even in a large group of lambs; they positively glow! What a perfect cross with Constantine…sadly not to be repeated as Sula is retiring this year.

A bit of comic relief: Runa (one of Constantine & Towhee’s girls) isn’t the first lamb who has ever climbed on Amelia’s back (she does truly love the lambs). But this went on for nearly 10 minutes, lots of jumping and pawing….much too much for even the kindest soul. Amelia ultimately rolled over and suggested that Runa leave!

Leah’s ewe-lambs are growing fast and her musket gulmoget girl is changing color almost daily. She is indeed spotted, but soon her musket-self will dominant…and she will turn light all over. Such fun that she will still carry the gulmoget pattern, and can pass it on (plus her gorgeous fleece) to her lambs one day.

No post would be complete without a photo of Grace. So sedate and MUCH too grown up to play with the other lambs, but she has made friends with Leah’s quiet little girls.

More sweetness: I found Sheltering Pines Viole Conique’s and Maximillian’s little twins all cuddled together one day in the nursery….so beautiful!

Last but not least: The lambs seem to know that the tiny blades of grass just outside the fence are important to them….heads through the fence every day, but no-one gets caught. Thank goodness we used the little brass lamb-tags this year!

I love the rear view!

Spring is here (more or less)…the other day, we had 4 inches of new snow, but by afternoon it was gone again. Thank goodness! I love snow; I love winter, but for goodness sake, it is April. The sheep should be grazing soon; we need bright sun and maybe a bit of warm rain.

The good news is that all our lambs have been born now! The week of April 3 began with 5 lambs on the ground, but over the next 8 mostly sleepless days and nights, 23 more lambs came into our lives in fairly rapid succession. At one point, we had 10 lambing jugs (pens) filled with moms and babes.

But now, the jug panels have been removed except for one housing Plein Jeu and her little katmoget ewe-lamb. Tomorrow they will join the few ewes and lambs left in the nursery area; the others will go outside to become part of the melee of lost lambs and anxious mothers…

Outside, Poppy and Amelia are such good guardiennes, and always come over to greet their new charges….Amelia (in particular) loves the little lambs and often lets them climb on her.

All of the lambs have nice uniform fleeces and good conformation…some really truly exceptional ones in this group. It is going to be so hard to create a lamb sales list!

Lambing stats this year:

28 lambs, 17 ewes, 11 rams
9 sets of twins, 1 set of triplets, 7 singles
9 gulmoget ewes (6 black, 2 moorit, 1 musket)
1 gulmoget ram (black)
2 katmoget ewes
2 katmoget rams
8 solids/ blacks or moorits
4 Ag/ greys or muskets

And now to sleep, dreaming of….lambs!!

I tried to write a post on Saturday, but never finished it. Lambs have been coming too fast. That morning, we found a ewe in labor….not Sula, not Bess, not Eva.

It was Leah, who hadn’t even been on my short list of ewes due now! Leah seemed disturbed by the other sheep being out, likely because a lamb that she had focused on in her mother-mind had gone from the barn. She baa-ed and fretted, and labor was stuttering. But eventually she gave birth to a BIG strong ewe-lamb. She weighed just under 8 pounds, but looks even bigger than that!

What a beauty! She is Constantine’s daughter, and so is gulmoget, but her fleece is multi-hued. I think that she will prove to be a musket like her mother. We can’t tell yet if the light and dark patches are spotting (Leah does carry spots).

An hour later, after we had settled her and her single lamb in the jug, Leah surprised us with another lamb…a nice size moorit ewe!

Saturday afternoon, Eva gave us ram/ewe twins, sired by Nicolas.

Then dear Sula finally settled down to lamb…

She faded a bit and her labor was not strong, but she got through it all with lots of support from CMPK and TLC from us. This will be her last lambing….but at 11 and after giving us many exceptional lambs over the years, she deserves to retire. Sula ended her career with two typically beautiful lambs…an 8 pound black ram-lamb and a 7 1/2 pound black gulmoget ewe-lamb. There weren’t any others in there…just these two…looking three weeks old!!!

Sunday morning, Raven had a black gully ewe lamb. (Photos later.)

A few hours after that, Hope lambed too. To my eye, she had looked as though she might have twins this year.

She had triplets, sired by Willym. A fawn katmoget ram-lamb, a moorit ram-lamb and a moorit ewe-lamb. The little ewe was the most vigorous of the group, so we put her with Raven in the next jug. Hope didn’t notice that she had only two lambs left, and Raven adopted the ewe-lamb immediately. Hope thinks that her “twins” are beautiful….and Raven and her two ewe-lambs are a study in mother-love.

Here I sit awake in the middle the night (early Monday morning). Dolce just had the first of Maximilian’s lambs. She is a first time mom, but morphed quickly into a focused, fiercely protective mother. Her lamb was up and nursing in no time. I only had 45 minutes in the barn…arranging a jug, things are crowded, getting her electrolyte water and hay, and reorganizing sheep to keep others out of the nursery (where Bess is supposed to be getting on with it)!

SHE, not Dolce, was the one I was listening for on the intercom. I am still listening…Bess is baa-ing, baa-ing, and Sylva doesn’t look that far away from lambs. So bed is likely not a possibility!