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We choose only a few ewes to be bred for spring lambs in an effort to keep our numbers down. As a result, some excellent quality rams and ewes are marking time here, and need to be fulfilling their potential in other flocks. This post will list rams…ewes to follow soon.

First and foremost…the two yearling rams who are tentatively on our sales-list have grown up to be excellent examples of their breed. There are actually four yearllngs that we would have liked to keep as breeding rams, but we have too many to overwinter in our ram-flock, and are forced to these decisions.

Valiant

was linebred for fleece quality and is a son of Cairn Farm Nicolas out of a Centaurus daughter (Viola). He is a mild mannered ram who also has great conformation, good tail and wide-sweeping horns. He carries Dailley lines and some Flett genetics. His fleece is intermediate, soft and dense.

Nighthawk

is also by Nicolas and has excellent structure, slightly smaller stature (a definite plus), and classically shaped horns. He is a bit shy, but very calm and respectful. He has a uniform intermediate fleece with lots of lustre, was born a flecket and so carries spotting genetics.

Olav

is another one of the sheep-for-sale that I wouldn’t mind at all having to keep! This young lad is a grey sired by Sheltering Pines Constantine, and out of a ewe (Bess) who is from our foundation MRSF lines. His fleece is gorgeous and looks to be a dense single-coat.

Olav broke the horn shell from his right horn as a tiny lamb, but the horn growth and direction seem to have been unaffected, and it matches the newest growth on the left perfectly.

If we had fewer rams, Olav would stay here through next summer, but as it is, he will be sold with a horn guarantee. He is a Constantine son, and is very much like his father….great body (an especially strong rear end), a correct tail, and laid-back temperament.

Stay tuned…more for-sale sheep in following days (this promise forces me to make decisions I have been putting off!)

This year we were bringing yearling rams to the OR Flock & Fiber Festival. We have never traveled to a show with yearling boys in the fall when hormones were rising…but the ones who were coming were all calm respectful fellows and I thought that the trailer space would allow for three.

But since I didn’t make it to OFFF, two of the yearlings (Gyasi and Callum) won’t be seen anywhere but here on our blog or on our farm (at least for a while)…unless some wise sheep show organizer decides that classes for mature animals should be created.

Gyasi (sired by Robin Goodfellow) was given this name as he is the “beloved child” of our dear departed Guro….she doted on him, kept him by her side constantly. She must have known how special he was. Gyasi has grown up to be the kindest, most polite young ram we have. Sweet-tempered and friendly but never pushy, always respectful, and completely trusting.

Callum (son of Baltazar and Dodge Cascadia) was to go with me too..He was born with a solid moorit fleece, and no apparent pattern (aside from being a solid Aa/Aa). But in the last few months, Callum has developed interesting facial markings, with teardrops initially, which now have spread somewhat. At first I was wondering if he could carry the English Blue pattern (one not necessarily related to color), but he has none of the variations in body fleece color. So he remains an enigma…but a beautiful one. He was for sale, but by the time that he developed the tear-drops, we had already taken him off the sales list (his fleece convinced us that he should stay). Needless to say, Callum will be in our breeding line next year.

There are two very promising ram-lambs who were to show….This is Loki, born of a golden cross from two fine-fleeced parents (Nicolas X Moonstruck). His fleece has the exquisite silkiness that I love, and as his parents are now retired from breeding, Loki will stay here to carry those lines.

The second ram-lamb is Matteus, who is a friendly but a respectful young fellow. He gets much less attention than he would like and is gently pushed away fairly often..so hard for me to do, but necessary. Matteus is a half-brother to Loki, and they are very alike, although Matteus has a super-dense single-coated fleece, and Loki’s is a bit longer.

Stay tuned…this weekend is the SSS&T (Shetland Sheep Sales & Trade) on the Shetland Breeder’s List. More sheep-photos to come!

We were planning (have been planning for a long time) to go Canby, OR to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival this weekend. I had careful photos of and halter trained (mostly) the sheep who were going with us. Organized the display, packed everything necessary for the two-day show, and was all ready to load up the trailer.

But yesterday, the electrical system on our truck malfunctioned in a dangerous way: The brake lights came on randomly and intermittently, even without the key in the ignition. And when the trailer was hooked up to the truck, and the light circuit became activated, the trailer brakes came on…locking up so that we couldn’t move.

We didn’t have time to be sure that the problem was solved, and couldn’t risk traveling 7 hours to the other side of the state with the possibility of the trailer braking suddenly and without warning. So the sheep who were going to show, those who were going along for the “ride”, and those who were for sale all are staying home…as am I.

I was so excited about this particular event…usually showing is the necessary price that I pay to be there with my Shetland clan, but this time I really did want to be there in the ring. Ah well, it wasn’t to be…

And here I am with all the photos I took…and no one will see them if I don’t post them here!

I am totally in love with Beata (Sula’s last-ever lamb…and such a gift). Her name means “blessing” and that she is:

And of course, there is Grace (our darling)…

She must be the one that they were thinking of when they wrote:

“There was a little girl who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead
And when she was good, she was very very good,
And when she was bad, she was horrid!

Grace gets in the middle of everyone else’s halter-training (SHE doesn’t need training), leaps/clambers over sheep panels when she is excluded, and climbs the barn loft stairs and flings herself off just for the fun of it!

And then there was Solveig, who is such an elegant princess. She is curious and friendly at heart, but does draw the line… “please don’t touch my fleece”):

This little sweetheart was/is for sale…she was a triplet by our Willym and out of beautiful Hope (a Nicolas daughter). She is a gorgeous little girl, should be going to the perfect home. We are retaining too many ewe-lambs this year; otherwise I wouldn’t think of selling Anja.:

One of these little gulmoget girls was perhaps going to be sold; I couldn’t decide which…or if!
(Is THAT why the truck cancelled my trip? Indecision? Or so that I didn’t have to sell any of the three ewe-lambs????)

Siri is a fawn gulmoget and Helga a musket gulmoget.

I will post photos of the boys who didn’t go to Canby tomorrow…sigh.

“An event horizon is a boundary in spacetime, an area surrounding a black hole…light emitted from inside the horizon can never reach the observer, and anything that passes through the horizon from the observer’s side disappears.”

That is where we seem to have spent our last two weeks!

There were intense days getting ready for, and an equal number of days picking up the threads of our lives after a very special event: Cycle Oregon came to visit in Halfway! The population of our little valley exploded…about 1200 souls live here in normal times, but during those two days, we were joined by around 2700 traveling with Cycle Oregon!!! It was a mind-bending experience….after they left, it was hard to fathom that many people had actually been here.

The folks who do this ride come from all over the world; they are supported by an amazing infrastructure while they bicycle from 50 to 80 miles/day. Meals and camping accommodations are included as well as bike and body maintenance….

During their visit, Halfway and Cycle Oregon collaborated for food, music and dancing, and local artists and artisans here in Halfway village gathered as an Art in the Park event. I didn’t think to take a photo of our little tent, but we were there too. We met lots of wonderful folks, exchanged stories and the cyclists bought mementoes of their visit from all of us.

We sold out of my Gansey hats and I have orders for more. The throws made from our Shetland wool were admired, and some of them went to new homes. And we sold yarn and spinning kits (drop spindle & 4 colors of roving)…there are a few cyclists now doing a new kind of “spinning”!

The second day, Pine Valley farms and craft studios were open for visits;
we offered a farm / wool tour:

and an open house at Brook’s guitar workshop:

By now, we have worked our way back to almost normal, but soon the “hecticity” of getting ready for Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival may drop me inside the “event horizon” again!

I am here, just invisible….

One of the problems with having “too many” sheep is that small percentages equal bigger numbers.

When we had fewer sheep, the 1 to 2% who might become ill or injured didn’t accumulate all in one year….we didn’t notice many issues. We were oh such clever shepherds with very few problems. Once in a while someone was unwell, but it wasn’t often.

Now with over 100 Shetlands, there are enough sheep here to make the small percentages noticeable. Are we less effective as shepherds? I hope not; in fact with time and experience, we may be able to prevent some of the crises. But then there are those that are unavoidable…especially if one keeps rams.

Sunday evening, right in the middle of the holiday weekend, I found Centaurus at the barn when all of the others were grazing. When he moved, he bore no weight on his left hind, and it wobbled as he moved toward me. He had broken his leg…or rather someone had broken it for him. There seemed to be a single fracture line through the canon bone just below the hock; the joint seemed fine. The skin wasn’t broken and so we put a splint on it with what materials we had, confined Centaurus in a pen in the ram-barn…and waited out the long weekend.

As you can see from the photo above, the ending is a guardedly happy one. We took Centaurus to the vet on Tuesday morning, he was x-rayed and the fractured fragments realigned to their normal positions. The vet put a super-splint on him (effectively a cast, but in two parts with padding and elastic adhesive tape). He was such a gentleman, hobbling into the clinic on his lead-line, tolerating the x-ray equipment despite his painful leg, and calmly allowing the vet to shave one side of his neck to find a vein (in order to sedate him for repositioning the bones).

Centaurus is relatively happy now turned out in an isolation paddock with Achilles, a wether son of his (of the Achilles horn…not heel). He is a good companion and Centaurus has settled into a rest/ graze cycle…emphasis on the “rest” part of this equation. He doesn’t try to bear weight on his broken leg, despite the stable secure splinting, but walks on his other three legs. I am sure that the effort is considerable….

We hope that he will heal and be able to stay with us. Keeping a ram alive with a broken leg seems like a poor livestock management decision, but Centaurus is too valuable to lose in this way. He passes on his fine lustrous fleece and near perfect conformation to his lambs more consistently than any ram we have ever used. He also seems to sire a majority of ewe-lambs! There have been only two other sons (who have moved on to other flocks) plus Achilles, but we have kept several Centaurus daughters. With this near-tragedy, we are aware that we would like to have a son here to carry on. Insurance….