stonehavenfarm.com

Our blog has been down for a while now and although lambing has occupied nearly all our time this past week, I might have posted some lamb photos if I had been able to. It seems that we have lost the Wordpress page design, but for now being in communication seems great however blank the page!

There are 23 lambs on the ground now, with 2 more ewes still to lamb. The lambs are beautiful and charming (aren’t all lambs?) I can’t wait to see this colorful mob all outside; that will happen soon, but many are too young to leave the jugs at this point, and the weather is terrible…cold, wind and rain. And a couple of inches of snow today. It melted with more rain and wind. Ugh!

Although we have lost the great ewe/ram ratio we began with (and now there are way more boys than we would like), the little rams that have been born are gorgeous! So we won’t complain…too much.

Until I get the rest of the lamb photos organized, I will pass along some photos of our first lamb Mimosa…she was premature and began life with some cute up/down ear action:

But Mimosa is/was a beauty in every way…perfect moorit gulmoget markings, silky soft fleece….just a small package:

Now out in the world with Olivia, her indulgent mother, she is wild and bold and curious…but still a small package:

More lamb photos coming soon….we have guls, kats, and spots galore! This is a banner year….

I am in my motel room in Flagstaff, about to fly home tomorrow…joy of joys! And within the next week, all of our ewes will lamb! (the one true sign of of a shepherd’s spring).

But in Tuba City this morning (on the first official day) and my eyes and my nose met Spring full force…absolute heaven:

And the next time I come to AZ, I am driving instead of flying from Phoenix to Tuba City. The desert will be blooming then!

Winter is truly on its way out! On my last trip, only a month ago, it was really truly winter! There is NO WAY to ever catch up everything that I would like to share…but here is a brief photo reprise of that trip.

My flight from Phoenix to Flagstaff was cancelled because Flagstaff was buried in snow and I had to rent a car and drive in order to get to work on Monday morning. Coming toward Flagstaff, at Camp Verde, a lovely rainbow heralded the rain….that soon became snow (and disastrous road conditions nearer to Flagstaff):

Even Tuba City (where winter usually brings cold but little snow) was white that week!

That trip I was working in Tuba City for two weeks, and the in between weekend (when the weather had moderated), I headed down to Flagstaff and had a wonderful visit with Kathy and Ralph…and met all their wonderful cats (here is Kathy with Daisy Mae and her son Mooch…rescue cats that NEVER want to look back):

I was knitting a winter hat for myself (forgot to bring mine)…and Ziggy kept me company and guarded my knitting when I got up.

Not only did I get a cat-fix but a sheep-fix as well. Kathy took me to meet her sheep and we bundled up against the cold…as we were leaving, Ole (the official greeter) asked could he please come into the house too….he is desperately miserable out there with those sheep!!!

I did finish the winter hat; it kept me toasty warm and I liked the results…lots of increases above the rolled brim to make it tam-like, and at the top, an extra purl stitch and purl-2-tog to make the decreases stand up more.

Flagstaff winters are much like ours in Pine Valley, so I felt right at home, but coming back the next week to our own mountains was thrilling…I watching the Wallowas growing on the horizon as I traveled from Baker City to Halfway. So familiar…so beautiful to my eyes.

But now, even in all its beauty, I am ready to bid good-bye to winter….and welcome spring!

Here it is too late to write a post….BUT I can’t not share this one! I just glanced out the window of my motel room…..and to be sure that I saw what I thought I saw, took this photo:

Being separated from my sheep for a while now, I wanted to go down and hug this beasty (any ruminant in a pinch)…but thought better of it.

Well, it has been over a month since I had time or energy to post anything to our blog. Not that there hasn’t been anything to tell…there has been too much!

You left me on my way to AZ last month (in the Phoenix airport). Be assured that I did get to Tuba City (although that is another story), did work for two weeks, and did get back to Pine Valley! But once I got home, we dived into the final preparation for two days of shearing which happened 3 days later….thankfully Brook and Minden (our farm angel) did lots of the work before I came home.

I will put in one shearing photo here with the promise of more to come…this is Clint Goodwin of Northport WA who traveled several hundreds of miles to shear our sheep (we are very grateful Clint!):

After post-shearing organization, I began getting ready to leave again the next week….to visit my dear mother in OH, and then from there, back to AZ for another week’s work…where you find me now!

We are lambing 4 days after I get home from this trip, and to avoid a psychotic break, I felt that all had to be readied before I left.

SO…..no time to post, no time to breath! And now there is more catching up to do. But amazingly today finds me sitting in the motel room actually RELAXING! So I will try to write a bit, and hit the high points, doing it backwards….beginning with the most recent excitement in my life!

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I traveled to AZ a couple of days early but instead of driving north to Tuba City (where I work), I drove south and spent a day and a night in Sedona. There is lots to tell about beautiful Sedona, but my reason for going there was to find the trading post called Garland’s who sell only Navaho rugs, and who give the weavers a high percentage of the value for their work. I don’t know exact numbers, but am told that many Navaho weavers travel far to take their rugs to Garland’s because the other trading posts usually pay the weavers a small % of the retail price!

It was a joy to spend the time with Steve Matoon (whom we met last fall when Cycle Oregon visited Halfway). He taught me about yarn composition of the various rugs, and I learned pretty easily to tell which rugs were made from handspun and which from commercial yarn….although I found it more challenging to sort out which weavers used combined yarns, and some handspinning was uniform enough to resemble commercial yarn, but the colors tended to be more heathery, and the yarns spun exquisitely finely.

The rugs are expensive as you might imagine….most of the handspun medium sized rugs were priced in the $5000 to $7000 range… but considering the time and tradition in each one, that is as it should be. There were lots (!) that I wished I could have taken home with me. I love the “Two Grey Hills” pattern rugs the best, but perhaps that is because our sheep’s fleeces come in all those rich traditional colors!

I was at the trading post for much of the morning, and foolishly forgot to take any photos (too absorbed in the rugs), but here is one from Garland’s web-site. Steve brought me into this locked room full of antique rugs, and pointed out the evolution of the designs over time…the older rugs were simpler in pattern, but so beautiful:

More to come; I will actually talk about sheep sometime soon!