stonehavenfarm.com

The time has come: I promised sheep for sale would appear here…and so I will begin.

We are making up the sales list and have two ram-lambs on it so far; these are fellows that we have a high level of confidence in…not very good grammar…and whose genetics we have safe in other boys. One of these young ones is now promised, but this handsome lad (Higgins) is waiting for just the right home.

He is out of Dodge Cascadia (a super-soft horned moorit ewe) by Shady Oaks Spats (a perfectly marked black HST with an equally soft fleece).

Higgins is the ideal ram for those who love single-coatedness and crimp, and he is very balanced in all his qualities…excellent conformation and tail, wide sweeping horns and a uniform fleece carrying the softness of his parents.

He carries spots and did have quite a lot of white on head and neck as a lamb (click to biggify),

but all that has faded now to some sparkles on his forehead. His twin is a wildly spotted yuglet. Those two were a real trial for their mother (you may have seen this photo last spring….it still makes me laugh):

Higgins is cautiously friendly, but very polite and respectful (he has had an iron-clad good beginning). He is only for sale because our ram-flock is much too large…and we are retaining rams from both of his parents.

When anyone asks how many sheep we have, I always answer (truthfully): Too many! This is part of an effort to try to turn that around…

Yes, I am still alive….

Between haying time and so many weeks of work away from home this past month, there has been precious little time to catch up on blogging. Haying our fields is finished, with the hard work done by Brook and his dear brother Lewis (who came out from Maryland to help this year).

Lewis shares Brook’s “oneness” with machines and had a very short learning curve at mowing and baling. He loved it and says that he will do it again next year! What a saint he is….

Lewis’s friend (and ours) Katherine came out the second week to join us…actually she and I arrived in Boise the same day and drove to Pine Valley together. Katherine and I tackled the garden and weeded, weeded, weeded. When I had to move on to other things, Katherine kept working in the garden….bless her.

They both live in more urban areas, but have farmer’s hearts….here they are as “American Gothic”:

Brook ran the balewagon, picking up hay, and moving them to the barns as Lewis baled…and after I got home, I helped him position the balewagon for each stack. He manages on his own, but it is so much more time efficient with me on the ground.

We came up short on hay this year, as did almost everyone else that we know….an idiosyncrasy of the long cool spring? Our delays in irrigation while getting the wheel-lines set up? Who knows? The result of all this is that we are haying some leased land this week while I am home to give us enough fodder for winter for our (too many) animals.

This field is an alfalfa/grass mix and so will go into the older barn where the bred ewes will overwinter, and be half of their daily hay ration while they are growing next year’s lambs.

Speaking of lambs and too many animals….I will be putting lambs and adult sheep for sale on the blog in the next few days. Hopefully on a brand new “sheep-for-sale” page that (our brilliant and talented) Ben is creating for us. I have hesitated to ask him since he is so busy with paying clients….but he says that it will happen soon. Stay tuned….