Kids and Lambs

Last night, when I would normally be in my jammies and watching a little TV before bed, I was helping a new mom deliver a baby. This is Elfine, a Nigerian Dwarf goat, and her new little buckling, who appears to have more of an Angora fleece like his papa. She is a wonderful mom and both were doing fine this morning.


And another of the Nigerians, Sequoia, who has two little bucks, one brown and the other, pictured here, who is brown and white. Their fleece is more "Nigerian-like". This is Billy, with his mom.


Shetland lambs, so far, have been mostly ewes. This is Fontina with her moorit (or maybe musket) ewe lamb.

And the newest member of the flock, Arcateen's moorit gulmoget ram lamb, who was born sometime last night or early this morning while we slept. He looks a lot like his papa, Tarpan. Gotta love those Shetlands - he was all dry, fed and sleeping in the barnyard with his mom when Larry did the first check this morning. (For those of you who know that I never put our Shetlands in jugs - a few of the Shetlands ended up with the "BWS" and they have gone into jugs and then into the nursery as I "funnel" them out into the Shetland pasture to rejoin their flock. The majority of the Shetlands are lambing on pasture without the "benefit" of jugging, since they don't really need it - they bond so well with their lambs and are very protective by nature.)

I'll have to check the lambing sheets, but we must be at about 50 lambs and kids at this point. The majority of the "big, white sheep" are done - we still have six or eight Shetlands and Icelandics to lamb and most of the goats - although I'm not sure all of them were bred, some are still slender with no udders. Lamb percentages are down a bit this year - feed quality wasn't as good. But the lambs and kids that are on the ground look good. And such a variety - Shetlands, Icelandics, Coopworths, Polypays, goats. Colors and patterns. It's like Christmas!

Dress Rehearsal

Well, the fiber is mostly all packed and ready for Spin-In this weekend. Just a few more skeins to label. We had a dress rehearsal this past weekend: This is the main part of the "store" - there's more towards the front of the booth, but the camera was dying and this is the only decent picture I got. But we're pretty pleased with the way it looks - now on to the main event. Set-up is Thursday - the vendors are open for business on Friday and Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Just Checking In

Not a lot to blog about lately, although we have been very busy. We are almost daily dyeing yarn and roving, in preparation for our first fiber show - Wisconsin Spin-In - Pewaukee, WI at the Country Springs Hotel - April 7 - 9 - click the link for more information. We are Hearthside Fibers - look for us if you are there. We're on schedule for product, I think we have just about everything we THINK we need - of course, that list could be different than what we find we actually DO need, come the weekend of the show! Just so you have something to look at in this post, here are some of our yarns - I think these are the fingering weight highland wool that we will be selling.

Yep, after studying the closer shot, I have identified these correctly.

In other news, we sheared the sheep (or rather, Roger sheared the sheep) last Wednesday. Only a few glitches this year, starting with the day we moved the half of the sheep that weren't already in our barn. The majority of the sheep and goats moved fairly easily - three of our Jacobs, though decided they were not coming with us. We tried enticing them into the barn with grain - not successful. In fact, one of them leaped over the fence, ran around the goat pasture, then decided it did not, in fact, want to run away to the neighbor's. So she leaped in with the goats, decided that wasn't right, leaped back out and finally made her way back to her Jacob buddies and leaped back in with them. At that point, we decided they could stay put and we left them where they were. I am again trying to train them to the grain bucket, so maybe, if they are bred, we can reunite them with the rest of their flock here in our barn, where we are equipped for lambing. But, as I said, the rest of the sheep and goats were fairly cooperative and the rest of the move went fairly well, in spite of the fact that the farm is a sea of mud and a fairly large pickup truck pulling a good sized livestock trailer filled with many animals does have a tendency to get stuck in said mud. But, in the end, all of the animals got into the barn and, although the truck and trailer are very muddy, they are not stuck. Must see the glass as half full. (By the way, our Nigerian dwarf goats were the easiest to move - they did not come over for shearing, but after, in preparation for kidding in a few weeks - they followed the grain bucket right onto the trailer and hopped right off when they got to their destination - I sure wish the sheep would behave that well.)

The day of shearing went smoothly - except for the two Shetlands that managed to squeeze through the fence and escape - I'm not mentioning any names, but Lavender and Maia still look awfully woolly! I will most likely throw (well, not literally) them up on the fitting stand and shear them with the hand shears in a few weeks. Maybe if I wait long enough, they'll roo for me. By the way, to my customers - the reserved fleeces have been skirted and those customers have been notified. The remaining fleeces will most likely not be skirted for a bit, as we prepare for Spin-In - but as soon as I get the new web site up and running and fleeces skirted and made ready for sale, those of you on our customer email list will be getting an email.

Lambing/kidding does not start here until mid-April - many new ewes and does this year, so it could get interesting. Fortunately, the "veterans" are all good moms and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, shouldn't cause us any headaches. I hope the new girls all do a good job, too.

And, for a parting shot - our washer died quite awhile ago - and our dryer was making an unearthly screeching noise every time we turned it on, so we finally took the time to replace them. Fuzzball thinks the new dryer is grand!

Introducing Hearthside Fibers!

I haven't posted in awhile - as usual, my excuse is, "I've been busy"! I took holiday pictures, intending to post them, but that didn't happen. This is what I have been doing instead of posting:

Those are hand dyed rovings, dyed right here in our "dye kitchen".

And we have hand dyed yarns as well:

Just a small sampling of the hundreds of skeins we will be taking to Spin-In in April (April 7 - 9, 2011). It will be our first show - if you are anywhere near Pewaukee, or planning to be anywhere near Pewaukee at that time, mark your calenders!

This is loads of fun - I usually start my day by putting some fiber in to soak, then washing the fiber I dyed yesterday, then dyeing the previously mentioned soaked fiber. Larry and I have "packaging" days - he skeins yarn, I label product. And he has been wonderful in taking over feeding most of the animals (I like to work in my PJ's and really hate having to throw on jeans first thing to feed all before I start in on the fiber). I do still tend to the chickens, the guineas and Alexander Goose, so I do get out each day and get some fresh air!

In other news, THE PACKERS ARE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!! I will not be working next Sunday during the big game - I do not want to be distracted even for a fraction of a second by needing to rinse a skein of yarn or some other silliness. I have been a Packer fan for 50 years and I do not intend to miss a moment of this game.

The rams are still in with the ewes, as the weekend we were going to remove them from their harems, it was extremely cold - I believe the girls are probably all bred, as there has been no courting going on for weeks now. I'll suffer through a late lamb or two if I must.

No sheep pictures today - I wanted you all to concentrate on the fiber - the label will say "Hearthside Fibers" - we decided we wanted something cozier for our fiber line than Maplewood North, although that is also on the label, just in smaller print, below "HEARTHSIDE FIBERS" - remember the name (I'll let you know when we finally get around to creating a web site - at this point, we thought product was more important). And come to Spin-In, if you can - we'll be there!

Blow That Horn!

I would like to briefly blow my own horn. In the summer of 2009, I contacted Interweave Press, sent off some Polypay fleece samples to Amy Clarke Moore, the editor of Spin-Off magazine and Carol Huebscher Rhoades, the author of their Fiber Basics articles. I talked to Carol at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, where she teaches some of the Wonders of Wool classes. We emailed several times, I sent some more fleece, took some sheepy pictures, figured out how to transfer said pictures to a disc, signed the appropriate releases and in the winter issue of 2010, our Polypay sheep and fiber were featured! If you look on the left side of the magazine cover, you will see (under "Try these fibers!), "Polypay (what's that??)"

And inside, they answer that question in the form of a Fiber Basics article,written by Carol Huebscher Rhoades and using several of my sheepy pictures and spinning up our fiber for their samples! That's one of our ewes in the picture below.

The entire Polypay spread is eight pages, including pictures and projects. I have to say, we are just thrilled with the article - my 15 minutes of fame, I guess!

More New Additions!

OK - I think this is it for 2010 - additions to the flock/herd, that is - hopefully not blog posts, although I have been very bad at updating it lately. The flock has changed dramatically in the past few months. We still have the Shetlands and the Coopworths and the Polypays - and one Clun Forest - and two Dorsets - and a handful of crossbred ewes. And you know, if you have been reading along, that we added some Icelandics and a Jacob earlier this fall - and some Angora goats - and some guineas - oh, and we still have some rabbits and some chickens - and one gorgeous, but mean rooster - he might have to go. But anyway, I digress.

We have recently added some more Jacobs - I think this is the wether - hard to tell sometimes, when they no longer have the normal male equipment.

And we have added some Nigerian Dwarf goats. These should be the two wethers, Jack and Dexter, although I'm not sure which is which yet. They love the fallen leaves from our London Planetree - somebody tell me quick if those are poisonous.

And a few more Jacob ewes. Although this is only one of them. Must be Zola? She is supposed to be the friendliest, and as the others were hanging way back, I'm deducing that this is she.

But the cutest ones are the Nigerian Dwarf girls. This little girl is very friendly - her name is Magic, I think. She would stand forever letting you scratch her chin, neck, back if you had the time. (Stasia, if I have all the names wrong, I apologize - let me know!)

Two more of the Nigerian girls. They come in all colors and are just the cutest things. Although what in the heck am I going to do with them? This is a fiber farm, after all. I guess we will have to make some goat cheese or maybe some goat's milk soap.

Or we can breed them to Valentine (aka Bucky), our new Angora buck and maybe get some nice, fibery Nigoras. That's him in the picture below, sort of in the middle, with the orange ear tag. It was very hard to get a good picture of him, as he was very intent on breeding one of the girls and only paused long enough for me to get this shot. He came from Bleating Heart Haven in New Holstein, Wisconsin - and after he jumped a solid wall that must have been close to five feet tall and tried to bash his way out of our truck, he settled down nicely for the trip home and is now behaving himself. Although if he didn't have all those lovely girlfriends, I'm afraid he might jump the fence and head on down the road!

And we also now have a goose. Alexander came from Tuppinz Farm with the sheep, as he thinks he is a sheep - and as Tuppinz Farm no longer has any sheep, we felt he should come along with his "family". So, while the goats and sheep rode in the livestock trailer, Alexander got the back of the truck to himself, where he settled down on the rubber mat for the three hour trip to his new home. Here he is getting to know some of his new sheep family - some of our Coopworths.

So, the breeding groups are now all together. Lambing/kidding will begin mid-April. With all the different breeding groups and the bachelor boys group and the lamb/retiree group, I have 9 different pens/pastures to feed, water and check on every day (well, that's stretching the truth a bit, as a couple of those groups have big bales of hay, so I don't really have to feed everyone every day). But for the next six weeks or so, I basically need a checklist so I don't leave anyone out! So here's hoping the rams/buck do their job and we have lots of bouncing babies in five months!

New Additions

We have added some new animals to the farm, thanks to our good friends Stasia and Jeff. When we brought home the Angoras in August, we volunteered to help them with their exploding guinea population. We took four keets off their hands. I'm not sure they even noticed, as they have dozens and dozens of the things. So we placed these four guys/gals in a small rabbit carrier and popped them into the back seat of the truck. Covered them up a bit, thinking they would think it was nighttime and settle down for the 3 hour ride home. Well, they weren't fooled one bit and chirped and sang and complained all the way to the first rest stop. Where we took their carrier and removed it to the back of the truck to ride the rest of the way with the goats! My advice to you, is never try to travel with guinea keets in the vehicle with you - VERY NOISY!

But I have always wanted some guineas, and "Mr Opportunity" was knocking! Here they are in our brooder, which was their temporary home until we got something bigger set up for them:

They have since moved into a dog kennel enclosure in our barn, complete with multiple roosts, while they get a bit bigger and become attached to our barn, so that at some point, when they are allowed to free range, they will still come home at night.

On our next trip to Stasia and Jeff's, we picked up a few sheep, including some beautiful Icelandic ewes, two of them pictured below. Thank you so much for allowing us to bring all of these beautiful animals to our farm.

And, because the majority of the animals on this place have to be productive - we are trying to bring in a bit of income, after all - we obtained this Icelandic ram at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival last month:

This is Oliver, who we purchased from Rick and Laura of Queso Cabeza Farm over in Michigan. He was the champion Icelandic ram at WSWF. I'm not sure yet whether or not I like the fact that he is polled, but he has a beautiful moorit fleece, which I promptly sheared off just after this picture was taken:

He's a lamb, so I'm hoping he is assertive enough to stand up to our Icelandic girls who are a few years older. We're hoping to have nice lambs out of them in April. I can't wait, as Icelandics are like Shetlands - it will be like Christmas, waiting to see what colors/patterns will be on the lambs when they are born! Already getting impatient and the breeding groups don't go together until mid-November!

Well, must get going - according to the Weather Channel, it looks like the rain is gone, at least for the time being. But the sun was shining half an hour ago, and now it appears to be gone. Hope I didn't miss the nice weather for the day, blogging. Cheer for the Packers tonight! We're playing that Brett someone and the Vikings!