Meet Zeus!

I would like to introduce you to the newest member of our family. This is Zeus:

He is a Border Collie. A bit over 2 months old, tri-color, very sweet and very smart. I'll probably jinx it, but I have never had a puppy this young with such good toilet habits. He was born in a box stall on a horse farm and confined there, as the breeders were afraid the horses would step on the puppies if they were left to roam. The owners bred their female on purpose, then decided after the puppies were born that maybe that hadn't been the smartest thing they ever did, so the puppies ended up at a nearby rescue. He was at the rescue for less than a week when we picked him up this past Wednesday evening. He sleeps through the night (although those nights are pretty short right now), has yet to have an accident in the house (although we are pretty vigilant about taking him out when he wakes, after he eats, etc), so far has ignored the Xmas tree, which is still up, but is very interested in the cats' litter box. He is not afraid of the goats or the sheep (of course, they are on the other side of the fence at this point in his life). He responds well when we tell him "no" for inappropriate behavior. He does seem to be curious about chicken poop, but it is hard to avoid that on a farm. At the moment, he is curled up behind my chair here at the computer.

It is wonderful to have a puppy in the house again, although I did hope to sleep beyond 6:15 this morning. Oh well, I've lived through sleep deprivation before in my life. But I think I was better able to handle it in college! So if you see me on the street and I don't respond - well, I might be sleep walking!

Happy New Year!

And this year, I will try to post here more often. I would say that this is my New Year's resolution, but that would just be asking for trouble, as I don't think I have ever stuck with any of my resolutions. But I did so poorly at posting last year, that it shouldn't be too hard to improve this year!

Looking back on last year, in addition to not posting on the blog, we started our new business venture, which most of you know about, if you still read my meager posts. Hearthside Fibers began in earnest just after the first of the year, we did about half a dozen fiber shows, I finally got the Etsy store launched in the fall, I set up a Facebook page and we placed our product in the local yarn store, Kaleidoscope Fibers, in Lake Mills, WI.

In the coming year, we are already booked into an additional one or two fiber shows and are considering a couple more. I plan to get more product into the Etsy store. We are adding a few new yarns and rovings.

On the sheep and goat end of things, we have downsized the commercial/meat sheep, but have retained most of the goats and fiber sheep. So for our fleece customers, we will have Shetland fleeces in a few months (and some of those fleeces look absolutely gorgeous "on the hoof"), a few Icelandic fleeces, maybe some mohair and a few other assorted fleeces off of the "pets" that we didn't sell. Lambing/kidding begins at the very end of March, and may continue into June, as we still have one ram in with a few of our ewes - he was put in as a clean up ram, just in case the ram lamb we originally had in with that group didn't do his job!

Not much in the way of pictures with this post. We have had very little snow here in SE Wisconsin so far this winter, unlike much of the rest of the country! So no pretty scenery shots. Very odd for us and I am nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop. There is no way that this mild weather and lack of snow can last much longer. Today it is hovering around freezing, though, and the winds are brisk, so I am glad that I will be sitting in the living room, watching the last regular season Packer game (GO PACK!) instead of in Lambeau with my cousin and his girlfriend.

So, since every year I try to get a decent picture of the Xmas tree, I will leave you with best wishes for the New Year and a shot of our tree from early Xmas morning -

Going Forward Into Fall

If there is anyone out there who is still following this blog - well, thank you for hanging in there. No excuse really, although I like to say that I have been busy.

We have survived the hot summer weather and are now enjoying the cooler, and sometimes rainy, fall days. Today the temperature was fine - almost 60 - but we had some rain. We have three young Nigora goats who sometimes graze our backyard and today, when it rained, they took shelter in the most convenient spot they could find. The picture is a bit blurry, as I have a new camera and forget to adjust the settings, but Billy found shelter in an old rabbit cage that we have under an overhang off the back deck -

I must say, that while I love my sheep, goats certainly are entertaining!


The summer wrapped up for us with a couple of fiber festivals. Yet another picture of one of our booths - this one at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, WI - the show was a success and we can't wait until next year!

This is what our barn looked like before the festival began:

And this is what it looked like the rest of the weekend:

My favorite weekend of the year! This was our first year vending - and while it was loads of fun and financially rewarding, I did miss spending the weekend with our sheep in the Hall of Breeds, talking with festival-goers about the pros and cons of the different sheep breeds, seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

And speaking of the sheep, we are downsizing a bit this year, as we switch our focus to the fiber end of the industry. We are already booked into several shows for next year and I am finally getting some work done on getting an Etsy site set up (since I can't seem to master Zen Cart for our web site). Tonight I was finalizing the choreography for getting the sheep/goats all moved around to their respective breeding groups. The plan for this year is three Shetland breeding groups, one non-Shetland group, one goat group, a bachelor boys group and a group of lambs/kids who are not ready yet to be bred. I'm sure the rams are ready - at least it seems that Gallifrey is saying "Let's get this show on the road, already - I could go for a little female companionship!"

Yes, I'm Still Here!

I know I haven't posted in a couple of months. I don't know why. I've taken pictures, intending to get them here on the blog. I could have posted more about the end of lambing. Or getting ready for Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair. Or the dreadful heat that we have had on certain days (we are about to get hit again with heat and humidity and I am not looking forward to it). But I guess I just haven't been very talkative.

Here is our booth at Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair. The weekend was disappointing. And I know we weren't alone, as in talking to other vendors, they were saying the same thing. Several don't plan on going back next year. Larry has family living in that area, though, so for us it is a good excuse to get together with them, even if we hardly cover the cost of getting into the show in the first place.

And since I don't have a lot of good things to say about that show, here are some goat pics. We haven't decided yet who is for sale and who is staying, but I think I would like to keep this little doe here on the farm. She is just adorable.

The kids fit through the fence and help themselves to whatever they like in the yard.

At least they are grazing clean "pasture"!

Below, you can see the mommas in the background, in the barnyard where they belong. And the kids are out climbing on the old hay bales, having the time of their lives.

We have started weaning the oldest lambs. The kids will be weaned soon. We are downsizing the flock drastically this year, so many of the ewes are going to market as soon as their lambs are weaned. The Shetlands have to be photographed and those that we decide are for sale need to be posted on the web site. But very little will be done in the next few days - I think I mentioned we are in for an extended period of heat and humidity? I could really go for a couple of inches of snow right about now!

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!