Solstice Sheep Of The Day - Kaala

With the way the draws have come, with so many matching their real personalities and traits, I expected to not see Kaala until Sunday or Monday.  

Kaala got here in 2018 and her first shearing here was 2019.  She was the very last sheep to be shorn that day.  In 2020 she was again the last sheep to be shorn.  In 2021 she was the last.  In 2022 she was second to the last.  I don't remember where she fell in 2023, but it was definitely in the last two.  She was at the end of the line again this year.

Some sheep figure out to just go on through.  Most fall in the 'wherever they land' category and some sheep put it off to the last minute rather than just get it over with.  This frequently happens with lambing too.  You know who the early lambers are going to be and the same couple of ewes will always be at the tail end.

Kaala has spent this year teaching people how to spin yarn.  Her fleece is perfect for this because it's not too long, but not too short and has just enough gray running through it that you can easily see your angle of twist.  She's in all the drop spindle kits these days.

Kaala likes treats, but what she really likes is to wait while everyone else goes out to graze in the morning because she's figured out Liddy, who also waits, get a special breakfast and she's figured out how to capitalize on that.  

Going Off In A New Direction

There are a few things I'm known for...and we are going to skip the first couple of them ;-).  If you've been around me any length of time you'll know that I am notorious for my lack of color.  My car is gray.  My truck is gray.  I wear white turtlenecks all winter and most of the time you'll find me wearing a gray t-shirt during the summer.  

Gray IS a color!  There are lots of grays!  You can make all sorts of them by mixing different amounts of black and white Jacob wool together!  It's just maybe not as exciting to you as all the other fun colors most wool crafters embrace.  Whatever ;-).

In the last couple of years I've gotten interested in punch needle crafts.  I enjoyed sampling rug hooking with wool strips several years back, but didn't want to get started having to collect a stash of different colors of wool fabric.  Punch needle is done with yarn.  I can make my own yarn as I need it and I can...ahem...dye it all sorts of colors.

During shearing over at Tring Farm we pull out the nicest fleeces for hand spinners and the rest, because there is no commercial market for anything but fine wools anymore, get used around the farm for mulch, erosion control or...nothing :'-(.

As I set one of my favorite sheep's fleece on the dump trailer last year I started thinking about how else to use that wool.  Miss Piggy is old and her wool is nothing really special...but it's Pigs...so it's special to me.  So are her daughters, The Piggly Wigs.  And Pocket and Double O and Mims and Holly and Posey and Maybelline and then there are all of Annemarie's favorites.

While they might not be sexy young sheep fleeces, they'd make great rug yarn!  And the next Lamb Camp yarn was born.  Lamb Camp...Old Friends.

I decided to ask the mill for a mix of worsted weight and bulky weight yarn.  There are different punch needle sizes for each, with the smaller yarn and needles offering a bit more option for detail work and the larger for a heavier weight rug you would actually walk on (!).

When the yarn came back earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very pretty and much softer than I'd expected and it would actually be just as nice knitted as it would be woven or punched, especially the worsted weight.  I should have trusted the old girls :-).

 

Here's where things get really crazy.  Since I'm a bit color challenged, I've been a little hesitant to make any big dyeing plans.  I did dye up a small amount to match the basic colors that someone else developed for last year's winter postage stamp collection.  I needed some color inspiration...or at very least a kick in the backside.

Yes, I bought two boxes of Nothing But Color :-o.  These Color Cubes provide all sorts of information for aspects I'm not even positive what they are yet, but they're inspirational for sure.  I'm looking forward to learning all sorts of new things.

Stay tuned for more colorful posts and more information about my ideas for punch needle designs and yarn kits and even perhaps some colorful knitting!  We'll have the new yarn available for the Bluegrass Yarn and Fiber Crawl starting this Saturday and I will get it added to the website soon.

March

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Good Help

"I can't believe you were going to start without me."

"I don't know who thinks they're in charge around here."

"So this is what you're using."

"Doesn't look too hard."

"Interesting technique."

"Well, I guess that's one way to do it."

"This sheet feels about the right size."

Archie took lots of breaks...

"It's important to make sure everything stays secure."

These are my friend Rebecca's sheep.  She's been bringing them over for shearing for many years now.

"You should probably add a strap up there."

"It'll ride."

"And that's a wrap."

Shearing doesn't happen without a lot of good help and this year's crew was the best...including Archie...most of the time ;-).  

Weekend Wrap Up

I'm going to try something new.  I've actually been thinking about doing this for a couple of years, but apparently needed the FB debacle to push me to actually do it.  

The Plan - even if I do some blog posts throughout the week (the ideal situation), I'm going to try to do a Weekend Wrap Up post that picks some important IG posts and shares them over here and on FB.

I hate that there are so many good (frequently really good) memories stored over on IG that never make this searchable blog.  While I don't care much at all about FB, I do care about the people who follow me over there and who are now missing all the daily posts.

At some point maybe I'll figure out a way to fix the FB issue, but at this point, a few posts are hopefully better than no posts.

And while there is much of this past week that I'd like to forget, that's not how life and farming works, so without further ado...the first Weekend Wrap Up.

* * * * * 

I'd like to start off by saying thank you for all the kind comments, messages and notes about Blossom.  I knew that was going to hit a lot of us really hard.  I still can't believe she's gone, but I hope she's out grazing along the creek with Hank and dancing in the moonlight. 

If you'd have asked me last Saturday, I'd have said shearing went great.  It did, as far as shearing goes.  Once again, after weeks of really nice weather, we got hit with a horrible cold snap and honestly I think it was worse than last year because it was still blasting us with a miserable cold wind today, eight days later.

I am definitely not going to forget any of that because it's going to dictate how I schedule things next year.  In the meantime, let's remember everyone out grazing that afternoon, the last warm day, and enjoy seeing Biscuit and Muffin still grazing side by side just as they have done since they were lambs :-).

Here's a short flock walk from Monday evening:

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While I don't like the story behind this picture, I do like the picture.

Jared was miserably cold.  On Wednesday, he finally felt well enough to leave the barn and sneak out to get his special second breakfast.  I nearly cried.  He started improving every day after that and was almost back to normal this afternoon.

On a happier note, I heard the first Purple Martins chirruping Friday afternoon.  They'd have been happier a week or two ago when it was warm and there were bugs everywhere, but they'll be happy tomorrow when it warms back up.  

This was a screen capture using the Merlin Bird app.  If you aren't already familiar with that, check it out.  Big fun!

While it might appear that I've just been wandering around lost in the Alaskan wilderness, I am still working on my Iknitarod project.  We'll get there eventually.

* * * * *

Okay, this wasn't too hard and on a better week, might actually be pretty fun to put together and hopefully I'll do more than just hit the high spots.  There were more pictures on IG and some pictures that never even got shared over there, so maybe I'll do a couple of catch (further) up posts.

On to the new week!

My Favorite Sheep...Of The Week

This week's Sheep of the Week is Burrnie :-D.  

Burrnie's story isn't anywhere near as harrowing as Renny's was, but it's not for the faint of heart either.  He came out of a horrible neglect situation and was rescued by Nistock Farm back in 2013.  He moved here in February of 2014 and has been a fun addition to the flock.

I teasingly call him a Sesame Street character because even though his wool is a creamy white, everything else about him, like his hair and skin is yellow.  Even his dark red "eye score" (a way to check for anemia from parasites - dark red is good) is tinged in yellow.  I'm sure he has some Tunis in his background.

Burrnie loves being here and loves sleeping in the the barn with all his friends.  He used to always sleep right in the middle of the stall in the middle of everyone, but I'm starting to find him sleeping on the "hill" between the inside and outside stalls lately.  I think he does that because he's starting to have some trouble getting up :-/.

If you scroll back through the blog and IG, there are quite a few pictures of Burrnie sound asleep at the night check.  He frequently doesn't even wake up as I walk through and tell everyone good night.  Even after all these years I still love to see him sleeping like that.  Everyone should feel that safe and secure.

This is as close to a baby picture as we have, taken while in quarantine at Nistock Farms.  You can see how he got his name.  It's hard to believe he was ever that small.

"I'm pretty big now and my eyes aren't nearly as bugged out. I've never gotten covered in burrs like that again, but I don't mind my name.  I'm proud of being tough enough to get through all that with the help of some nice people."

"Here is me getting carried out to the car when I moved to Kentucky.  I was much fatter by then, but Andy just scooped me up and carried me all the way up the stairs and out the door.  I don't think he could do that now haha."

There are a ton of good Burrnie stories if you scroll back through the blog.  I'd forgotten about his first cookie party and putting him out with some of the boys and Daniel causing so much trouble.  Or that he and Maisie used to be good friends.  There are a couple of references to that.  Maybe one of the best stories was Bill shearing him blindfolded.  Burrnie's always been a good sport.

Burrnie has a fairly short fleece, but it's on the finer side so a bit softer than the longwools.  I spun and knit a hat for Robin from what I could salvage from his first shear and I've used it for felting several times. Burrnie's main job here is just being a happy sheep :-).

Thank You, Eleanor

I am not the original "crazy sheep lady".  I laughingly introduced my friend Eleanor that way to some friends years ago and she fired back "Oh, you ain't far from me, sister!" When I decided to start using social media and found punkinsmom already taken, I became thecrazysheeplady.  Eleanor's husband is Saint Thom and Tim became Saint Tim.  They have both earned those names.

I would love to tell you a bunch of great Eleanor stories about bottle lambs we've enjoyed sharing and old sheep and good horses and great dogs and how she gave me Ewen McTeagle all those years ago...but I just can't.  It still stings too much.  Eleanor passed away fairly unexpectedly at the beginning of the year.

We traditionally shear sheep in the middle of March.  It usually works out okay.  This year, after so many weeks of way too hot winter weather, many days well up in the 70s and even one 80 degree day, the forecast for this weekend tanked. 

If it would have been possible to reschedule to a less frozen weekend, I sure would have, but shearing dates are hard to get and there was no way the sheep could have made it until much later in the spring.  I knew it was going to be rough, but I also knew we have a good set up and the experience to manage everyone as best we could.

Still...after a day of wind and rain on Friday (the pre-shearing fasting day) and the temps falling down into the 20s, I felt awful.  I hated sending my sheep to a cold bed on pretty much empty stomachs and I was so unhappy about them having to deal with a low of 19 just after being shorn the next day and 20 the following night that I sat in the kitchen and cried.

I want to stress again that if there had been any way to reschedule, I would have.  It would be almost impossible for me to shear 27 sheep myself and just 24 hours before they had been so hot that they were trying to shear themselves.  I knew that a couple of cold nights would be much easier and healthier than weeks of too hot, no matter how sad it made me.  

Just before the last night check I turned on my computer and saw a message from Eleanor's daughter.  

"Are there any coats or anything you need for any of your old sleep? I didn’t realize how much extras of things mom had and I’m not sure she did either lol"

She did not know we were shearing in the morning.  She did not know how upset I was.

What would possess Little E to send me a message about sheep coats for my old sheep at 10:13 at night on the night before a shearing I was dreading like no other.

Out of the blue.

.

.

.

Out of the blue.

I know where these coats came from.  

Thank you, Eleanor.

The younger sheep were all tucked into the middle stall together.  I'd added some extra wind breaks and we'd bedded them deep with fluffy straw over the warm straw pack.  I fed extra hay at midnight and while they weren't warm, they weren't miserable.  Everyone in Easy Breezy was happy with their jackets.

This morning the young sheep were all unsettled, up moving around looking pretty cold.  The coated sheep were still tucked in comfortably and sound asleep or happily chewing cud.  

We did not shear Rocky yesterday because I felt that at his age and after the rough winter he'd managed to make it through, that it would be safer to shear him myself once it warmed back up.  I can handle shearing a couple of sheep ;-).

Once the sun came out, everyone was much happier and the afternoon has been in the upper 30s and "warm".  I pulled the coats off of Maisie, Blossom and Short Round for a few minutes because I figured out a way to put two coats together to make them longer.  Maisie will still probably "show her butt"...but not because her jacket is too short ;-).

"Phbbbbbt!"

Both Maisie and Blossom walked over to me to get their coats back on when I finished.  Short Round was already settled into a hay bed on top of the compost pile, but I bet she'll be happy to get her coat back on his afternoon, too.  She didn't even question it last night.  

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I'm so grateful that you can enjoy some sweet dreams, Maisie.

March

Apple changed their software for making the Memories and I had a ton of trouble getting the month end compilation put together.  When I finally got it to sort of work, I no longer could find the setting for length and it ended up almost 10 minutes long.  

I manually pulled out pictures and videos...and more pictures...and more pictures until I finally had it down to around five minutes.  I still felt it was too long for anyone besides me to watch, but when I really couldn't pull any more pictures out I had to just accept that March was one busy month!

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Haircut Day

First up, Short Round.  She marched into the chute from Easy Breezy like she knew exactly what was coming.  I just love this old ewe. I wasn't expecting much from her fleece, but I salvaged quite a bit and tossed it in the washer and it's actually quite nice :-).

The Ellie Monster.  I was afraid she might be sassy, but she did just fine.  

She and her momma, Short Round, have something sweet planned for their fleeces :-).

Muuuufin

Still very black!

Jared aka Big J

After you get your hair cut you get to go eat grass in the yard. It was a bit drizzly, but no one seemed to mind.  Yard grass is a good treat!

Mini Moose, now being called Macro Moose :-o

It was actually mostly wool...mostly.

Amos helped push sheep from the big pen into the catch pen.

Lots of Pinto pictures because his family wasn't able to come watch...and we all love Pinto pictures ;-).  Here he's listening carefully to a discussion on catch pen/chute set up.  Big Moose (looking on) is not paying any attention and is only thinking about ways he can get in trouble once he hits the chute. 

I love how intently he's watching :-).

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Tabitha on deck

Maisie on the board.  She behaved herself...as best she could :-D.

And Amos has the last sheep penned.

Great catch, Rusty Ewe!

Another shearing in the books.  It is always a huge relief to have this out of the way.  We had yet another great crew this year and I'm so thankful for everyone's good help!