Today's the day!

The big day has finally arrived! Our new pole building goes up today. Above you can see the cleared area in relation to our house. It's pretty close so I won't have far to go when doing chores and lamb checks.

The workers are out there now putting in the posts for our new building (below). The sheep all went out to the back of the electronet enclosure, but now they've returned for water despite all the commotion and machinery. The weather forecast is for rain today, but the sun is shining and now and the guys are shirtless already.

Below is a shot of Amber and Abby, Cordelia's twins who will be going to live south of the Twin Cities after weaning this summer. These two are so friendly. Amber, the musket in front just wouldn't leave Bill alone when he came out to look at lambs, so she sold herself. They are 25% UK and sired by Windswept Boggart, so they are pretty nice lambs. I added another shot of Abby so you can get a better look at her too. She's got a very nice fleece and what a face.






We're almost out of hay so I have to run up to the auction at noon. I'm hoping to have Rayna and her mom out today to look at some of the other sheep for sale too. And I really should be fixing up my house for the graduation Open House on the 10th. But the lambs and fleeces and sheep keep calling for my attention...

Time just flying by

We've been so busy around here getting things ready for the new pole building. It involved moving the sheep shelter and fencing as well as clearing out all the bedding/manure, and taking out several trees. Of course the sheep loved eating all those fresh leaves! They make a big fuss now whenever my husband goes out there, hoping he'll throw a few more branches their way.


The flock is finally all shorn as of last Saturday when Jim Peterson came out to finish the last eight sheep. You can see in the photo above that our 7/8 Shetland wether, Willy (in back) and our BFL ram, Dougal are getting plenty of groceries...


This is a shot of Gillian before shearing. She looked much better that way. The poor old girl was pretty thin and we didn't realize how thin until shearing day. Her lambs are doing just fine and she's looking better now too.



The lambs are growing so quickly! Here are our two katmoget ewe lambs out of Bombarde, Lucy and Bailey, they are Ab/Aa. The ewe behind them is River Oaks Hannah, she's an F2 Holly. I was surprised to see what a rich moorit color she is after shearing. I guess she's not going on my sales list after all! Her sister Hattie is a very rich black too. Their mother was grey, so I'm very happy with such solid colors on these two.

Pictured below is Derra, one of our Shetland mule lambs. She's getting so big! And I'm glad to say that her tail has fallen off already.



Well, I can't believe Memorial weekend will soon be upon us. Time to get the garden tilled and planted!

Getting ready for a new pole building

No new lambs since my last post. Had to cancel the shearer yesterday morning due to wet sheep. We don't have facilities to lock up the whole flock right now.

We made some temporary housing to provide shelter while we clean out and move the Megahut to make room for our new pole building. The temporary shelters were made from T-posts, cattle panels and tarp. We made one for the rams and one for the ewes. They do use them. In fact, we found out in short order that lambs will climb right up to the top if you have too much of a slope. The lambs are like little mountain goats! We didn't want any broken legs, so we squeezed it in a little closer. These panels had a bit of a bend, so we didn't get a perfect arch on the shelter in the photo above.

Check out the three tone coloring on the back end of Bailey, our little Grey Katmoget ewe. She's got some white spotting on her face and ears too. Very soft fleece on this girl.

Here's another look at our shetland mules, Delia and Derra. They are so sweet. Still cautious of us since the tail docking incident.