Fall Fiber Festival this Saturday!

I am going through my fiber and finding lots to sell this Saturday at the Fall Fiber Festival in Hopkins, MN.  I really haven't been up to speed on selling my fiber for a couple years and I have so many beautiful natural colors of Shetland combed top and roving!

I'll also have Bluefaced Leicester combed top and roving; some raw fleeces to sell; raw and washed Cotswold, BFL, and BFL/Teeswater locks; felt pelts; tanned sheepskins; Bluefaced LeicesterX, Wensleydale/BFL, FinnX, Karakul, Lincoln, Icelandic, Cheviot, Suffolk, and English Leicester roving and cloud.

Hopefully there will be room in my van for all the fiber, pelts, and some felted hats. It's going to be a fun day, hope you can stop by if you're in the area. Hours are from 10-4 p.m.
In other news, I have a purchase agreement on my house! If all goes as planned, we'll close before Christmas. I'm going to be busy these next few weeks getting everything moved out. Things really accumulate in 28 years of living in a house. I've been working on downsizing all summer, but I think a roll-off might come in handy.

The weather this past week was incredible. I took advantage of the warm temps to get three fleeces felted in 24 hours. My body is feeling it now.

The beautiful fall leaves are history, but it's still so nice and peaceful to work outside by the wood-fired oven.

Sid hatched out 35 baby quail last week. They are SO tiny! We're planning to use them for meat and eggs. I thought it would be fun to make pickled quail eggs to sell at the Farmers Market next summer.

 The breeding pen is set up and my Teeswater ram, Jester has been busy. I'll be breaking them up next week.  He will be available for purchase anytime after November 15th. He's the sweetest ram and his fleece is absolutely amazing.  I hope to get a bunch of ewe lambs from him again this year. I am keeping 5 of his daughters in my flock.

Hobby Farm and Sheep for sale

As some of you know, my place is on the market. Click here for more information on the house.

I love my house, Stan and I built it in 1987.  We skated on the pond...

We planted gardens and fruit trees, built two barns, fenced and raised poultry and sheep.  Being on the end of a cul-de-sac means there is very little traffic, so no worries about pets on the highway. The neighbors here are simply the best, most helpful, caring people.  This place has been perfect for me and my animals... But the time has come to move on in life.

I'm in a relationship with an amazing man who can build and fix anything, is an excellent cook (Italian), and he actually wants sheep! But most important, he makes me feel alive again. Life is about moving forward, not living in the past.

Sid's noodle-free lasagna made with zucchini, eggplant, and wild mushrooms from a neighbor's yard.

So I am relocating my studio and animals to Ogilvie, MN.

We built a nice pole barn, but we have no pasture there yet.  We still have to fence and the sheep will have to clear out the woods.

I have decided to sell four of my registered Bluefaced Leicester ewes and my yearling Teeswater ram, along with some purebred Shetland, TeeswaterX, and BFLX ram lambs.  I also have two small Teeswater/BFL ewe lambs for sale. They were the smallest in sets of triplets. Very sweet friendly girls with beautiful lustrous locks, but too small for breeding this fall. Please check my Sheep for Sale page tab above for details and pricing.

I will be heading to Jefferson, WI for the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival September 11-13th with as many sheep as I can pack in my new-to-me miniature horse trailer. I will be teaching a Raw Felted Fleece class there on the 13th, so I need to leave enough room in the trailer for all the class supplies too.

I'll have two pens in the Stock Exchange barn at WSWF.  I hope you will stop in and see the sheep, I can't wait to see everything and everyone at Jefferson!

Another Ewe Lamb!

Some things are moving along at a snail's pace it seems and others are going way too fast. I have moved ten lambs to Ogilvie and the remaining 25 sheep are still at my place.  We haven't gotten fencing done because we've had to wait for the dirt work to be finished around the new pole building and the rain keeps delaying the dirt work.  The lambs are in the lean-to portion on hay for now.

Lambs at Ogilvie. Lucy in the center is 3/4 BFL 1/4 Shetland. Pi on the left and Clyde on the right are purebred Shetland ram lambs.

We plan to build another cattle panel and T-post shelter for the ewes at my house to get them out of the pole barn. That way the pole barn will be clean and dry and ready for potential buyers. :-)

Good news! River Oaks Mystery delivered a 7.8 lb. single ewe lamb unassisted on July 25th (she's a first time mom at age four). She's a great mother. I am SO happy that her lamb was sired by Jester, my Teeswater ram! You can see the resemblance in these photos.

I can't wait to see the Shetland/Teeswater fleece!

Grazing the side yard in Mora. The lambs are getting bigger!

4th of July Already?!?

 
I can't believe it's already mid-summer. Hope everyone had a good 4th of July. Sid and I went to Wahkon to watch the fireworks on Mille Lacs Lake. Half of the fun is sitting on the lakeshore watching the people. The other half is watching the fireworks going off all around the lake. We've had some beautiful weather so far this year.

The strawberries did especially well, and Sid's homemade cranberry wine turned out excellent. Life is good!

Sid in the new barn weighing one end of the 26' white oak tree trunk.

We got the center pole for the spiral staircase this week. It's a white oak tree trunk. It came from our friends' farm and weighs 890 pounds. According the rings, it's 84 years old. It will be the focal point of the main floor here in Ogilvie, but I'm afraid we need to make a hole in the north wall of the house in order to get it installed.

The new barn in Ogilvie is finished, but we still need to do some dirtwork before we can put up fencing for the sheep. I can't wait to get the flock moved to the new farm and see how fast they clear the brush. I will need to invest in coats for all of them.

Good news! It looks like Mystery is pregnant after all. She's bagging up and her belly is looking pretty big. The bad news is she chose to wait until after Elvis (the Shetland ram) left. So the sire of her lambs is either Mason, my Bluefaced Leicester ram who jumped the fence at the end of January and stayed with the ewes through February -- or Jester the Teeswater ram. I'm keeping a close eye on her because she's 4 years old and this is her fist time lambing. I didn't intend for her to start off with crossbred lambs.

I've decided to sell all my registered Bluefaced Leicester ewes. I have three 4 yr-olds and two yearlings. Ruby, a triplet yearling out of River Oaks Rita, is in the photo above. I love the Bluefaced Leicesters, they are all excellent moms, but they all delivered healthy triplets last March and I really do need to reduce my numbers.

I am really excited about the Teeswater cross lambs' fleeces.

I will keep most of the TeeswaterX ewe lambs and my BFL/Finn and Wensleydale/BFL ewes.  Maybe a couple of my favorite Shetlands too.

Watching the TeeswaterX lambs grow is interesting. Some are growing quite quickly and others are staying small. Of course the triplet factor may be part of that.

Jester has filled out and become a very nice looking ram. He's pictured above grazing with Mystery and below grazing with one of his sons (this is one of the larger lambs).

I have two Jester sons (Teeswater/Bluefaced Leicester) that are looking good as potential wool flock sires. They are triplet brothers out of River Oaks Rita, so they carry color. I will be at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival this fall and can deliver sheep there.

I found a new little horse trailer so I can haul rams and ewes separately -- plus all the supplies necessary for the Raw Felted Fleece class I will be teaching there on Sunday, Sept. 13th.

I taught a class for the Minnesota Feltmakers Guild in my new outdoor class space last month. It's always a fun class and everyone learns from the fleeces and from each other.

First step -- evaluating the fleece. Photo by Micah Kinder.

Students lay out fleeces as the wood fired pizza oven gets warmed up. Photo by Micah Kinder.

Micah and I working on her fleece layout. Photo by Sid Frantz.

Sid served up some delicious pizzas. Photo by Micah Kinder.

Thankfully everyone was stilling smiling during the rolling portion of the class. 

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the finished projects from the class. But two days later I hosted the Artrageous art group here. It was a bit chilly, so we all snuggled up under my raw felted fleeces.

Photo by Thelma Olds

River Oaks is on the Move

The new pole barn is going up in Ogilvie...

the new coop is ready...

and the 5 chickens and duck who survived the fox at my house are getting used to their new home...

We've got 33 two-week-old chicks in the studio at Ogilvie...

and ducklings are hatching in the incubator at my house...

I am going crazy trying to declutter my house so it can go on the market. I have too much stuff! I've gotten a million minor repairs done and still have more to do. If only I would have done all those minor things years ago.

The realtors came to stage the house and take photos yesterday. They did a fantastic job! The place looks good, but it feels so empty now without all the artwork on the walls.
They also took a couple photos of my Teeswater cross ewe lambs...

47% Teeswater, 34% Wensleydale, BFL twin ewe lamb.

Annie, 47% Teeswater, 50% BFL triplet ewe lamb

Raw Felted Fleeces!

We had a beautiful weather for the raw felted fleece class yesterday at Shepherd's Harvest. I was lucky to get a great group of students who had no qualms about getting in there and helping out when things went a little off (like when my portable water heater sprung leaks because I failed to drain it out before winter and frozen water burst the pipes).  Thankfully Sid ran to get a new one, but in the meantime the ladies helped move our tables outside and hauled buckets of hot water so we could get started.

They all made gorgeous fleeces! Left to right in the photo above, an Ag dual coated Shetland fleece, a white  Corriedale and natural colored Corriedale/Wensleydale X fleece that was pieced together, a white Icelandic fleece, a Gotland fleece, a white Bluefaced Leicester lamb fleece, an English Leicester fleece, and a moorit Shetland.

I wondered how Corriedale would do because it's so fine and the staple length was 4-5". We were worried about it not catching in back, but it did and what a nice dense fleece/rug it turned out to be.

My Raw Felted Fleece Class at Shepherd's Harvest

It's coming up soon, my Raw Felted Fleece on May 15th at Shepherd's Harvest in Lake Elmo, MN!
There are still three openings at this time. Here's a link to the class description and registration:
http://shepherdsharvestfestival.org/festival-info/friday-classes/

I love teaching this class because it's such an individual project. Each fleece is unique and we all get to learn from each other's fleeces.  And who doesn't love to immerse themselves in all that wonderful, aromatic, sensual wool?

I will also be teaching this class at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in September.  I'm really looking forward to going back to WSWF. I will bring my Teeswater cross lambs and Shetlands for the sale area. Maybe I'll even train Roxie's biggest ewe lamb to walk on the lease so I can show her.

The land has been cleared and our new barn goes up in just two weeks.  There's so much happening these days! I'm still trying to declutter my house so I can get it on the market.

The darn fox took out half my flock of chickens and ducks a couple weeks ago. I'm down to one broody duck (14 eggs in the incubator for her) and six hens. Sid and I decided to incubate all the chicken eggs for the week after the attack (it got the rooster) and we now have 72 viable eggs.  That will give us lots of purebred Barred Rocks and Barred Rock cross chicks!

Because of all the housing, moving, and building projects going on this spring, I decided to cancel my booth at Shepherd's Harvest this year.  I will be back next year.  Be sure to mark your calendar to attend the 2015 Shepherd's Harvest, it's always a fun weekend.