Shearing on a cold day

This is a picture of Alfie, who was born last Tuesday. He looks a lot like his dad, who is a a gray pure bred border leister.

Yesterday we had Jeff come to shear 25 of our sheep, (two were already shorn). He arrived about an hour before we expected him having traveled from New Hampshire. He was very fast with the shearing, which is good when sheep are full and round with lambs.

Several of our fiber community came to help. We had 4 helpers in the barn. Two to catch the sheep, one to record who was done, condition, and help gather up each fleece into a sheet and carry it to the fiber building.

The first sheep shorn was Ruthie, which was washed right away, and this morning is dry already. She will be going with Sally and Sadie to be processed right away as we are low on white yarn at the moment.

In the fiber building we laid the fleeces out on skirting table to skirt away the edges and remove as much of the vegitation as possible, weigh the fleeces, and put each one into a bag marked with the name and weight of the fleece.

Anne, our fiber expert, was teaching inexperienced helpers about skirting the wool. This what I heard her say: "Think of the fleece as a jacket on the sheep with a zipper along the length of the belly from the neck to the hind end. The shearer unzips the jacket and peels the fleece off all in one piece. When you lay it out, you put the cut side down on the skirting table, which is a frame with turkey wire on it. You can identify the neck, which tends to be full of hay and vegitation, the rump, which may have britch, a coarser fiber and manure, and the legs. You then remove the edges with manure tags and most of the vegitation." When the fleece is fairly clean you roll the fleece inside out, folding the sides in first and rolling head to tail. Then the fleece is weighed and put in a paper bag to be washed and carded another day.

The shearer was done by 1pm, we had a pot luck lunch, and some kept skirting, some knitted or spun. We had a lot of fun, good food, and sold one raw fleece to a handspinner. Then Mary Ann announced that Sassy was having her lamb. She has a ewe lamb and we named her Abby. A big girl she weighed in at around 13 pounds. She is black with a tuft of white on the top of her head and the tip of her tail. Mother and baby are doing well.

This morning I estimated that we have over 150 pounds of wool in all. About 60 pounds of it is skirted and in bags. The rest is in sheets or laid out on a screen to dry. Thanks to all who helped with a very productive day.

Getting Ready for Winter

It has gotten a bit cold before we were quite ready. The sugar house is going up "inch by inch", and we were recently reminded that "Inch by inch, life is a cinch, Yard by Yard, life is hard", so Mary Ann is creeping along inch by inch with whomever she can find willing to help and we are hoping to have a roof on the structure this week.

We have added electricity to the pole barn, tightened up the big doors at the back of the barn, and put up new perimeter electric fencing around the new field in the back. We have a fancy new fence charger that has a remote that locates problems in the fence line. We also installed a Nelson waterer (that fills automatically and will not freeze. This replaces the heated buckets that used so much electricity that our bills flew through the roof last winter.

Chores for the last few weeks have included carrying water from the frost free hydrant to the animals in the fields, carrying bales of hay in the wheelbarrow, and carrying small buckets of grain to them. The animals stand at full attention facing us as we move toward them, eager for their food.

Yesterday we finally had everything ready for them to move to their winter quarters, and the move was beautiful to see. Three of us, (Mary Ann, Lee Ann and I) led the sheep with grain from the orchard around the sugar house construction, through the barn and into the pole barn. There was hardly hesitation, and the sheep actually beat us there. Some of them immeciately went to the new waterer, as if they knew what it was for.

The insulation is up around the foundation of the house and the storm windows are down. The woodshed still needs to be reorganized for easy acess to firewood. We have had some fires in the kitchen wood stove that feel really good and will be essential to minimize the use of the oil furnace.

The upstairs storage area in the Tesseract is getting full of fleeces to be picked and washed. The ram lambs have gone to meat this week. They are small again this year, and we have concluded we need to grain them all summer in the future, which will increase the costs to raise them.

We have done statements for our CSA members so they can come to shop and reap the benefits of their investment with beautiful products from our store. Several people are knitting items for us to sell on consignment providing a nice array of scarves, slippers, hats, and other unique itsms in the store. Holiday decorations are up. Whew. What a beautiful time of year!

Hope to see you at the farm this month. Stay tuned.
Warmly,
Marty

Sallie

Sallie and Sadie' who are sisters were next on February 26th.... Sallie gave birth noonish with Victor (black) and Valerie (white).... They weighed 9 1/2 and 8 1/2 pounds, very vigorous.
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Sadie was next around 2:30 with Una, a beautiful white single, tipping the scale at 13 pounds.