Rhinebeck

(glorious New England color)

This week, well actually this whole month, has been a bit of a blur and a slowdown is not yet on the horizon.  It seems we've either had some big activity going on here at the farm or we've been on the road, away from the farm, for most of October.  I'm thinking some quiet time settling into the coming winter will be a very good thing during the month of November.

Last weekend was the glory that is Rhinebeck.  Friday we drove 13+ hours to Rhinebeck, New York for a nearly perfect weekend of beautiful foliage, good food, wonderful weather, meeting new and old friends (it was so great to be reunited with my Squam cabin mates!) and the ultimate in fiber festivals.  It's surely a combination of all of the above that makes me love Rhinebeck so much.  I have gone to a lot of festivals over the years and this is the one that continues to top my list of events that I'm willing to travel long distances to attend.

(my 36 colors)

Saturday was my day to check out all the vendors and because we arrived at the fairgrounds well before the gates opened and were close to the front of the line, that was mostly accomplished before it became too crowded.  Sunday was devoted to the "36 Color Wheel Workshop", taught by Gail Callahan (The Kangaroo Dyer).  It was an eye-opening class for me and I think I finally understand the process of combining a few primary colors to achieve just the shade I'm looking for.  Gail explained and demonstrated the process in a clear and easily understandable way and then turned us loose to try it for ourselves.  It was fun and educational - the best possible outcome for any learning experience.  Gail has inspired me to be more creative in my color choices for this year's palette.  As soon as I can stay home for more than a day or so, I intend to pull out the dye pots and start working on the mountain of my "fresh from the farm yarn" that arrived back from the mill a few weeks ago.  (More on that in a later post.)

(buttons & detail of front)

My Olive "Antler" was indeed finished in time to become my 2013 Rhinebeck sweater .... just barely!  She made the drive on Friday, stretched out on top of the luggage in the back of the car,  feeling still slightly damp.  One of the best parts of the weekend were comments and questions from other knitters.  I love that walking around Rhinebeck in a handknit starts so many conversations with people you don't even know, who immediately become your friends.  For someone as introverted as I am, it's the best possible way to talk to strangers.  Even more fun, was spotting other "Antlers".  Because Olive was handspun and a little larger gauge than the pattern called for, she was somewhat different from other versions.  It's a great pattern to knit, easily adaptable and I can highly recommend it.

(the back view of Olive)

Tomorrow,  my friend Teresa and I are heading to Asheville, North Carolina for the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair.  Asheville is such a great town and SAFF is a fun place to catch up with fiber friends in this part of the country.  It's an easy drive through beautiful mountains and I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend of (more)food, (more)fiber and (more)friends!

Olive

I do know that was not the best blog post earlier today.  I was postponing the inevitable, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought there was no way to combine a post about my high-on-the-mountain-top experience at Squam with the painful experience on coming home. I'm going to just get it out now and then concentrate on giving you my experience at Squam in a day or two.

About two hours after we returned to the farm on Sunday night, my precious Olive died.  I have cried more than I thought possible for an animal.  It feels especially heavy because it is due to my negligence that she's gone.  She had done a stellar job raising a set of twin lambs, so I can only assume that she was a heavy milker. She had gotten quite thin and I debated on pulling the lambs off before our trip, but decided it would only make things more complicated around here while we were gone.  I opted to wait until we were back from New England.  As we left the Cincinnati airport parking lot and headed toward home, I received a text from our farm sitter saying #1016 was acting very lethargic and not eating.  At first, I didn't even realize that it was Olive because I never even look at her number. She had done what she could to make Olive comfortable, even calling another veterinarian for advice.  When we got to the farm, we went straight to the barn and found Olive very weak, lying in front of the fan.  I gave her a dose of a nutritional drench and tried to coax her to eat and drink, to no avail.  And then, just like that, she was gone.  I still can hardly believe it.  I don't know if the heat from that day stressed her or if something else was going on.  We decided not to take her to the diagnostic lab for necropsy, so we will never know.  In any case, the end result is the same.  She is gone.

As we always do, when we have a rare trip away from the farm together, Mike and I spend a lot of time talking about how complicated our lives are and if we should be trying harder to simplify things by not having so many animals, a smaller garden, a smaller farm, just less to take care of in general, etc., etc.  Frankly, there are times when we both feel overwhelmed and it's nearly always in the springtime when everything is more labor intensive.  We spend most weekends working away trying to keep everyone and everything healthy and feeling like we are just not doing enough. This sad event has caused us to begin that discussion again. Right now, I'm specifically feeling like a failure as a shepherd.  It's very hard for me to lose an animal, though I think after all these years of raising sheep I can be fairly pragmatic about the cycle of life and death on the farm, but losing one that I've bottle raised and grown so attached to feels too painful. So, lots of soul searching going on here.

I promise the next post will be all about how wonderful Squam was and it will make you all want to start saving your money so you can go next year.

Way to go girls!

 Well, hello there.  Yes, we really are still here, even though it has been mighty quiet on the blog front.  The weeks leading up to the 2012 Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival were packed with preparations that left me unable to focus on much else.  I'm not the most organized person in the world, but I tried really hard to not procrastinate this year.  I think I may have improved on my past record, but still have a long way to go.  A couple of big accomplishments this year - the trailer was loaded and ready to roll before noon on set-up day - the bottle babies (Matthew and Marilla**) had been bathed the day before and were sparkling white and clean - Luna and Birdie got a quick spray off with the hose the day before to spiff them up just a little and best of all, I did not put my iPhone through the wash cycle in the washing machine.  Yes, that actually did happen two years ago.

Saturday at the festival was action packed.  There were good crowds of happy yarn and fiber buyers all day.  Luckily for me, my sweet grand-daughter, Jordan, came for the weekend to help me because it would not have been pretty if I'd tried to hold it together on my own.  Sunday was much, much slower, but it gave me more time to chat with people coming through.  I love the fact that so many said they read the blog and have been enjoying the lamb-cam.  (Sometimes I wonder if anyone is out there, so it's good to know.)

Wondering why the title to this post?  Because my girls did me proud in the fleece competition.  I only entered four natural colored fleeces, PeeGee, Teeny, Olive and 901.  The girls brought home two blue ribbons, two red ribbons and my special little Olive won the championship ribbon.  It was especially nice that the judge came to me afterwards to ask about Olive's breeding and tell me what a beautiful fleece she had produced.  To make it even sweeter, with the exception of 901, they are all bottle babies.  (My grand-daughter has made me feel guilty that 901 doesn't have a name, so if you've got ideas please send them this way!)

( Would it kill ya to give me a name?)

 This week it's back to real life on the farm. There's much to do to make up for slacking off on farm chores while preparing for the festival.  I only have two more fleeces to go before all the sheep and alpaca fleeces for 2012 will be washed and the garden needs attention a.s.a.p.  So, onward ......

** I know I said this was to be a "Downton Abbey" year for names, but DA didn't have any brother and sister names for me to use, so these two got "Anne of Green Gables" names.  I don't think they mind.

Easter miracle

*(Olive and one of her twins)*

Every year for Easter, the family comes out to the farm for dinner and an Easter egg hunt.  Every year I think about skipping the Easter egg thing, but no matter how old they get, they still want to have it.  Traditions are part of what makes a family get-together special and I like to think I'm providing memories that will be with my grandchildren long after I'm dead and gone. It was suggested that maybe next year we would do a switch and let the kids hide the eggs and the adults be the ones to go hunting.  The kids loved the sound of that, so it just may happen.

This year got off to an unusual start because when everyone arrived, Mike and I were in the barn, dealing with a breech birth.  My grandchildren got a real education (and some of the adults in the group, also!).  The ewe could not have given birth without intervention.  After the second lamb was born,  Mike palpated the ewe and found nothing else, so we cleaned everyone up, moved them to a mothering-up pen and I managed to get dinner on the table, only two hours late.  The kids had their egg hunt and we had begun to take our annual family pictures on the big rock in the side yard when, Jared, my eleven year old grandson, came running from the barn to tell us that the ewe we had thought was finished four hours ago, now had another lamb hanging out of her!!  As we all ran back to the barn, what was going through my mind, besides pity for the ewe, was that I really didn't want the grandchildren to see me pull a dead lamb out of that ewe, but everyone was determined to watch the whole scene unfold.  Sure enough, there was the head and one leg. Not good. I had to push the lamb's head back in and find the other leg, then pull the lamb out.  Now here's the miracle part.  The lamb was alive!  Within minutes, she was trying to get up and find her way to her first meal.  At this point, there was some risk that the ewe would reject her.  After all, she already had two healthy babies, who were cleaned up, well fed and sleeping contentedly. But, she immediately started cleaning the lamb and 'talking' to her.  So, what seemed like a sure disaster (and possibly scarring experience for the onlookers) turned out to be an Easter memory that everyone (with the exception of the Parker, who is only three) will remember a long, long time!  Ah, life on the farm.....never a dull moment.

It's been a strange year with birthing times all over the place and several malpresentations.   I go through different stages during lambing season.  At the beginning, I'm very anxious to just get things started, around the middle I'm thinking it will never end and by the end, I'm wondering if, at my age, I should still be doing this!  But, oh those babies!  How could I not have some babies in the spring? 

So, I think lots of people have seen some live births on the lamb-cam in the last few days.  We are down to having only two ewes left to lamb (yay!) and they should go within the next few days.  After that,  it will be lamb races and games of lamb-on-the-straw-bale, for your viewing pleasure.

**Remember my baby, Olive?  Well, she had her first lambs this year.  She had twins,  a boy and a girl.  I wondered what sort of mothering instincts she might have, since I raised her on a bottle and she's just a little spoiled.  I needn't have worried.  She's doing a wonderful job.  I had to laugh this morning because when I took some bottles in to supplement the triplets born on Easter, Olive tried to take one of them!  That girl remembers when she had it really good!

The peace-keeper

 Maude ( the CVM ) apparently got up on the wrong side of her hay bale this morning.  She was a grouchy girl and started picking on Olive as soon as they went out into the big field.  That head-butting stuff is disturbing to watch ( and hear ), but they rarely carry on with it for any length of time.  Usually,  the instigator gets bored with it and wanders off.  That big white sheep is Buddy and he's the peace-maker, lamb baby-sitter and company keeper in the flock.  Buddy is a wether ( remember this post ? ),  so he's allowed to be in with the girls now that breeding season is over.  I love that he was trying to peacefully discourage this little dust-up.  I watched for quite a while this morning,  just to be sure I wasn't imagining it.  He kept stepping between the two and protecting little Olive from Maude.  How sweet is that ?  He didn't give up until Maude quit harassing Olive.

Maude is a Romeldale/California Variegated Mutant.  Romeldales originated in the early 1900's,  from breeding Romney rams to Rambouillet ewes,  for the purpose of getting finer, heavier fleeces and market lambs of good size.  CVMs came about in the 1960's when a breeder in California noticed the unique markings of a ewe in his flock and continued to breed for that.  So,  while it is somewhat confusing,  all CVMs are Romeldales,  but only Romeldales with the distinctive badger face markings are classified CVMs.  CVMs are on the American Livestock Conservancy's endangered list and are listed as critical.  Because I no longer have a purebred CVM ram,  I will not have any CVM lambs next spring,  though those distinctive markings often show up in crossbred lambs.  You can see a little of that in Olive's markings.  In all the years I have been raising sheep,  I've never had any with the personality traits that my CVMs display.  I don't know what it is.  Maybe I just bring out the weirdness in them !  They are the only ones in the flock who climb,  eat tree bark and generally stay completely to themselves.  I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else has CVMs that do those things.

Don't you just love that face?

 Anyway ....... peace has been restored,  thanks to Buddy.  He's such a good boy and truly the buddy-sheep around here !

Up and at 'em

Things are better around here this week ... on several fronts.  I am on my feet and the crutches have retired to the garage attic once more.  I'm thrilled that I was able to get back up and running ( so to speak ) so soon.  This time last week,  I wouldn't have wanted to put any money on how long it would take me to resume my regularly scheduled program.  Any other time,  I might have taken advantage of an excuse to stay couch-bound ( with knitting time ) as long as possible,  but the wedding to-do list waits for no one!

Remember her?  It's little Olive!

Best of all,  we have had rain.  Beautiful,  slow,  all day rains.  The grass is green again after being given up for dead.  All humans and animals are much happier,  even if it does mean I'm back on the mower.  The only down-side to the rain is that the greenhouse construction is not finished.  The builder still says it will be done before the wedding.  I have my doubts,  but at this point,  I'm not going to stress about it.

Holly standing - Aslan reclining

So,  how about a Holly and Aslan report?  They are best buds.  Holly goes in to Aslan's field once or twice a day to visit,  maybe have a little romp,  and then back to her group of ewes,  who are still in the "outfield".   Aslan is still with the little girl lambs,  plus Strawberry and Pippi,  and is doing great.  His first day here,  he barked at the llamas because he'd never seen anything like them before,  but once he was in the field with them,  he accepted that they were a normal part of his new world.  Great Pyrenees are sometimes a little weird about their routines and surroundings,  but Aslan has adapted very,  very well.  Our dear,  sweet Holly is probably the weirdest LGD  ( Livestock Guardian Dog ) I have ever owned and having Aslan here has made it even more obvious.   That's okay.  We love her anyway!

Everybody say..........

Awww!  Isn't she cute? The ever sweet and thoughtful Susan Anderson sent me a surprise package yesterday and look what I found inside: the cutest little handspun, handknit lambie.  Even better, this little lambie was knit by Susan using her very first handspun yarn, spun with Tanglewood Farm natural roving (and you can find the link to the pattern right here). I think I need a pedestal to put her on (the lamb, not Susan, though she deserves one too).

And you know what? This lamb reminds me a of little Olive, in her babyhood.

Hello there!!

Remember this girl?

Such a sweet picture and just look how tiny she was!

Every time I walk into the barn or am near her pasture, Olive runs to the fence and climbs up to greet me. Never fails. She's as cheerful as can be....always (that's her smiley face up there). I love that about her. She's getting to be a big girl now, but still likes her foster mom (that would be me) a lot. Olive especially loves treats, but will settle for chin rubs and behind the ear scratches if no treats are forthcoming.

Funny thing about this group of lambs. They are nearly all climbers and I think it comes from their dad, Ollie, the CVM ram. I've never had sheep who climbed like that before. Could it be a breed characteristic? Not likely, but I do find it interesting how traits are often passed on to lambs by their parents (much like our own children). The ewe lamb's hay feeders hang on the sides of the panels in the barn and no matter how high or how low they are placed, they climb up and stand on their hind legs to eat the hay.

Somehow we got lucky with the weather this time around. We are just a little south of the ice and snow that hit yesterday. We got a whole lot of rain and 50 mph winds during the night, but I'll take it, compared to feet of snow!

And....Happy Groundhog Day! I'm always confused about what it means, but according to the weatherman, there was no shadow to be seen and we are going to have an early spring. Yay for that!

Feeling the breeze

There's no cool breeze around here, only warm ones. We are being tormented by yet another blast of hot weather. But, at least if there was a cool breeze, the little girls would be able to enjoy it. The ewe lambs had their first trailer ride on Monday for a date with the shearer. A friend (the same one who sold me studly Henry) was having her very large lamb flock shorn and let me bring my ten little ones over to be relieved of their scroungy looking lamb fleeces. I've been wanting to shear off my lamb's fleeces for years and was finally been able to do it. (Most shearers don't want to make the trip here for a measly few lambs---and I understand that). By this time of year, the tips of the lamb's fleeces are often brittle, which means if I don't shear them until the adults are done next spring, I have wasted a whole year's worth of wool growing. The past several years I have thrown away most of my lamb fleeces because the tips tend to break off and that makes for bad spinning fleeces. Ideally, the lambs would have been shorn in late June, but I couldn't seem to make that happen.


I loved Miss Olive's reaction to this unexpected turn of events. She was surprisingly calm and sweet about it all, if not a little puzzled! And, oh, how energized they all were when they jumped off the trailer back home! They all ran right out into the hot sun and started grazing. Wish getting a haircut would energize me right now

.(yep-there's Frenchie-out grazing with her peeps)

I've made another one

Remember this girl? Teeny was my special baby a few years ago. She was the last born of a set of triplets, who really struggled to start breathing, and had an even bigger fight for a place at the milk wagon. She became my bottle baby and turned out to be such a sweet lamb. She's still a special girl, though she has become part of the brood ewe flock and had her own set of twins this past April
.
And this.......this is Olive. Looks kinda familiar doesn't it? What can I say? Mike says I shouldn't spoil Olive by letting her eat separately from the rest of the flock. I sure don't know why not! I love that Olive comes to me, instead of rushing pell-mell to the feeders when I let the lambs in to be fed. Besides, she still has a bit of trouble holding her own against the rest of the lambs. This way, I'm sure she is getting the amount of feed she needs to grow out nicely. And, I'm also sure that she will continue to be my special buddy, even after she becomes a big girl. So, to my way of looking at it, it's a win-win for Olive and for me.

(I wouldn't want to get in there if I didn't have to!)

Notes from the weekend

(Teeny adorned herself for the Festival)

Well, I do believe a good time was had by all. We've been getting a lot of positive feedback from attendees and vendors and people are already talking about next year! That's a pretty good sign, don't you think? We'll be having a wrap up meeting soon and planning for next year will start immediately after, so any suggestions you have for making us bigger and better will be gladly received.

Saturday was just perfect. Glorious weather, big crowds and everyone in good spirits. Sunday was not so great weather-wise, but still we had decent crowds and good sales. Of course, I have almost no pictures. A few of Miss Olive and company and some of my vendor space (after I had sold so much stuff, it looks a little bare). There will be pictures and competition results on the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival website very soon though. Thanks to all who came by to see me (I was not fooled. I know each and every one of you really came to see Olive, but that's okay).

(before the bottle)

(after the bottle)

Meanwhile, the wreckage here at home does not seem to be straightening itself out. The yard..oh my! It's a jungle out there! We are finally having a day without rain and I've made the first pass with the ZTR and will need to do the whole thing all over again in a day or two (if it's not raining) to make it look decent. Meanwhile, my vendor space tent is half-way open in the garage, drying out, and there are boxes and bags piled everywhere. Mike and I were reminding each other this morning that this is the month we always start thinking we are crazy to be out here in the boonies with all these animals. The grass grows so fast and the weeds in the garden are growing even faster. And.....It.Won't.Stop.Raining. Next thing we know, it will stop raining and seem as though it's never going to rain again. Kentucky weather!

In case you wondered.....

Are you thinking I may have fallen in a hole somewhere? Well, you would be partially right. I've been in a cave of wool and it's conveniently located in my dining room. (because I'm still waiting for my studio to be finished--don't get me started on that!) This weekend is IT! Our very first Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival. I've been dyeing yarn and fiber, weighing and packaging fiber and just generally running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. I am so excited that it is finally about to happen.

I'm taking my first year's clip of 70%alpaca/30%wool blend roving and, if I do say so myself, it is scrumptious. I seriously want to keep it and spin it all for myself. I'm also taking some beautiful mohair/Coopworth lamb/silk blend roving that my friend, Mary Beth Jewell, has put together. Be sure to come by the livestock pavilion and give it all a squeeze or two. (I know how fiber people are---we just can't help ourselves---we have to touch it!) I'll also have Olive ("the mouth") along with me. You'll probably be able to hear her if you are in the area!

It sounds as though the weather may give us a break, at least on Saturday and maybe part of Sunday, so come on out to Masterson Station and enjoy watching the Bluegrass Classic Stock Dog Trials, some good food and great fiber shopping opportunities. Honestly, there will be something for everyone at this event. Stop in and visit with Olive and her friends while you are there.

ps-Be sure to check back here in the next day or so. I have a really, really, really exciting event happening here at the farm in the month of July!

Time out

While some of you may be thinking that this is now the all Olive, all the time blog, it's really not. It's just that she occupies way too much of my time during the day. In fact, I've pawned her off onto Ivy for part of the day, just so I could walk around without tripping over her. I've been calling this the time-out pen because it gives me just a little time off from being the substitute mom. Besides being pretty cute, Olive has a mouth you wouldn't believe. I expect she can be heard in the next county when she decides she's had enough of time out or is thinking it's meal time!

I've been trying to get myself ready for the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival. I can hardly believe it is nearly here. Way back in the fall when we first started meeting to plan the event, it seemed we had ages to get it all together. Now we are just days away and I'm working myself into panic mode! I think it's going to be a great weekend. We have over 60 vendors coming and I think that's a great turnout for our very first year. I'm hoping for beautiful weather and a big crowd. Are you coming?

Olive goes to town

This past week, Olive went to Wednesday knitting with me. I knew I couldn't leave her home alone for such a long time without a bottle or something unforeseen happening ( She's gotten very good at jumping out of her box. I've come back from the barn several times to find her standing in the kitchen communing with Ivy, our corgi!) So, I fixed her a nice little place in the floor of the truck, packed a bottle and some diapers and away we went. As soon as I placed her on the floor of the truck, she hopped up in the passenger seat and settled in as if she had been riding in trucks all of her short life. While we were at knitting, she laid on the couch beside me (no furniture or floors were harmed because she was wearing her diaper--which she hates).

I took the picture at a stoplight by aiming the camera in her general direction and hoping for the best. In other words, I "Kinneared" her. Remember that whole Yarn Harlot episode? When we were having dinner with friends this past week, I mentioned that I had "Kinneared" Olive in the truck and Audrey in the back of my car. The two husbands had a hard time grasping the whole "Kinneared" concept. Not only did it take a lot of explaining, but even after they knew the meaning of it they didn't think it was all that funny. (Of course, I also had to google Greg Kinnear on my I-Phone so they could see who he was!) Men really are from Mars.

(partners in crime)