Tag Archives: Contributor Post

All the Naked Ladies

Posted on March 25, 2014 by | Comments Off on All the Naked Ladies

Yesterday our friend Emily came down to shear the ewes in advance of lambing.  I’ve been around for lambings done with wool still on and with wool removed, and I can tell you I FAR prefer them to be sheared before they lamb.  It makes it soooo much easier to see what’s going on, and much cleaner as well, without all that dirty wool hanging over their back ends.

What I love about Emily is she not only shears them; she clips their hooves and gives me an idea of how healthy she thinks they are.  Susan and I were  happy to hear (and see!) that they all look great, and she thinks all but two are bred. Emily handles countless flocks of sheep all through the year, so her opinion carries a lot of weight around here.

The rest of the flock will be sheared at the big shearing party on April 5; we didn’t want to move the ewes to the park that far into their pregnancies, though.

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It was chilly when we went out at 8, but sunny, and bright.

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We stuffed them into the mini barn the day before so they wouldn’t get wet in the rain; and I do mean they were stuffed in there.

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As the wool came off, however, they had so much more room!  It’s amazing how much less space they take up when they’ve been shorn.

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They’ve been getting extra grain and hay so they stay warm.  I elected to keep them near the barn since we’ve got snow today, but they are happily munching their hay and chewing their cud, more or less oblivious to the white stuff.

If you’re wondering, Emily wrote up an excellent post about shearing sheep and cold weather HERE.

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Worming Day! (Part 1)

Posted on March 13, 2014 by | Comments Off on Worming Day! (Part 1)

The beginning of this week was just extraordinary in its loveliness. We had wonderfully mild temperatures for several days in a row, and we all felt the itch to get outside and stay there.

It seemed like the perfect time for worming the flock.

Since it’s been a wonderfully cold winter, we’re pretty optimistic that parasite levels will be lower over the warmer months this year.  Even still, with most of our ewes likely bred we want to make sure they are not carrying an overload of them in their gut, as the hormones and stresses of pregnancy and lambing tends to exacerbate the condition, and then things just get ugly.

Now, worming has always been a bit of a tricky chore; you want to make sure you catch it early enough to be effective, but you don’t want to overtreat them and build up resistance to the drug. However, to our great relief, a miracle seems to have been discovered in the use of copper.  You give one dose of copper to each sheep roughly every 6 months and the parasites (hopefully) never build a resistance to it.  It simply makes the sheeps’ guts too inhospitable to the critters.

In the past when Susan and I would use copper we had to break out the scales and empty capsules and very carefully measure out copper particles.  You can imagine how excited we were earlier this winter when we discovered THESE over at Jeffers.

Hello easy coppering!

The only drawback to this is that I can’t seem to get a solid answer on whether or not we can copper our ewes that are bred.  We decided, therefor, to err on the side of caution, and the ladies all get a dose of the chemical wormer we’ve always used until after lambing.  All the boys and goats get copper.

So, with copper and wormer in hand (along with hoof clippers just in case) Neve and I set out into the winter pen to get down to some serious work.

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Neve’s a pretty big help for most of the flock; it gets a little more difficult with the big sheep like Alabama.  She is my shepherd-in-training though, and since she is responsible for evening feedings every day, they know her and trust her.

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Wren!

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We managed to get about half the flock taken care of, when Jerry and Alabama combined forces to knock the temporary fence panels over and everyone streamed out of the holding pen.  They knew better than to fall for coming into the worming pen again, so we had to knock off for the day.  We’ll finish the rest up on Saturday, and everyone who got copper should be satisfactorily protected until September. If it works like it’s supposed to, Susan and I will be happy shepherds!

 

 

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A St. Patrick’s Day Tradition

Posted on March 10, 2014 by | Comments Off on A St. Patrick’s Day Tradition

Every year, on the Saturday closest to St. Patrick’s Day, my town hosts a party. No corned beef and cabbage or green beer is seen, though. Instead, there are a lot of bald heads. The men, boys and even a few women of this community raise money for St. Baldrick’s by shaving their heads in solidarity with kids with cancer.

St. Baldrick’s is an organization that funds pediatric cancer research. Cancer that affects infants, children, teens and young adults acts differently and needs to be treated differently that adult cancers. There are long term consequences to treatment that need to be studied and supportive care to be funded.

My family got involved with St. Baldrick’s when my son was in second grade. His elementary school fields a team of participants every year, and Alex decided he wanted to join. He had heard that a neighborhood girl was battling osteosarcoma and wanted to help.  After making sure he understood what it would be like to be bald, we signed him up.

Alex really hates clippers. He has never been a buzz cut kind of kid.

The next year, he was ready to do it again. This time, my daughter joined him. She donated ten inches of curly, red hair to Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths program. We also knew two more kids with cancer—a neighborhood boy and the little sister of one of Alex’s classmates.

This year, Alex is getting ready to shave his head again. He hates the process of getting his head shaved. It hurts because he lets it get so long prior to the big day. He likes how it feels to help people, though, and he recognizes that he has the choice. Kids with cancer don’t.

If you are interested in supporting Alex’s fundraising efforts, you can donate here. His dad will be sitting next to him on stage for the first time. We set a rather lofty goal of raising $1500, and with less than a week to go, we’ve only just passed the halfway point. Sadly, we’ve also added another warrior to our list—the granddaughter of a coworker.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for your contribution.

**Susan here. FYI for Mac/Safari users! I was trying to make a donation for a couple of days and kept getting a disconnect after I had filled out all the forms and entered my credit card number. It appears that this site doesn’t play well with Safari. I was able to make my donation using Firefox though. Save yourself some time and use a different browser to donate. Also, I have met Alex and I can tell you he is a truly fabulous kid with an enormous heart.

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The 2014 Blanket Block-A-Long

Posted on January 6, 2014 by | Comments Off on The 2014 Blanket Block-A-Long

When I saw Cris’ fantastic first blanket square, I implored her to share her progress on the blog. Despite that she’s already sharing the progress of her Moonshine sweater, she agreed. I think that you’ll like what you see. And if you check out the thread on Ravelry specifically for knitting blankets, I think you’ll be just as impressed! We’ve got some great blankets being made! I would love to see someone knit blocks out of the sock club yarn. Wouldn’t that be amazing?- Lauria

I am not so much for New Years resolutions.  In most cases, I find that my enthusiasm for whatever resolution I have set for myself peters out some time around Valentine’s Day (hello chocolate, my old friend).  Instead, this year I set myself some goals.  The goals should be a challenge, things I have to put effort into, but at the same time tangible and attainable.

One of my goals for 2014 is to design and knit an afghan block each month, which I will then stitch together at the end of the year into one snuggly blanket.  The design aspect of this is the real challenge for me. I have improvised a few small knit and crochet items, but I have never officially designed anything.  Especially not anything as large as a blanket.

After perusing my stash (another one of my goals is to knit from stash as much as possible), I decided to knit my blocks in Yearling.  It is super soft and squishy, and the bulky weight yarn knits up quickly.  Primarily, I’ll be using the Hot Chocolate, Chili Pepper, Mermaid, and Butternut colorways, with a few other colors sprinkled in  as accents here and there.

I am aiming for a patchwork sort of look. Some of my blocks will be solid color blocks with stitch patterns.  Others will be colorwork designs of some sort. The only hard and fast rules are that the blocks should be 12 inches square (for easy seaming), and no two blocks will be exactly alike.  For my January block, I used the Chili Pepper colorway to knit a block that I consider to be a scaled up version of the cabled owl motif featured in Kate Davies‘ owls sweater.  I have always loved the little owls and the way they are created by an ingenious use of simple cables.  My block also uses cables, but on a much larger scale, to create the owl design.  Later, I’ll add eyes and a beak using duplicate stitch.

Each month, I’ll be sharing my progress and pictures of the new block here on the blog and in the JMF group on Ravelry.  There are several of us in the JMF group knitting blankets of assorted designs this year, and we would love to have you join us in the blanket block-a-long.  (If you are interested in knitting up one of my block designs, I’ll be sharing the designs on Ravelry.)  If you have your own blanket in progress or would like to start a blanket for the new year, please stop by the group and share your blanket ambitions with us.  Hope to see you there!

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