HOLY SMOKES! Lambing season is nearly upon us and it has completely snuck up on me this year. My dear friend Sarah VV reminded me this weekend that we haven’t come up with a naming convention of this year’s forthcoming lambs yet.
Every year, we chose a category from whence the lamb names will come. In the past we have used candy bars, herbs and spices, islands, U.S. presidents, Jane Austen characters, Muppets, Downton Abbey characters and fonts. Here’s the cool part: you get to help us pick the convention!
[My friend and former business manager Jenny says that I never write about naming conventions without including this link. I was going to leave it out but I didn't want her to be disappointed.]
As I said last year (and the year before that, and the year before that) the category needs to be something with lots of naming possibilities. Candy was great cause there are umpteen jillion kinds. Think broad. Characters from fiction? Good. Characters from Dickens? Fine. Characters from Salinger? Not so much.
Put your nominations for this year’s convention in the comments of this thread. Amy and I will narrow down the choices and then y’all can vote on which one you would like us to use.
The first person to nominate the particular category that ends up winning gets to name the first lamb and -BONUS!!! – will win a bag full of JMF swag. In fact, the first person to nominate any of the conventions that make it to the voting will win a yarny prize. [I have an insane amount of yarn in my office, y'all, and some of it has got to go to a new home where is can run around of leash.]
So nominate away!
In other news, shares in our 2015 Yarn and Fiber CSA went on sale today. This shares will include the fleece grown on the very lambs that are currently snuggling up inside their mamas, waiting to make their grand entrance next month.* I’m not sure that we will keep doing the CSA forever, but I’ve decided to go ahead with one more year, at least.
I may be accused of burying my headline a bit here, but there is one more bit of news about the 2015 CSA Shares. I’ve lowered the price this year to make the shares more affordable to everyone. Why? Good question. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this over the past few months. See, the entire point of the CSA when I started it back in 2007 was to give knitters a more personal connection to their yarn. To give the yarn a little context, if you will. Back then, CSA Shares were JMF’s only source of income and we had to pay all the bills associated with raising the sheep and running the farm from that income stream.
Since then, due to the hard work of a lot of people who believed in what we were doing, and the very generous support of our shareholders (both moral and financial), Juniper Moon Farm has grown and expanded beyond my wildest dreams. The sheep no longer have to shoulder the entire burden of supporting several people’s livelihoods. I am more grateful for that than you will ever know.
I wanted to pass that good fortune on to the people who have supported us along the way, even if it’s only in a small way. I’m not sure if all that rambling will make sense to anyone else or not, but it makes sense in my head. And it lowering the price of shares by $50 lets more people participate who couldn’t before, well, that’s just a bonus.
You will find the Cormo Shares here and the Colored Flock Shares here.
* Don’t worry– the lambcam WILL be back in time for lambing.
