Breeding Group 2011

Yes...I did decide to go ahead and put a few ewes in a breeding group--five total. I tried to get some decent pictures of them the other day. Obviously some of them need a re-shoot! Something about me crawling around on my knees making clicking noises made them nervous. Huh...

The night before I made elaborate plans in my head on how to separate five ewes from the flock--four Shetlands and one Dorset/Merino crossbred--two being confirmed mamma's girls and hard to detach from their mommies. Finally I came up with a rather brilliant (I thought) plan where I moved the entire flock into the breeding pen and then sorted them there--releasing the others back into the adjoining main field as I sorted them off. This way there was no trying to 'herd' or drag resistant sheep away from the main flock. It all went very calmly and after ten years 'in sheep' I've learned that slow, calm and steady wins the race when you are dealing with sheep. There was only one small incident when a cattle panel imploded and flipped up and while a rather nasty bruise for me, nobody escaped.

Jasper came calling later that day and will be here for a few weeks. Jama and Jim were kind enough to bring him over for me. He has matured into a rather nice ram, with a lovely wide horn set and a very dense soft fleece.

So without further delay here are the members of the 2011 breeding group.

Fairlight Jasper

(Fairlight Jeffrey x Fairlight Lark)
Jasper was one of Jeff's last lamb's before he died later that summer.
Jasper is a 2010 grey flecket ram with a wonderful temperament, beautiful horn-set, soft, dense fleece, and good conformation. I am hoping that he carries spots, but only time will tell. His dam was sired by a moorit smirlset sokket and his sire was a grey flecket. Because he still retains quite a bit of white on his face, I'm encouraged he might carry spots. He comes from a line of grey fleckets that when crossed with solid fleckets will often produce spots.
One horn was broken off as a lamb at the tip--he also was on a runabout through the woods before his trip over here so his wool has picked up some nasties.

And the ewes:

Fairlight Luna

(Minwawe Redford x Locksfield Willow)

Luna is the mature lady of the bunch, and has produced some lovely lambs. She is a 2006 musket flecket and is one of my nicest ewes. She is sired by a moorit smirslet sokket and has produced yuglet fleckets. She is a nice compact ewe, with a level topline, small fluke tail, set four square, pretty head with poll and cheek wool, and a lovely soft wavy fleece. She is the kind of ewe that I want in my flock.



Fairlight Stella
(Fairlight Jackdaw x Locksfield Willow)
Stella is a 2010 musket flecket ewe who will be lambing for the first time. Her sire is the colorful black and white Flecket, Jackdaw. Her dam has produced wildly spotted grey fleckets. She is one of the mama's girls I mentioned above. I retired Willow after she lambed Stella and let her 'keep' her. She still stays right with her mom all the time. Funny sheep--some family lines form very strong bonds. Stella is a chunky little thing, dense bone, good topline, tail and leg placement. Her head is a little more cobby and she doesn't quite have that alert 'deer-like' Shetland expression that I like. Her fleece is very nice--dense, soft and wavy.



Fairlight Persia (Three Ring Just Jack x Fairlight Blackberry)
Persia is a 2009 Fawn ewe, who was born with a large krunet. She should carry spots as her sire was a moorit/white flecket. She is one of my bigger ewes and is very much a primitive sheep in attitude! She is watchful, careful, snorts and whistles like a deer (and stomps her foot) when alarmed and will always make sure that there are other sheep between her and me. She is not a crazy wild child though and will work calmly when being confined. While she is not one of my pocket sheep I have to admire her defiant attitude. She has good conformation, lots of bone, a little more leggy, nice tail and a lovely, fawn colored fleece that is crimpy and soft.

Fairlight Rosetta (Three Ring Just Jack x Fairlight Rosemary)
Rosetta is a 2009 Fawn ewe who should carry spots as her sire was a moorit/white flecket. Her solid dam produced two fleckets in 2010 (Ford & Ranger) and was sired by a moorit smirslet sokket. Lovely little ewe with a sweet, expressive face (really--she is just giving me the stink eye here), nice conformation and a lovely fawn colored crimpy, soft fleece.


Fairlight Teresa Hope (Blue X Gracie)
Hope is a 2006 white Merino x Dorset cross. Her wool is soft, crimpy and has a shorter staple. She has lambed once before in 2009. The Shetland/Merino/Dorset cross has produced some really lovely fleeced sheep in the past. I'm hoping for twins, since I would like to keep one of these crossbreds and Jama wants one for her fiber flock. Hope is a sweetheart, sometimes not the brightest bulb, but always cheerful and easy to work around. She is definitely still her mamma's baby girl even after five years!

There will be lots of Ag (Greying) with this bunch, but the lambs should be very nice with lovely fleeces!

Tortie Tuesday--The Big Secret Revealed...

Tempe says...hold on to your whiskers!



Well...it's finally happened. After saving every spare dime for the past two years and after almost 25 years of wishing and wanting it--I now have a deck off my back room!

If you ask the cats, of course it is phase one of their 'catio'.

Blank Slate

Earlier this summer, I sketched and planned and stewed about having a deck--at first I thought I could build it myself, but quickly became in over my head, just in the planning stages. So I contacted a Mennonite that someone had recommended and he came by, looked it over, measured and called me later in the week with an estimate--for labor and materials. It was within what I had saved so I was ready to go forward. However he couldn't begin work until September!

In the end, I waited fairly patiently and in about mid September the deck project was commenced. If it were me doing it it would have taken weeks and weeks --so I was a little surprised about how quickly the man and his son created the deck for me. It took them exactly one and half days to build a lovely 10 x 12 covered deck!

The first day I came home from work to this----the floor in and the roof rafters on. The next day they put in the cross pieces and ties for the roof, and added the roofing (a light filtering white). I was amazed. I hardly ever hire out for anyone to do anything so I guess my experience is small with how quickly people can accomplish such projects! :-)


The collies were quite amazed too, and did a little happy dance to test it out.

The kitties were not amazed and were considerably stressed out and exhausted from hiding in small spaces all day--next to sworn enemies at that. (from left is Meshach, Gabe, Noah & Sage)

So everything went so wonderfully well, and I had enough in the saved fund to buy a patio door... I had to do some scraping to come up with the labor to install it..but we were on a roll and couldn't stop without a door. Here Minty (and Sage in the window) test the new deck and you can see the new door under the blue tarp, waiting for the guys to come back.

The dismantling and removing of the windows was quite loud and not so easy. Once they got them out it was (much to all our dismay) easy to see that it wouldn't have been as big a deal, if we'd known the 'key' to removing them. (It seems they are actually two windows, and the center metal piece once removed would allow them to be easily dismantled.) Still and all they got them out in two pieces with only the center strip being damaged. Once the windows were out, then they had to remove the monstrously heavy cement sills, dismantle brick and cement blocks and bring it down to the deck level.

This photo shows the old windows removed, the new door tacked in place, with a temporary board across the top (to keep the cats in)--you can also see the open area that goes into the dropped ceiling. This was the first day of operation door installation! They had left for the day to go and pick up supplies to finish installing the door, sills and inside steps. We were able to re-purpose quite a bit of the free shelving wood I got from work a year or so ago--it was used for sills and inside trim.

Here the kitties check it out after the guys left.

Another view of it before sills and steps (and door knobs!) were added.


Sage wasn't handling it very well, and lay with teddy bear and eyes squinched most of the night.

And here we have the finished product! Stairs installed--we could only have a half stair since the dryer blocked it from going all the way across. You can also see the new sills, around the door and over the top, with an unexpected and nice bonus of a shelf over the door! I will need to do some finish work--staining and painting to make it all match. I installed the locks myself, since when picking out the door I got a little overwhelmed and couldn't decide on locks. So upshot was they were boughten after my construction guys left or they would have installed them.

And here it is from the outside. They finished off the gap over the door with vinyl siding (insulated on the inside) and I think it looks pretty nice! In one of those odd coincidences my Adirondack chair was also made by James, the Mennonite builder of the deck! When he came to figure an estimate for the job, he walked into the yard and said 'you have one of my chairs!' in a tone much like a mother seeing one of her long lost children. I was pretty sure from that point that he would be doing the deck! It just seemed to providential and I knew he did nice work from the chair.

And here Sage relaxes in his chair enjoying the view...

I love it too. It's a lovely place to sit and read or just relax. Haven't gotten to do allot of that, but still, over my vacation I made good use of it.

I'm working on enclosing the deck with wire. It's a lightweight green wire that should blend in nicely with the scenery. Once that is done, the kitties can sit out there with me.

The final phase of Operation Catio, will be to construct a large pen alongside the house (see photo one) from the deck to nearly the front of the house. It will extend to just to the outside of the sidewalk. It will be enclosed wire and the cats will have access to it via the house windows (I'll install a couple of kitty doors). The deck will be included in their new outdoor area. It will be a happy thing for us all I believe. Eventually the pen will have lots of shelves and places to play and hide.

Oh. But this will take longer since I'll be doing this work myself...and we know that I'm not going to get 'er all done in two days!

Exciting stuff all the same.

Catching Up

Summer's Last Hurrah--Sheep on new pasture

It's been way to long since I posted, and there has been lots happening on the little farm. I hope to do several posts that are a bit outdated, so I'll probably work my way backward and see how it goes.

Part of the issue with posting is that my computer is on it's last half leg. So far I can still post on the blog but it's slowly eliminating my options--for instance I can't access hotmail at all. Yahoo mail can be accessed and sometimes replied to (although often it takes about three or four tries of copying and pasting the message...). Turning on the computer is its own special challenge. To get the monitor to engage I have to plug in the power strip, rush to the computer and push a button to achieve 'takeoff'. Then sometimes it comes right on or sometimes it does a bunch of ominous beeping before it will do it's stuff. It goes on and on, but the upshot is, that sometimes it just isn't worth the hassle..... As finances permit I hope to get a laptop in the maybe not so near future.

On to other things. This past week I was on much needed vacation. I didn't get nearly enough done, and am feeling a bit flustered because I have so many 'projects' going at the moment that I can't seem to accomplish much of anything. However it was nice being able to set my own schedule and work around the place for a week.

Autumn colors and lots of dust from the road!

The first day of official vacation, I did manage to tear up my washer. The third day of vacation I spent way too much money getting a new one. Just for the record that makes it for the year (so far) --a new washer, dryer and hot water heater. Would have been a new air conditioner too, if the hot weather hadn't been on it's downward slide. I do now have a matching set washer and dryer and that was totally unexpected (since I got them six months apart from separate dealers), but nice.

The weather was perfect all week. We got some rain, but it was needed and so I enjoyed the cloudiness and rain. Most of the time it was really very lovely--cool, but not too cool, sunny and sparkly.

Fairlight Rosetta--she will be part of the group. Sweet little ewe with a gorgeous and very soft intermediate fleece.

I'm thinking of putting together a small breeding group with the Shetlands this year. Really it's been hard decision to make. It will most likely be the last 'hurrah' for raising sheep, and if I do carry on with putting them together, it will be only a select few. I'll be using Fairlight Jasper, the little grey Jeff lamb that went to Southard Farm last spring. Should get some lovely little lambs out of these pairings--much of it line bred. Individual pictures and information will be posted if I decide to go ahead and set up a breeding group.

A few weeks ago I went to a library book store sale. I think I ended up with somewhere around 17 books or so....Usually this sale happens when I'm gone on vacation and I don't want to travel back into the town I work at just to go to the sale. Because of that I had never actually been to it before, but had heard it was a 'must go'. This year they had it a week early, so I worked through my half day and planned to attend an early bird special part of the sale. For this you had to pay $5 plus the .50 or 1.00 for each book you bought. Since it's a good cause and I thought it would still be well worth the cost I forked over my $5--after standing in a long line for 20 minutes! I arrived well before the event, and kept seeing people dash around the side of the building where the entrance to the sale was. Although I knew it was way too early, I finally decided I better head on around too. Going around the corner revealed a line already formed--with hardcore book buyers clutching large tote bags, or pulling little carts on wheels...or dragging large plastic storage containers! Yikes...I didn't even bring a bag.

Ahem...I think this speaks for itself...

After waiting the twenty minutes and getting the scoop from a book sale pro, I was getting pretty antsy. Once the doors opened everyone moved in an orderly and polite fashion into a very large room with bookshelves and tables. The books were quite nicely displayed, most by topic or type and in alpha order by author. I was very impressed. The quiet intentness of the book buyers was a little creepy in a nice sort of way. Finding a section I was interested in, the best thing to do was just start pulling out anything that seemed to interest. I ended up with a few surprise buys when I got home, but for the most part was very pleased with what I got. Yes, I know I really did need more books.

Gracie--one of my first four Dorset sheep--I picked her out because she had such a cute face....she'll be 11 in 2012

The puppies have grown like mad and are now bigger than their mom. I hope to do a couple of catch up posts on them. It has been an interesting experience and I am glad I ended up keeping two puppies instead of one. Keeping two has had it's own special challenges, but the benefits outweigh the negatives--most particularly that they have the same energy level and tend to keep themselves entertained. More about puppies in a future post--including another puppy play day and the Celtic Festival!

Tempe says to check back on Tortie Tuesday! She has a very exciting secret to share.... (if her bad blogger 'bean will get in gear and get the post ready...)