2007 Breeding Rams - Rich

This striking young ram is Windswept White Pine. He’s a yuglet sokket katmoget who has every quality that we look for in a ram. He has an excellent conformation, quiet disposition (although he’s climbing the walls right now), and beautiful, wide horns. We paid a lot for him, but we’re hoping for big things. His markings are quite stunning! He also represents our first venture into spotted katmogets. We’re not sure where this will lead us. I think he will get four ewes this year (and hopefully will produce a couple sets of twins). He is the ram on the left in the photo directly below, posing with his companion wether.

UndertheSon Clover is a mioget gulmoget, in the two photos below. What a beautiful color! We brought this ram lamb to the farm this summer from Indiana because we were looking for a gulmoget ram with a nice conformation and modified color. He has everything except spots! It looks like he’ll get a couple of ewes this year (I’d like to give him two more if I could, but there are only so many to go around). I should probably throw a spotted ewe at him, but I don’t have one to surrender.

This is the second season we’ve used Sheltering Pines Cihat, in photo below. Last year, we ended up with four lambs out of him and all were extremely nice. Unfortunately, I sold them all like a bleeding idiot!

He’s a white yuglet flecket ram with very soft fleece. His lambs were all improvements on their mothers and all had nice fleeces to boot! I also discovered that he carries moorit, which I didn’t realize. Our goal this year is to get a spotted gulmoget and katmoget out of him, while maintaining his excellent conformation. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be happy if we repeat what we did last year (with a few more yuglets, perhaps?). I’d like to end up with a yuglet gulmoget or katmoget son to replace him some day. We’re excited about the possibilities with some of the excellent ewes that we brought in this year. It looks like he’ll get eight ewes this year (which he apparently doesn’t realize because he’s awfully mellow compared to the youngsters).

Egads! They're thespians! - Jen

Saturday Andrew and Will performed in a modified version of Robinson Crusoe at the Kenan Center in Lockport. For the last week they have been working with the two leaders from the Missoula Theater group from 4-8 every day. Excellent program and talented children made for a really colorful and inspiring program. Bonus - I enjoyed getting to know friends of Andrew and Will's a little better (Kate and Eric).

Truce - Jen

I can't believe it. After weeks of squabbling, sparring, and scratching - they have finally realized that its much nicer (and warmer) to just get along...

Dye happy - Jen

Oooh hoo hoo, how exciting is this? Potential for great things here, my first set of dyes ever. Burgundy, Navy, Aqualon Wine and Purple. The packaging of the dyes reminds me vaguely of stuff in my Grandma Flading’s basement that came from her unsold inventory when she ran a General Store. The old bottles of ink, nasty cough drops, and weird bottles of stuff I don’t remember what they were.

I can’t even organize my thoughts I have so many ideas for projects. Where to start? A sweater (maybe this one I will wear?), a funky pair of fair isle socks, a beret, finger flap mittens so I can knit at soccer games? Christmas ornaments? HOW CAN PEOPLE NOT KNIT? What must life be like as a non knitter? What do non knitters think about before they fall asleep? You know how you feel like passing out when you try to imagine infinity, or never having been born? That’s how I feel when I think about the world without knitting…

Ghosts and Goblins - Rich

I haven't posted in a while because I've been toiling away at a number of outside projects in a futile attempt at getting ready for breeding season. Back in June or so, I set a goal of getting a halloween train layout completed by...you know...Halloween. So here it is.

The ghouls, the cackling witches, the freaks, the undead, the wretches of the underworld. Okay, enough about my last trip to Walmart, here is the completed (or nearly so) train layout.

The first image shows most of the layout. The Haunted Mansion in the top left (that my wife Jen made out of paper), the haunted graveyard below it, and the witches brew pub in the bottom left corner.

The next picture shows a different angle, capturing the two farms in the middle. Yes, the horse farm has a few sheep in the pasture. You can also see a ghostly looking grey sheep by the covered bridge. Wait a minute, how'd he get there?...William!

This picture provides greater detail of the Haunted Mansion and nearby graveyard.

Finally, the last image shows the two amishmen hauling a load of hay down the dirt road. Little do they know that they are being chased by a ghostly posse (of course, they wouldn't believe in it anyway, so I think they are safe...as of this writing). Lots of stuff happening in this creepy little village. Too much to mention...hooahhhhaha!!!

Stuff I Made and lookit how cute our dog is - Jen

Here is Cody, our whippet, posing in front of an afghan I just finished crocheting. The yarn came from a variety of white sheep we’ve had on the farm over the years that I finally spun up. At one time we had quite a few whites, now we only have our Lily. And of course, I am now at the point where I am ready to start playing with dyes, and I only have 1 and a half white fleeces left. Go figure. I suppose I can always dye some of our lighter greys. Anyways, mom said she wanted me to make her an afghan to replace the tattered one she made 20 years ago from acrylic (blech) yarn, so naturally, I had no choice, and now it's done. Except for the fringe, which I'm not going to add because I just see it as a waste of perfectly good wool yarn. Yep, I'm a true Yankee. As Deb always said, " Want not, want not".



FYI, afghans take up a heck of a lot of yarn. I would estimate I used about 2000 yards, or appx. 4 fleeces.
Isn’t Cody funny looking? He always tries to make himself look smaller than he is, all curled up like a kitty…

Tidbits - Jen

I was a vendor at the Knox Farm Fiber Festival on September 20th. My first time selling my yarn and fleeces to people. http://www.knoxfarmfiber.com/. It was a beautiful day, pastoral setting, the drive down was picturesque, saw tons of friends. Only damper on the whole day was - I hated selling my stuff! Everytime someone walked off with a skein of my yarn or a bag of my fiber, I felt a little piece of my heart chip off. But the money was cool, and I spent almost all of it on a table top loom which I have no idea how to use.

Trixie our new kitten is thriving and is very scratchy/bitey right now. I was getting ready for the fiber festival Friday, bagging up and labeling yarn. She found a nice cozy spot for a nap.

Karen was there with her two ankle biters, who are starting to be my favorites. They are so cute and say such funny things. Plus that, they have an eensy beensy hint of bad in them (especially the one, she knows who she is...), which I love. Here they are in front of the angora bunny pen.

We are doubling the floor space in our barn to accommodate our growing flock. Here it is mid process. Can’t wait for it to be done so I can not have to talk to people all the time again.