A Goat, an Electric Chainsaw, and a DR Trimmer

Time flies when you're working the homestead! I can't believe I haven't posted in such a long time. I've been busy, busy, busy.

Our driveway is overgrown with brush and small trees. So bad that we can't drive down without limbs hitting the vehicles. So, this summer I've taken on the task of trimming back our 1/4 mile long driveway. This is no easy task. And I can only work on the driveway when everything else is caught up. I'm now more than half way done. Among all the brush are tree limbs that fell during the ice storm. Photos are before trimming back, and after.

So Shadow is helping drag the small trees that I cut down with my handy dandy electric battery powered chainsaw. Then I use the DR Trimmer with a beaver blade to cut down the small brush and then pile it up for burning later.

The sheep are doing well despite the high temps this summer. Grass is plentiful this year.

New Additions to the Flock and Gardening

 

The breeder I bought my sheep from had some bottle babies for sale, and well, we were looking to diversify our herd anyways. So, I drove 4 hours one way to pick up these little darlings. A white ewe and two ram lambs. The ram lambs are really unique coloring, officially called silver blackbellies. The garden is doing really well this year! I've been picking Swiss Chard, Radishes, and Loose Leaf Lettuce. The Sugar Snap peas have just started producing little pods! Yum!

Surprise!!!

Yesterday, my husband was looking out the window to the front pasture and said "I think you have a new lamb". You've got to be kidding me! Moonstruck really pulled a fast one over me. No way did she look like she was bred. So, I had to go way out in the front pasture and get the lamb and try and coax Moonstruck back to the shed to put her in the maternity ward. A little white ewe lamb! Yehaw! Both mom and babe are doing well and are in their own paddock enjoying fresh grass today.

Spinning, Spinning, Spinning

All the sheep have been shorn. And I've washed all but one of the 2011 fleeces. Yesterday I started flick carding and spinning Jacynda's fleece. What a lovely fleece she has. So soft and easy to spin. Another reason she has become my favorite ewe. I really hope next year she gives me a ewe lamb or two!

Lately we had been having such wonderfully warm weather with higher than normal temps for this time of year. Well, of course, the weather sling shot in the other direction last weekend. Rain, rain, and more rain, plus thunder sleet, a little hail, and temps in the 30's at night. I hope the garden makes it through this last ditch effort of Mr. Winter!

Ramblings...

Last week the weather was nice enough that I was able to get some garden work done. Here's Shadow hauling topsoil and compost to the raised bed garden for me. I'm not done filling the raised beds yet, still quite a few bags to go. Thank you Shadow for being such a help to me.

I've been washing this years fleeces and getting them ready for combing and spinning because it's been rainy lately. This is Jacinda's fleece before washing.

Lambs!

Jacinda and Raven have lambed! White twin ram lambs and black twin ewe lambs! I'm so happy that they both had twins! Hopefully next year Jacinda will have ewe lambs. She's getting on up there in age and I would really like to have a ewe lamb or two out of her before she retires.

This week has been really rainy, good for the pasture seed that I put out to seed the bare spots, but makes it hard to do any work outside. The garden is doing well. Can you tell I have spring fever!?!

Hopefully this spring, we'll be having the tree stumps pulled and hauled off.

I've been knitting another pair of Fair Isle Flower Socks. I just can't seem to stop knitting socks. This pair I'm using Moonstruck's yarn as the main color and some leftover butter cream white as the pattern color. The color has come out really nice.

I just recieved some books from Amazon that I bought and am flipping through them looking for ideas for projects that I want to do with the yarn that I'm going to have spun with my fleeces. These are really good books and are loaded with designs for color work as well as the history of different ethnic traditions of color work.

Knitting in the Old Way: Designs and Techniques from Ethnic Sweaters

Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting

Traditional Fair Isle Knitting

Traditional Scandinavian Knitting

Shadow taking a cat nap between work sessions.

Neked Sheep and Crazy Weather

Well this has been one crazy week when it comes to the weather! We had about 6 inches of beautiful snow with temperture down to 0 F. There were a lot of tractor trailer accidents for over the road truck drivers. Thank the Lord that my husband was able to make it home safely to wait out the weather.

This week the weather is going to be in the upper 60's F. Today, I was outside in a tee shirt! The garden has started coming up despite the extremely cold weather.

 

Jacinda is due to lamb at the end of the month. So today she got her spring haircut. Tomorrow, I'll be giving Raven her haircut as she's the next ewe due to lamb.

This fall, I'll be coating the sheep to help keep their fleeces cleaner. I'm also experimenting with a new way of feeding the round bale of hay to help keep them from getting so much hay on their necks. I need to wait a few weeks to see how they do with the new method.