Growing Pains, Sheep pt. 1

It's been a rough week this week. I was ready on Sunday night to blog about my new sheep.  About how the day they arrive at my house (May 16th) is a very special day for so many reasons and on and on.  I decided to wait till I could get good pictures to go into the blog. I decided I'd do it Monday night, after knit group, which I'd go to after I unloaded the sheep.  I had no idea the transmission in the truck would crap out on the highway. On the way home. With three sheep in the trailer and in the middle of a may snow.

I couldn't manage to blog about my special day of finally getting my own sheep on Tuesday, or Wednesday. Instead I tried to just enjoy their company. Pretend that on Monday night I wasn't stricken with grief. That really, the only thing that the excitement of the day reminded me of is that my mom died of Alzheimer's the year before. That because of toxic family members I'd found myself utterly alone, not unlike that moment on the highway with a dead truck. Hoping that my husband would be there soon with the kids in the mini-van to save me.  So, I ruminated instead of blogging.

I thought about how my mom wasn't my legal mother upon my birth. On May 16th 1979 my adoption was finalized and then I was hers.  It had taken a year of various checks and things.  But on that date in 1979 a judge had my mom and dad say some vows.  Actually it was just my dad because when he went up in front of the judge I screamed and hollered "I want my dad!!" etc. so loud he simply asked my mom if she felt the same and of course she did.  That day my mom, dad and I celebrated every year from that year on until dad left and it was just the two of us.  We still celebrated every year until she got so sick she forgot.  That was the year she moved in with me.  It was a tough year for everyone.  It was heartbreaking that she sat next to me that year and had no idea that it was my "special day". A day that only she and I could celebrate.  It was no one else's special day but mine and hers. 

Me and mom circa 1979ish

Me and mom Christmas 2004ish

After a rough several days feeling sorry for myself I realized that it's quite fitting that the year following mom's passing my husband had to save the day and limped the truck home, trailer in tow, and that sheep were unloaded under a spring snow storm. It was a beautiful wreck and in the end I unloaded a trio of wool sheep into my yard to raise my kids with and begin the journey of growing my own wool.

I also found joy one morning when the sheep called out and I could hear them from the Study, bleating.  I hadn't heard that sound in my own yard in the wee hours for so long. It was comforting.  It was in that moment I realized mom would have been proud.  She'd have been so happy for me to have my own full time flock of sheep to enjoy and tend.  Mom may not have ever enjoyed the critters the way I do, but she totally understood it.  She knew it was in my bones.

There are 100 bales of hay stacked up with my name on it (literally) that needs picked up before they start putting up the new hay.  There are sheep who need to eat that hay.  That hay is a fraction of the cost of the feed store hay.  hwe had to buy a bale of feed store hay just to get through the week because we can't haul the big load without a truck.  There is lumber to haul for a garage but then, I suppose if we're out a huge bill to fix the truck or buy a new truck, there may not be a garage yet. Not for ANOTHER year.  Growing is always hard and growing a farm, even just a hobby farm, can be unrelentingly hard but so worth it down the road.

Selfie with Bluelips

It does help to remember the deep roots, sometimes painful ones that get us to where we are.  I aso really love noting that my genetics seem to be written in a way to include sheep.  My great grand parents were part of the Columbia sheep project with the University of Wyoming and in my Great Grandma's ledger she wrote that she knew each of her spring lambs as well as she "knows each of her own children".  Mom is resting with her mom, and her grandma and grandpa on the ranch they homesteaded that we all love dearly.  And I can finally call myself a bit of a shepherdess.

Great Grandpa Ben letting the lambs out

Coming up: Sheep pt.2--The big reveal on shearing day; preparing and showing the fleeces!

New Leaf: A Quick Springtime Post

After about a year of  meat rabbit keeping, we've decided to move away from this aspect of rabbit raising in favor of pursuing my real passion of fiber arts and spinning.  While I really love to eat rabbit prepared in many different ways, the culling days were pretty emotionally draining for me.  Then my family just wasn't interested in much of the eating part unless it was prepared in a way that required quite a lot of work on my part.  The facts are that as a family we're not huge meat eaters in general.  I also have been keeping a fiber herd of rabbits that I haven't been able to focus on because of the work I've been doing with the meat rabbits...either cleaning the colony, culling etc...  Not that it's a huge amount of work.  I have two small children and the work involved in keeping two separate herds with two pretty different sets of needs, housing and dietary, just isn't worth the little pay off we were getting.  I'm sure there are plenty of other families with a different situation.  In fact in an urban area if you wanted to grow your own meat, rabbit is ideal and I think the Silver Fox breed is a really great breed for pelt and meat purposes.  Very calm rabbits with very good meat to bone and solid growth rate if you get rabbits from a reputable breeder.

Doe colony of Silver Fox

Our first rabbit processed

It's spring, finally, here in Wyoming and we're doing a little bit of revamping . Since my rabbits will be moving out of their camp trailer colony (here's a link to pictures of the process of building the colony:Rabbit Colony from Start to Finish) I'll be moving the waterfowl into their space.  I will have two flocks, a flock of Muscovy ducks we will use for meat and pest control and a flock of Welsh Harlequin ducks for egg laying.  My Cayuga flock with the Rouen and Pekin will probably be for sale later this summer.  I also picked up a pair of Buff Geese that I'm really excited to have around to sound the alarm if there's anything amiss around the place.

The flock of sheep mine will come from

The most exciting bit of goings on around here this spring is that we'll be picking up a pair of CVM x Merino lambs as soon as the last duck has moved out of the duck house.  The sheep will be living in the duck house with the geese.  I've spun from this local flock so I'm super excited to be getting these guys.  I think this is a ewe and a wether and both were bottle babies so should be very sweet to handle.  If it pans out we may expand our flock into more sheep and lambing our own addition or for sales.  I will probably blog about how we came to the decision to purchase these two sheep from this particular breeder.  A bit about the breeds as well.






Spring is always such an exciting time on a "farm".  New babies and plans as well as work going in to cleaning up the mess that winter left.  We might even manage to get a garden going this spring.  I have a shoulder injury though that may make tilling up a plot for a garden difficult at best.  Building projects for a garage are on the horizon and that building will include a fiber room for me to process wool in.  I'm very excited for things to come.  Look forward to more regular postings from me as well.  Last year was a little rough for us so I wasn't able to keep up on the blogging as often as I'd have liked to.

My daughter with one of our new Welsh Harlequin hatchlings