We usually bring our old girl, Sally Ann, into the barn for a little extra TLC every morning. She and Kismet seem to have developed a special relationship. He loves to torture her while she eats her grain. She really doesn’t mind all this attention, and usually just continues slowly and patiently eating.
Yeeee-haw! (Sorry.) It’s breeding time again. We got everyone situated into four breeding groups today. We have some really great ram/ewe combinations that we think will produce beautiful fleeces
We are excited about next year’s lamb crop already.
Funny how things work out sometimes. The morning we were getting ready to shear, we startled some mice in the barn. Jonathan immediately began lobbying for a barn cat, but no time to think about that, there was shearing to be done! Fast forward to the next morning…Travis goes for a morning run, and (you guessed it) found a little kitty along the road. Well, you cannot argue when fate steps in, so meet Kismet, the new barn cat.
He has settled right in and enjoys ‘playing’ with the sheep. They haven’t quite figured out what his position in the flock is going to be.
Kismet likes to help the human beings out also. Here he is supervising Jonathan’s work on the four-wheeler. Our new kitty is very busy all day long patroling the barn, chasing stray pebbles and straw, and organizing baler twine. He has a little stub tail, which means (so we have been told) that he will be a great mouser. However, in between all the activity and excitement, every kitty has to make time for a little nap in the sunshine.
There was shearing,picking and carding, 
Spinning and knitting
The students were also given a wonderful bookmark:”Ewe” can’t beat a good book! which featured a sheep with real wool locks.
On Monday we traveled to Deer Run Sheep Farm near Franklin and brought home these beautiful Coopworth X Blue-faced Leicester crosses. Fiona is a 2 yr old ewe out of the silver/blue Coopworth ram, Hatchtown ‘Hatch’ and Deer Run Eithne a 3/4 BFL ewe. Fiona’s daughter, Deer Run 0620, is out of Silver Creek Obsidian ‘Sid’. Ewe lambs, Deer Run 0618 and 0619 are also out of ‘Sid’ and Deer Run Fenella, Fiona’s twin sister. The girls have great Coopworth and Blue-faced Leicester bloodlines and the beautiful fleeces that follow from them.
Thank you, Martha, we are very excited about these new additions to our flock!
