Tag: spring

Spring Colour Week – Yellow

Sheeps & Peeps6 Comments

forsythia

‘home – making’ – mom’s and mom’s-in-law

“… and then my heart with pleasure fills,
and dances with the daffodils.” — William Wordsworth

The Buttercup Family from a favorite book
 “The Flowers’ Festival”
by Elsa Beskow

spring means shearing.. shearing means wool
tumeric-dyed wool provided by the lovely Prudence

Day 2 of Poppytalk’s Spring Colour Week – lots more wonderful ‘yellow’ here.

Spring Colours Week – Green

Sheeps & Peeps6 Comments
The true sign of spring in West Virginia – Allium tricoccum – Ramps

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough
or a book long enough to suit me.” — C. S. Lewis

moss and rock = love

fragile and beautiful – the first spring leaves

We are joining the folks at Poppytalk for the Flickr Group – Spring Colours Week.  You can check out all the beautiful contributions here.

Spring Shearing

Sheeps & Peeps6 Comments
Saturday dawned crisp and cold but sunny… the perfect day for spring shearing.  Shearers Joe and Melvin arrived and quickly set up shop.  We brought the yearlings over from the graveyard field while the bred ewes and wethers spent the night before in the barn, ensuring that their longer, thicker wool would be dry and easy to shear.  Our family and friends that pitched in to help are becoming quite experienced, almost a well-oiled machine once we get rolling.  There are stories told, memories shared, tears, hugs as well as laughter.  Sheep are caught, thrown for the shearer, belly and britch gathered when thrown to the side, sheep collected as they jump up from the mat, fleeces bundled, mats swept… then on to the next.  The shepherdess/s give CD+T vaccinations and a dose of garlick to each sheep on their way back to the pasture.  The bred ewes go out the side door, back into the barn paddock; the yearlings back in the pen awaiting their return to the graveyard field.  Granddaughter/great-niece, Harley, arrives to provide even more entertainment, moments of comic relief, games of tag, rock collecting, worry over the sheeps getting their shots and of course, more hugs and more kisses.  As the work continues…there are snacks, water, juice and Mom contributes cupcakes and cookies.  Wool fumes are heavy in the barn, and as we make our way through the 54 sheep each fleece is ogled and exclaimed over.  The excitement over a new crop of lovely fleece builds as the morning goes on. 

Finally, we are finished and the sheep head quickly to the feeders.  It is much more comfortable to be sheared with an empty belly so they have not eaten in nearly 12 hours.  They are now rewarded with feeders full of hay.  The yearling ewe, Maebh, has been moved in with the grown-ups so that we can keep an eye on her; she could lamb at any time.  Everyone heads home, except for one who remains to help the Shepherdess/s a little longer… there are yearlings to move, temporary fences to take down, and so on, and so on…

The scene in the pasture is quite different on Sunday morning with temperatures in the low 20’s and snow on the ground.  The pasture and the feeders are completely empty… not a sheep to be seen anywhere.  No sheep… that is until we open the barn door and there they are… all those nekkid sheep huddled in the barn.  Not to worry… in a few days their wool will have grown and they will, once again, be oblivious to the snow, wind, rain and pretty much whatever Mother Nature throws at them.  That is the way with sheep.

Happy Memorial Day

Sheeps & Peeps1 Comment

HEADQUARTERS GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC

excerpted from
General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land.

We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders.

Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.


If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.


Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from hishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation’s gratitude, the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.
Grave of Daniel Wiles, veteran of the Civil WarPlease thank the veterans in your life, today, for the sacrifices they have made.(Re-posting from Memorial Day 2009)