Baa-log

This is my first Baa-log. Thanks to my dad for the title ( sheep people like corny sheep jokes, don't ewe?) My goal is to do a sheep blog once a week, so to start out here is a little of my sheep background.

Wool drying at Mt. Vernon last summer

For the past eleven years, my family has had sheep. Currently, we have about a thousand head of ewes and their lambs on our commercial lamb to finish operation. Commercial means that we are primarily raising lambs to sell at market. We lamb our ewes in three groups, 450 head the end of January and beginning of February, 400 in March and the rest in April and May.

Lamb 100 this spring.

 Our ewe flock consists mostly of ewes we raised – only about 200 in the flock were purchased, and we raise our own replacement ewe lambs (ewe lambs that are not sold to market). About 700 head of ewes are bred to black face (black face means black sheep) rams. These are the lambs that we sell to market as they are fastest growing. The others are bred to white face rams, and hopefully have lots of white ewe lambs that we can keep for replacements! I love my sheep and really do miss working on the farm year round when I am at school. I try to go home and help whenever I can, and my parents like to plan working sheep, shearing and barn cleaning around when I am going to be around to help.

Little I ewe

I am a major sheep nerd - not only have a I shown sheep in FFA, 4-H and Little I.....

Reserve Round Robin and Grand Champion Sheep Showman at Little I

But I have also sewn with wool and competed in several different contests like Ladies Lead and Make it with wool. And knitted lots of wool things like bags and scarves.



Wool Peacoat



And I was on the wool judging team last year at SDSU. :)

Our Judging family at awards in Houston!

Moral of the blog: I love my sheep - look forward to more sheep blogs to come!! In the meantime feel free to ask me about sheep, wool or anything else!

Wordless Wednesday



I forgot how much I LOVE taking pictures. Until my little froggy friend showed up and inspired me to borrow grandma's cool camera to snap some new shots.





Inspiration!

So after catching Mr. Toad on the hop, I spent a evening wandering the place, snapping some new shots.





Mini Roses



Am thinking this one may get framed for the apartment

A perfectly clear SD night



Am calling this one Perseverance



My creativity came back: I ended up taking pictures IN the silo. Like as in hanging upside down in the silo.

Did I mention that grandpa has a gorgeous pony? This is Jerry. Jerry likes his picture taken.

Another part of my creative burst - my refinding my good friend, picnik! I did this picture right before the 4th - it was taken last year when I was in DC, but I kinda forgot about editting it. Until now! All in all? Bring it on open class photography!

Prince Charming?



Prince Charming?

 As I was walking past the fish tank the other night, I noticed this little guy hanging out with the goldfish. After checking to make sure he wasn't feasting on the fish I grabbed my camera and caught him on his way out. Should have grabbed him - could be prince charming!

Storm Season

Its storm season out there, and I want to take a mintue to remind everyone to be smart and to be SAFE, because scary storms can happen anywhere, as my family learned a year ago.

It was a warm July day, and there were tornado warnings and sigthings in our area. I was working at the DQ in town, and we had almost 40 people packed into our food coolers because the tornado sirens were going off.  We were sent home when the sirens quit, and Mom called as I was driving. "The hoop barns are gone." Gone?  

South Barn

We had just finished this barn about 4 months before the storm. There were 600 lambs housed in our two hoop barns. Fortunately, we only lost one lamb!  You can see overturned feeders in this picture - They had been filled with corn just that morning. 

The north barn

Twisted beams!

We were so lucky to have not lost our house, or more animals! This experience made me very thankful for our neighbors. That night, we had several visit and offer to help clean up the wreckage, even though it was almost a month later when we finally started ripping things apart and attempting to salvage posts and hoop sections.

A year later, two new hoop barns stand in the same spots - It's almost as if the storm never happened. I keep a bolt that is bent to a L on my dresser to remind me to never underestimate mother nature - and now I really really don't like storms!!