Fair time is one of my favorite times of the year - friends, family, fair food and of course, showing livestock. This summer, I spent over 20 DAYS at fairs in South Dakota. Most of them were spent sitting at the Ag United informational booth, talking to people about ag.
My favorite part of all the days of the fair came at the South Dakota State Fair this week. Our sheep were stalled right by where people walked by. When I was fitting my ewes, several people would stop to pet them and ask about them - me and moms's favorite part of fair! We both love promoting the sheep and lamb industry, and the fair is a great opportunity to do so. Later, we walked the ewes to a different barn, and were stopped by several families that just wanted to pet the pretty sheep. It was so awesome to see the little kids faces when they realized how soft her wool is and how much she likes people.
Fair time always reminds me about how we can take advantage of everyday opportunities like showing our livestock to promote agriculture to consumers. It also serves as a wake up call to remind me about how many are removed from agriculture.
Showing posts with label sheep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sheep. Show all posts
Monday, October 3, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
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.
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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.
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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.
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Little I ewe |
I am a major sheep nerd - not only have a I shown sheep in FFA, 4-H and Little I.....
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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.
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Wool Peacoat |
And I was on the wool judging team last year at SDSU. :)
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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!
Thursday, June 16, 2011
My first post!
Long have I been amused, entertained, educated, and distracted by other peoples blogs. After my boss's urging, I have decided to start my own! So here it goes:
I am many things.
I am a Farmgirl - from south central South Dakota. We have 1000 sheep, 100 cattle, 20 goats and many acres of farmland. Living on and working on the farm has giving me passion for agriculture and what I want to do with my life.
I am a Cowgirl - We also have 12 horses. My favorite thing to do is ride them, work with them, and just be with them. I love barrel racing, pole bending, goat tying and rodeo
I am big sister to 2 little munchkins - J and J are my best friends, worst enemies, and favorite people to play with. Even though I am 11 years older than them.
I am a sheep and goat person. (Yes I even admit it :) I love working with our sheep on the farm, talking to others about sheep and working at the SDSU sheep research unit.
I am the intern at Ag United: I work in Sioux Falls, helping plan events and do outreach to consumers so that they can learn more about agriculture.
Thats about all I have for now, hopefully I will update this about once a week, so stay tuned!!
I am many things.
I am a Farmgirl - from south central South Dakota. We have 1000 sheep, 100 cattle, 20 goats and many acres of farmland. Living on and working on the farm has giving me passion for agriculture and what I want to do with my life.
I am a Cowgirl - We also have 12 horses. My favorite thing to do is ride them, work with them, and just be with them. I love barrel racing, pole bending, goat tying and rodeo
I am big sister to 2 little munchkins - J and J are my best friends, worst enemies, and favorite people to play with. Even though I am 11 years older than them.
I am a sheep and goat person. (Yes I even admit it :) I love working with our sheep on the farm, talking to others about sheep and working at the SDSU sheep research unit.
I am the intern at Ag United: I work in Sioux Falls, helping plan events and do outreach to consumers so that they can learn more about agriculture.
Thats about all I have for now, hopefully I will update this about once a week, so stay tuned!!
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