Goodbye Arwen

Last night we lost our beautiful Gr Pyr/Akbash named Arwen. She was only 14 months old and went chasing coyotes who were across the road and was hit by a car. She died instantly and the lovely person that hit her didn't even stop. She had never gone near the road before so we were very shocked that this would happen to her. She was the best LGD ever! Friendly and loving with everything from our kids, lambs, all the house dogs and cats but at night she turned into the vigilant guard dog. She is pictured here last summer as a puppy. Unfortunately this is one of only 2 pics that we have of her. We are so grateful to have known her and thankful that she didn't suffer. A pail with the handle chewed off (her favorite act of destruction) will have the power to put me to tears for a long time to come. Goodbye sweet Arwen.

Kentucky Derby and Rainbows...

Last Saturday I was really sad after watching my favorite for the Kentucky Derby run her heart out with a brave second place finish to a truly exceptional colt only to break down after the finish and have to be euthanized. It is a sad aspect of the sport and I really hope that they continue to work to make racing safer.

An hour or so after the race I went outside and this is what I saw...

There was actually a complete arc over the barn from the pasture to the hay field. I couldn't get back far enough to get a picture with the entire rainbow.




Of course the colours never turn up as well on camera as to the naked eye. Here you can just see the shadow of the second rainbow to the left of the main one.

Somehow a view like that puts things into perspective...to quote my friend Bill "life is good".

Shearing Day

Last Friday was shearing day and unfortunately it was cool and rainy. We managed to get all 50 (did I say 50!) adult sheep in the 2 barns so they were dry but our shearer complained that the fleeces were really gumming up his equipment due to the cool wet weather. So some of the girls have less than perfect haircuts. We will have to try and clean a few of them up by hand this week. The fleeces were really nice except for a few lambs that had felted. I wonder if the extremely snowy winter contributed to that?

SheltringPines Kamelya waiting patiently for her turn for a haircut.

Two of our wonderful assistants for the day waiting for the next fleece to come off. Thanks Dave and Leslie!

Honor and Linda deep in discussion, Linda was a big help with light skirting and bagging fleeces and Honor wrestled several of the girls over to the shearer and then made sure all the babes found their newly naked moms :)

Still more lamb pics...

Our lambs have had amazing fleeces this year! I am so impressed with all 5 of the rams we used. Lots of the fleeces are greatly improved over the dam's... now who to keep?

Not quite sure how I manage to get a rainbow in this pic but it is a nice effect for this sweet little ewe :)

This fawn katmoget ram has one of the tightest crimped fleeces.

My favorite baaaad sheep Elly with her little HST ram.

Apricot is using her little moorit ewe as a pillow (actually not so little she was 7.6lbs at birth)

This guy is still one of my favorites, love the spots and the fleece!

This is the ewe from the rainbow picture again, another favorite (I am going to have a hard time parting with some of these lambs)

Another shot of the fawn katmoget ram lamb...

BFL lamb Aurora thinks she is a dog because she lived in the house for a week!

BFL lambs

I have been very busy with lambing, children, life in general so I have not been keeping up with the new blog already :) We currently are halfway through lambing with 20 ewes left to lamb and 5 BFL lambs, 19 Shetland lambs and 2 Nigerian Dwarf kids on the ground. Here are some pics of the some of the new lambs...

Here is Beechtree Hetherington and her ram lamb below...

Above is a little ewe lamb out of Beechtree Platinum (one of a set of twin ewes)

Brae and her black pattern ewe lamb by Beechtree Coaldale

Ram lamb out of Beechtree Hetherington above.

Ewe out of Platinum again, she is sooo cute! The girls have named her Saphire and her twin is Opal.

Lots of spots!

Above is a cute little ewe out of HarmonyMarsh Aruba and Willowgarden Sudan.

This ewe (pics above and below) has an amazing crimpy fleece, plus the cute spots and she may be modified. She is out of Willowgarden Gala and HarmonyMarsh Aslan.

This is HarmonyMarsh Anne Frank and her brand new ram lamb. He has an amazing crimpy fleece and he is moorit, spotted and carries modified!





He has a Pink nose Bill :)









Black HST ram lamb (carries modified) out of Willowgarden Ella Fitzgerald and Willowgarden Sudan.



HST fawn katmoget ewe lamb out of Willowgarden Rosemary and HarmonyMarsh Aslan.

Annie and her ram again.

Lambs at last...

The lambs have been arriving daily for the last week. We have been very busy with 10 Shetland lambs, 5 BFL lambs and 1 Nigerian Dwarf kid but all are well so we are happy. We still have 29 or 30 ewes to go and one goat so lots of babies still to come. Here are some of them so far...



These are our bottle babies Mabel a musket Shetland ewe and Aurora a BFL ewe lamb. These girls are best friends :)

This is a tiny little ewe lamb born to one of last year's shetland lambs. She only weighed 3.5lbs at birth but she is feisty and is already playing with the big boys.

This is Sage's little Nigerian Dwarf doe, doing what goats do best...climbing.

This little guy was the first of the lambs born here this year. He is very content and has the smile to prove it :)

No lambs or kids yet

We are patiently waiting for lambing/kidding to begin, well maybe not so patiently :) We have 37 Shetland ewes bred with due dates from April 1st to May 26th as well as 2 Nigerian Dwarf goats that are due sometime after April 1.

Sooo...

Because I have no baby pics for my first post here is another cutie that has taken up residence in our barn. He is doing a great job of scaring the pigeons away and eating mice. Hopefully we will have lamb pics in the next 2 or 3 days.