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!