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I am so excited to share this post with you. Let’s have some fun!
Last year Betsy MacIssac of Crooked Fence Farm, Putney, VT (site is under construction so check back) contacted me to get together as she had just purchased her first CVM/Romeldales and was interested in getting together to discuss our shared interest. She had heard we had a fine flock of CVM/Romeldales that we began developing in 2002. Our encounter has blossomed into a great friendship…..Sister Farms bounding the Connecticut River in NH and VT. As the crow flies we are 4 miles apart, our farm nestled in the hills on the East side of the river and her family’s farm set on the west side of the river in VT. We have joked many a time that if we had a boat that we could anchor on the NH side, I could be at her farm for a visit in 15 minutes! As it is however, we need to adhere to the roads which is a 25 minute trek.
In the history book of the Town of Westmoreland is many a tale of the ferries that ran from our town to the Putney/Dummerston, VT area as early as 1752. By 1812 a bridge was constructed from Westmoreland to Putney, later known as Britton’s Ferry. The following winter the bridge was swept away in the ice flows come spring. Again, in 1814, the bridge was rebuilt and there was a toll booth on the NH side. As a side note, to this day, NH owns the CT River and perhaps NH felt they had rights to charge for travel across it. That bridge continued to serve the people for 12 more years accounting only one catastrophe. In 1820, a circus, traveling across the river, was transporting an elephant whose weight proved too much for the bridge and the poor elephant crashed through the floor and into the river below. The elephant did not survive but the bridge was repaired and continued to thrive until a series of rainstorms and repeated rebuilding discouraged further attempts to span the river at this location.
Betsy and I are both pleased and excited to be so near to each other and able to share not only shepherding help but also breeding our flock’s combined genetics and getting together to work on projects with CVM/Romeldale fiber. It’s a great opportunity combined with a genuine friendship.
Here ye, here ye! Crooked Fence Farm is about to have their first lambs! And we want to have a lamb pool for due date and time of day! Here is the first lamb pool.
This is the ram, Neville, a CVM. An extremely handsome boy and also a love. He is the proud sire to be.
This is Georgia, a CVM, the expectant dam to be.
Clue #1: This will be Georgia’s first lambing. On a side note, both Betsy and I agree it is better to not breed ewes their first year but rather to let them develop and mature and start the breeding cycle in their second year.
Clue #2: Georgia began her breeding days with Neville October 12th and she remained in his adoring reach until November 16th, 35 days and two estrus cycles which is ideal.
Clue #3: Her due date, based on gestation tables will be from March 6th to April 10th. Look at her closely….it’s not far off!
Time to place your bets for the date (month/day) and the time of day. The person coming the closest to the actual lambing date will win 4 ounces of Long Ridge Farm’s
roving from our very dark and very dear Trinity, a natural colored Romeldale!
Check back for the results when the lambing is official. I will post the heading as Lamb Pool Results and the winner’s name will be posted. Of course your entries will also be visible here under comments.
Good luck!
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Three things come together in NH in late February to mid-March: maple sugaring, mud season and town meeting. We have hit the perfect storm this week. The mud on the dirt roads is as bad as ever…knee deep in places and the frost isn’t even out of the ground yet. We had such an early cold winter the frost went deep and with the record snow fall this mud season will be a whopper. I hear that past our farm the roads are darn near impassable already.
Annual voting is tomorrow and then our town meeting is Wednesday night. Lots on the town warrant this year; typical issues like a new fire truck, repairing the pumper truck, we need a new highway truck and so forth but folks in town aren’t feeling very flush right now so attendance will be high and the debates heated, I suspect.
I’ll update those two issues by weeks end.
Now about sugaring, we are having a season but it’s been a bit up and down. You have to have cold nights (below freezing) and warm days (above freezing!) for the sap to run and that hasn’t been a steady thing so far. But Friday into Saturday was pretty good so we spent some time at a sugar shack in town Saturday afternoon into the evening.
Last summer I did a post in August about Reggie who had driven his team of draft horses past our farm as he was working on a logging project not too far away. Saturday morning I was out in the workshop and Reggie drove by and we had a visit, roadside style. He said he was giving sugaring a go for the first time from beginning to end, with his team of horses helping by doing the lugging. He invited us down in the afternoon. By the time we got there he and Norm had already gathered the sap with the horses so we got to hang out, have a few beers (pretty much a given) and see what might come of the days gathering.
Now this is a sugar shack to write about! It’s portable! He can haul it anywhere with his truck. Reg took his horse hauler and converted it, temporarily into a sugar house. Inside there is a barrel stove with an evaporator on top, enough space for wood to feed the fire, space for folks to gather round the stove and outside the horses can pull up next to the sugar shack and the sap can be off loaded in buckets to pour into the evaporator. It wasn’t a romantic Yankee Magazine sugarhouse but all in all it worked! They even rigged up a leaf blower which could be pointed at the draft to the barrel stove to further fuel the fire!
I spent some time in the barn during chores as Reg cleaned the horse and cow stalls to ready them all for the overnight. Jack and I have driven by his barn many a time on a cold winter evening and it looks so cozy. Now I see why. He has 5 horses, 4 of them draft horses and one guernsey cow, Fosta. Fosta is about 17 months old and due to calf in July. She is a lovely Guernsey and it will be nice to see a babe coming along this summer. Up back there are some 50 hens which are layers and Reg sells the eggs around town.
We came away from the day feeling good…had a lot of good laughs, helped as we could and once again knew how much we love our town.
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That thing we dread has happened today. My PC crashed….
We had a power outage (ever so brief) last night and when I got to my office this morning a message came on my screen….”Alert! blah, blah, blah….System failure!” So of course I did all the attendant things to resurrect the system but wound up just buying a new tower and moving on. In a week I’ll have my world back to computer normal but meanwhile I have no email addresses to work with or whatever really matters.
We had a great time maple sugaring here in town yesterday with Reggie and Norman, more on that tomorrow…”Fosta”, Reg and Shannon’s Guernsey cow, sums it up completely! No matter what life hands you, it’s all good. She was enjoying an alfafa snack.
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A snack
Chewing the “fat” with your friends
And some time for rest and reeelaxation!
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And now we wish Jackie happy birthday!
We bought her in 2002 with our original starter flock and she was 4 months old. She had traveled all the way from the west coast and by the time she reached us she was so skittish. As with all the newcomer sheep we keep them in a safe environment where we can watch them and visit with them and get them used to us, our voice and handling.
Jackie was so timid it was impossible to get near her unless we confined her. She has a crooked lower jaw and so her teeth are offset. Not sure if it was an injury early on or she was born that way. But now it is endearing characteristic for sure. Below is a photo early after her arrival. Perfect conformation.
She came to be known as ‘Jackie O’ for Jackie Onassis, both beautiful and mysterious. It took 6 months for me to be able to touch her at all. And the day she decided I was alright it was over in an instant. Jackie walked up to me, I got down at eye level with her and she folded into my arms. It was such a special moment. And now we are buds for life.
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It’s an old WIP, but a good WIP!
I have made peace with a pair of thrummed mitts I started but got set aside for awhile. I just unearthed them and will now wrap them up. They are knit with the yarn from my ever so soft Ashley, shown here.
She gives the softest Romeldale fleece I have ever felt, as soft as butter, really. And for a few years now I save her fleece for my personal stash only! She only yields about 5 pounds a year and by the time it is gone to the mill and back I get 3 pounds of yarn.
The wool is a soft brown so I jazzed it up with a strand of a hot limey colored yarn made of 70% kid mohair and 30% silk…yummy combo! For the thrums (fleece in roving form) I used Ashley’s roving in very small pieces and knit a bit of fleece into every 3rd stitch in every 4th row. I am on a size 2 needle. I wanted mitts that were fitted and a bit more elegant.
