Snow is setting in today. Maybe 10 plus inches for us which is just great.
Sidney is in heaven! Here waiting for me while I did the sheep and hen chores this morning.
And then we took a walk and he ran and ran and ran. He just loves the snow which is good thing because we have plenty of it!
And today we celebrate Daphne’s 6th birthday! I have a feeling I will be saying this more than not as I go through all the birthdays and describe each sheep….Daphne is just so sweet and mellow. She is not a stand-out sheep for personality….very low key. But if ever I need a gentle conversation and am willing to listen she will be there. Sheep like for humans to get down so they are at eye level before they are willing to commit to any real discussion. Daphne’s style is to put her head down and just hang out and if I cup her chin in my hand and hold her cheek to cheek with me she will stand there for hours. She loves it. I have had her snore while holding her that way! Here she is just after we bought her in 2003.
One thing Daphne is proud of is her fleece. She can win a ribbon every time. So convinced I was, I saved it to submit in the fall of 2007 to be judged at Rhinebeck. Some of you read this story after I posted it here in October 2007, I was so upset. But it goes like this.
I took three fleeces to Rhinebeck and was at the door at 8AM to enter them. That went great (so I thought) and I went off to open my booth for vending. At noon my friend Maryann went over to the sale barn to see what the results were. She found Daphne’s fleece gone and Joe and Judy Miller, the people who run the sale/judging, had no idea where it had gone. When Maryann returned and told me I roared over there, as you can imagine. After a lengthy go-round they basically put up their hands and said “must have been stolen”. I was fit to be tied and somehow it didn’t ring true. I had labeled it and it was 7 pounds, a bit tough to steal. But there was nothing I could do. This is the fleece before I took it to Rhinebeck.
Well the months passed and come early spring of 2008 a woman contacted me to reserve a fleece. She said she had bought one before and loved it. You know where this is going, right? I asked her where she had bought before and she said Rhinebeck. Ah ha! So through the course of emails back and forth she said she picked Daphne’s fleece out early in the AM before judging and then waited in line to buy it at the appointed time. She told me I had won 1st place in natural colored fine wool class! I had a ribbon! And she was so psyched to have purchased the winning fleece! She sent me pictures of all the tags that came with the fleece. But of course the ribbon was not there as it would be given to the owner of the animal…me!
At that point I was relieved to know it had sold and that I had won a ribbon! So I contacted the head of the Rhinebeck Festival, Bob Davis, and told him my story and sent all the pictures. I told him about the Miller’s inexcusable negligence with the whole situation. He appologized and eventually after many months I got a check for the fleece. But I never got the ribbon. To this day I write Bob Davis, who had told me he would get the ribbon to me, but he will not reply now.
So I have resigned to just knowing Daphne won the prize and resolved to never show at that venue again. What would you do at this point?
Here is Daphne today, a lovely face and a lovely fleece. My Daphne doll, happy birthday!
So here is Bea this morning. I just gave her some cubes of alfalfa and she loves me! Don’t you just LOVE her name? I will never be one of those hard core shepherds who never name their sheep, just ear tag numbers. I would never want so many I couldn’t distingish each one from the next.
We bought Bea in July 2003, she was born 1/26/01. I saw her photo and thought “boy, not the greatest looking ewe. Split ear, funky looking face, but I just LOVE the name!” She was a proven good lamber and mother so I thought why not. And she also is half sister to Memphis who has her day in the sun tomorrow. She and Memphis came from a farm in Washington state, darn good stock. That split ear bugged me!!! And you can see that her neck is shaved? I was told she liked to eat grass on the other side of the fence and had done it so much she had a perpetual bald spot! So I had this nagging question….is she one of those ewes that is always getting into trouble?
Here is Bea a few days after she arrived with two other ewes we bought, Daphne and Mila and a wether, Wetherby (white lamb laying on the ramp). Daphne, Mila and Wetherby were just 4 months old and had assumed Bea as the mother figure. Bea is one heck of a mother. Very protective, attentive and alert at all times. If there is a movement or an issue at the field edge or in the woods she will stare it down. She is up front and strong. One windy day a green plastic trash bag had found it’s way loose and into the field, catching on a fence post. I watched here react before removing the bag. She stood and snorted at it from across the pasture, just like a deer. She wouldn’t let up on it and I like that about her.
Here she is later that summer with Daphne and Mila and Memphis to the far left, just chewing and grooving. 
She is a joy to have here, and gives me the most incredible hugs…I call them Bea Hugs and I am going to get a photo taken of one soon! She comes at me head on, puts her head over my shoulder, we are chest to chest and she just leans into me. It is a great reward for taking a chance on her in 2003. Happy birthday Bea! 8 years old today.
We have a flurry of birthdays in the barn this week beginning with Crystal’s today.
She is now 8 years old and I can’t believe where the time has gone! She was one of the first ewes we purchased, a twin, stemming from a flock in Washington. She traveled across country that spring of 2002 all the way to us here in NH. I didn’t have a digital camera back then so I don’t have the cute lamby pictures (and she was cute!) but this is her a year later at one year old.
Crystal is probably our steadiest, mellowest ewe, always has been. She rarely has a issue and always loves a hug.
Here she is this morning, enjoying cake with her friends!
Many moons ago and I mean MANY moons, we owned two beautiful Oxford ewes pictured below. They were our first sheep that we bought in 2000. I was soooo excited and boy did we spoil these girls. Pearl (left) was named after my maternal grandmother and Viola (right) for Jack’s childhood family nanny.
Here they are running out from the barn to the hay feeder, about 4 months old and feeling good!
Oxford wool is great for outerwear, blankets and socks. And at the time I didn’t even know how to knit, I just had to have some sheep.
So I sent the raw wool off the following spring to a mill to be spun to yarn and a few blankets. I knew nothing about good mills from bad mills and this was not a good experience. The yarn came back single spun with massive amounts of slubs (for you non-fiber people that means areas of the yarn that are unspun). But when I say slubby this was awful. I couldn’t market it at all. So I kept it for us to knit up. It would make fine barn sweaters and heavy socks.
In 2002 we sold Pearl and Viola to an farm that raised Oxfords so we could make room for the beginning of our CVM/Romeldale flock. Secretly we have felt badly ever since as they didn’t get the life we had hoped. I know Viola has since died and I suspect Pearl has also. In the summer of 2004 I decided to knit a pair of socks for Jack from their yarn as I reminisced about them. But I also wanted to try my hand at dyeing and so I used some synthetic dyes to paint the yarn. It was so exciting, having never dyed before. And then I began knitting the socks in the fall of 2004.
This project fell off the face of the FO list when I realized I didn’t have enough yarn to finish them and also the first sock came out too short for Jack’s measurement. I stashed the project, fell in love with natural dyeing and never looked back. I’d pull the project out of the UFO drawer look at it, sigh and close the drawer.
But then whilst in the middle of my block a few weeks ago, I decided “I can do this!” So I dyed (with the synthetic dyes) another skein of yarn, tore out the finished sock back to before the toe decrease, remeasured Jack’s foot and off I went. It was so easy once I made up my mind to finish them!
I was captive in the truck for a day last weekend while Jack ran radar for our local snowmobile club’s annual radar run and I was able to wrap them up.
Webster was thinking they might make for an interesting bed.
Jack wore them to do the chores this morning and I am happy to report they don’t slip down in his boots, they are warm, he loves them and they are DONE!
For all my friends who knit alot…you inspire and amaze me!
Today Jack and I enjoyed a local snowmobile ride….one we have done many, many times and we never tire of it. We trailered to a dairy farm in Westmoreland, Windyhurst Farm, where we began the ride. It is without a doubt one of the prettiest farms in the state and has earned the NH Farm of Distinction award. Windyhurst Farm is a working dairy farm, milking holsteins. Owned for many generations by the Adams, they also operate the best pancake house around, Stuart and John’s. Starting February 15th the pancakes are once again on the griddle along with unbelieveable waffles, french toast and Grampy’s homemade donuts. Stuart Adams and John Matthews started the business as teenagers and it is now a thriving business. They have a large maple syrup business and so as you can imagine the pancake house serves all that great food smothered in pure NH made maple syrup. Oh my it is the best!
So we took off from Windyhurst and wound our way around Westmoreland and up into Walpole across some of the prettiest farmland the state offers. This is a view of Derry Hill in Walpole. We stopped on top of a huge field to take in the view and way down below the County Road winds through the fields. An old pickup drove along the road and from so far away gave a big toot on the horn to say hello as we waved back. Nice.
Winding down from these high field we came to the Graves Farm in Walpole. Also a working dairy farm, milking holsteins and raising some beef cows also. To the right and out of view was another group of cows around a feed bunk and there was a huge flock of wild turkeys with them, eating the left over feed the cows didn’t eat. Tranquil.
And yet another field just off from the Graves Farm. Beautiful. I can also visualize a summer day, the grass so green and a breeze out of the Southwest, cows grazing and bees buzzing.
We continued down to the railroad bed and rode up to Diamond Pizza in Walpole for a refresher. It was a busy day there…the place was packed with snowmobilers enjoying the day on trail.
Heading home we traveled along a huge corn field owned by the Malnati Farm in Walpole, also a working dairy milking holsteins, and another NH Farm of Distinction…just beautiful. 
The trails travel through field after field after field….this is the Chickering horse farm in Walpole….as I stopped to take the picture, the horses were all so frisky. Was it my presence or were they having some fun themselves?
And finally we arrived back at Windyhurst Farm….such a pretty spot.
We felt so fortunate to live in such a beautiful town and area, still steeped in farming and the lifestyle it offers.
