Wow, it's been nearly 3 months!

Hoping to remedy the dial up situation by year-end...It's killing me!  Every time I start a blog, by the time I finish it it's totally outdated lol.  I miss you all!  :)  If I ramble a bit, I appologize, but I worked last night even though it was my night off, covered for a friend.  So I am a little sleep deprived :D

So, what's new?  Lets see here...For non-farm life....Adam and I both turned a year older...yipee...lol.  The 20ths of June & August :)  My beautiful god daughter turned a year old in July, and my awesome niece turns to a teen in a couple days.  Gonna be pulling my hair out between those two within the next couple years...the older because of boys, the younger because of toddlering...lol.  It's been nearly a year that we've been married now, and we've had our ups and downs, but we're nearly over the first hurdle!  :)  I've got something awesome planned...but shhh don't tell him!  We're still working on selling the house, going to finish moving everything to our storage locker this week.

And the biggest thing I'm sure a few people will notice in a few days:  We're not attending the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival in Jefferson, WI this year.  Between needing to clean the house, clean up my mom's place, and various other things and expenses that have come up, we're just not able to go this year.  But that's okay, because next year we'll be back in the show ring! 

We're changing the flock around a bit, downsizing the Shetlands, keeping back more meat crosses & purchasing a few more Romeldales.  Ideally I'd like my Romeldale flock around 10 animals, hopefully a representation of every color available eventually, though I think it'll be a while before I'm able to get my hands on a Swiss marked.  I love my Shetlands, but there's not much of a market for registered stock up here, and while I'm trying to improve my flock every year, it isn't going as fast as I'd like, though there are a few REALLY nice lambs out there right now, I'll try to get photos up soon.  Bedegraynes daughter and granddaughter espically.  I do have a young ram I kept back from last year I may use this fall, who's pretty darn nice.  The toughest part is cutting some of the ewes that have made the difference, to let them be replaced by either their own progeny or someone elses.  Some I can't cut, and will be kept on as crossers, like Bejig, and some who I'll probably cross this year, but next year if I get a better ram, will breed pure, like Rhiannon. 

We're hoping to get a website up in the next year or so, so be on the lookout for that!  I'd love to have all of my animals profiled on there, along with their stats for microning, lambing, etc.  We're also hoping to start testing for Johnes, CAE, etc., as soon as money permits. 

And while most animals choose to produce in the spring, it seems the fowl on this farm think that summer into fall is better.  We have chicks popping out all over the place.  I'm sure this year it at least has SOMETHING to do with the flood....OH THE FLOOD!  Okay, I'll come back to that...So I have three abandoned chicks in the house.  Twinkletoes was the first.  I found Twinkie all by herself (hopefully) in the barn.  Her momma was a first time momma, and didn't understand that you have to wait for newbie chicks to catch up.  So she was cold, and I took her and warmed her up.  But then, oops!  She thought I was her mommy.  She still runs into my hand every time I open the cage, too cute :)  Next were Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum...Unfortunately Tweedle Dum didn't make it, and Deedee is really touch and go right now, they got very chilled through at least one night before we found them abandoned.  And now Wookie has joined us.  Wookie is the fuzziest non-silkie chick I've ever had!  Total puffball.  Wookie was hatched under a guinea where a hen accidently laid her egg, and so we grabbed her quick before the guinea left the rest of her guinea eggs to go off with one little mutt chicken and ruin all those eggs.  They're precious :)

Okay the flood.  That was Mother Natures birthday present to me...lol.  But I also believe everything happens for a reason, and let me tell you, while the rest of this nation was having severe droughts, we were still okay because of all that rain.  Our rain gauge overflowed within the first 12 hours...and by the end of 24 we were under 10 inches of water.  Luckily our poor sump pump was working over time and only kicked itself out once, so we only suffered 3 inches of water in the basement.  While we're in the Nemadji Flood Plain or whatever it's called, we're much higher than Barnum or Moose Lake are, and they got hit HARD.  They had to recover people from the assisted living home there by front end loader out of windows.  Lous weren't sure they'd ever open again, but with LOTS of donations, I was able to have breakfast there this morning :)  They opened just in time for the fair.  There are still a lot of people working to fix up their homes after the disaster.  And FEMA is denying assistance...I'm sorry, but let me step up on my soap box for a second.  People build homes where hurricanes, or at least tropical storms, happen YEARLY, if not more than once a year, and they get assistance?  But when Duluth, MN and the surrounding area FLOODS, they deny it?  People were KAYAKING by the mall in Hermantown.  ON A HILL.  /steps off soapbox.

Okay, on to more farm news.  The baby alpaca is ready for a new home!  As are MANY lambs, chicks, muscovy ducklings, young call duck pairs and other critters.  We have farm kittens available as mousers as well.  We are selling off most of the miniature horses as well, cutting down and refocusing everything it seems!  We also have purebred Holland Lops available at this time, and hopefully will have Flemish available in the next couple months. 

For cattle, we will be keeping back several of the young heifers for a couple years down the road because they're black carriers and we will be slowly switching over to black angus as it pays a bit better :) 

I think that's it for now...the dogs are demanding my attention, along with taking over my lap, so I must retire.  :)  Have a wonderful day, and Twinkie says don't forget to check us out on Facebook! 

Back from the grave!

WOW has blogger changed since I last blogged, which was far too long ago.  I apologize to those who like to read my blog, we've been busy and having technical difficulties.  :) 

We're rounding up lambing season here, had a few yearlings who accidentally got caught, and so will have some unregistered lambs available for sale later in the year.  Using a Romeldale ram as a crossing sire was awesome, the lambs are growing in leaps and bounds, and their fleeces are to die for.  We did have a two year old just lamb too, but that's what we get for leaving the rams in too late :)  lol. 

Adam and are permanently out at the farm now, which feels GREAT, except that we still have to finish moving and storing things in the rental shed and bringing a little more back here, like tools and stuff.  I still have to dig my garden there, no one can have my plants!  :D  lol. 

I still hate dialup.  :)  Loading pictures is really a pain on here, but between here and Facebook, I will try to keep you all updated on the goings on :) 

We finished calving yesterday.  6 heifers to 2 bulls (well, now steers *snickers*), so if anyone is looking for beef cattle to raise, we'll likely be selling some of the heifers privately, rather than shipping them.  One is BLUE, she's beautiful and will be staying, as well as a black white face heifer who is massively built. 

About a month ago, my computer crashed and wouldn't restart.  There was a corrupted file in Windows, and we had to bring it into a shop to get it fixed.  I was biting my nails and nearly gave myself an ulcer worrying about if my pictures and stuff would be lost or not.  Luckily it wasn't, that's probably 10 or more years of my life on here :)  We do need to upgrade it, and I need to start backing up everything so I don't need to panic from now on.  I will start trying to blog on my weekends, or maybe Saturdays while Adam's at work, and try to do it once a week.  Although, I will try to blog tomorrow because something really neat is happening in a few hours....

But, I will leave you in suspense now ;D 

I would leave you with photos, but I don't have my editing software on my computer yet, and so it takes an hour to upload one photo.  Seriously.  I just tried it.  Started uploading, fed the baby, and came back over a half hour later and one photo wasn't even half done loading.  *sigh*  I can't wait until we get some bills paid down and can get satellite :D 

Updates!

Boy we've been busy! 14 ewes have lambed since Pandan & Parsley. We took our annual trip out to Ramsay Farms in New York Mills, MN for to see our bestie, Garrett, and to go to the exotic animal auction hosted by Vern Paustch in three seperate locations through-out the year. It's been a bi-annual tradition for us ever since they started the auction up there, though we've missed a few here and there. It was great to see Garrett again, that's for sure! Anyway, lets start at the beginning!

All was quiet until the 8th of April, which means no one won the contest! :( We had 4 ewes on the starting date!

River Oaks Tasha X North Star Lightning McQueen gave us twins, a ram and a ewe, both black as the night and nice tight crimpy fleeces. So far the ram will be available, but we will know more after both have been evaluated

Quartz(Heinz 57) X Sampson (Romeldale) gave us a little single. This is her first time lambing and she did great! A beautiful snow white ram lamb with amazing looking fleece. I was loving having used a Romeldale already! He will be available for sale as a fiber wether or flock sire or meat until we ship to market in the fall.

Lil'Country Maid Marion X North Star Forsetti gave a sweet little black smirslet sokket with a white tip on her tail! "Angelica" certainly looks like she has a halo! She will probably be for sale.

And finally, miss Winter Sky Torrent gave BEAUTIFUL twin grey katmoget ram lambs out of Lightning. Now, this should be interesting, as she's a horned ewe, and he's a poll carrier ram. :) Both boys are stunning, one a little better than the other. Being both parents are katmoget, they could be homozygous kat as well. One of these boys will likely be staying with us.

On the 9th, we walked out to find one of our maiden babydoll X Shetland ewes with a beautiful little ewe lamb at her side. Mica did great on her first run! Again, this baby will be available as a fiber animal, otherwise we'll keep her to add to the meat producer flock. Daddy is Sampson.

On the 10th, Thor finally was a daddy for this year! White Pine Salida had a little krunet katmoget ram lamb. Cute little fuzzy bugger. He got out of the fence first thing, as Glenmore March Maddness was trying to steal him away from his mother! Salida is lower on the totem pole, so wasn't fighting back much, but he knew who his mommy was, and she never gave up on him. We moved them to another pen and now mommy and son are fully bonded with no problem :)

Also one of our F2 Orion ewes went that day too, North Star Arkrose had a moorit gulmoget ram lamb with Forsetti. Tiny little bugger, but very spry!

Skip a day...lol

On the 12th, Diamond (3/4 BFL 1/4 Shetland ) X Sampson had a little white ram. Beautiful boy! Will have a LOVELY fleece.

We left early morning Friday the 13th for Garretts. Got a call that afternoon that Olga had two lambs. Mom said "One was lighter, one was darker" so I'm assuming a katmoget and a gulmoget, as they were in Thors pen and he has the ability to throw either. We went out today to find two gulmoget EWE lambs! One is nicely marked with a heavy krunet, the other is the darkest marked gulmoget I've ever seen! She's so dark I hardly saw she was a gulmoget.

Mom met us out at Garretts Friday night, got there just after we'd gone to bed. We all woke up that morning and went to Lakes Cafe, as tradition dictates, for breakfast. We all nudge and poke each other during the auction, and Garrett ended up going home with more ducklings than he had intended, and we also took home 10 call ducklings. We left for the sheep and goats and went to get lunch while Garrett went home and took care of the puppies & other critters. Unfortunately we missed out on a spotted potbelly gilt we had wanted as a friend for Missy, but oh well. I ended up buying the last cage of the auction, well, because I hadn't gotten anything else! LOL. He's probably a 2 year old red golden male pheasant, beautiful and fairly tame (considering he got loose in the topper and we had to catch him while putting sheep in).

We always hate leaving Garretts, because he's so busy and it's so far we only get to see him a few times a year, so we stayed Saturday night and late into Sunday. We went out for supper at the VFW and had nummy greasy burgers, and then came home and had a glass of wine. Sunday, we helped him tag all his lambs, and I finally got to find out what our wedding present was! He let me take a sheep! So we got to welcome White Pine LaBelle to our flock, along with River Oaks Eliza, and probably a few more this fall (even though I said no buying sheep this year...lol). It always sucks leaving a good friend.

So we headed home to pick up Pandan from Adams parents house, and then headed to Hinckley, to deliver him to his new parents. They had already driven from southern WI, to IA, and then up to Hinckley. They had already picked up Pandans future girlfriends, and boy was I jealous! They're were beautiful! Kendra is going to have a great start in the Romeldales/CVMs! I can't wait to see photos of him when he's grown. I miss the little butthead already, but to be able to sell a house, it's kind of important to get it ready, and with a demanding bottle baby, that's really hard!

So, while we were gone, we had 4 ewes lamb! Crazy chaos! hehe. Babydoll had twins by Sampson, beautiful, looks like either two ewes or one of each. Bedegrayne had a cute little fawn kat krunet ewe lamb, but unfortunately her daughter wasn't as lucky. Ruby had a 10-12 lb stillborn single moorit ewe lamb. She was/is sooo sad :( It's never easy to lose one, espically something so helpless as a lamb. It looks like it may have been backwards, so probably not an easy birth, so we're glad Ruby is still okay.

And last, but definitely not least, Charm did it again, only better! This year, instead of triplet boys, 2 white, one katmoget, she really outdid herself. This year, all three were moorit based instead of just one. One solid moorit with little romeldale type teardrops like dad, one smirslet flecket, and one wildly spotted yuglet flecket. And guess what....ALL EWES! WOOHOO! :)

And now we come to today, after all the torrential rain and snow last night and today, Aurora graced us with a little black or moorit (too dark outside to tell) yuglet lamb, healthy and huge!

I will try to get photos as soon as possible, it's just really hard with the dialup to sit and wait for an hour to upload 4 pictures, even after downsizing them lol. I will try though :)

Oh and we're only 4 people away from 100 likes on Facebook, so head on over there and like us if you haven't yet! We'll be having a few giveaways when we hit 100!

Please welcome...

Our newest member! Cute little bugger, huh? :) J/k. While Adam brought home this yummy treat for us...we actually do have new members!


Delta with Parsley

And little Mister Pandan.

Pandan will be staying with us in the house until such a time as he has found a new home, or we get too attached to allow him to leave lol. He is a purebred registered spotted badger marked CVM/Romeldale. Excellent fleece sheep. If he remains on the farm, we have yet to decide if he will be a wether, or will stay intact and be our new ram. Time will tell :)

Contest time!!

CONTEST TIME!!! Whomever can guess the date the first SHETLAND (not Romeldale or cross) lambs are born, will get to NAME THEM! The only rule is that is needs to be an herb or spice, that's this years theme. The Shetlands *could* go starting the 23rd according to the lambing calculator.

If you can guess which ewe goes first as well, you will get $20 towards the purchase of anything to do with the sheep (lamb/fleece/meat) I will post some photos of the girls I think will go soonest to help you along :) Good luck to everyone! And don't worry if someone's already picked the date you wanted, go ahead and guess it. If there is a tie, we'll figured something out ;-)

I'm posting this on my Facebook page as well. And please invite your friends as well to the Facebook page, we're 8 people away from 100 people! At 100, we'll be having a giveaway as well :)

Record highs!

What WONDERFUL moving weather! Yesterday Duluth shattered record highs in the 70s! IN MARCH?! How crazy is this weather? I'm loving it :)

Anyway, still busy moving. We're planning on being out at moms by next weekend, so we've got lots left to do. Then we gotta get the house fixed up so we can show it. I should really clean my desk off..... :D

Anyway, at least for a while, I will probably be on dial-up (If I can find a freaking modem! lol), so pictures will be minimal. I can post some on my FB page with my iphone, but that will probably be most of the limit lol. Oh well. At least until we can get satellite figured out. And probably sell the house since we'll be broke otherwise. Ahh the joys...

But the real reason you're here....

No there's no lambs yet. Sad I know! Everyone else is starting but us. Mom was teasing Delta & Dolly yesterday though, saying they looked like cows. Both are quite heavy bred, as are a lot of the Shetlands. The Shetlands could start as early as next Friday. Delta & Dolly could go any time. Here's hoping for healthy lambs!! :)

Oh, and shearing day is April 21st, so if anyones interested in fleeces, let us know. We will be doing the alpacas in late May or early June :)

Feb 20th and 28th

Getting more and more lax, yeah yeah yeah, I know :) Bad me :)

Leetle feathers on thee head...:)

Spot starting to fade now

Lots more feathers on the back
Look at that big comb! :)

Little brat trying to jump down back to the brooder....lol




Feb 28th
We shut off the light for a while while I cleaned the cage, and then left it off for a while, so they took a nap :)

Feb 16 - 20

Feb 16th
The newbies arrive! Spot is curious :)


Stubby is always curious about the camera :) Baby Barnvelder says "Are you my mommy?" to Spot :)

"Can I eat this?"
Lookee the back feathers!
And tail!

And comb!

Feb 20th
The spot is still there!

Startin' to get his stretch on :)

More Spot updates :)

Feb 10th


Back stripes are still holding on for dear life!

2/11 - Happy birthday Mom!

Just a pic of Paulie sleeping in my hand...


Feb 15th


Teeeeeny little back feathers :)

More Spot photos! And other chickies :)

Don't stone me, but I haven't been very good about EVERY DAY photos...but I've gotten a lot. :)


Feb 6th


Feb 7th

Buh-bye back stripes!

Lookee those wingies!


This was the first time I suspected "Spotsie" may be "Spot" instead :)
Oooh baby shake yer tailfeathers! Look at those little buggers comin' in!


Feb 8th
Little changes every day!




Continued on next post... :)

Chick-fil-a? Noooo Chick- a- day!

Well, I won't BLOG about her every day, but I do plan on trying to take photos of her every day. Explaining....


I ordered an order from Ideal....in it, were 15 of 3 varieties of blue moderns....blues, silver blues and self blues. Now that their wing feathers are coming out, I can tell two are splash, but don't know if they're splash silvers or just splash. But anyway, in comes Spotsie...She is one of two dark blue chicks...but she's unique in the fact that she has an even darker spot on the back of her head/neck and dark blue almost chipmunk stripes (think typical wyandotte chicks)! Interesting! So I have decided to take a photo a day of her to maturity to see how she turns out. It gives me a project...an excuse to use my camera...and an excuse to make myself blog every week on SOMETHING, since I've kind of left you guys high and dry most of the winter (I am SOOOO sorry :( )

Anyway, so the only photo I got on day one was with my cell phone, and I'm pretty sure this is her in the middle, but not positive. If you haven't, feel free to like our page while your there! We're hoping for 100 people soon so we can have an uber contest!

And here's day two. Yes, those are sheepies on my PJ's :D

Itty bitty wingies!

Hiding "under" momma :)
I think she's half giraffe! :)



Oh, and I have to post one other photo today. This is one of the "for fun" white d'Uccles I ordered. Look at the extra toe! I wonder if there's some silkie or dorking blood in the backround.... It will be interesting to find out how this chickie turns out :)




I'll post another post on Spotsie on day 7 probably, or around there, and compile pictures from the week :) I've got some cute ones :)

Two months until lambing! YIPEE! :)

One word: Unproductive

Yup. Wish I could say I've been soooo busy that I haven't had time to write. That I've been doing things soooo legen-wait for it-dary it would blow your mind(been on a How I Met Your Mother kick if you hadn't noticed). Nope. Not doing anything spectactular. Nothing outrageous. Nothing even fun really. Last week the world was plunged into an icy abyss...and we rode it out by hibernating :D

I am over half done with Adam's hat though.



But that's okay. Because in the next few weeks, things are gonna get WILD. We're *hoping* to be moved out of the house by the end of March so we can fix up the few things that need to be fixed up and sell it. So we've got about 2 months to get EVERYTHING that's not essential to our living packed and either moved to moms or the storage shed. Things gonna be gettin' crazy....I'm not sure if we'll have internet right away out at moms, but I'll try to keep lambs updated on my Facebook page. Please like it. Trying to get to 100 fans and we're gonna have a big contest! If you have any suggestions as to what we should give away, please suggest away!

Oh, also, 5 registered intermediate/primitive fleeced Shetland ewes and 1 registerable ram for sale. Please inquire if interested. :)