new lambs, stuffing wool, to market Sunday
Good Morning!
Boy is it Spring: new colors in the dye pots, a personal (aspiration) push for, or at, spring cleaning, mowers breaking, the garden knee high in weeds…(a few beds are cleaned up and planted thanks to Joan), my desk is getting a bit deep in paper, etc. Basically…start early, go, go, go and stop in the evening because you just must…not because you’ve really made progress. This is my problem, and I do know it’s an attitude issue. The sheep are so much more advanced. They take everything in stride and just handle it. Including loss.
Tomorrow, says my calendar, is the first possible lambing here at Solitude. But yesterday I rounded the garage heading to the barn to do chores and I knew in two steps that something was up. The sheep were just looking at me telegraphing news. Sure enough, I see two white lambs up and standing with Oklahoma who looks calm. Cool! I just turned around to call Sue (I’ll be late) and go fetch the lamb “stuff” (it was on my list to get all that together yesterday). So, I get back out there in a few minutes and Okla has moved over under a tree about 30 feet away from where I first saw her. I get a picture and think one of the lambs was exhausted by the effort and is laying down.
But I go over…and the lamb is obviously dead, in fact, stiff. I know I saw two up and moving and I’m sure my eyebrows knitted together trying to figure this out. How could it be? Well, I look back over where I first saw them, and sure enough, there is the other lamb. Okla had triplets. I try not to feel bad. This is nature. I wonder if I had done a 3 am check and could have assisted with the birth, would the lamb have lived? I don’t know. Maybe, but I didn’t. So once she had showed me, she let it go and concentrated on her two boys. Here they are, shortly after settled in to a clean pen (called a “jug”) to relax for a day or two.
I’ve posted more photos of the lambs including their evening out in the pasture on another young thing…Solitude Wool has a Facebook page. There is a link on our homepage, and I probably should be able to put one in here, but it is beyond my current skills…just look for Solitude Wool. Hope you “like” us!
What else is up? Sue! up in a wool bag:
Sue is stomping in Montadale fleece that was sheared a month or two ago. We got a lot more than our usual haul, and this fleece will be heading north for scouring. We will see how this works. We are pretty excited about this beautiful soft wool. Thinking about what kind of yarn we want to make (oh boy!). And then we got back a box of Montadale yarn from the mill that I had forgotten about, a small batch of Montadale that we had saved up fleece before we met the new farm. This yarn will be the follow up yarn to our Shropshire baby yarn. It feels pretty great. Sorry you don’t get to see it yet, but look for Montadale pretty soon (Maryland Sheep and Wool?)
Last for today…Sunday we will be at the Dupont FreshFarm market in DC. We are planning to bring: Alpaca/Merino, Border Leicester sport weight (nature dyed), Border Leicester aran weight, Icelandic (nature dyed), Leicester Longwool/Border Leicester (nature dyed), Romney, Shropshire baby, Suffolk/Dorset sock yarn including yoga sock kits, Targhee 3-ply, roving, 4 white Romney sheep pelts (all I will have this year) and honey.
Gotta get going, I’m behind already!
Remember Sunday the market opens at 8:30am for the regular season,
Gretchen