We have spent the last month getting ready for lambing. What we do and how we time it have specific reasons in the linked MS Word Document. April snow fall is common here. No lambs yet but if any ewes were bred on first ram exposure day, the lambs are due in just a few days, so we are watching and waiting...
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Fingerless mitts I made for a friend from upcycled, fulled sweater sleeves. I added to the thumb area and also added the ribbed cuffs you see here.
Leego and Russ, who is pleased both yearling rams are behaving, halos for the boys! Lionel and Thorian, Our Angels all the time, even in breeding season... Ellie and Terry, trying to behave, but don't let them fool you... From All of Us At Glen Tamarack Some of our ewes who ALWAYS behave themselves!
Breeding season has presented some interesting challenges with providing winter shelters for all 5 of our breeding and non-breeding groups. We have two round calf shelters that the rams and ram lambs delight in pushing around their paddock, often so the door is up against the electric fence that separates them from the ewes, rending the hut unuseable. It also exposes bedding and minerals at the former site to the elements and the huts are tiresome to move back uphill to their proper sites. So, while Russ was hunting out west, our friend Mark and I fixed the ram lambs'…
GT Lancelot's Breeding Group includes GT Tasha and GT Winifred (rear) UTS Mancera's Group includes S'More Arabesque, GT Ganymede, GT Gussalyn, GT Mirabelle, and WP Noss who was inside... Thanks to Russ for setting up paddocks, to Mark Kries for help anchoring a hut and moving sheep, and to Lila Jones for help moving sheep!
The Duluth Fiber Handcrafter's Guild gave me Flax seeds and I grew a 9 x 10 foot plot of flax in our garden this summer. Some photos and explanations of what I have done so far follow. End product this fall: white, hairlike fibers pop out under bark when I bend stems! Flax is up by mid-June after a good rain July 25, 2018 Mid-late August, 2018 Mature seedheads are brown, flowers blue, Mid-September, 2018 Pull the entire plant to harvest it By October 24, after turning it once a week, dew retting is progressing well, especially on the thinner…
For those wondering about conformation, Glen Tamarack Lancelot, 3rd place yearling ram and anchor of 3rd place "Best Small Flock" in 2018 MSSBA show in Wisconsin, is a good example of "straight legs and standing square on his legs". He also has a correct head Proportion of length to width of face and correctly straight nose profile, even going into breeding season. The tiny bump on his nose near his halter line is normal for a ram entering breeding season, but one would not want to see much more of a bump in profile than that, experienced breeders tell me. …
Gathering Wool (by Jeanne [Terry] Dukerschein) September 14, 2018 Welcome to Gathering Wool, Glen Tamarack Farm's Sheep and Fiber Art Blog (with sheepy, wooly subject matter and a few essays, poems, and recipes thrown in)! I have just redone our whole website in Word Press and hope it will be informative for you and easy to navigate! As I have more time to work on the website, I will try to bring in archives from my former blog, Glen Tamarack Farm Sheep and Fiber Art, but for now, I will just post what is happening on the farm in the…