Friday, July 13, 2012

It's been awfully hot - 105 degrees - but it seems to be cooling down into the mid-90s.  The sheep manage by staying in the shade and drinking lots of water.
Thankfully the grasshoppers seem to have moved on and our trees are starting to flourish again.  We're counting on them for expanding shade for the sheep.
I've been knitting up swatches of last year's wool and it's quite soft. I washed the fleeces and had them carded and spun at Yolo Mills in Woodland.  We're trying to keep processing local, to keep costs down, but there aren't a lot of mills available in our area.  Yolo did a very nice job and produced a lovely 2-ply DK weight (light worsted) wool.  We have several colors available - natural, grey, medium brown and dark brown.  Next year we'll have a lot of black.
We had quite the reproduction event this year, with our rented stud (Joshua Farm Colin) managing to  leap the electric fence and make a date with nearly every ewe we have.  We ended up with almost double the flock we had last year.  I can't complain as we have gorgeous babies and tons of lovely fleeces coming up.