Fall things

Today is my youngest son’s birthday and it’s the time of year for getting firewood split, picking the last of the tomatoes and for sheep breeding!

The gestation period for sheep is exactly 5 months and we generally like to lamb at the beginning of March. We prefer this timing because it’s not so cold that lambs are in danger of freezing and it’s just in time for the hungriest grazing right when the grass is growing fastest in April and May. If we want to lamb in March, we need to breed in October. For us, this simply means putting the right ewes in the pasture with the ram. We don’t use markers or conduct ultrasound tests. We just get the animals in the right place and they take care of the rest.

Right now we have only one ram between the two farms. He’s a wonderful 3/4 Romeldale CVM ram named Rusty. Romeldales have extraordinarily soft dense fleece; different in length and lustre from our existing BFL/Cotswold/ Romney flock, however, crossbreeding makes a lovely fleece. Rusty is not at all aggressive and the ewes are all in excellent shape so breeding will naturally go well.

This is also the time of year when we decide who will stay and who will go and sometimes we get a surprise, like when we sheared a yearling wether named Italy. ohhhhh the lustre! ohh the range of colours from silver to dark brown. We spent some happy hours sorting and picking through fleece to send to the mill. First on the list was a batch of moorit (reddish brown) CVM fleece to be blended with our angora rabbit fur. Below, I am including some photos of our grey CVM fleece batch.

I hope that wherever you are, you have family coming to visit and delicious food to cook and hopefully some creative project to get your hands into!