He got another pretty ribbon!

 Look who got the Grand Champion Colored Fleece at Fiber Fusion NW in Monroe WA yesterday.

This is The Shepherd with Jefferson's fleece.  The one that the judge at Black Sheep said felt like cashmere, and then forgot to move up to the top 10... Oh well, you win some, and you lose some.  This time he's the winner. 











At this rate, we're going to have to make a "Ribbon Board" for him :-)

Nothing would be more fun to make.

Hope you've had a good weekend. 

Meanwhile, out in the pasture

Did anyone see what happened to the month of July?   The lambs are bigger, the pasture is browner, but I sure don't remember the days going by...

I think part of it was the smoke.  About mid month, there were fires burning up north in BC.  The smoke, however, doesn't respect borders and soon our skies were filled with dirty brown haze.

Not only making it hard to see, but hard to breath as well. Happily it rained last weekend and the skies cleared. 

The Shepherd has been working on socializing his crew of lambs.  They are coming along quite nicely.  Next is halter training.  That is always fun to watch - (not for The Shepherd, however)  Most of the time they will do the "flop" until they get used to having that weird thing around their nose.  He is taking them to Fiber Fusion in the fall and needs to have them halter ready to show. 

Here's Mr. Jefferson, looking Oh so Regal, and proud.  His fleece won blue ribbons at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden this past week.   

    
It is hard to believe that he is not even a year and a half old.  He's probably one of the nicest rams we've had, temperament wise - his mom Jennie did a good job when he was a baby. 

This is "Number One Son"  (what can I say, that's what he calls him)  He's looking for a new home where he can have his own flock of girls, since his dad has the job here all sewed up...

Some of the older girls, looking as brown as their pasture.  You can see the haze in the air - these pictures were taken during the time of the BC fires. 

Sorry for the long absence.  I have been more active on Instagram - you can find me there as "menolly44" - hope to see you soon.

Proud papa

First lambs of the year born on Wednesday.  This is Jefferson's first "crop" of lambs.  So far, so good. 

New kids on the block

Sadly I have no new news about George.  If I haven't gotten back to you personally, please accept my belated Thanks to everyone who has left such nice supportive notes.  I am more heartbroken every day.

In the mean time, I'll share some other news with you.  I really need to figure out if I can post to my blog from my phone, because I take picture after picture, thinking "Oh, this will make a good story for my blog" - then the pictures just stay on my phone.  I'm on the computer for 7 hours a day at work, so, sometimes my home time is "off line"  -  well, it's gotten to be "Kindle time" lately - I am such a brat - ha ha...

Anyhow, we have some new sheepies here at the farm.  The brown one, of course, is Katie, from this spring.  But The Shepherd likes to have a buddy the same age for his sheep, so the black one is Kayla, who was born in the Olympia area.  Looks like I needed to have wiped off the lens on my camera - but she is a real pretty girl - black, black, black and very fine wool (which is unusual for black - it tends to be a courser fiber)



This is Jefferson, on the left, in the black coat, and Buddy in the brown coat on the right.  The Shepherd decided that the two ram lambs that we had here were not going to work for his breeding plans, so he drove over to Port Ludlow on the Olympic peninsula and picked Jefferson up from Ananda Hills Farm.  Handsome boy with a black/brown fleece.  Again, much finer than normal blacks, so he's looking for some good lambs in the spring.  Of course he will not breed Kayla until 2017 Fall, so a couple of years out on that one.

And Buddy - the same as with the girls - he likes to have a "friend" of the same age and especially for the boys, company in the pasture.

So, that's the news.  I'll be in touch.