NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

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I hope this upcoming year I can find more time to just dance, laugh with my daughter, spend time with my friends, and continue to enjoy the fruits of living on our wonderful homestead.

I am also looking forward to continuing my quest to produce the finest, softest Shetland sheep and promote their heritage as a wool breed in the local marketplace.

I've come full circle and now feel Australian Spotted bantam ducks are the only breed I want to work with, so I will continue to breed a few of this wonderful breed every year and enjoy their antics in the garden. This year my little flock of ducks enjoys hanging out on rooftops and flying down upon us whenever we get a bag of spinach out of the coolers out front.

I wish you and yours a most wonderful 2008. In about three weeks' time we will have our first Nigerian kids born. We will post photos as soon as the blessed event happens.

Wintertime Thriller and Piper

Thriller has matured into a very nice polled ram. This year Meghan decided to just breed him to two of her NASSA registered ewes, as she wanted to use Black Forrest(her black gulmoget ram)and a very nice mioget Heights Orion F1 of Cynthia Caillagh-Allen's for the majority of her ewes. She also did a couple more breedings to Thriller's sire Wintertime Landslide. The ewe below is Sheltrgpines Piper. She carries spots, modified colors and has a nice intermediate fleece. The other ewe slated for him is Wintertime Pavlova who is getting an extra month to grow up a bit more before being bred. This breeding will be a linebreeding on Landslide and two strong polled lines of ewes.

Winter Sky Cointreau's Breeding Group

This boy is a total psycho in the barn, but I can't take a bad photo of him and his fleece tested 19.5 AFD, 5.6 SD, 28.7 CV with 4.4 % fibers greater than 30, so I've selected an interesting and diverse group of ewes to cross him with this year just to see what he can do. His dam is also being bred back to Wintertime Black Forrest to hopefully produce the ultimate ewe lamb this spring. The above growthy ewe lamb is a Tennyson/Staccato daughter--Pianissimo. Her fleece is more intermediate in handle and length but has a wonderful dark brown coloration.

This is Winter Sky Lorrie Morgan(a half-sister to Tennyson sired by Winter Sky Sandstone)and Winter Sky Deja Vu(Tennyson X Kismet ewe lamb from this spring). Both have amazingly nice, interesting fleeces and type and are into hanging out in the barn with us each evening.
Last but not least is Winter Sky Diva--Space Cowboy's full sister. I was going to breed her to a moorit Heights Orion F1, but we ran out of breeding pens, so Leonid ended up going south to Wisconsin for his group of ewes. I am sure this cross will be an interesting combination for those folks looking for something that carries a lot of patterns and spots.

Winter Sky Space Cowboy's Breeding Group

Winter Sky Space Cowboy is an F1 Jericho triplet out of Winter Sky Calypso. His fleece tested a respectable 21.9 AFD, 5.2 SD, 23.7 CV with only 6.4% fibers great than 30, but he has a rather testy disposition which was evident from birth, so he has one "hurrah" and then it is off to the freezer. He is pictured above with Winter Sky Kiss This--shaela smirslet ewe lamb from numerous spotted lines.
These are my daughters unregisterable white Shetland ewes Winter Sky China Silk(Winter Sky Sandstone X Cedarose Short Tale)in the foreground and her daughter Wintertime Kiera. Meghan decided this year to go for the ultimate fleece and if for some reason she gets spots and/or color, so much the better.
Winter Sky Breathe is a finely fleeced moorit smirslet ewe out of Winter Sky Ready to Run and sired by Winter Sky Sandstone.

Winter Sky Tennyson, Kismet and Halla

Winter Sky Tennyson is one of the few mature rams ever to reside at our farm. He has proven over time to have the type of temperament, fine fleece, and purity of color we strive for in our breeding program. This season because of our abundant number of ram lambs he only had three ewes in his breeding group, but they were all crossed with him last year and produced lovely lambs, so we feel 2008 will be a very good year as well. Below are Winter Sky Kismet(a Willowcroft Jamie F1 ewe)and her equally typey and lovely shaela daughter Winter Sky Halla. Glenmore Staccato was also bred back to Tennyson but had already been moved back to her favorite barn(she was pouting).

Wintertime Thriller

This is Meghan's favorite polled ram lamb "Thriller". He was all slated to show at Michigan Fiber Festival this past weekend when he came down with a pretty harsh cough about two weeks ago. He eventually recovered with some antibiotics, but Meghan felt hauling him south was out of the question and opted to stay home and take care of the farm while I went to pick up some sheep for her.

Her plans are to use Thriller on a limited number of ewes this fall and take him to Jefferson for the AGM show next fall as a yearling. Until then photos will have to suffice, but they just don't do him justice. The photo below was taken just after his coat was taken off, so his fleece is somewhat flattened out.

Thriller's fleece at midside.
Thriller from the back. And yes he does have a little ring of white around the tip of his tail.

A Permanent Flock Member--Stacey

Glenmore Staccato came to our flock as a ewe lamb with a gorgeous moorit fleece going taupe. She eventually greyed out to almost white but as she has matured she has gotten quite a bit of color back into her fiber. She is the epitomy of "musket". Each year now I can rely upon her to produce a wonderful fleece of rose-grey tones that sells before it is even spun up into yarn. And the fineness of her fiber even now at the age of five is exceptional. Two of her sons were wethered and sold to fiber flocks on the basis of her wonderful wool. And this season we decided to retain her dark brown Tennyson daughter even though her fiber isn't as soft as we typically like to see, because Pianissimo has her dam's personality.

Stacey is the ewe that will come up regardless of what is available to eat and hang out, breathing nice hot breaths on my neck when it is 90 in the shade and letting me know just how much she enjoys my company. Nothing phases this ewe and as you can see from the photo which was taken just last week even drought and poor pasture doesn't hurt her condition. My thanks to Louise Hooper for allowing us to bring Stacey north so many years ago.