WISCONSIN SHEEP & WOOL FESTIVAL 2011

I literally dragged Meghan kicking and screaming(not really)along with me on this trip after our neighbor agreed to keep milking her does for her so they won't dry off whilst we are away. It is hard for Megs to leave all her critters in others' hands, but she did just that and we were off for three nights and four days of "vacation".

Our first stop was Lori Sommarang's farm to check our her sale lambs. When we arrived she was with Rich Johnson and a couple other people I didn't recognize. After I realized one of them was female and had a healthy Scottish accent I asked if she might be Kate. Yes, indeed. And the other fellow with the healthy head of grey hair and a very dry wit was Alan Hill. We had a nice, if brief, visit with them as they needed to be fed and we needed to get our sheep checked into pens and meet up with someone to deliver the final shipment of Stephen's Cormos.

Our sheep have lovely pens and there is a nice breeze this weekend which is helping keep away the typical high heat of Jefferson in early September. Grasshopper is eating himself into false-pregnancy. During the evaluations yesterday afternoon Alan commented we must feed him a lot of "cake". Not so. Just hay and poor pasture, but Kelly provided us with nicer hay with alfalfa in it, so he was pretty full. No hay last night as the show is this afternoon and we'd like him to look a little less full of himself.

We are finding a nice variety of Shetlands at the show and lots of convivial and cordial meeting and greeting. Getting to know people I've only seen posting online which is always good. We brought a silent auction ewe lamb for MSSBA and are hoping Grasshopper finds a home where he'll be put to more ewes. He passed his evaluation with flying colors despite his large beer gut and will be in the yearling ram class today. There is a very nice group of polled rams in attendance, so who knows? Perhaps one of them will come through with a GCH. How lovely would that be? (See how quickly that British way of speech creeps in!).

We should have brought a camera but I am sure there will be someone in attendance who will be posting photos online after they've recouped from lack of sleep. We were doing well in that department before a football team took up residence in our hotel last night. Between the slamming doors and heavy footfalls we were up half the night. On to the fiber show...have the last two Cormo X fleeces in open and three Shetland fleeces in the Shetland show.

Toodles.