Winter Sky Tennyson

This is Tennyson's second year on the farm. Above is his second fleece after skirting. He has retained his rich, dark moorit coloration with no white fibers and a lovely lacey crimp. His yearling son--Buster Brown--has a very exciting fleece and shows every promise of being an equal to his sire. We will be retaining three of Tennyson's daughters this year--Haiku(a moorit HST out of Lorrie Morgan), Deja Vu(black daughter out of Kismet)and Pianissimo(dark brown daughter out of Staccato).

Tennyson's First Lambs of the Season

Above are Winter Sky Kismet's twin moorit ram and black ewe(Deja Vu)sired by Tennyson. I am finding the Tennyson lambs all exhibit a different type of fiber than one sees on the tightly crimped UK lambs or more loosely curled domestic stock. All the lambs have a slightly open curly fleece that is consistent from front to back and very soft down at the skin already, so I am imagining they will develop that fine crimp I so love as they mature into the fall.

The twins below were the latest born to Glenmore Staccato who had a fabulously fleeced dark moorit ram lamb by Tennyson last year. This time she produced a lovely dark moorit ewe lamb--Pianissimo--and a musket ram lamb--Largo. Largo has the softest fiber of any lamb on the farm--like crushed velvet, so we are excited about his prospects.


Winter Sky Halla(a true shaela Kismet daughter from last year)produced a comical black smirslet ram lamb with feet and legs larger than his leaping ambitions. He looks very much like Winter Sky Chrome did as a lamb, so we will see how he shapes up. His name is Astaire.
This is Winter Sky China Silk. The last daughter out of my daughter's pet white ewe Short Tale and sired by Winter Sky Sandstone. We have found crossing Sandstone daughters with Tennyson always produces something nice and Calista is no exception. She is almost a carbon copy of Pianissimo and another dark moorit.

Heights Orion F1 Lambs at Winter Sky

Above is Winter Sky Ready to Run--AFD of 27.4 with an SD of 6.2 and her single krunet moorit ram lamb sired by Heights Orion. His fleece is not as consistent as I'd like to see, but it is very soft and only time will tell if he'll develop into the type of ram we want to use on our farm.
Below is one of triplet rams born to Winter Sky Alafair. She had two lively black rams and one extremely typey moorit ram(unfortunately born dead in the middle of the night)after showing now signs of labor. The black rams have a doglike lamb coat, so once again we wait to see what will develop over time. Alafair's side micron test this year was a very disappointing 30, so she is being culled from the flock.

Wintertime Landslide Lambs

Above is Glenmore Crisp about 12 hours before lambing. Her side micron tests at 21.5 with an SD of 5.4. She is the dam of my daughter's black gulmoget ram Black Forrest who has lambs due by the middle of April. The twin ewe lambs pictured just below are her Landslide lambs born this spring. Both have the type of fiber one only dreams about and a lovely look to them. The moorit lamb is Pavlova. The katmoget lamb is Creme Brulee.
Wintertime Pavlova showing off her "ballerina" form and lustrous lamb fleece at an early age.

Wintertime Creme Brulee emulates her mother in coloration and fiber. She will make a lovely addition to my daughter's growing flock.

Wintertime Ruby and her Landslide daughter Wren. Wren was an unexpected addition to our flock as we didn't believe anyone was cycling mid-October, but she is extremely soft and shows great promise.

Todhill Jericho F1 Lambs at Winter Sky

Winter Sky Calypso--a blettet musket four year old ewe with a mature side micron test of 23.1 had a difficult lambing due to one dead lamb blocking her cervix. Space Cowboy pictured above was born breech and last. He is a heavily spotted light grey katmoget ram with exquisite fiber already and a lovely look to him. He may be Ag/Ab but only time will tell. His triplet sister "Diva" is pictured below. She was the first lamb out as I was finally able to find both her front feet and head and get her past the logjamb. A surprising smirslet fawn katmoget with total attitude in a very small package.

This is Winter Sky Chisenbop. He is out of Winter Sky Chutzpah--a black ewe with some facial markings whose side micron test at three years is 24.3 with an SD of 8.2. His birth was totally uneventful and unwitnessed which is more typical of lambings on our farm.

The Fun's Just Starting

Tuesday evening Meghan and I went to our local airport to pick up two kids she'd bought from Twincreeks Farm in Texas. The kids arrived on time, but it took a bit for them to unload all the baggage, so we didn't make it home and get them fed and bedded down until around 11 p.m. These kids are both from CH lines and striking to look at--I promise I'll get around to taking photos soon.

So Wednesday morning I dragged myself out of bed about two hours later than normal(7 a.m.), started a fire, drank some tea and went out to feed everyone. The numbers are climbing and I believe we are up to around 52 different animals on the homestead. I begin with the smaller barns south of the house where the more mature ewes and Meghan's goats are housed. Then up the hill and back to the largest barn where the main sheep flock and lambs from last year are bedded down. Just as I was passing the windows of the main barn I heard a lamb call. We don't get lambs in mid-March and had seen no breeding activity, so I started to make a mental list of which ewes were due the end of the month thinking perhaps we had premature lambs?

Turns out one of Meg's youngest ewes decided to sneak in a heat cycle way before anyone else and had dropped a lovely tiny ewe lamb sometime in the wee hours of the morning. The ewe was being a very attentive mom. And the lamb although very small is exquisitely made, vigorous and healthy. So we put up a jug and got them settled in for the day, let the rest of the flock out into the paddocks to eat their hay and tried to regain our composure.

It helped that the day was sunny and warm, so we could spend part of it outside with the new kids dancing on the snow.

Will take photos of everyone soon. In another two weeks we've got a number of ewes due to lamb, so the party's just starting.

Ode to Plastic Snow Shovels

The beginning of March we had very strong, gale force winds hit the Upper Peninsula from the east. Since Lake Superior has no ice this year these winds produced a lovely snow machine which proceeded to dump more than 36 inches of snow in blowing layers over our homestead. Paths that had been religiously shovelled all winter to our four barns had to be abandoned and snowshoed over to insure we kept the barn doors clear and enough paddock space open for our very pregnant ewes and does to get out and exercise.

It was somewhat disheartening to see areas that had so very little snow(which for us was like a summer vacation)suddenly disappear under glacial drifts, but we perservered and the sheep were out within 36 hours eating their hay in their paddocks despite the fences being completely covered over. The sun came out, the temperature rose and we started the slow meltdown of last week.

At first we just continued to boot walk over the pathways, since they were packed enough to handle our weight. But two days ago when the temperatures rose above 50 degrees and the nighttime temps failed to go below 32 I knew it was either shovel or have a tough spring of falling through knee-deep snow & slush. It took us two days to completely shovel out all the paths including the one to the stream, but we are now back to working order and eagerly awaiting the first lambs/kids the end of this month.

I would have taken some photos of all this but I was a bit too busy just living it. And the folks in upstate NY totally negated what little snow we had with their ten feet or more.