Busy Weekends!

The ewes and lambs are out on pasture now & it's beem really busy around the farm lately.  Last weekend was the Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Fest and this weekend was occupied with hauling firewood, working in flowerbeds, mowing grass, and a visit to family in Maryland.  Next are business trips, so there won't be much getting done at home.  Oh well .... it will all be here waiting!  Now that we've had our fill of rainy days, we're getting record temps in the low 90's.
We had a group of visitors this weekend and here's one of our helpers bottle feeding one of our lambs.  Luckily, only 1 bottle lamb this year.  Our total lambing for this year?  20 ewes with 36 lambs & none were triplets.  All were born in a 17 day window, so our ram was on the job & didn't miss a thing! 

Fiber Festival Crowd!

Lippencott Alpacas On Parade!

What would a fiber festival be if it didn't feature fiber animals?  This weekend at the  Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Fest, we saw all kinds of fiber animals.  Most were sheep, but here we feature shots of nicely groomed attendees .......

Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Fest Blurb

Here's a press release for the Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Fest. It gives an nice picture of what will be going on this weekend! WRF will be there tomorrow setting up the vendor spaces and our own booth.  

Getting Ready

Wild Rose Farm is getting ready for the Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Fest next weekend.  With business travel this week, we have to get things staged tonight.  So ......... we also had a flurry of activity in the barn this afternoon.  We finished ear tagging, vaccinating, & tail docking on all of the remaining lambs.  The final numbers are in for the lambing season.  We have 36 lambs from 20 ewes this year.  We started with a couple of singles, but finished strong with twins, twins, twins.  Our Rambouillet ram got all of the ewes bred on the first service .... we started lambing on April 26th & finished on May 12th.  We have one bottle lamb out of the bunch,  She's #300 & she was small & wobbly at birth.  Her twin was normal size & he's doing fine with the ewe, but this one needed some help getting her strength to stand up.  Hopefully all of the lambs stay healthy.  It's always something that seems to come up. 

Almost Attacked By Lambs!  :)

NOTE for the festival: I got a call from someone who has a J-mode 4 harness table loom, 23" reed,warping board, shuttles, thread, books, etc FOR SALE.  She's asking $300 or best offer.  I'll have the pictures and phone number at my booth and at the information booth if anyone is interested.  Sounds like a good deal to me & a great place to try and find a new home for it! 
Now back to work for a few more minutes .... bundling up copies of Sheep!, Shepherd, & Stockman Grass Farmer magazines to resell at the festival.  It's a bargain & I sell them every year! 

City Streets, City Sheeps?

Returning from a business trip, Wild Rose Farm was startled to see this group of sheep approaching along Route 22 in Zanesville, Ohio!  Wow!  It turns out that I stumbled upon the Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio & Gallery.  Of course I had to stop, take a few pictures, and visit the studio.  The studio is only a few minutes from the Zanesville exits off of I70 & definitely worth a stop if you're in the area.

   

Lambs Wool For Sale

WRF # 197 - Lambs Wool Fleece

We have 2 lambswool fleeces skirted for the Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Fest.   One is from the 1st shearing of a Wild Rose Farm Rambouillet ewe lamb & the other is from one of our crossbred ewe lambs.  Of course they're smaller than the fleeces from the mature ewes and they have a very soft handle.  Anyone who knows me, knows about my "lambswool" rant, expressed a few weeks ago on this blog.  :)   Unsuspecting folks buy "lambswool" sweaters and then complain that they are itchy & scratchy.  It bears repeating that just because wool comes from a lamb, it's not necessarily soft or fine.  Every sheep was a lamb at some time & all breeds have different wool characterstics & micron counts.
Since we're in the middle of lambing, I usually don't go to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, but I bet there are some really happy fiber artists/addicts out there tonight and some really exhausted vendors ....   Hopefully eveyone had a great time!

More In The Barn

Today we had another single lamb & a set of twin ewe lambs at Wild Rose Farm.  Here are some of the ewes & lambs from the group that were born in the "flurry of twins" on Thursday ........ they were all born out in the field, but we brought them in to the barn since it just keeps raining.  Better that than to take a chance with twins losing too much body heat on the wet ground in the rain.

Rambouillet #328 & Twin Ewe Lambs

Rambouillet #323 & Twin Ram Lambs - they'll fill out in a couple of days!

Rambouillet #404 Cleaning Twin Ram Lamb

11 More To Go

We have 11 more ewes to lamb at Wild Rose Farm.  The temperatures are little cooler than normal in the evening for this time of year.  The colors of the trees, the green grass, and the white ewes make for a nice picture postcard!

Lot's of Lambs .....

We had 4 sets of twins today at Wild Rose Farm.  First a set of ewe lambs for Rambouillet #328 around 6AM.  Than in the afternoon, 3 other ewes all had sets of ram lambs out in the field.  They had to be sorted out, since originally it looked like the Dorset ewe in the picture had triplets.  Turns out that the smallest lamb to the right belonged to another ewe & must have wandered off.  Now they're all paired up .....

Save The Date!

Waynesburg Sheep & Fiber Fest coming soon!