Easter Sheep. Sort Of.

Here's our Day Before Easter lamb: Greener Pastures Lollipop! And if you scroll back to the post on April 21st, you can see that the "next ewe to lamb" was the big whitish one right ahead of the ewe and her babies. Greener Pastures Jazz is the fabulous lamb shown on our A Life in the Day web page.

And here are a few photos taken Saturday of a few of our adult rams.

Greener Pastures Jackpot has wide horns and is in the early process of rooing his fleece. He was utilized as a breeding ram last fall, and is Lollipop's daddy. Lollipop has brown skin and will likely be blonde like her Pa.

Greener Pastures Jester, Jumping Jack Flash and Redwood are lined up for a photo shoot. You can see how much Jester's and JJ's horns have grown since January if you look at the previous post. Redwood was utilized as a breeding ram last fall. I am surprised that his horns are not quite as wide as I would like... his sire had really wide horns, and his dam carried the genetics for wide horns. Because he has genetics on his sire's side that I really needed, I utilized him carefully with selected ewes whose sires had really wide horns.

I have photos and thoughts on body structure to share in my next post. Oh yeah... and hopefully more lamb photos!

Happy Easter!

~ Ronda

Catching Up On Ram Photos

While we wait for more new lambs, I'm catching up on all the photos I took last summer and winter.

These handsome boys are just a few of the Cascade Farmstead rams in our flock. Greener Pastures Indigo on the left was nearly 3 years old at the time this photo was taken; Jan 2, 2011. Quite a rack of horns, huh? His twin brother lives in Missouri, and I'm hoping to see photos of Juniper sometime. You can see a larger photo at the bottom of this page.

Greener Pastures Jumping Jack Flash (black with super wide horns) and Greener Pastures Jester are shown at right. At the time of this photo they were nearly 2 years old. JJ's horns are wider than we normally see, and are quite useful when breeding to a ewe that we know carries narrower horns.

Indigo was utilized for two breeding seasons; once as a flock ram for his group of allotted ewes, and I was so pleased with his progeny that the following year he had another breeding group as well as performing duties as a "clean up ram." Last fall I kept him just as pasture decoration and as my Grandpa Ram in the Bachelor Boy pasture. If the economy hadn't sucked so much, I would have kept him longer, but since I no longer needed him for breeding, we ate him. And that's what this breed is for! Several rams were butchered at that time and we processed them into the best tasting burger we've ever had.

More photos to go through, so you'll see more activity on my blog than you've seen in a long time! Woo hoo!

~ Ronda

2011 Lambing Season Has Begun!

Sigh...

I love lambing season!

We discovered our first lambs of the year today. The twins were nearly dry by the time we learned we had lambs, and we scrambled for our lambing equipment: the camera.


The Kid took photos of the Mister and Me. The lighter colored lamb is a girl and she will become blonde or a butterscotch color as she matures... this brown color is her lamb coat.

The black lamb is a boy, and the white bits on his head and neck might fade to nearly nothing, or they may indicate a color change coming. We shall see. He's only a few hours old, and has some sturdy one inch horns that are mostly covered with hair. In a week or so they will be more visible.

Good girl Valerian!


Which of these beautiful, fleecy girls will lamb next? Some of them are already beginning to shed their fleece.

I love lambing season!

~ Ronda

Spring?

I saw this on a couple other blogs and just had to share it:


INSTALLING SPRING...
 44% DONE.

Installation delayed... please wait.

Installation failed. Please try again.

404 error: Season not found.

Season "Spring" cannot be located. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Please try again.


And on that note, I'll continue to wait for lambs, which are due very very soon. : D

~ Ronda

I'm Back, and Just in Time, Too!

Wow, I'm feeling good! Now that I am feeling so good, I can see that the past year or more I was wading each day through a metaphorical toxic sludge. An infected tooth can do that and more. Anyway, I'm all fixed up and ready for the coming lambing season!

We are shipping two flocks to Massachusetts this year. I think we've got nearly all the "M" states covered by now! I'd sure like to get a flock located closer to me, so that I can more easily swap rams.

I updated the Cascade Farmstead Sheep Association website to include the blog of Flock #4. I haven't read their blog lately and need to catch up!

I've been working on my online store, and have some new patterns coming that will be lots of fun. This morning I added one of my newer designs to the blog and am writing up the pattern this weekend to be available on the store as a freebie. There was no way I could sell that pattern after the 3/11 disaster, and I hope that quilters around the world will find this design helpful in some way, to remember those who were lost in this tragedy.

~ Ronda