Happy 24, Justin!

Oh, I am SOOOO going to get in trouble for this!

Our son Justin is 24 today, he generally is not a big birthday celebration kind of guy, so I will try not to embarrass him too much-HA! Given the fact that I am not a large woman, and he weighed 9lbs. 4oz. at birth, he owes me this indulgence!

"Yeah, I love physics!"


We are very proud of Justin, but most of the time we don't know what he is talking about. He is a physics grad student at the University of Iowa and a teaching assistant in the physics department. Sometimes he "dumbs down" explanations of his projects for us in hopes that we will grasp some of his physicsy jargon, but we still stare blankly at him and pretend that we understand...he doesn't laugh...that is a good son. This picture was taken while he was working at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, it is the world's largest particle physics lab.


Among his other many interests, Justin is also an accomplished "chicken whisperer" and friend to white chicken.

Justin is a very well rounded young man. Here we see him honing his skills as a circus performer/parade Shriner. We had just taken off the training wheels for this photo. Good job, Justin!

Anyway....Happy Birthday Justin!!! You can't be too mad at me, after all, I didn't post any silly baby photos of you, ( I wouldn't want to embarrass you, would I ?).

Don't worry Nicole your birthday is just around the corner :).

I am real,real smart-like.

YUP, it's still cold, just checkin'..........note to self-make sure that your gloves are dry before you touch a fench post in 15 degree weather!

Iowa in December and sheep hoarding

Yesterday Gary and I made the 3 1/2 hour trip to Lori Stephenson's Sommarang farm to pick up my "rent-a-ram". I had intended on taking lots of photos while there. I brought my camera, even had it in my pocket, but it was as cold in Wisconsin as it has been here in Iowa and I couldn't muster the courage to take off my gloves long enough to get any good pictures. I wish I would have though, she has some really nice sheep and has exceptional fleece on her girls............so nice, in fact, that I ended up bringing one of her girls home with me! Shocking, I know. Who would have thought that I would go to pick up one sheep and come home with two??? Probably anyone who has read my blog! Unfortunately, I have a husband that is an enabler, he doesn't even so much as give me a raised eyebrow when I start getting that "but I don't have one this color" look in my eyes. So now I do have one in this color...She is a beautiful fawn katmoget with the yummiest fleece ever. BTW, Lori is also an enabler (and a lot of fun too), so clearly it is not my fault that I brought home an extra sheepie. Hmmmm, last year when I was at Lori's I brought two sheepies home also... but that time it was my sister Marie's fault, I went to pick up Daisy, and Marie decided to get Lilly to keep at our farm as her pet (Marie lives in town). So really it is not me that has a sheep hoarding problem, it is just the company that I keep.
I am so happy to have my pretty little katmoget girl, I will try to post pictures soon, but it has not been a picture taking sort of day.


Like much of the Midwest today, most of Iowa got socked with an ice storm. We started with freezing rain this morning and it has continued all day and is expected to go into the morning hours. Luckily the temperature is supposed to rise overnight so it should turn to just rain.


This is why it was a bad picture day.

This is looking out our living room window.....no, we don't have that funky wavy bathroom glass in the living room, all of our windows were coated with ice. For that matter, everything was coated in ice. I must admit though, the "glass half full" part of me found it to be kind of pretty. My lavender blooms were encased in an icy shell.
As were the pine cones, the grass, the leaves....you get the idea.



We had to do some hasty rearranging in the barns to make separate areas for the ewe lambs that are not being bred, from the big girls with their new handsome "beau" so that everyone could have a comfortable place to get out of the elements. Given the weather that we were dealing with today, it was no easy task. Carrying bales of straw from one barn to the other in 30 mile an hour winds, skating on iced over grass while being pelted with ice pellet missiles...not fun...especially when the bales acted as quasi sails, pulling me across said frozen grass, not necessarily in the direction in which I was intending to go. Gary and I did manage to get it done though, and everyone is now warm, cozy and dry. Some of the chickens made their way into the sheep barn to warm up....it seems as though "Ugly Betty" needed to warm up her feet.
I normally try to keep the chickens out of the sheep barn, they have lots of other places to go, and I don't want chicken poo in my fleece. But today I let everyone go where ever they could get warm...and I guess that if I were trying to get warm, Willow's fleece would be the first place that I would go too.


I suppose things could have been much worse, we only lost power for about an hour today....this is what happened in February when we had our last big ice storm.

Yes, those are power poles snapped in half all the way down our gravel road. We were without power for 8 days, thankfully that didn't happen this time.

Just farm stuff.

Fall is here, this is what is left of my garden. Yesterday I gathered up the remnants of withered vines and dehydrated sunflower stalks and piled them up....kind of sad.
There is definitely a chill in the air, and according to the forecast it will be in the 20's overnight in a couple of days. Gary put the heater in the horse stock tank, but I need to get some for the sheep tanks...this weather is reminding me that I have a lot to do before it gets really cold.
Cinnamon and his brother Junior usually find a nice sunny spot in the sheep barn on the straw bales every afternoon, but now that there is more of a nip in the air.....

Junior has found a cozier spot. I like to use these covered cat boxes filled with straw as nest boxes for my free range chickens. The boxes work really well and are easy to clean. Lately I have heard the hens cackling and fussing in the afternoon when they are ready to lay their eggs. When I went to investigate the first time I heard the ruckus, I found Junior all snuggled up
in the nest box paying absolutely no attention to the protesting hens.
I guess I need to get more boxes for the girls since Junior is unwilling to vacate.

Daisy and Willow are on the lookout for boys.


" Hey, look at this face! When are you going to post about me????"

Yikes, it's November!

November 1st already! What??? How did that happen??

Like most of my "sheepy" friends I have been contemplating which ewes to breed for 2008 lambs since....well, since the 2007 lambs hit the ground in April. Now that romance is in the air, (or maybe it's just ewes in season aroma in the air) here is my "final" list.Sommarang Daisy. Friendly, pretty girl, nice fleece and tail....really friendly, did I mention that she is friendly? Modified.

Thistle Keep Teleus Longtail "Willow". Very nice ewe. Soft crimpy fleece, very tiny tail, nice rear and legs. Ag grey. Selectively friendly...she is not an "attention hussy" like some of my other girls that will do anything to be the center of attention, she is much more dignified.

Sheepy Hollow Lovey. Black (iset)krunet ewe, good fleece and conformation, also very sweet.


Sheepy Hollow Trillium. Pretty girl, good conformation, very nice tail, shorter staple fleece but soft and crimpy. She is my least friendly ewe, but she had one of my nicest conformation ram lambs this year.

Sommarang Dolly "Lilly" will probably not be bred this year. She and Thistle Keep Sagebrush Vole (below) were allowed to wean their ewe lambs on their own, and they were nursing for quite a bit longer than my ewes that had ram lambs, so unless I push back breeding they wouldn't have much of a rest between when they weaned this year's lambs and breeding again.
Sagey did give me some really nice lambs this year though.
Crosswinds Sophia. She is just a lamb, so she won't be bred until next year.....She is such a pretty girl, I can't wait to see how she matures! Love that wool on the poll.

Crosswinds Isabella. Isabella is one of this years lambs she will not be bred this year. I will have to decide after she matures. She has really long, soft, crimpy fleece, unfortunately she has a longish tail. She is a "Rocky" lamb, so she may carry polled genetics.

"HMMMM, all those girls look GOOOOOD"!

Sorry Rock, remember that trip to the vet? You won't be romancing the ladies anymore.

I will be leasing a ram this year...seems kind of silly with all the ram lambs that I ended up with this year, but we will be hanging on to a couple of those boys until next year to see how their horns turn out.