Lambing, round two.

This is a quick lambing update before things get any crazier here. 

We had one lamb born last night. One GIANT ram lamb.

I thought Ashumet was expecting twins, but last night she gave birth to this single, practically full grown, ram lamb. Of course that is an exaggeration, but he is huge. Poor girl had a hard time getting this one out, and to make matters worse for her, he also has large horn buds, so I am sure mama is feeling a little sore today.

Black, yuglet gulmoget.

 Mama Llama is doing her quality control inspection.

I'm not sure what to think of his fleece yet, but his purse is very crimpy. Time will tell.

There are (at least) 4 other ewes that were bred right around the same day as Ashumet, I know this because the second that the ram was introduced to his ladies, romance ensued. He was not shy in the least bit. So I expect the next couple of days to be a bit hectic.

Sommarnag Ivar is the sire to this ram lamb, as well as the rest of the lambs that are due. I leased him from my friends Craig and Cindy Bowser at Whispering Winds Farm. I should get lots of spots and great horns!

Off to do a barn check!

Spring-loaded lambs.

Don't worry, you're not missing anything. I haven't been secretly delivering lambs and posting photos of new babies on another blog.
Nothing has changed, only two ewes have lambed thus far. I have several ewes that are planning...or, more accurately,  plotting something. I just know it. They are all going to lamb in rapid-fire succession and make me even more crazy than I already am!

There are about three ewes that are really close to lambing and are looking something akin to the Hindenburg at this point.
Because there will be some first time mamas in this group, I have gotten up several times in the past few nights to check on them. I shuffle out to the barn at all hours of the night, I flip on the light, they all look up at me like, "Meh, what are you doing out here at this hour?" They chew their cud. They burp. I sigh. I flip off the light. I turn and walk back to the house, knowing full-well that they are laughing their sheepy little laugh at me behind my back. I go back to bed and do it all over again in a couple of hours.
So, because I have no new lambs yet, I will show you updated photos of the 4 that I have. Still 4. Still the same lambs. Still.

These are Holly's girls. I am pretty sure that they will be staying here.

 As you can see, Holly's milk came in just fine.

Yeah! Milk! Boing! Boing! Boing!

The spotted girl's tail is not as long as it looks here. 

She has baby hair on the tip that makes it look ridiculous!

These are Lilly's girls.

 I'm waiting to see how fleece develops on the darker moorit girl-she's got loose crimp right now, but I have learned to be patient when evaluating lamb fleece. I love her color. I don't know if I have ever had a moorit lamb this dark before.

So, that's it. I am going out to do a barn check in a few minutes...wish me luck!

Trashy people

Something new is happening at Crosswinds Farm this year. We have adopted a section of the road that runs in front of our farm. We are now responsible for picking up litter along the ditches twice a year.

No, surprisingly, this is not court-ordered...why would you even think that?

We volunteered for this project...and when I say, "we", what I really mean is: I volunteered, and I also roped my husband, and my sister Marie, into helping. What do we get out of this? Well, we get the satisfaction of looking at clean ditches along our road, and we get this nifty sign in front of our house.

We spent a good chunk of the day last Sunday picking up litter along the 2 1/2 mile stretch from our place to the edge of town.  

The amount of trash along the road was unbelievable, but it provided an interesting, yet completely unscientific, insight as to who exactly is littering. I think the fact that a High School was in close proximity had much to do with our findings. Ninety percent of the trash we collected was beer cans. More specifically, beer cans from really cheap beer. I'm not sure what can be deduced about the folks that are tossing trash out of their car windows, other than their taste in beer is questionable, but I found it interesting, nonetheless. I don't even drink beer, so I'm not judging, but if I had to speculate based on what we picked up, it seems that a conclusion could be drawn that taste in beer has some bearing on one's propensity to litter...or maybe there is just one really slobby person out there that drinks a lot of cheap beer

I'm just sayin', just an observation. 

Does that sound judgey? 

I shouldn't judge, but after spending several hours up close and personal with other people's smelly cast-offs, one tends to get a bit judgey. 

This is probably not a good job for a crotchety, old, OCD woman like myself. Seeing all of this garbage completely stressed me out.

This pile really irked me. It was already in a bag so it could have been easily placed in a dumpster, and these cans were all returnable for deposit...okay, so the return for deposit is only 5 cents per can, but given the astronomical number of cans that we found, these folks could have returned the cans and purchased several cases of their classy beer from the proceeds. Geesh! Come on guys, return the cans for the cash, throw them in the recycling, or at least throw them in a dumpster, they're already in a bag for gosh sake!

The rest of the trash was a mixture of miscellaneous debris. 

Luckily, the county provided us with lots of trash bags and some heavy gloves with which we could pick up all of these treasures. We found everything from car parts, to cigarette packages, empty boxes from condoms, yes, even some used condoms (I did NOT pick those up), and a used pregnancy test (perhaps the previously mentioned condoms did not do their job?), crushed cell phones, sunglasses, chewing tobacco containers....a few trucker bombs..O.M.G., not enough antibacterial lotion in the world for those. 

Seemingly, this relationship did not end well.

Marie and I (with the help of our feisty 79-year-old mother, who happens to have dementia), started our collection at the end of the road closest to town and worked our way back to the house. For those of you who have met me and Marie, you know how flaky we can be, so you can probably guess what it might be like with Mama thrown into the mix.  Before you report us for elder abuse for dragging Mama around to pick up trash, you should know that our mother lives for this kind of stuff. She prides herself on the fact that her father taught her to be environmentally-conscious back in the days when that wasn't even a 'thing.'

As one might imagine, the three of us got easily distracted a few times along the way.

Marie made friends with a little field mouse that captured her attention. 

Yeah....it's a wonder that we aren't still out there wandering around aimlessly.

We also found this Crayfish, who was angrily threatening me with his one good claw. 

Who's being judgey now Mr. Crayfish? I'm only trying to clean up your ditch!

I found a Praying Mantis egg case...

we are going to talk more about those in another post.

When all was said and done, we ended up with a ginormous pile of trash. Approximately 52 BIG construction-size bags full, and lots of miscellaneous loose bits of junk. We aren't even done yet. Some of the ditches still had standing water from all of the recent rain, so those will have to get cleaned another day.

Of course, you know that this project has just set me up for more stress in my life, because now I am going to start twitching every time I see a new piece of litter while driving down our road, and I'll have to stop and pick it up. 

But it does feel good to see it all clean.

Yee-haw!

This will be brief because it's been a super-busy weekend (more about that later), but I wanted to take a minute and share the big news. Drum roll, please!

Holly had her lambs!

Not just any old, run of the mill lambs, mind you. She had two gorgeous EWE lambs. Apparently, Holly carries spots!

So far her milk supply is looking good too (knock on wood).

Fleece and conformation look great too...as far as one can tell on a newborn lamb anyway.

So far 4 lambs born, two sets of twins, all ewes, all out of Crosswinds San Diego. Exactly zero of them have names.

The next group should start around the 5th of May, that group was all sired by Sommarang Ivar.

Ande-not amused that I wouldn't let him in the barn while Holly was lambing.

Holly, still livin' large.

Well, it doesn't seem like Holly feels any particular urgency to pop out those babies. 

I am cautiously optimistic that she will produce enough milk, as her bag looks as though it is filling nicely. That is, of course, unless she produces an entire litter of lambs; which looks entirely possible.

I skirted fleeces yesterday. I was pretty happy with most of them, although the oppressive heat of last summer took a toll on some of them, and there were a lot of dry, sun-bleached tips, particularly on the black fleeces. I haven't gotten my micron reports back yet so I will be interested to see those numbers.

This is one of my favorites, it is from a yearling ewe, who just happens to be a daughter of our dear friend Holly. Yes, Holly, the very same full-figured gal that is pictured above. The yearling ewe's name is Rio, which, in retrospect, was probably a poor name choice. I can't seem to say her name without thinking of Duran Duran.

This is why we are giving Holly another go at lambing.

This moorit fleece shows the sun-bleaching. This is from Odessa, another yearling ewe.

The samples below are from Mandalay (Mandy). Her fleece is nice, but not very consistent. The first photo is from the neck/shoulder area, and the second photo is mid-side. Her fleece is still nice, but I would sure like to see that first fleece type all the way through!

Athena. I love this girl. She is a two-year-old, spotted ewe. She is due to lamb in the next few weeks.

The samples below are from Bella, a three-year-old ewe, who hates me with every fiber of her being.

Neck and mid-side. She is spotted and modified, so there is a wide range of moorit-based tones in her fleece.

Aaaaand a random chicken picture...because I have no new lambs.

If Holly doesn't lamb soon, I'm about to start squeezing!!!