Sheep Shearing // Vlog no.3

And here it is, folks!  The much anticipated sheep shearing video!

Once again, sorry it's so small! YouTube is misbehaving...again.  Is it just me, or is the "share" tab not working for other people?  Maybe it's just Google Chrome...maybe not.  I don't know.  If you'd like to see a larger video (which I recommend) here's the link.

As you can see, Hank is very good at sheep shearing.  Even if he weren't my friend, I'd want him to shear my sheep.  I truly appreciate how careful he is not to injure the animals, and how clean and even the wool is when he's done.  It's so fascinating to see all of the wool come off in one big fluffy fleece!

My brother's sheep catching and moving skills are to be envied, are they not? *wink*

Oh, and despite what he says in the video about not showing it to anyone, I asked and received Hank's permission to share all of the footage with y'all.  So I did, because I didn't want to leave anything out.  Thank you for your permission, for your patience, and for shearing my sheep, Hank!

Well, I hope you enjoyed watching the video as much as I did!
Hop over to Day by Day's channel to like, favorite, and share!

: :

Changing the subject, I wanted to say thank you to all of the lovely ladies who have been tagging me!  I love tags, but there is simple not enough time in my day to do all of them.  However, I decided to accept Treskie's challenge and am planning to answer the tags vlog style.  I think it will be faster that way...but we'll see how that goes.  No promises as to how soon that will be done.  It will be finished when it's finished.  In the meantime, thank you so much for the tags!

: :

Have a lovely Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

Question: Would anyone be interested in a Q&A vlog?  Are there any questions you'd like to hear me answer?  Leave a comment and ask me anything!

On the Farm | Life Goes On

May has been the busiest month yet, even busier than lambing season in April...and that's saying a lot.  There are so many things that need doing during spring.

The sheepies have been enjoying the tender grass in the orchard and now the rich stuff in the lower pasture.  We've been blessed with the perfect amount of sunshine and rain, and the pastures are all doing so well.

As you may have noticed, they've all been sheared, too.

My sheep were very well behaved this year.  In fact, Hank says they were better than his own sheep.  Yes, this is me gloating...but just a bit. *grin*

I'll be sharing the sheep shearing video sometime soon-ish...I hope.

Miss Picabo the llama went to her new home and is doing very well there.

In the horse trailer - I love how easy llamas are to load.

Here she is with her new pasture mate Savannah...

Checking out her new home...

I'm so thankful to have found a good home for her where she will be well cared for.  And I'm very thankful to only have two llamas to feed of this coming winter.  That'll save me some hay!

Picabo's new home is also the farm where I bought my five extra meat lambs.  They're Katahdins, which is a hair breed instead of a wool breed like mine are.  Not what I'd want for breeding purposes, but they'll do for meat.  I think they're pretty cute, too. ;)

The horses have enjoyed being out on pasture, and I'm happy to be conserving the last of my grass hay.

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I had the opportunity to help shear alpacas at a friend's ranch last weekend.  Way too much fun!  I took a lot of pictures so I'll be sharing more about that in a separate post at some point.

I love riding with my dad to the dump and part of the charm is riding in our farm truck, the one I'm sitting on in my header picture.  I love old Ford trucks.  On our way back home my dad pulled of to the side, I slid over, he got back in on the passenger side, and explained to me how the clutch and the stick work.  Yep, my first time driving manual. 

*grin*

Going up our gravel driveway, dad had me step on the brake and the clutch, stopping the car.  Now I'm pretty sure he was setting me up, because we were going up a slight incline.  When I tried to get going again, the truck died.  I got it going again, hit the gas and popped the clutch.  Ooooh yeah!  Power!!

*bigger grin*

Once I'd parked the truck in our driveway, my dad says, "Okay, now go inside, get your camera, and go take a picture of what you did to the road.  You can put it on your blog."  Hehe...

Yep, he set me up.

This two inch deep rut?  It's mine.

I can't wait to drive the truck again - I think I'm going to really love driving manually.

I'm currently focusing my time on fence fixing, mainly tightening the fence so the animals won't push it over.

Also, I'm bringing home a new addition to my menagerie next Sunday!

Can you guess what "it" is?  Hint: I've never owned this kind of animal before.

That's all for now folks!

On the Farm | Sheep Shearing

First, a song by my second favorite Bluegrass band, The Panhandle Polecats...

Sheep Shearin' Blues

This song is relevant in more than just subject matter.

Hank Little is the dobro player (wearing the bowler hat) in this fantastic family band, and he's also my sheep shearer.

I've never had the sheep shearin' blues.  In fact, sheep shearing time is something I anticipate.  My bro and I look forward to hanging out with Hank every year while he's shearing my sheep. 

 He trims each ewe's hooves after he's sheared them.

 A rather undressed looking Sweet Pea - it takes a while for the lambs to get used to their mother's wool-less state.

"Mummy?  Are you my mummy?"

Ingrid's turn...

Once Hank is finished, we stand around and talk.  

And talk, and tell jokes, and discuss movies and sheep and talk some more until he has to leave.   I don't know about Hank, but as sheep and movies are my two favorite subjects, I think it's great fun:)

The next step, is to skirt the fleeces and bundle them up for storage.

Ingrid's fleece - I'm always amazed that all of this wool fit on one sheep...

Skirting a fleece is where you remove the dirty, matted and unusable sections of the fleece.  These are typically the belly, legs, and tail areas.

You discard the trimmings and keep the rest of the fleece for washing and spinning.

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination - I may sound like I know what I'm doing, but I don't really.   I just try things out until I figure out how it all works.

Still, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to skirt a fleece;)

Emma's fleece

And the last one, Sweet Pea's fleece

Here's the fleece before skirting (above) and after (below).

And here they are, bundled up and stored in trash bags until I find time to wash them...along with the other bags of wool I have sitting around from several years worth of shearing.  I haven't had time to experiment with wool washing very much, but I'm hoping to work on that this year.

And there you have sheep shearing, over and done until this time next year.

Happy Trails, y'all!