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Category: Sheep Farming

Greetings from New Mexico

Greetings from New Mexico

My name is Donna and this is my first blog post on the Felting and Fiber Studio Blog.  I read it regularly and recently responded to a post by Shepherdess Ann with the fact that I too am a shepherdess.  Ann invited me to post about my sheep and felting.  As the title indicates, I live in New Mexico, just east of Albuquerque, in the high desert, where it is not always warm as some might think of New Mexico.  At an altitude of 7200′, we get snow and cold in the winter and warm to hot in the summer, but not enough moisture because then it would not be desert.

My husband and I started a hobby farm late in life because of my love of fiber.  We presently have 18 sheep,  2 pigs,  14 chickens, 2 livestock guardian dogs and one Australian Shepherd.  I started this adventure with Angora goats.  Of course they have beautiful locks as you can see from this photograph of CeCe on the left but as you experienced felters know that fine fiber does not felt well without wool to hold it down.

 

I then acquired a pair of twin Leicester Long wools, Winken and Blinken, from a friend in Colorado.  They have nice long wool but I was not pleased with their fiber color which did not resond well to dyeing.  They are big boys, wethers.  The goats have since gone to live with a guild member who is a spinner and weaver.  I could still get fiber from them if I wish.

I decided that Wensleydale sheep were what I wanted.  Thanks to the North American Wensleydale Sheep Association, I found a breeder in Oklahoma and my husband and I drove over to Kerrville and picked up a ram and 3 unrelated ewes to start my flock.  There are not many Wensleydale sheep in New Mexico.  The girls had 6 uncomplicated births.  Then there was Maddie, my 7th, who was rejected by her mom and had to be bottle fed.

I brought her into the kitchen and luckily my experienced shearer came the next day and told me that was a mistake.  She needed to be out with the flock for her own protection.  If she wasn’t used to being with the flock and later kept separate from them she would be the first to be attacked by a predator.  I complained to him that I was too old to be night bottle feeding in the barn!  He set me straight with a morning, noon and evening schedule. Whew…  At first it was exciting but quickly got old. (I bet Ann, the experienced shepherdess, is smiling at this.)  I have not bred any more ewes since.

Here is Maddie when she was abandoned in the barn and here she is now.

I have since acquired 6 Debouillet sheep from a friend of mine. The Debouillet is a cross between a Rambouillet and a Merino.  The breed was developed in Tatum, New Mexico, in the 1920s and they

have a nice wool fleece.  The total now is 18 sheep, 3 rams who live a boring life, 13 ewes, and 2 wethers who live in another pasture.  Winken since passed away and I sold one of my ewes.

Here is a picture of the ewes waiting for their breakfast. As you can see from the picture, the flock does not get to enjoy the green rolling hills like their relatives in the UK.

 

 

For those of you who purchase your wool, so do I.  As many of you know, the process of preparing fiber straight off the sheep is an onerous one.  It must be skirted (my least favorite job), scoured and then the locks must be picked. Last year, I had to take all my unskirted fleece to the dump because it had become infested with moths… Ugh!  The moths especially love the dirty stuff.  But surprise, surprise, there was much more after the shearer had come!

Here is a picture of the before and after the scour of some Wensleydale fiber.

 

I made cobweb felted scarf/shawl from some of the locks I hand dyed.  It was one of the items I sent to a Guild sale and was asked by some of the members working if I knew it had holes in it and did I want to take it home and fix it 😢😢  sigh…  There are not many felters in my guild.

 

Here is a picture of some scoured Debouillet fleece.  It is a shorter fiber, and I have not used it in any felting projects yet.  It still needs to be combe or carded to get more of the VM out, but it is not nearly as difficult to remove as it is from those tight Wensleydale curls.

I hope I haven’t bored you too much with the sheep stories.  The sun is coming up and it’s time to feed all the critters.  It may be in the barn today because the forecast is calling for snow.

Sven Came Home

Sven Came Home

We got the call the other day that our new (baby) ram is ready to come home. We decided to call him Sven. He has grown since April. He now weighs 70 pounds(32 kg).

Here he is with his fellow lambs. He is the one in the back with the white on top of his head. He knows something is up.

HI is still a baby, so he was easily rounded up and carried to the dog crate in the back of the van. He was not impressed with his travel accommodation.

Here he is looking back as we drove away. It made me feel sad.

But that didn’t last long, and he was looking out the front window. He didn’t complain much at all.

And now he is in his new temporary home. He will stay here for a few weeks to settle in, and then we will put him next to the Storm, our current ram, and the ladies to get acquainted.

Here he is listening to Storm and the ladies yell greetings from the other side of the barn. This was a couple of weeks ago. He is settling in nicely and no longer thinks my son is going to kill him when he brings him his grain. He will even let him pat him if there is grain on the offering.

Lastly, a couple of close-ups of his wool. I hope to make something nice out of it next year. The sun shot shows you the lovely colour.

Name that Ram Lamb

Name that Ram Lamb

In today’s post, I need your help naming our new Ram lamb. He is just little, born April 27th.  He is 96.5% Gottand with the remainder being Finn. He doesn’t have a name yet.  He can’t be registered because he has a white patch on top of his head. This suits me as it brings him into my price range.

Here are his mom and dad.

And this is him.

Jan suggested Sven, my husband thought of Batman because there is a town called Gothem on the island of Gotland.  What are your great ideas for a wonderful name for this little guy?  Or maybe something formal-sounding with a good nickname? We had a dog whose real name was Amulets More Music; we called her Corry, short for encore. We are good with a strange and/or convoluted reasoning for a name.

Demo at the Log Farm.

Demo at the Log Farm.

As some of you know the farmers market I go to is at the Log Farm in Ottawa. https://thelogfarm.com/ Along with the farmers market on Saturdays, there is also a working small farm with the original log house and barns where you can visit and see some animals and enjoy a break from the city without leaving the city.   Last weekend was shearing day for the sheep they have at the farm. They asked my guild to do a demonstration, and of course we said yes.

Here we are setting up under the tents. You can see in the first shot that the styrofoam head and hat had already taken the first of several tumbles with the wind. in the second shot, you can see the container of goodies I brought as a treat. A little bonus for coming out to demo on an iffy weather day.

This is Josee demoing on her table loom.

This is Paula spinning on her electric spinning wheel. She also has her incle loom set up and was demonstrating that too.

This is Maureen Spinning on her wheel, an Ashford Traveler. You can see it in Paula’s picture too. I think Maureen was chatting with someone when I took this.

And to be fair here is a picture of me teaching some girls how to make felted beads using some pencils. I know I am blurry but it was the best shot of the girl’s hands.

 

As I said we were there for shearing day. here are the sheep staying dry while they wait for the shearer.

Here is one getting shorn. They had their own tent so the shearer could also stay dry.  All the wool was donated to the guild and Jan and some others bagged it all to give to fellow members.

Here are some pictures of the surroundings. Some barns were renovated last year. after a few years, they will weather and not look so brand new.

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We had a great time despite the ominous clouds and several downpours. I was surprised at the number of people who attended with the forecast we had but they all seemed happy and I think we gained a couple of guild members.

April round up.

April round up.

April is now gone and May will hopefully bring more sun and more flowers.

I started the month with some felt stars. It was a fun little project and might work for a fast free workshop. Maybe at a guild social. You can read about how I made them here

wool and silk felted stars. Green and Yellow

Next was an eyeglasses holder for beside my bed. It was an interesting project with some strange wool. Here it is hanging up beside my bed. I didn’t realise how dusty the bookcase was until I took a picture. Then I had to dust and take it again. The things I do for our followers. LOL

wet felted hanging eye classes case.

 

I taught 2 workshops this month, Nunofelt Scarf and  Felt Birdhouse/Feeder workshop. We had a lot of fun. Here are the ladies with their finished scarves. Sorry, I forgot to get a group shot.

And the finished Birdhouse/feeders.

After teaching I decided to treat myself to a Workshop. I signed up for Helene’s Felt Spiral Workshop. I really enjoyed making my spiral. I learned a lot along the way. It is wonderful to see how different people do things. It would be wonderful if we all lived close enough to get together regularly.

I am full of ideas for more spirals now.

purple spiral movie

I couldn’t get the movie to work so here is a still.

With April finished I have another completed page for my slow stitch collection.  I decided to include a little needle felting this time. I included some flowers but also the solar eclipse we had here, a cloud and rain because we have had a lot of April showers and my purple umbrella to keep me dry. I really do have a purple umbrella. I added the Autism Awareness infinity symbol because it is autism awareness month.  Then I was left with an empty spot at the bottom and I couldn’t figure out what to put there. I did a special days in April search and on the last day of the month, I was reminded of the first day of the month and added the fake glasses nose and moustache for April Fools.

a piece on hand made felt with needle felt and stitched pictures for the month of April

and lastly, because it is spring this last week we have started having lambs.

Lambs and moms in a group pen

And these are my current bottle babies. Sven( thanks to Jan for the name) who no one would claim. He is doing a good imitation of a Valies Black Nose with his black nose and knees.  And Henna whose mother hates her( probably because she is really good at yelling at the top of her lungs for no reason) Once they are both drinking well and down one feeding per day ( they are on 5 times a day right now) they will go live in a lambing pen until they are a little bigger then they can join a group.

 

September Adventures

September Adventures

September has been a busy and exciting month in contemporary textile art (specifically felting art) in Ireland so I thought I would feature what I got up to, I will call it my September Adventures.

Weather wise, the month started as we hoped it would continue (it didn’t by the way) with a return to fine warm weather – something we had not seen since last June.  So I took the opportunity to visit our National Botanical Gardens (https://www.botanicgardens.ie/) which are situated on Dublin’s north side.  The gardens (there’s free entry, if you ever visit Dublin, Ireland) opened in 1800 and are an oasis of calm with restored glass houses, magnificent specimens, bee hives and, of course, a tea room.  There’s also a pedestrian access to the historical cemetery next door which I suspect is not seen too often.    Glasnevin Cemetery also houses a genealogical archive for anyone wishing to trace their Irish ancestors (https://www.dctrust.ie/genealogy/home.html).

But, I digress.  Let’s go back to the gardens.  My visit coincided with their annual exhibition ‘Sculpture in Context’.  The exhibits feature artworks in various media including ceramics, wood, metal.  I decided to focus purely on the textile element of the exhibition and to photograph any pieces I came across as I wandered around.  I was aware that some of the members of Feltmakers Ireland had pieces accepted for the exhibition; Clare Merry (http://www.merryland.ie/index.htm) an exceptional artist who quietly creates her pieces was featured.  If you would like to see some of Clare’s work please check out her website, which, she tells me, is not really up to date, or Google her and feast over the images; Fiona Leech (https://www.instagram.com/feltathome/?hl=en) had three beautiful pots which were originally housed in the cactus house.   Annoyingly two of the three pots were stolen within a matter of hours of their arrival and the remaining one was moved to a safer spot in the garden’s gallery.  I thought I would show you the three pots as they were originally grouped together.

Fiona Leech’s three pots (source: Fiona’s Instagram page)

I searched but could not find Leiko Uchiyama’s beautiful work but here is a link to her website if you would like to check her out: https://www.leikofelt.com/my-felt-work/  I found two other exhibits from members of the guild.  Their featured work while not through the medium of felt were equally stunning.  Congratulations Mel Bradley (https://melbradleysilks.ie/)  and Mette Sophie Roche (https://metteroche.com/)

I put together a slideshow of my textile finds in the gardens which I hope you enjoy.

We had our first meeting after summer in Feltmakers Ireland and as usual the committee put an incredible amount of preparatory work into making it successful.  It was a busy morning as everyone beavered away felting flowers to create a tapestry as part of the 20th anniversary celebration for the guild.  Much to everyone’s delight, the guild’s founder Elizabeth Bonnar joined us. I thought I would feature Elizabeth here as without her it is doubtful that there would be such a vibrant community of feltmakers today.   Here she is with her granddaughter and with the committee.

Feltmakers Ireland founder Elizabeth Bonnar and her granddaughter
Feltmakers Ireland committee with founder Elizabeth Bonnar (3rd from left)

Here are some photos taken on the day.

The finished tapestry was revealed at Feltmakers Ireland ‘Bountiful’ juried exhibition which opened on 30th September.

Feltmakers Ireland members: The Floral Tapestry to celebrate 20 years.

The exhibition also saw the launch of the new book “Exploring Irish Wool for Feltmaking”  The book is the product of a collaboration between many members of Feltmakers Ireland guild, sheep farmers, shepherds, shearers and suppliers and not forgetting the various washers and carders who took the raw fleeces, converting them into usable fibres for testing.  I think this approach was quite unique and it will certainly be a worthwhile and useable addition to any textile maker’s reference library.  Understandably it was a huge project so congratulations are due to all, especially Annika (Berglund), Breda (Fay) and Sinead (Doyle) who collated all of the findings into an invaluable resource on Irish wool.  It’s so full of well written practical advice and it was made extra special by the presence of one of our Government Ministers, Pippa Hackett an ardent supporter of the project, who officially launched the book and the exhibition . Here is a quick look at the contents page to give you an idea of the scope of the book:

Exploring Irish Wool Contents page

An added bonus is that feltmakers/wool artists can now make direct contact with numerous artisanal suppliers so there is no excuse for any of us not buying closer to source and of course for anyone overseas who wishes to use Irish wool fibre in their work purchasing from source.

It is available to purchase from the following link and I understand will also be available in eBook format shortly:  https://feltmakersireland.com/exploring-irish-wool-for-feltmaking/

I hope you have enjoyed my September adventures.   It has been an exciting month.  Once again I would like to thank Feltmakers Ireland and their hard working committee who work tirelessly to maintain this vibrant community – it makes such a difference that, as textile artists, we can gather together and create regularly. I take my hat off to Elizabeth Bonnar and her decision to found Feltmakers Ireland twenty years ago; the catalyst for lifelong friendships, masterclasses, collaborations, exhibitions, networks and travel.

To complete September’s birthday celebrations, I thought I would produce a slideshow of the Bountiful exhibition which is running for the month of October in Phoenix Park, Dublin Ireland.  I took photos on the day so I apologise where the light may be shining on the artwork.  There are over 30 pieces of art and it will give you an indication of where Ireland’s vibrant felting community is at in its journey.  I hope you enjoy it!

Still working on flowers and lambs.

Still working on flowers and lambs.

I have started adding flowers to my branch. It is slow going as I am still fighting my cold but it is started, so that’s something.

I started adding the purple backgrounds for the flowers. I took a picture partway along.  I remembered to take pictures before finishing so everyone should clap…… or something. LOL

a felted tree branch with purple flowers

Taking the picture made me look at it more and wow, dead straight

 

A felted tree branch with more purple flowers

So I went back and poked them into a more organic shape.

 

a felted tree branch with purple flowers and orange stems.

Next was the stems and that’s as far as I got. I am not sure about the blank space bottom right. I can’t decide if I like it or not.

And just for fun, sheep and lambs. theses are bad sheep who escaped in the rain and decided to eat the grass between the two houses on the farm. They are not very good at being sneaky. This was a little earlier in the spring. They are out in the pasture during the day now.

Sheep grazing on grass.

And some cute Lambs

 

 

Black sheep and her twill white lambs. Black lamb looking through the fence

Where wool begins: Keeping sheep safe

Where wool begins: Keeping sheep safe

In my last post, I introduced you to how we raise sheep (and wool!) a little differently than most in Canada — our sheep live outside year-round and graze solar installations and cover crops as their day-job.

In that post, our livestock guardian dogs made an appearance and garnered plenty of attention, as they should. We couldn’t graze sheep like we do without our dogs!

Where we farm, coyotes are a major threat to sheep. Our sheep are also vulnerable to attacks by ravens and even bears, though it has been years since that has happened here. Did I mention we are in Ottawa city limits? We are! But yes, there are black bears, sometimes wolves, and plenty of coyotes to worry about.

There are a few options for guardian animals, including dogs, llamas, and donkeys. We’ve had the greatest success with dogs — it takes a predator to smell, spot, and deter a predator. And that is our goal: unless a coyote or group of coyotes is preying on our sheep, we leave them alone. We would rather not hunt or trap the coyotes, but it does happen from time to time that a troublesome animal or family moves in and even the dogs can’t keep them back.

We’re always asked what breeds of dogs we use. Most of our dogs are a mix of breeds — there are a surprising number of guardian dog breeds, all of which have been developed over hundreds of years alongside sheep flocks. Most of our dogs are Maremma (an Italian breed), with some Great Pyrenees, Akbash, and Karakachan in the mix.

A child and adorable puppies
Charlie and some puppies, March 2022

Our dogs are sometimes born here, or at other sheep farmer’s set ups, but it’s so important that they be from working parents and are born and raised with the charges they will protect. A pup needs to bond with sheep from the beginning so that they treat them as their own. The instincts these dogs have been selected for are truly amazing, but they still require training and support to eventually make it as a livestock guardian. Not all of them do.

We run about one adult dog per 200 ewes, but prefer that the dogs work in pairs. The final number (up to three or four) all depends on the coyote pressure, the terrain, fences, and whether we are lambing or not. There are always young dogs coming on and older dogs slowing down. It’s a real challenge to find the balance of new and experienced.

A livestock guardian dog watches as a ewe has her lamb
A livestock guardian dog watches as a ewe has her lamb. The paint on the ewe is to identify with breeding group she is in. It mostly washes off the wool, I promise.

We’ve just started lambing this week (see above) and two of our newest dogs are doing an amazing job keeping watch over the newest lambs. These dogs not only keep the ewes and lambs safe they also clean up the lambing areas (gross!) which serves a real purpose — less scent for predators to pick up on or come in to investigate. The relationship between these dogs and their flocks is incredible.

Even with many good dogs, losses still happen. This past fall and winter were some of the hardest for coyote kills in close to 10 years. They even took down a mature ram, which is rare. We did have a few trapped, and that seemed to help, but our goal is to add more dogs to keep the pressure down.

A livestock guardian dog looks over his sheep after being sheared
T-Dawg, a livestock guardian dog, looks after sheep

Until next time, enjoy the sunshine and if you’d like to see more of our solar grazing and lambing adventures check us out on Instagram at @Shady_Creek_Lamb!

Shearing Day

Shearing Day

Sunday was shearing day. It is a very busy day as you can imagine. We had a friend come help but most of the setup work was done by my son.  This system is set up in the area we put the lambing pens in the spring.  This is a shoot system from the holding and crowding pens to where they get sheared. There is a gate part way to stop them from going backwards. On one side is a big pen for the ram lambs to be separated for weening. It will be a noisy night.

 

Here are some shots of the sheep being sheared. We have a wonderful shearer. He is calm and gentle.

 

This is a picture to show the difference between the outside sun-bleached wool and the cut side of the wool

I only kept 4 fleeces. These are 2 of them. I couldn’t resist the white one. I have to have a proper look at them yet I hope there isn’t too much hay chaff in them.

 

 

This is my Lincolns fleece. It looks matted to me but I will try washing it and see what happens.

 

This is a bad sheep complaining, between nibbling. She ran around and instead of going out the open gate to the barnyard she flipped open the wooden gate and ran out the opposite side of the shearing floor. She then complained that she was by herself for the remainder of shearing. We opened the gate to let her back in but she just stood there and yelled.

I tried to get a picture of naked sheep. when I went feed Storm they were all in the barn, too dark for pictures. I went back an hour later they are all in the old garden, great. I got one picture before they turned tail and ran for the gait to the field. This is the story of my life trying to take pictures of sheep. You have to sneak up on them or they at very least will all turn away and show you their tails and at worst decide you are a coyote taking pictures for a future dinner party.

 

This is 4 half bags of wool ready to go to the wool co-op. I get half bags because I am the bag stuffer and the big bags are a pain if you don’t have a stand and are bad at climbing ladders to stuff fleeces in. they are much easier to manage and transport too.

 

 

For those wondering how Storm is doing. here he is He is in the barn and is eating grass (cut for him daily) and grain and still gets 2 bottles a day. In the close-up shot, you can see milk all over his face from bumping the bottle and sprayed milk all over his face and the other one is just to show you how much he has grown.

  

 

I took lots of pictures but my iPhone kept switching to live and so it kept taking 3-second videos instead of pictures. If anyone knows how to permanently turn that feature off I would love to know it. What a frustrating feature. If I wanted a video I would switch to video. I don’t know how to grab one shot out of a video. It is probably simple but… And that’s my rant for today. 🙂

 

 

Another small picture

Another small picture

I am still all packed up so decided to do another small picture. This one is 3.5 x2.5 inches. I wanted to do a sunset. Step one google sunset pictures in the public domain. Well, that was disappointing. It seems that the popular configuration is oversaturated with the blinding sun dead center and if there is anything else in the picture it is a black silhouette. I was looking for something more subdued with lots of colour in the sky but with colour still in the landscape. I tried adding qualifying words to my google search but it didn’t help. I just kept scrolling and scrolling. The further away from the top hits the better it got. Sometimes page 5 has better pictures than the first page.

 

I started with this small piece of offcut from a long-ago project. I think it was a little bag.

I decided to go with my imagination rather than an actual picture.  Drew in the horizon, the lake, the hill and an indication of trees. I knew the trees would disappear under the sky so not much point to that.

 

I added some sky using 2 shades of blue.  I used 3 shades of orange and a little white to do some nice sunset-kissed streaky clouds in the sky.

 

 

The water was next. It is a combination of Prussian blue and navy.

 

I added the grass. It is antique, olive green and a puter/brown colour. I was thinking of late in the year when the grass turns golden. I carded the colours together but not too much so I would have some nice variation.

 

Then I added the cloud reflection in the water.

I wanted some trees on the ridge. I want the ridge to be in the distance with the trees striking up a little. I don’t like them. they look too much like they belong at a Christmas tree farm, so I took them off.

 

Next, I tried mixing some shades of green and then drafting it thin. I told it in my fingers to give it some cohesion and needled 3 trees on the ridge. I like these better but am still not sure. I think I probably just need to not look at them so closely. The thumbnails that show along the bottom of my photo editing software look better than the big picture but it’s twice as big as the actual picture so it shows too much detail. I would like to add more trees but not sure it won’t just end up looking like a green blob. I may leave it and more onto the flowers in the foreground. Any suggestions for the trees.

 

 

For the next one, I hope to go bigger. I always want to add too much detail and it’s just not possible with a small picture.

And one last thing, a cute thing. This is Storm. He was born on Saturday. we have no idea who his mom is. Perhaps the storm spooked her.

We had a huge storm in Ontario it took out power to most of the south of the province. We were out for a little over a day. Many people are still out. You may not see Jan in 2 days. It hasn’t been like this since the Icestorm of 1998. At least the weather is better for this one.

here’s the outage map the darker green is the area the hydro company covers and all the dots are the numbers of outages in that area. London, Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa have separate hydro companies but they all have huge outages too. if you follow the link you can zoom in and see different areas.

https://www.hydroone.com/power-outages-and-safety/stormcentre-outage-map?bodyOnly=true/