Greetings farm followers! I think lambing season is almost done. We have one more hold out and truthfully I am not sure 100% she is pregnant. The suspected ewe is named Elinor and she is the oldest Gulf Coast ewe we have. She will, Lord willing turn 14 on April 26, 2019. Wow that just amazes me! Last year she had a pretty rough year, her fleece was just awful. We had gotten an LGD the year before (Great Pyrenees) because we has some issues with foxes and coyotes in the neighborhood. Unfortunately she enjoyed chasing our sheep. No matter how hard we tried to discourage the behavior she just did not get it. Thankfully we were able to re-home her and poor Elinor had to work on being able to just de-stress! This year her fleece is in better shape and she has put on a good deal of weight. That is why I believed she was pregnant. And she still might be, her daughter Amarantos was the last to lamb a few weeks ago so she might yet still have a wee lamb to contribute. Either way she will be the respected matriarch and live out her days hopefully in comfort and peace. I appreciate that she is very tolerant of the young lambs. They run and climb on her. Some just snuggle up against her when their moms are off grazing. It is a wonderful sight! So we have 9 lambs born this year. Five ram lambs and four ewes. Three of those rams are sired by our new herd sire Titan. All the males have horn and thus far the ewes do not. However, that can change :-( Two years ago I had our Vet out to help dock a tail and do some tagging. We were going to dis-bud the females if any had horn buds. The Vet checked a set of twin ewes for me and they were at least two weeks old, no horns. But after several months they did develop some and both have a small set of thin horns. We do not milk them therefore I do not concern myself with the horns. I do believe in dis-budding animals that you work closely with.
Pretty soon it will be shearing time around here! Hopefully our shearer will get here before the end of March. This year I vowed I will process our wool or give up raising Sheep! My poor husband really is patient but I should not let the fleeces add no value to the farm so I promised to get it into high gear this year. Pray for me that I will be true to my word.
The Bake Shop hopefully will be opening up by the end of March. I was trying to get it opened one day a week but my time is so precious that I just cannot seem to dedicate myself solely to baking. And baking like we do here takes concentrated time and effort. However, that said I do bake privately for folks so feel free to message the farm and I can always arrange my schedule to acomodate orders.
I had a lovely lady and her sister call about stopping by while they were in the area. We welcome visitors here but we do appreciate a little advanced notice. It was my fault for not posting our hours clearly and I am very sure we disappointed them. We are limited in what we have for sale so it is best to call ahead. Our raw milk is in limited supply and we are NOT a licensed dairy. We do test our milk for our own purposes just to make sure our cows are healthy but we do not regularly send our milk to labs. Therefore we do not sell raw milk to consumers. Please call if you folks have any questions about purchasing milk. We can help direct you.
Well enough said! Thank you for your time and the patience to read this post. Feel free to comment, ask questions or give some positive feedback. We are very thankful for you all.