Lambing started early this morning.  Desana, one of our older ewes, had twin ewe lambs at 0510 and 0525.  She (of course) picked her favorite spot-at the top of the very steep hill in our pasture.  Both lambs are doing great.  They are now all down in the barn, where they’ll stay penned up for a few days.  Now there are 4 ewes to go-not many, but I’m always anxious-even more so with working full time again the past few years.  It’s quite windy now, and getting colder, so we worry about chilling.  I’m likely to be out a couple times tonight checking on everything.

Desana and her 2 ewe lambs

Dark ewe lamb-born first

Light ewe lamb-born second

I’m so thankful all went well-Wednesday mornings are very tight for us time-wise, and we are also having vehicle problems.  Mom and babies were doing great when I got home about 3:30.  Praise God for new life on the farm.

We just got a new digital camera.  I couldn’t figure out how to use the old (now broken) one, so I’ve been playing with this new one.  I took 3 photos, and am going to try to post and caption them.  In case that doesn’t work, the pics are Joey,( my angora rabbit), the barn (and snow), and Missy, one of our grey tiger cats.  

Well-I got the photos in the post, but have no clue how to make them bigger and space them out.  More to learn!

Ok, OK-this is not turning into a weather blog, but we are having some extremely high winds.  It made for an interesting time doing chores tonight-quite difficult to pull the side barn door open.  But all critters are doing well, and it is still warm enough that the bunny water is not freezing-one less thing to take care of.   

I’m happily deep in several new books-mostly fiber related.  I finally broke down and bought A Fine Fleece  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_13?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=a+fine+fleece+knitting+with+handspun+yarns&sprefix=a+fine+fleece   I’m so excited-at least two-and maybe three-of the sweaters are from Jacob handspun.  Yumm!!!!!

PS-if anyone knows how to put in a clickable link without all this extra stuff, please let me know.  Time for a late dinner.  

Auf Wiedersehen.

Just changed the header colors-winter to spring-not that I think we’ll have the warm weather for long. But-it’s been nice not having to thaw out bunny water bowls three times a day. I just finished shearing Joey, my chocolate Satin/French/English mix angora.  One of these days I need to do something with the two large bins of angora that I have. That’s the problem when you own the fiber animals-no time to do anything with the fiber!!

I did make it to the guild meeting on Saturday and had a nice time. I was able to start spinning some bright Wensleydale top that Lynn gifted me a year or two ago. Seems like that’s the only time I get to spin any more; I need to just keep my wheel(s) up in the living room.

I have been knitting-have finished almost 2 dozen washcloths for the KAL the Ravelry Christian Knitters and Crocheters are doing for the Ronald MacDonald House.  I’m trying to work through my large yarn stash right now.  The only new yarns coming in anytime soon are for the Wooly Wonka Shakespeare in Lace Club.  

Doing OK so far on daily Bible reading and journaling. I average missing about 2 days a week, which is quite good for me.  This is the longest I have ever kept a journal.  I’m using a Moleskine Daily Planner-nice paper and I have my fountain pens out again.

I think it’s the fourth one so far this school year and it’s only January.  There goes part of our spring break!

Yep-it’s been almost two years since my last post.  Fortunately I was able to find my user ID and password.  I really do want to keep a blog; my problem before was that I didn’t know how to use the digital camera and then I ran out of time.  Now the camera is broken, and I still don’t have time-BUT-I have started to journal now though (on paper), so I thought I could try a bit of blogging also.  Maybe this time it will take!

Big Praise-Steve is still cancer free; it’s now almost two years since his surgery.

Brief farm update:  maintaining the flock at one ram, one wether and five breeding ewes.  We should have lambs starting in March. Down to three rabbits-still have issues with snuffles, so no new rabbits while these are still here.

Life is busy as usual and I still struggle with juggling the many roles I have.  I’m getting better at learning to say no and focus on what is important.  Bible reading and prayer are helping a lot, so I’m striving towards more consistency in both.

New endeavor: working through the book The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer (http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Call-Artists-Response-Writers/dp/0877881383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233145840&sr=8-1)  I know I have talent in the fiber arts, and I really want to be able to explore and use it.

Lambing seemed fast and furious this year.  Fortunately it did not start until after we were back from the hospital.  My brother-in-law had all the phone numbers lined up for help, but he was very thankful no lambs came while he was house/farm sitting!

 Bernice had twin rams lambs early 12 March, Eina had a single ram lamb 16 March, Bethany had twin ewe lambs early (1:30 and 2 am) 17 March (Happy Birthday to me), Desana had twin ram lambs early 20 March and Charity had a single ewe lamb on 20 March.  Except for Charity, all the births were uneventful and easy-just the way you want them to be.  Of course, none of the lambs came during the 3-4 day spell of nice weather.  Oh no….it was either cold and frosty, or in the middle of the 2nd major snowstorm of the winter (St Patrick’s Day weekend). 

For the first time ever, we had to call the vet in for an emergency though.  Charity had some minor problems last year with the lamb’s head briefly stuck, but this year it was clear she would not lamb without assistance.   It turned out the lamb had one leg forward, with the head and other leg turned backward.  The vet was able to pull the lamb, and revive her.  That just brought tears to my eyes, as I watched the vet swing (yes, vigorously) and rub the little ewe.  She is a small lamb, but probably the spunkiest one we have!  She and another of our ewe lambs are also what is called “lilacs”: instead of typical Jacob colors of black and white, they are charcoal and white.  They also have blue eyes.  So, we will definitely be keeping one of them.  We are looking around to find a home for Charity, as she must not be bred again.  We have some feelers out to 4H families.  As a last resort, we’ll put her in the freezer, but would rather not have to.  However, we are not set up to have pasture space for non-breedable ewes.

I lost Toby, my beautiful REW German cross angora about 3 weeks ago.   He was fine at 3pm when some friends visited Steve, then dead  in his cage at 6 pm when we went out to do chores.  No visible signs of problems.  The best we can figure is he may have had a heart attack when some birds got stuck in the barn near his cage.  He was a sweetheart-very friendly and easy to clip.  He had gorgeous white fiber.  I will miss him.  This may sound a bit macabre, but he is in the freezer until we can bury him in our pet cemetery in the pasture.   I have now lost 2 rabbits in the past year (unrelated causes).  I will be getting 2 more this spring/summer, but it is hard to  lose the “friendly” ones.

Yes, I know it’s been a while (over 6 weeks!) since my last post.  In the interim my husband had major surgery, the ewes all lambed, and I had lots to do at work.  God is sooo good.  Steve’s surgery went well; the docs believe they have all the cancer.  Lambing went pretty good-we now have 8 new lambs-pics to come later.  And I’m getting back into the swing of teaching again, after being off for 2 weeks.  

I have lots of pics of lambing, so will try to learn how to put them in the blog.  Bye for now from snowy upstate NY-we got over a foot of heavy wet snow yesterday (but had a snow day-yippeee!!).

Well, some sort of nasty virus snuck up on me Tues pm/Wed am.  I’ve been down and out with nausea, vomitting  and a fever.  I felt so awful I couldn’t even get on the computer (and that’s unheard of!).  I’m better today, just feel like I’ve been hit all over with a baseball bat.  I have now used up all my sick time at work, so time off for Steve’s upcoming surgery will be without pay.   On the positive side, I did manage to get 3 weeks worth of lesson plans written on Tuesday before all this hit.  And, it appears Steve’s sinus infection is clearing up.  We’re praying he doesn’t catch whatever I had, or the surgery will need to be postponed.  

Farm news: my husband tells me all the animals are OK.  Jugs are set up in the barn for lambing.  All we need to do now is hang the feeders, since he will be on lifting restrictions post-op.  Lots of work to get done this weekend!  We’re praying for lambing to hold off several days.  My brother in law will be here house/farm sitting, but has no experience with lambing, and we’d rather he not have to learn the hard way!

Well I just came in from the barn…brrrr!  The other two rabbits were OK-I just trimmed their nails and clipped off a few small matted areas on Bart.  The sheep are a mess.  There is burdock stuck on their neck wool, and some have burdock elsewhere from lying down in hay that had burdock.  We have done a really good job of cleaning up our pasture of this nasty weed, but have less control over the hay.  We are fortunate to be able to buy hay nearby, and this is the first time we have had this problem.   We’ll just keep pulling the burdock out as we find it in the hay.  Fleece skirting will just take longer this year.  I’m pretty agressive picking out the VM, so it just means if I sell any fleeces this year they will be a lot smaller than usual!