Shed is Ready!

The sheep shed is ready to shelter our ewes with their newborn lambs! Here is Beau the Llama being feed a tasty tender branch of hazelnut sucker last fall. The shed withstood the horrific rain and winds storms of last December 2007. It is a true shed, from a USDA plan from the 1960's. We can store almost 5 tons of hay, and wish we had even more room for hay! I visited a neighbor recently who has a huge giant shed, and he says his is not big enough - either. Hmmmm. Family activities and life and outside work have taken me away for awhile from writing/blogging, so hope to make a little time to make regular entries from now on. We did have many wonderful pounds of Icelandic rovings processed recently, we have creamy white, smokey black, morrit/reddish brown, ligth gray/buff, a sturdy black with white, and even our first batch of lambs roving that spins up a heathery gray! You may view the rovings at our website www.Dolcefarm.com Back to the lambs, they are arriving any day - we started a waiting list for lambs, and after the people on the list make their choices we post it for everyone else. I'm getting ready to send in several beautiful lamb pelts, we sold out pretty quickly on our first batch we posted.

Early September musings...

Somehow August has flown by - busy with visiting friends, taking time out to savor the local wineries, enjoying our tomatoes from the garden and walking the hazelnut orchard. We visited the Oregon State Fair in Salem - always fun to see the dairy cows, pigs, dairy goats and 4-H sheep! This year we planted 3 types of tomatoes, started by my Dad -- Glacier - which is really early, we snacked on the first ones in July, small red salad type - Taxi - medium size, yellow and very sweet, and Big Beef - nice, meaty beefsteak. The summer weather cooperated by not being excessively hot and the tomatoes did well. Our sheep shed is nearly complete, the metal roof is up - it is painted a snappy barn red, has enough room for storing 5-9 tons of hay, alfalfa and room for the sheep to get out of the sun/rain. It is a USDA plan from the 1960's, with a hay room, feed/tack/extra room, shed roof, 20'X30'. It has board and batten siding, looks just beautiful! And my husband built it nearly by himself, with help from friends and family. We are walking the hazelnut orchard, we've put alot into pruning the nuts to bring them back into higher production. I'll delve deeper into the hazelnut orchard in a future blog. We also righted a shelter (half ton shelter, mind you) that goblins help lift over a 5 foot fence on Halloween Day last year during a wind storm. Thank goodness for our workhorse tractor!

We will be attending the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival this year in September - in Canby Oregon. This is a new experience for us - I've attended the festival for the last few years, and am really looking forward to bringing some of our ram and ewe lambs/yearling to show and offer for sale as well. Come by and say hello!