ba-bye birdie

we are downsizing.. selling off 22 lovely sweet hens who have done us well and also shat upon our patio and yard daily... we are thrilled to rebuild our fence/redo coop area to more efficiently accomodate a modest flock of about 12 hens & 1 rooster.

And for those of you who know our first four red star chickens that really belong to Mill Creek Urban Farm I will let you know that one of them died of old age last thursday. I believe it was "Olive" that died. We had a nice ceremony to say thanks & good bye over in the solfest fire pit in the field in front of the pond. In this fire ring I found the head & disinegrating beak of a barred rock chicken that had died earlier this summer. It was quite interesting to find a remanant of an animal I had placed in an open field several months back on such a wild property with such a circle of life/food chain presence. Typically one only finds the bones & hair & teeth of the dead (groundhogs, deer & other sacred creatures that we live with).

Funny enough I glanced to the field one day later and saw that Olive had gone elsewhere. go figure.
and go to the Mill Creek Urban Farm 1st ever Fundraiser sunday december 9 from 3-7pm. I have a link to their website below--there will be kegs & music & art & steaz!

Lambing season to start April 15th 2008!

Thanks to Mr.Chocolate! we have a due date already!
He is a beautiful brown ram with small horns and a good frame. Gorgeous brown fleece--yay!
He is the one in the center of the photo approaching my lead ewe, Minikin (the black sheep).

his name is Mr. Chocolate

this could be the best name for a stud I've ever heard!

I will be buying an Icelandic Ram this weekend. His name is Mr. Chocolate. I cannot wait and neither can my girls who have pent up hormone things going on.

It has been snowing in Kempton since before 7am yesterday...it is gorgeous but a surprise to me. I think the sheep must have exhaled when the flakes started falling down. But there really is nothing like a view of yellow maple leaves next to branches weighed down by white snow.

so please enjoy it as you think of how thankfull you are.. List the ways in a comment

reallee nice goodstuff wool for sale - FYI

hey all, I have been washing my wool and even handcarding some of it.

SPINNERS & FELTERS>> For sale I am offering RAW and WASHED, some carded, mostly uncarded WOOL from:Icelandics, Cheviots, & a BabyDoll Southdown. Raw or Washed - both are free of vegetative matter & manure.

My wool comes in several natural colors - no need to dye! (but you could)
Each sheep breed's wool has different purposes, ex:spinning or felting... Let me know if you have any questions! I also have closeup shots and stories to tell about each sheep; I keep each sheep's wool separate. Its a good deal I tell ya!>> wool & stories & pictures! my oh my!

COME CHECK OUT OUR LUSTRE & NATURAL COLORS!

hidden in a pile of soft spongy wool, Lala of Lillian's Farm

me-be mom to a ram?

whoa! yes, I am thinking of actually buying an Icelandic Ram!
well It is breeding time (November) and I am a little late planning. Not for lack of thought & notes & talking to my vet BUT for lack of stability in my physical world..healing from my rotator cuff strain, followed by getting my wisdom teeth ripped out of my thick head. So I realized on Monday- crap I gotto get on this! I have to pick up my list of tri-state area Icelandic Sheep breeders (very few!) So I called the top of the list for Pennsylvania. I spoke with a lovely woman who was also excited to meet another person in our state with these specific sheep. Though she did not have a ram I could rent she kept racking her brain cells to figure out some way she could lend me one..maybe the young guy she just bought from NJ? She was so kind & we were mutually thrilled to be on the phone! I gave a call to the woman who her young ram just came from. A very wise, long-time farmer woman who schooled me and figured that she could sell me a 3 year old ram for a very small price (compared to what this breed normally costs). When I started the phone call I was so set on renting a ram but by the end I was telling this engaging shepherdess that I was pretty dern sure I was going to find a way to come up with the cash! Bring him on over!

You see the day before said phone call I saw some signs in the pasture that my girls are coming around to the seasonal hormones..I have to get a dude in there asap--also to time the births for a good tme.

kay, so that's my big news that is still talk!
more later

buying gas to fuel the beast

The situation has progressed to the point where I do not flinch while paying for gas as long as it is below $3.00 a gallon. Yesterday I had major issues buying gas that was $3.09. Today price is up!
I cannot even remember what the price was when I got my license at age 20.; maybe it was 99 cents? And then it would have seemed outrageous to pay over a dollar!

My how time and perspective seem to be racing each other.

Enjoy today’s scorpio rains.. we gettn stuff dunn!

Peace n hugs

Our winter coats were shorn!

Our winter coats were shorn! Yay! Now we have 5 huge bags of naturally colorful luxiourious long wool! You may think – what a mean shepherdess to shear her sheep just as frost blows its winds. You see I have three breeds. One of them, Icelandic sheep, require two shearings per year. Their wool grows about 10 inches in a six month period. Without regular clips their wool would become matted, filled with vegetation, and could even trip them. My shearer said their fleeces were very nice- a true pleasure to shear; he was happy with my care & feeding/bedding methods! It has been just over one year of being a reality-shepherdess so I was very excited to hear a complement from an expert.

Icelandics not only grow the absolut best fiber for spinning and felting but they manage to keep very clean because they enjoy their days out in the pasture AND they stay out in the rain so as to clean their fleeces of anything messy like barn-poopy-mess. Now I cannot say the same about my other 3 sheep. As much as I love them I will admit they are quite sissified when rain comes; they stay in the barn accumulating stuff in their fleeces. As a result their fleeces require more work to process. Mind you the nastiest poopiest wool can be cleaned and one would never know the difference. (Mine are not that bad but I could imagine how larger sheep farms could lack the attention to keep their sheep spotless…). On the other hand felting with raw unwashed wool does quite nice; some felters even prefer it!

Because of the spotted, mixed colorings on my Icelandics one can spin a yarn that will resemble an authentic tweed! I think it is amazing that a tweed is traditionally produced form one animal not from mixing several fleeces of different colors.

For sale Lillian’s Farm is offering top notch wool from 3 breeds of sheep: tan/grey Babydoll Southdown, white Cheviot, and Icelandics in several colors. To buy our wool you must be a spinner or a felter as we do not yet offer our wool in yarn for knitting & crochet. Hopefully in a few years my sheep farm will be so so successful that sending away wool for processing into yarn will be an attainable reality. Stay posted for that. I have 8 adult sheep, 5 that I will breed this month. So I should be doing this for awhile!