Another Day, Another Animal

Yesterday was the day I did my errands: groceries, burned out heat lamp bulbs, letting the chicks out to free range, etc. When I went to Albertsons, there were two 10-12 yo girls who had free kittens. Talk about a smash up marketing job: the boy kittens had blue ribbons around their necks and the girl kittens had pink ribbons around their necks and were so cute, you'd almost have to take one. Most of thepeople in the store were talking about how cute those kittens were, but Lance and I had talked about getting an additional cat to keep the mice, moles and gophers away....in other words, we needed a barn cat. So, I brought the female kitten home and she is, for the time being, living in the garage. Once my house cat becomes deceased, we won't have any more house cats....too much cat fur to clean up all the time.

Lance named the kitten, "Norphan," as in an orphan in slang and is from the POGO cartoons from when we were both kids. We still like to look at the couple of POGO cartoon books we bought over the years and enjoy the political and other humor in it. So, Norophan is her name.

About 1.5 months before that, we got a "not-so" Great Pyrenees puppy, a male who was the runt o f the litter, whom we named Bud. He is such a love, but will never get to be as tall or heavy as a standard sized Pyr dog even after he becomes an adult. His legs are too short, his muzzle and head too big for his body, his tail's too long, so he'll never be a show dog--we love him just the way he is. Plus, he'll be a wonderful source of dog hair for me to spin when he blows his coat in the spring.

This spring, we had 16 lambs (5 died). We have 7 ewelings and 4 ramlings, 4 of the lambs are Finn/Icelandic cross lambs and the other 7 are registered Icelandic lambs. They are as cute as a bugs ear though. Bud loves the lambs (for dinner--kidding) and plays with them...they leap over his head playing keep-away with him as he tries to play with them like they were puppies. But he is learning and, as I said, he loves them. He is still afraid of the alpacas though--we still have three, but that's fine. El Dorado will be gelded this autumn when the flies die down.

The farmers' market in Walla Walla starts on May 21 for those of us who sell there. I've had a couple of people purchase more products from me over the winter/early spring (yarn, a custom-made scarve, toys) so my products are becomign known. It's so exciting to be able to have people want to buy yarn and other things from me. I did the Waitsburg Jr. Livestock show in April and I'll be doing the 2nd Annual Dayton Festival of the Arts in Dayton for the second time as well as doing spinning demos at the Mall (January) and at the Walla Walla Labor Day weekend festival (Frontier Days) at the county fairgrounds in Jim Nelson's booth. Jim's our resident sheep shearer and is looking for someone who can pick up some of new people in the area who need their sheep sheared. He's really busy. His booth at the fair has over 50 types of wool, Alpaca, Llama, mohair and angora fiber, and it's won for the last few years as the best booth of the fair. He's good.

My now 21 yo daughter came to stay with us and we had a great time. She's gotten to be quite an adult and I'm proud she is as strong and knowledgeable as she is, especially since she had a hard life already. She's making it and that's what counts.

Well, take care for now and I'll write again later.