It's Lambing time again in Walla Walla

Hi Everyone:

Well, I've recovered (almost) from my cold/flu thing-y and though I'm still exhausted, I'm pretty much back in the swing of shepherdess and fiber artist and instructor. First the lamb news: I've got 11 lambs so far and one more ewe to go and she will have either twins, as she had the last two years, or triplets. I'm so excited. I have 5 ram lambs and 6 ewe lambs to date with two ram lambs being bottle fed babies. They are the cutest little boys, one black cross lamb (Finn mom and Icelandic dad) and a white cross lamb (Finn mom and Romney dad). I'd been putting registration tags on them as well as Scrapies tags, so that's all finished.

I wasn't supposed to have any Finn/Romney or Icelandic/Romney crosses and didn't plan on having any, but I was using Rocky (as in Rocky and Bullwinkle), my Icelandic ram, to breed to two of my former Icelandic ewes in the front pasture, Rommie, the Romney ram, got in with the ewes. I'd never seen Rommie mount the ewes, but apparently he did when my back was turned. So, I may have some cute curly lambs, but they aren't the ones I was breeding for, so I'm S.O.L. I believe they'll go to a nice buyer because the fiber appears that it will be, especially on the Finn/Romney crosses, quite nice with lots of crimp.

One last thing about the Finn/Romney or Icelandic/Romney crosses lambs, they are all long-tailed, so when I noticed that, one of the things you do is dock the tails by banding them...they lose blood circulation and the tip drops off. It sounds cruel, but it's not...it's a sanitation issue to keep their tails from getting full of sheep manure and helps keep them healthy. If there was a way to keep them healthy without doing that, then I would.

All the ram lambs, but the ones people want to have to breed to their sheep, will be banded in a couple of weeks when they're testicles drop. I do not want to have any rams to breed indiscriminately to my ewes. You put a band around the testicles that will do the same thing to them as it did to the long tails. It bothers them for a little while, but for the most part, they seem to bounce around within minutes of banding. It bothered me the first time I did it, but they rebounded to quickly that I could see it wasn't an issue. It's rather like putting tags in their ears. I don't think they have the same pain senses as humans do. I had my ears pierced 3 times (when from 1 hole to 2 holes, then 3 holes, but let the 3rd holes close up and still have 2) and it didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would and I was doing fine in less than 15 minutes. At any rate, this is all part of what a Shepherdess or Shepherd needs to do with sheep.

The reason I breed and raise the sheep I do is that they tend to let you know when they're lambing or something is wrong, so all you have to do is listen to them. Domestic sheep do some of this as well, but they are not as protective of the ewes and lambs as the Icelandics are. I researched sheep for over 2 years before I decided which breeds I wanted to breed. I love the Icelandics and the Finns.

BTW, the black cross is named Bart and the white cross is Bullwinkle. When they're bottle fed babies, you get more attached to them and then the next thing you know, they're named. One of the ewe lambs is all black with a white cross on her face and some are all black with various white markings on their faces or their bodies and are so full of pep. They jump all over the pasture looking like little black frogs sometimes. So, it's amazing watching these little lambs move around.

It's been raining like crazy here and the lambs don't particularly like the rain because the ground is wet, so when the feed bins are empty, they get tipped over and the lambs are usually inside of them staying warm and dry. I was so surprised yesterday when I went out to put hay in the bins and here were 4 lambs inside. I hated to evict them from their warm home, but it was a warm and sunny (for a change) 60-degree day and they needed to be out and about. They enjoyed themselves immensely, lazing about in the sun, or playing, so they did just fine. I even put my bottle fed lambs in with them and they all played together. So, it's obvious that the bottle fed lambs are not mentally disabled due to the bottle feeding.

I butcher the culls and the sheep I cannot sell so that I keep the number of sheep down to about 15-20 (my hubby wants no more than 12). I love my sheep adn want to have more acreage so I can raise registered Icelandic and Finn sheep, mainly, but I'll have a few that are different so that I can have a variety of fiber to work with.

I traded two Finn ewes for a Merino/Rambouillet/Finn cross ewe and two black Merino/Rambouillet/Shetland fleeces in January, and I traded another Finn ewe for a brand new Cotswold ewe lamb this spring. So, I mainly have my Finn/Icelandic crosses, Finns, Icelandics, Cotswold and MRF cross. That's 5 different types of fleeces that I have (not counting the Romney I have this year, who I hope will be gone later this spring/summer). I don't mind making trades and bartering at all.

Does anyone want to buy a gentle, handsome, Romney ram, named Romney? I can get him registered if you want him to be for an extra $25. I can't afford to have any more mistakes with rams breeding that I don't want to breed.

March 23, I sheared the sheep as well as trimmed hooves, put Scrapies tags in, and gave shots for tetanus and such. It helps keep them healthy and you only give it once a year. Rommie gave me a 12 lb-fleece which is amazing for me to see.


The Icelandics and Finns are medium-sized primitive sheep with short-tails. Romneys are large-sized domesticated sheep with long tails (as are all their progeny). It took from 9:30 AM until 3:30 PM on a Thursday and we just finished when it started to rain. I bagged the fleeces and lightly skirted them (skirting is what you do to get rid of the dags, the manure, second cuts, and other bad parts), then put a card in the bag with the name of the sheep on it. I got 23 fleeces and I still have 5 more to scour from last year. It takes a while to scour fleeces (scouring is washing in spinning-ese) and then card them. You can only put so many net bags of fiber into your washer, so the fiber will get clean.


Instructions on how to scour a fleece: You use Dawn dish detergent (least expensive), baby shampoo (if you buy it in bulk at Costco or Sam's Club, a bit more expensive then Dawn) or any of the commercial fleece soap (tres expensive). You separate the fleece into 1/2 to 1 lb sections and place in a net bag. You put 1/3 cup of Dawn (or whatever soap you're using) into a full tub of HOT water. Swish, then add your bags of fiber. Do not put more in the tub than you can push down into the water (probably about 5-6 lbs worth), but do not agitate or you'll felt the fiber. You wash the fiber until the water is clean when you rinse. In the final rinse, you add 1/2-cup of vinegar to bring the fiber back to neutral pH, and you hang it to dry on a wooden rack, out of the sun, with lots of air circulation. Then you place it in a clear, large plastic bag. A fleece will lose 1/4 to 1/3 of it's weight due to the decrease in lanolin and dirt after washing. After it's dry, you can card the fiber by hand or with a drum carder, or you can send it off to a professional fiber processor (and there are a lot of them out there with varying skills and charges to do what you want to the fiber).

I do ithe whole process myself because I enjoy it, but I have a hard time processing as many fleeces as I've had the last two years. In addition, I pick the fiber of vegetable matter (vm) so I'll have a nicer fiber to spin. The processors charge more if they scour and pick the fleeces for you, so most people scour and pick their fleeces themselves, then ship it off to the processor to spin into batts (wool sheets that you can spin, felt or to put into a quilt), roving (an inch thick, loose rope), pencil roving (a 1/4-inch thick, loose rope), or yarn of varying plies (usually from 2- to 10-ply). It saves you time to go through a processor, but IMHO, you lose the individuality of fleece yarn if you do.

I tend to spin from the lock or run it through my Fricke/Strauch drum carder once or twice (unless I want my yarn to look like it's spun by a processor). That way, I get a self-striping yarn which turns into beautiful socks or sweaters.

My alpacas will need to be sheared in May and I'll be doing that myself. I don't want to pay the going rates for the people who tend to shear then around our area. Can you tell I don't like paying someone else if I shear my animals if I can do it myself? The 'pacas all have nice fleeces (a white Suri and Huacaya, dark brown Huacaya, cinnamon Huacaya, and rose grey Huacaya) this year so I can hardly wait to start. I have two other alpacas I will be shearing for a friend in May or June as well, so this will be a good beginning of my practice before I do hers.

I sheared one alpaca for a friend last year and though the job wasn't perfect, I learned a whole lot about what NOT to do. I'd rather have a shearing table, but I don't have one yet, so I have to use alternative means. It will work just fine once I get the practice in with my five alpacas.

My plan: One alpaca will be sheared every two days, so they'll be finished over 10 days time. I'll be putting come Calm Forte, a natural herbal calmative, in their water so they'll be calm enough not to fight me when I not only shear, worm them and trim their hooves. It will probably take me about 3-6 hours to get it all done per animal at first, and once I get the practice, maybe one every 3-4 hours or less. I'll let you know.

My 16 Americana chickens have been laying between 6-13 eggs since March and in January they were laying between 1-5, so their egg production is on the increase. I'm raising Americana chickens, aka the Easter Egg chickens, so that I'll have naturally colored eggs. I'm blowing them out and I'll be selling the empty eggs at the market also. As you can see, I try to use all of what I grow and raise on my farm to make enough money to feed my animals and get what they need to continue doing this.

I also give tours of the farm to school-aged kids (schools, pre-schools, brownies/girl scouts/boy scouts, etc.) on Saturdays, and read them a sheep, shepherd/dess, alpaca, or sheep dog story. It gives the parents a short time to have to themselves as the kids are tired from the tour, so they need to take a short break so they're not overtired before going home. It helps remind me why I only had a daughter (who's now grown) and a stepdaughter (who's also grown). Other people's children I can enjoy and then they go home--sort of like a token grandparent. I love kids, but not ALL day and ALL night, every single day. I had enough of that with my own children...and they haven't had grandkids yet, so I'll keep in practice for that with other people's kids. *G*

The farmers market in Walla Walla, WA, starts on Saturday, May 6, and will go until Saturday, October 28, so it will be a long season this year. I sell my fiber, yarn and various items I make from wool, alpaca or wood, so I have a wide variety of items to sell there.

I'm making some horn buttons this year which I'll sell for $10-$15 for 4-6 buttons depending on how large the buttons are. I make children's hats and booties for 0-1 yo and some hats for toddlers and school aged children, toys (rabbits and cats are most popular), shawls, scarves, and hats for adults, garden markers, knitting frames and other odds and ends. I'll be selling some plants I grew from cuttings I took from my own house plants and rooted. I put them in cute little containers so they'd be more enticing to buyers.

I'll have some produce (apricots, peaches, nuts, strawberries, etc.) that I grow on my farm and ripens throughout the season. Some I'll dry or freeze for our use here and the rest I'll sell at the market. My garden is going to be bigger this year than last years so I expect to make more from the additional produce.

I'm growing some feed vegetables for my sheep and alpacas (mangels, beets, squash, pumpkins, carrots, etc.) as well as what I'll grow for us to eat. As long as the animals are healthy and happy, that's the main thing.

The plants I ordered from various catalogs are starting to arrive, so I'm excited to start planting them soon. I'm working on getting some hardy Kiwi to grow here. I tried last year, but it didn't work out, so I got new plants this year: 1 male kiwi and 4 females. That's how they come and you need to male to fertilize the females. I'll continue adding to the group as you can fertilize 6 females with 1 male, so next year I'll order another 2 females, then the year after I'll order another set of 1/4 like I did the year before that. It takes 2-3 years for them to start producing. I have 100 everbearing strawberry plants, 4 different types, growing now and hope to have enough strawberries to freeze 25+ lbs for home use, then sell off the rest at the market. I'm so excited...and hope this all works out. I don't think I can sell them as organic, but they are definitely chemical-free as I use beneficial insects rather than chemicals to kill the bugs. Those little parasitic wasps kill maggots and other insects in larval form so they never get to the pest stage.

That's all for now. Hope to hear from you soon.