Sheep on the Move.....Again

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Fleece Sale last Saturday. It poured down rain in buckets which was sorely needed. I hope the fleeces are working out for everyone and they have started washing them and spinning.

Early this week, the sheep grazed our neighbor's old orchard directly across from our farmhouse. This orchard is no longer tended and it is growing up into a mass of wild roses amongst the old trees. The sheep stayed there for 3 days and ate everything they could reach, including the leaves from the roses. How do they do that? Eat the leaves without getting rose thorns in their mouths? Amazing.



Here are a few of the sheep with their coats off. They look like goats when they are without their coats, don't they? I think the lamb on the left with her fleece still on is Olympia although we are not really sure. I suspect because of the shape of her nose. Olympia has become part of the flock and no longer craves any human attention. We don't shear most of our lambs. We run out of shearing time and they do fine because their fleeces are not very long.



The grazing on that orchards was done and on Tuesday morning, our friends Matt and Alice came over to help us move the sheep up the road for more grazing. Matt is twelve and loves to help out with our farming chores. It helps to have extra hands so the mass of animals doesn't go too far astray.



This bale of hay proved very tempting.


It took about a half hour to move them to their new space. We'll be able to leave them there and rotate the pasture every day with the electronet fence for the rest of the summer. They'll leave their droppings and the land will become more fertile. It is an amazing and wonderful cycle of nature.


I'm reading Anthony Bourdain's new book Medium Raw which I borrowed from the library. I loved reading Kitchen Confidential years ago and I am loving this one too. I enjoy how he tells it like it is, not sugar coating anything. You might like it too if you are interested in food and the restaurant biz.

p.s. Hope to see some of you tomorrow at Colorful Stitches in Lenox, MA for the class I am teaching!