The lambs are gone, the girls have arrived

The last of our lambs went to market last weekend, which marks the end of our 6-month experiment with raising meat lambs.

But not the end of raising sheep.  I absolutely loved raising sheep.  Despite months and months of foot-rot problems.  Despite weed-wacking a new paddock fence line every other day. Despite temps hovering in the 90's for weeks on end while we hand-carried hundreds of pounds of water by buckets every day.

It's not really a question of "if" we'll have more sheep.  It's basically a question of "when."

I visited a vegetable farmer last week with a handful of bred Katadin ewes for sale.  I was tempted to toss them all in the back of my 'burb, except for the fact that we don't have any interior paddocks set up at The Little Farm that are sheep-proof, and these Katadins were a bit wild.

Wild as in, when the farmer when to snag one of the ewes to take a look at her foot, she jumped past me over my shoulder!

And he mentioned they have a way of jumping over his electric net fences if they get spooked.

Great. 

Because that's all we have for interior fencing right now, electric net fences.

So I think I'll have to wait on adding any Katadins to my permanent flock.

But that won't stop me from investigating all the other cool breeds I'm interested in. Like Icelandic.  And Shetland.  And Soay.  And Karakul.  And Old Norwegian Sheep.  Although they've not yet been imported into the US.

Yet.

But back to my girls.

After dropping the lambs off at the processor, we swung by The Big Farm and picked up our girls.

Yeehaw!

This is the first time since I've owned Brigid (almost 5 years now) that she has lived on my property with me. 

And her beautiful daughter Grace is here, too.  Both of them are bred to a handsome true-black herdsire named Midnight Man from our friends at The Big Farm.

The boys got loose on Saturday and managed to find their way over to the girls' paddock.  But we were onto them and caught them at the fence line, before they could attempt any Hanky-Panky.

(And besides that, Boo was just gelded on Friday, so his Panky days are numbered).

It's good to have all my critters home.

Finally.

I should rest a bit before adding any more to our menagerie, shouldn't I?

Right.

Cheers -