New Arrivals

 As I opened the barn door on Sunday morning around 3am the sound of little lambs crying made me smile.
Yes the first of the girls (BT) had given birth to twins, a ram and a ewe.
This is proud BT eating hay and watching her twins.

 
 This is Millie and she gave birth this morning around 4am again twins and again a ram and a ewe.

 Millies ram lamb.

BT's twins

Learning something new

 Three weeks ago I went on a weaving class with a friend and while it is not exactly something new for me, I certainly need the refresher class.
I already have a floor loom that was not getting used as I was not sure how to warp ( thread) up the loom and when my friend said she would be interested in going on a begining weaving class I decided that it was a great idea to get me going.

While at the class I decided that a small 16" table top loom would be a great idea as I could use it anywhere at home at the farmer market, outside

nice days etc and to experiment with smaller pieces on mew techniques. The class was great we went to the Woolgatherers in Fond du Lac and had a great day with them.

The top pic shows my table top loop, it is now warped with my Romney wool and I am weaving with a mixture of Romney and hand spun Romney and Rambouillet.

Next is my floor loom, yes I have progress to getting this one warped and I am weaving
cotton kitchen towels. Strange you may think

weaving cotton when I have all this wool, but I  sure that I would make some mistakes when I warped the loom for the first time and I can live with mistakes in kitchen towels but not in fabric that I may wear.

This pic is of my first piece of my table top loom, this scarf is warped in hand spun shetland with a weave of mohair ( which is some comercial spun that I had in my knitting stash).

The hardest part in weaving is the time it takes to warp the looms, the weaving go's fast.







This last pic is of another scarf woven from Romney wool that I dyed, bright and cheerful to take away the winter blues.

I am sure I will be taking a few more classes at The Woolgathers as I would like to learn different techniques and what could be better to do on a snowy day, while waiting for the girls start lambing.

Getting Ready for lambing

The time for lambing is getting closer, we should start around the second week in February so we are starting to get the girls ready. They are getting their hooves trimmed and a hair cut, as you can see BT is showing her new do.
This is called crotching out and usually the whole of the rear is sheared ,  even over the tail, but for these girls I do as little as we can get away with as it is a little cold at the moment and I wouldn't want to walk around without a coat.

 We crotch out for two reasons the first is so we can easily see what is going on and if any complications occur we are not fighting around  the wool,
The second is once the lambs are born they can find mama's teats easily and we can see that they are nursing properly.
Tinkerbell is a little shy about showing her do.




 

Dave has also been constructing a temporary chicken run inside our big chicken run so that the young hens can go out.  I have been opening the little door in the back of the coop since Monday but not one of them is brave enough to go out yet.




You can see how big they are now and it is so nice to see the different breeds and how their feather markings are changing
The pure whites are white rocks
The brown's are red stars
The dark with grey necks are wyandots
and the all black are Austrolops.

YORKSHIRE ROSE FARM: winter is here

YORKSHIRE ROSE FARM: winter is here: These  two Pic's I couldn't resist taking yesterday morning it was so lovely with the haw frost on everything.     These nex...

winter is here

These  two Pic's I couldn't resist taking yesterday morning it was so lovely with the haw frost on everything.

 

 

These next three pic's show you one of the project we managed to get done this year, we have had a water line put in from the house to the barn, so there is no hauling water down the the barn this winter. It is so nice we have two all year round drinkers in the three paddocks, one of the drinkers is a double and we have put it through the fence so it will serve two groups. We also had two stand pipes put in, one in the barn and one in the paddock, I am so delighted every time I go to put water in the barn drinkers, it is so easy to hook up the hose pipe and fill them.

The pipe line itself took some digging as the house is on a rocky hill and so what should have been a couple of day job ended up being a 4 day job and a little costly too, but well worth every penny. 

 

Top paddock single drinker

 

Stand pipe in barn

 

Double drinker in to bottom paddock and ram paddock

 

This is Harry 2 year old ram at the back and our wethers

 

 

This is our girls eating breakfast alfreco, we give them hay inside too but until we have little ones they get fed outside too. 

 

I hope you all have a Happy new year

 This has been a very busy week, Dave has taken the week off work and we have been very busy getting jobs done around the farm before the snow comes. We have been very lucky with the weather and I have decided to do a large batch of dyeing as the weather is so good and I will hopefully get it dry without putting it in to the basement(fernace room)
It was a very foggy morning and it was 10.30 before the sun started breaking through.

But here at last the world is bright with color cooling pots of color on the deck.

 and a washing line full of colorfull roving

 Even inside I have my banister rail is full of color, then its a couple of nights make up the 21 color roving bags that you all like so much.

The chicks are growing fast and will be a month old they have lost that cute puff ball look and are going through the ugly duckling stage with their first set of feather growing well.
I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy Black Friday shopping and don't forget to come and see us on Small Business Saturday.

October and the new arrivals

Sorry I have not kept you up to date with what is going on here at Yorkshire Rose Farm, over the next few month I hope to show you what we have been too busy to get down in our blog.

The most resent things that have happened is the arrival of our 40 day old chick, I got a phone call at 6:10 am we got a call from the local post office sorting office that our chicks had arrived and needed collecting. We had been emailed from the hatchery the day before to say that our chicks where on their way so we had put our heat lamps on, so that the had a warm home when they arrived.

There is a mixed bunch but all are female, 25 red stars which we got last year and have done very well for us, 5 black Australorps, 5 silver laced wyandotte's 5 White rocks.
Sorry the pic is a little distorted by the red heat lamps, they are all doing well and we have 3 extra, one I think is a red star the other two are a free gift from the hatchery , they are rate Extic chicks. We got two last year and seagull and road runner have made us smile through out the year, seagull has given me small white egg that I have made our own as all the rest of the hens lay brown, she is now in full molt and very happy as she is quite a good looking girl. Road runner I am not sure how many she layed, I would get a smallish brown egg now and again, she seems happy but neither are very friendly and flee when you we get close.

The big girls (sheep) are all well, we have got through the drought and all have them have been in their breeding groups so fingers crossed they are all pregnant, I took a couple of photos and the 29th as it was the first time that all the females have been together since the the spring, The ewe lambs where split off for weening and then they where split into breeding groups.

I think they all look good the lovely frost morning.

I will tell you about other things we have been doing in the come weeks and getting more pic's