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

Getting to be big boys and girls

On Sunday we weighted all the lambs and gave them all some medicine for intestinal worms and I thought you would like to see how big the lambs are getting. The one with his head in the bowl is one of the bigger ones and is around 100lbs and the one walking away is little brown nose, he is one of the triplets that we bottle feed because his mum had mastius and could not feed them herself.
 He is the smallest of the triplets at 54lbs.

 His is the hay scrummage, there is plenty to go round but like all sheep the lambs want to eat what his neighbor is eating.

This is the cool place to hang out, the shade of the trees even and 8am is the best place to be.

 

 Taking a walk though the field we seeded this spring and the out look is optimistic IF we can keep getting some rain.
Part of the field looks like this, which is not good but it is still hanging in and with a bit more rain it my produce some hay and or grazing.

 This part of the field looks a lot better, still not ready for hay or sheep but is a lot healthier and it is helping us keep our spirits up even though we know we are going to have to buy quite a bit of expensive hay from somewhere.

The chicks that where born on the 4th July are on their first excursion in the big chicken run. We lost 3 of the chick to a predator when they where only 2 days old, but now at nearly 3wks we decided to put them in with the old chickens that like to stay in the winter quarters.
We put them in early Sunday morning so they would be use to the run before night time, at 8pm we went to catch them and fasten them in the chicken house for the night and we found our old cockerel with a very bloody face.

We think he has been defending his girls and babies, part of his comb on his head is missing and his eye is partly closed. We gave him a close inspection and while he looks quite battered all of his injuries look to be superficial and best of all  know one else was hurt so he did a good job. Dave is now patroling the chicken run at dusk and dawn to see if he can find the critter that is harming our chucks.

North fence line

Untitled, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

This pic shows the north fence line from west to east , it looks along way to the east fence line.

Fencing 18 acre field

Untitled, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

Our fencing is under way this is a picture of the north west corner we have nearly all the wooden fence posts in and all the green T posts are in on the east and north side. We are now ready to put on the wire on the North side.

babies again

Untitled, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

How about this little ones, they hatched yesterday 4th July on one of the hottest days of the year. Mum had 8 eggs and as you can see she has got 6 babies, so she has done very well.

Untitled

Untitled, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

Busy Times

Sorry its been so long, I need to get in to the habit of blogging and with all that is going on here on the farm at the moment it is very hard, there is always another job waiting to be done.

We sheared the sheep in early May so it has been a round of endless shirting(cleaning) the fleeces and then washing and I am still washing and will be washing till the fall I expect, as I hand wash every fleece. This practice may have to stop as it is time consuming and it is not good for my hands been in water for so long.

The 18 acre field that we seeded grass this spring is growing, but very slowly as we are suffering from a lack of rain, we where hoping to get a hay cutting off it and then graze part of it but at the moment the only animals on grass are our weaned lambs. All the ewes are on hay and are sheltering from the heat in the tree line, which is good as they are keeping all the weeds down in the trees.

Finally today I would like to tell you about the wonderful day we had last Sunday 24th June, at the Schultz's farm we were asked if we would attend their farm day that they put on for the international student services They asked us to bring our stall that we set up at the farmers market and some of our sheep, so we took Lambie our Tunis ewe and her two lambs and two weaned Romney Lambs. We had a great time talking to the students and professors from other countries and seeing other displays and and talks that they put on from a bee farmer to a cheese making demonstration, quilting displays and lessons to spinning and fiber prep and finally square dancing. The students had a good time and so did we even our sheep looked like they enjoyed the attention most of the time.

Last Lamb of the season

Lots of thing going on around here but I think the main thing for both me and David is that I think this little guy is the last lamb of the spring season, I say think as the very last possible date from the Rams being taken away form the girls is actually  May 4th. We have some girls that have not lambed this year. Most of them are the ewe lambs and they will be kept till next breeding season and if they don't lamb they will be culled from the flock. The arrival of this little guy means that we are able to sleep through the night with no 2am trips to the barn.

 

This is proud mum Frostie and the little guy.

We now have the hens in the field with their mobile hen house, they have settled down to the new location and get on with the sheep well, the first couple of night when we went to check on everyone we found some of the hens had roosted on the backs of some of the sheep. The sheep didn't look bothered by it and the hens would be nice and warm, unfortunately neither of us had our phones with us so we didn't get any pics, we scooped them up and put them back in their hen houses and now they all find there way back at night.

 My last pic is of may SAD Sam , yesterday was annual injection day at the vets and Sam had a wart on his leg and he kept chewing it so I asked the vet to take a look and he sad he could take it of with a local injection so Sam has no wart but stitches and he is not going to chew them.

Spring time

The lovely spring weather is here and the daffodils are flowering, I have a lot of lovely lambs that are running and skipping down the field.

On the nice afternoons I let the ewes out onto some pasture and it is great to see the lambs running and playing. We have about 10 more left to lamb, they are mostly last years ewe lambs so a have to watch them closely as they are unsure of what is happening to them, so cope really well and other need a little coxing to let there lamb nurse.


 

We have had a local farmer come and work on the 18 acre field, he has got it ready for sewing the grass seed, but we have had some rain and it is too wet for David to seed it. We have managed to re seed the top pasture and we can see the seeds starting to grow.

We are looking forward to seeing a green field.




















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lambing time

Its lambing time and we have got about half of the adult ewes lambed, we have had a few early mornings like this morning 4am, but we are doing quite well. We have one set of triplets 8 twins and 5 singles, we have lost 2 lambs one had a navel hernia and the other was born dead, so we feel that we are doing well. At the moment we have a problem one of the yearling ewe has a vaginal prolapes we have put the prolapes back in side her and put a prolapes harness on and given her an injection to endues her in to labor, this could take anything up to 48 hours so we are spending quite a lot of time with her, making her as comfortable as possible and watching for any signs of distress. So keep your fingers crossed for her and enjoy a couple of the photos I have posted, I will put up more when time allows

Wternaby

Wternaby, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

This is one of last years ewe lambs and she decided to come and play in the water will I filled their water trough, she nearly got all of her head wet by putting it under the stream of water and it was a cold frosty morning.

Trott2

Trott2, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

This is Trotter with her little girl, she is a real good mother and her baby is never far away from her, she's also a cutie.

Kingcastle

Kingcastle, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

Little lamb playing on mums back
This is Teddy and she had twins on the 5th of March, as you can see her little girl is full of mischief, her baby brother is not very well, he was the weaker of the two twins and mums milk did not flow very well at the beginning so the little guy has had a rocky start but is getting stronger by the day.

Pancake2

Pancake2, a photo by Shepherd_Carole on Flickr.

Our first lamb of 2012, she is a little Tunis ewe lamb and we have called her pancake as in England yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, better known as pancake day. They are not like the American pancakes they are crepes. Rust (mum) had to have a helping hand,but mother and baby are both doing well.

Morning exercise and a little helper

I don't know about you but I am one of those people who like to ease in to the morning, unlike this morning. Just after 6am, I was laid thinking about the day ahead and some of the jobs that need doing and what I may just enjoy doing today when I heard a noise and so did Giz (the dog) who started barking. Telling him to shut up and listen and the door bell rang which set him off again and I jumped out of bed to answer the door.
David our neighbor from across the road had come to tell us that we had sheep out on the road, I shouted at Dave and thanked our neighbor and we both scrabbled into our clothes. Dave shot down to the barn for a bucket of food (bribery works very well on our sheep) I shot off down our drive, as I neared the end I heard a vehicle coming up the hill and I waved my hands franticly still not know exactly where and how many sheep where out. He came to a slow halt and as I ran to his window he looked at me and said " got critters out" yes I replied and ran off  as I spotted a movement further down the road next to our fence in the beam of his lights.

It was the Rams that had got out and I started calling Silver as I knew he would come to his name, they where a little scared and confused but started to slowly come to me, Then Dave arrived with the bucket and they turn and started moving away, scared by his movement. Slowly I said to Dave they are confused and scared. He then climbed over our fence so he could get round them while I shouted and rattled the bucket of corn, they started towards me and we headed back to the paddock, waving my thanks to the driver of the vehicle as we came near. Then made our way down the drive getting the escapes back to where they belong shutting the gate firmly behind them.

They obviously had liked there trip out as later in the morning the dogs started barking and I looked out to see 5 of them sniffing round the front of the house, What, How did they get out again! I grabbed my coat, boots and an empty bucket that I use for gardening and shot out, they trotted up to see what I had for them in the bucket and we walked back to the paddock, where we found little Ben bleating his head of as he had been left behind and sheep don't like being on there own. Once again back in the paddock I checked the gate lock, but found it secure when closed, I went and got some bail twine and fastened the gate. then went back to the house to get a padlock (get out now).

Little Helper
Dave was skeining up some yarn last night and he had a little helper.

DYEING TIME

We have been busy skeining up the new yarn and I have been itching to see how it would dye, so Sunday I gathered up 10 skeins of wool and went to work.
The first thing is to wash the skeins, as they have the milling oils on them and the dye will not be successful if the oil is left in.

 After the washing I put two skeins to dry in the natural color.

 I went to work with the dye, I use Cushing Acid dyes.
 With the weight of the skeins recorded in my dying diary, I decided to use the full amount of dye and on this batch of blue I got my calculations a little wrong and put extra dye in.
It is not the look I wanted, but I love the color and I don't think it would have come out as nice on pure white wool.

 Now the green, the brain is still not in gear and I use the same amount of dye as before only this green is very pale so it has not over powered the color of the yarn as much as the blue and  I can see some of the heather look that I was after.







Now I realize what I have been doing and drop the amount of dye to the right amount for the weight of wool the Rose color has come out very well and it is showing some of the heather color I want to see, but it still isn't quite what I was looking for.

Last batch and I decided to use the amount of dye that I would use on the plain white sports 2ply Romney and this is the look I was after you can still see the color of the original wool coming through the dye making that lovely heather color.
I can see that I have a little more experimenting to do but I think I am nearly there.
I now hope everyone will like it, these first skiens will be going up on the website soon.

New Yarn

I am so excited, I have got my first batch of colored Romney yarn yesterday. I only have a few colored romneys and I have had to save the wool from a couple of shearing's. I sent the wash wool to the mill in July, I was hoping to have it back in November, but the mill had a few problems. I have done my first skeins, I am very pleased with it, now I want to dye some of it and see how it knits.
Keep you posted as I do the dying and knitting and when it will be available on the website.

Busy weekend

We have had a very busy weekend, the Wisconsin weather has co operated and we have managed to get half way down the fence line cleared, 400ft. I am so pleased, but I think we will both need the rest of the week for our aching bodies to recover.

Window of opportunity

Hi and happy new year, sorry it has been a while since I blogged but his is the quite time for the ewes they are all hopefully pregnant and I have only had one health issue and that was with Spot one of the Rambouillet's last Saturday as I was filling the water butts I noticed that she had a mark on her butt that I had not seen before and the weekend before we had trimmed them out ready for lambing ( that means trimming away all the long wool from around there butts and back legs). I got Dave to help me catch her ( not hard she is one of the more friendliest ewes) and I found she had a large abscess, we cleaned it up gave her an antibiotic shot and I am pleased to report that she is doing well.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
Today with the nice weather in Wisconsin (NO SNOW) Dave took the day of work so we could do some work on our 18 acre field, we need to clean out our fence lines so we can put in new fencing for the sheep. We don't want to take away all the tree's etc as this will take away the shade the ewes need in the summer but we do have to make a path through for the fence and take away any unwanted under growth like briers and low limbs on trees.

The first two pics are before we started and the one above is as we finished, you can see Dave at the end where the fence line will go. We didn't get as far as we wanted as we had a problem with the chain saw, Dave swooped the gas for the oil and the oil for the gas and chain saws don't run well on oil. Ha! well the day ended well the chain saw is up and running and tomorrow is another good day in Wisconsin.