Ram lamb, Chaleco. Born 4/15/10

Manta’s ram lamb is a killer color/pattern combo: reverse badgerface with a cinnamon fleece. Of all the lambs we have for sale, Chaleco is the one I most hope to sell to a breeding farm.  With Manta and Anisette being half sisters already, and the prospect of keeping Anisette’s brown ewe from this year, Chaleco is just too related to the rest of the flock for us to keep him for breeding.  So we have at least 3 breed-quality ewe lambs and two ram lambs for sale.  Please contact us with any questions or to set up a farm visit.

As the sheep grow and the pasture improves, we’ve continued to grow our little fiber business.  One of the most important aspects of our Navajo-Churro conservation effort, I think, is the outreach that we do at various shows.  This year we expanded from two shows to five: the Vermont History Expo, Art In the Park (benefiting the local Waldorf School) the Tunbridge World’s Fair, the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival, and the Dartmouth College Library Staff Association (DCLSA) Craft Fair.  Each event has a different vibe and a different audience, but it’s always gratifying to chat with people about these amazing animals, their history, their unique character, and their future.  Whether I’m talking to weavers and knitters about the fiber, to parents about agricultural education, or discussing small flock management with a potential shepherd the work is fun and rewarding.

Now it’s time for fall shearing. We shear our flock twice a year due to the outrageous fiber growth of an inch of wool per month.  This gives us cleaner fleeces and the flexibility to either hand process or send the fiber out to be washed, carded, and spun into yarn at a local mill.  We’ll post updated photos of the grown lambs this weekend, as well as a step-by-step guide to shearing day.  We will also have 15 grease fleeces for sale in a wide variety of colors, including 9 very soft lamb fleeces.

Our first lamb - Zinnia's ewe born 3/31/10

After weeks of preparation, and what felt like eons of waiting, our first lamb arrived on March 31, 2010, in the wee small hours of the morning. We knew the lambs could be born anytime after March 25, but weren’t sure exactly when they would show up. Zinnia, one of our four “first-timers” delivered all by herself and her strong, healthy ewe lamb was dry, up and walking when we found them early in the morning. A few days passed, Zinnia and her baby bonded in the jug, and we kept trying to predict when the next ewe would go for it.

Aretha with her twin ewe lambs

Turns out, it was a family affair, with Aretha and Nina (a mother and her daughter from 2008) both delivering early this morning. Aretha gave birth to twin ewe lambs, a yin-yang pair in black and white. Nina had a single ram lamb, our first ram so far.

Mother and daughter are in their jugs with their lambs, bonding and resting after what must have been an exhausting morning. Tomorrow morning we’ll band the tails and put ear tags on these lambs and within another day or so they will rejoin the flock.

Nina with her ram lamb

It’s been interesting to note the color patterns that we’re seeing so far.  Our flock sire this year is predominantly cream with a few spots of light brown.  Three out of four of his offspring have been black with white spots on their heads and white tail tips. The double white spot is a fairly common marking in the Navajo-Churro breed, called “two gray hills”.  The fourth lamb is the opposite, a solid white ewe.  I’m hoping to cultivate some browns in our flock, and it’s possible that some of these black lambs will turn brown eventually, or they could go gray or silver. It is rare that a black lamb will stay solid jet black for more than a year; their fleece tends to bleach to a lighter color in the sun.

Meanwhile, we have three more pregnant ewes still waiting to deliver. I just hope all of their births are as easy as the others have been this year.

It’s been far too long since our last post. In the intervening year we’ve gotten our little farming business off the ground. In the spring we fenced a second pasture to give the sheep more room to graze. We sent our first batch of wool to Green Mountain Spinnery in August, and sold yarn at the Tunbridge World’s Fair and the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival. Our yarn is available for sale via the shop, and in the next few weeks we should also have some washed and carded fleeces available for hand-spinners. If you are interested in grease fleece or roving please contact us for colors and prices.

The big news is that we’ve bred the ewes and are expecting our first crop of lambs in late March. We’ll be posting pictures of all the lambs as they are born, and accepting deposits for breeding stock in April and May. We may also have locker lambs for sale. Please contact us with any questions about our products, sheep for sale, or for more information about raising Navajo-Churros.