Sheep

Yep still here.
Holding down the fort on my own as Allen has been away for most of this month so far with still a week to go. I’m just keeping up with all things sheep and dog related – and a wee bit of wool work too. And cows and horses as well. Just keeping water to the ewes is a regular chore in this dry year.

I moved the ewes to the South pasture which is considerably larger than the lambing pastures they have been in. They are very content there for now. They ewes have pastures they like better than others and the South pasture is one of them. Plenty of variety in tame forage and native, open grazing plus good bush stands that are expansive enough for sheep to settle in on hot days.

This happened as well and it just makes me smile.

This batch of wool was processed at a new mill in the province (we haven’t had a fibre mill in our province for years). I am thrilled to be the first customer to use the services. I am also pleased that this wool batting will now head to a store in Saskatoon, our nearest city. It may seem like small potatoes as it really isn’t that much wool (yet) but it is so satisfying to keep this product within province and to reduce the footsteps of wool traveling around the world as so much of it does when that need not be the case.

I recently attended a fibre fair as a vendor and while a day of talking about did me in, it was a solid day and I made some great connections. I was, however, surprised to discover how much wool is bought from overseas and sold here, completely skipping the connection to the sheep and to the farmer. Fibre is much like food in this regard and we are a nation a people who want what we want, when we want it. It’s my wish to turn the tide on this a little bit. We have good wool in this province, including coarse wools, mediums wools and yep, the long wools and the fine wools too. We have Corriedale, Targhee, Romney, Leicester, and Rambouillet is just next door in Manitoba. What we don’t have is the producer connected to the fibre enthusiast who seeks it.

The other surprise discovery was the number of people who popped by my booth and said how much they enjoy the photography on Instagram or Facebook. Wool Stone Prairie isn’t even a blip in the social media scale of popularity but no matter, there are plenty of you out there who are tagging along and that makes my heart swell. I’ll keep taking and sharing photos of this sheepish life.

… and p.s. if you aren’t getting enough photos in these sporadic posts, do check out Instagram or Facebook as I seem to be able to manage posting photos there on a more regular basis.

Stopping in with a few photos to share.

There are the usual number of losses and causes of them this lambing but the sheep are so unsettled. They move almost continually and I’m thinking this is due to the lack of quality grass. There is green stuff at their feet but the dry dusty conditions have us all looking at the other side of the fence and believing it is better over there when it isn’t. This movement of the ewes means new lambs are on the move too when they should be resting and taking in milk.

I’m allowing the ewes to graze each paddock much harder than I normally would just on account of nothing in front of us to go to. If the grass bounces back from this it will be a true forgiveness by nature. There is nothing like drought conditions to make one realize how little you know about managing grazing or how little forethought you put into it during all those wet years.

We were blessed with one day of drizzle last week and that day and the next was the calmest time on the pasture. The sheep were quiet, they got up, they ate, they laid back down. They took in moisture with the grass they ate and that seemed to make all the difference in the world to them. Normally the prairies are cool enough over night that we get morning dews in the Spring season and I always have wet shoes when walking the dogs in the morning. There is no morning dews this year, just wind and dust. The grasses are crunchy already and we are approaching some record setting high temperatures this week.

We tend to think animals readily adjust and I guess they do; I guess we all do, but we don’t sit still while we do it. The sheep are indicating the adjustment they are having to make, they are not pleased with it. Nor am I. I too am fussing from one project to the next with a real lack of focus. Just feeling that urgency of literally ‘moving’ our way through this. One of Allen’s favourite mantra’s is ‘it is what it is.’ I catch myself repeating that phrase while I check lambs and I stop the movement of my Self for a moment. Recenter, we will adjust because sometimes there is no alternative.