fairwether farm
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The reason we decided to buy sheep was for me to be able to see and do the whole process from sheep to garment.
I have finally managed to do that process and am very pleased with the results; well satisfied that I know and understand the process, pleased… well that is an ongoing feeling but I am getting there. (Is anybody every truely pleased with finishing something? I know I want to improve my finished product, but still am proud to have achieved the process from beginning to end.
Let me explain:
I started knitting many years ago… as a kid actually… and, of course, bought my yarn. When we lived in Diamond Harbour – (Christchurch, NZ – in the harbour basin) we had sheep living next door and I took up spinning with a drop spindle.
Hi everyone… if you have found some photos missing recently it is because I am having to reconstruct this website. I have no more gigs to put up photos and since this blog is built on photos as well as stories I am contemplating my next step…
Bare with me while I undergo some thinking processes to see what the best solution is…
thank you for reading my blog and hopefully we will be back chatting again soon.
I have been reminded that I did a project on spinning and knitting up an alpaca fleece and I said that I would post the results of this exercise as it was the first time I’d spun this type of fleece.
The fleece was a joy to spin; flowed freely through my fingers and it was soft and easy to get a nice even size.
Unfortunately I was too eager to knit up the fleece before I found out how much I had in that colour and so I didn’t have enough to complete a jacket (started here).
So I unpicked the entire back, two fronts and one and half sleeves.
After smoothing out the yarn I reknitted it into a hat and booties. These turned out well although the hat took some changes to the pattern as the hat was too wide across the brim and was not going to sit on the head of the baby but fall off, so I knitted a further six rows at the base of the hat instead to increase the size of the hat.
I think if I was to knit this again I’d use a rib on the brim to keep in tighter. Not really sure this pattern is the best for baby heads, but since this was my first project in alpaca I will be interested to see how it wears (when the baby arrives – November soon).
Good knitting folks and I will chat about my beautiful Gotland fleece shortly. Bye for now.
We are now officially in spring-summer mode as we go into our long weekend from work… “hahaha” I say, “a farmer’s work is never done!” but I decided since it was a beautiful day today, I would take Leigh out for a joy ride in the merc… since she has had her roof fixed and we can now put the top down.
It was a lovely drive down to a country diner to have lunch – pizza and drink – then on to the beach on the east coast in Amberley (about 1hour away). Home via the east coast and back (in a big circle) to our home at the foot of the mountains, (took us about 4 hours round trip).
On another note… Ema – our lamb is now 1 month and 1 week and few days old, she is now in the paddock 24/7 and sleeps with the other lambs/mamas and wethers. She still has her milk from a bottle 4 times a day, with the last feed at night 10pm/11pm given by Leigh.
She is still feisty and will get out of the paddock any chance she can, and so we have spent quite a bit of time putting up netting around the house fence to keep her in. It’s only a matter of time until she gets too big to fit through the fence wire, but in the mean time she is constantly trying to get out if she hears our voices.
Nico is a little sad today… his bested friend Louie is no longer around… Nico has been looking for him all day, and he has been meowing at us when he comes inside. Unfortunately our neighbour rang to say that Louie had been run over on the road outside their house in the late evening, so now we have a sad memory of Louie.
Bye from us all at Fairwether farm …
Mama Clare says ‘happy birthday Nico’, cause today I’z one year old. I’z got a present from Mama and Leigh… I’z BIG now.. grown up… but I’z still like toys.
I’m off to find Louie and tell him I’z one…
Bye..
Why is it so hard to ‘do the right thing’? I am having no end of ‘mind trouble’ with getting Ema to stay out in the paddock by herself. Let me explain … (might help me too)
Ema doesn’t have any other sheep that she is bonded to (yet), and so I am surrogate mama, that I understand, and as a mama must let the Ema be a sheep, but, and this is my issue, I see that because she hasn’t bonded with any other sheep, she is alone in the paddock a lot of the time. Yes she feeds with them, plays with the other lambs (sometimes) but when it comes to just sitting around and chewing the cud (which is up to 50% of the time) she has no-one to sit with. The other lambs sit with their mamas, or with other lambs (ie their twin).
So this is my dilemma, do I let Ema ‘fend’ for herself and in time hopefully will bond with the others (if I am not in the paddock) or sit with her sometimes when the flock are at their rest? The problem with the second option is that she is staying by me, and not going off with the other sheep even if I walk around with them … she doesn’t seem to want to investigate by herself. At this point Ema is only just on 4 weeks old; the oldest lambs are now nearly 8 weeks old and are starting to be weaned (by mama sheep) and are also going off by themselves so I guess I have answered my question, that she is still young and needs time.
I know, “Ema is only a sheep” (you say) but at this point I have invested a lot of time and effort into keeping her well, now I would like her to find her place in the flock, but how to do that and not be a ‘helicopter parent’ is my problem. I do leave her by herself for up to 3-4 hours but there comes a point in the day when she continues to baa because she’s looking for company. So I go and sit with her, she climbs into my lap and has cuddles, and then when I walk away she continues to follow me. Leigh on the other hand, seems to not have the same problem, she comes and goes where and when she likes with him. I will probably have to ask Leigh to do more paddock time with Ema to ‘wean’ her off my dependence.
Well that makes sense to me, but doing it is not as easy, but this makes me feel a little better having written it down. I hope you understand the nature of this ‘story’ and I’m sure you will understand: 1) if you have ever had baby pets, 2) if you have hand reared any animals and 3) it’s a bit like having kids just before they leave home…
Good chatting to you all again… see you all soon.
Mama Clare says “Nico tiz time you told the people about you and the new lamb, Ema”. I’z say “Ema is sheep I is cat … yum yum lamb cutlets”… Mama says “no we don’t eat our friends” I’z say “yes I do”.
Well it started when I’z help Mama Clare look after Ema; she waz sick so I stay with her. I sleep in her hay and keep her company … she was little. She drink from a bottle not from a mama sheep. Ema have no mama …cept Clare.
Tiz been more days and Ema feed from bottle and I’z see her when she go into the field with the other sheep … at feeding time.
Now she is 2 weeks old and I can play with her; she runs around and I’z chase her … then she chase me … tiz a good game we play … but she eats grass – yuck – I’z only eat grass for medicine…
Ema is fun now … not little and staying with Mama Clare all the time. Soon she will stay in the field with the sheep but not yet, says Mama.
I’z going now…
I am not saying here that this is the correct or right way to bring up a lamb in a house but it is what we are doing in our situation.
The reason I have decided to write about our highs and lows is because there are lots of pitfalls and advice, but I found a lot of it to be ‘not quite enough’ or ‘that’s not our situation’. I guess what I’m saying is, common sense and the gut feeling is what is working for us along side advice from friends and vets who have been through this.
As you all know, it started with me finding a ewe lamb sitting beside our wether ‘Sugar’ who passed away during the storm of Tuesday last week. How the lamb got to be there is a guess on my part; either her mother rejected her at the outset (which I sort of disregard because the lamb was dry from afterbirth) or (more likely) that the mother ran off to the barn at the start of the storm – with one lamb but not realising she had two. The storm was very fast, wet, cold and sudden and was over in an hour.
When I found the lamb, I immediately tried to return it to its mum, but as I now realise, the lamb (Ema) would have had; 1) my scent – from picking her up and 2) probably Sugar’s scent from Ema lying next to him for about an hour. So it is not surprising that Ema was rejected. I did try to wrap Ema in the wool from mum (Nickel) but I think it was too late and after the fact.
Anyway from that time on I realised that Ema was going to be a house-raised lamb. From the first initial bottle of colostrum both Leigh and I realised that we were now in for the long haul. Bottles to be washed, sterilised and feeds to be done at regular intervals through out the next XXX days until she is weaned.
You will also have read about Ema’s pneumonia (here), but what I have since learnt is that this could have been caused in several ways. 1) from the storm, 2) from her lying next to “Sugar” who died of pneumonia, or 3) from drinking from the bottle too fast and milk getting into her lungs (a very common result for bottle fed lambs). Since the latter was something that I took on very seriously, we changed the way we feed Ema; we use a teat with a very small hole, give her lots of breaks in her drinking (to simulate mama) and to hold the bottle so that Ema has to kneel to drink (her back is arched). Ema has recovered from the pneumonia and the cough that she had so we hope we are on the right track with her feeding process.
I also wanted to replicate Ema’s natural environment as much as possible, so on the first day we set up our house garage with a surround of hay and peastraw and hay on the ground to soak up ‘stuff’ (I didn’t want to use ‘nappies’) and a bean chair for ‘human’ to sit in with Ema. That worked well as Ema didn’t move much from the human’s side (Leigh or me). After that it was necessary to think long term as to how we would keep her in the garage and confined so we brought in the hurdles (movable and stable fencing) and put them up in the garage to make a pen. This is still working, and we are now finding that Ema has associated the ‘pen’ to her home. She is quite happy to stay in the pen even if we are not there with her; she settles down without the baa-ing if she is fed and tired.
The other part that we/I am doing (because Ema has imprinted that I am Mama) is to take her out to the paddock when I feed the flock sheep nuts in the morning and in the evening. I have also just sat in the paddock with Ema and read my book or taken photos. Ema has started to venture over to the flock and interact with the lambs and the mothers. Of course the mamas push her aside but she is a courageous little girl and will go back time and again to ‘talk’ with the other sheep.
I am very impressed with her independence in that she goes off by herself to explore the paddock, mingle with the other lambs and generally play. I haven’t left her by herself yet because I am worried about the ‘head-butting’ of the mamas. Ema is prepared to stand her ground though and it wont be long before she is big enough to fend off the butting.
The feeds are now down to four per day and she is taking approximately 300 ml of milk at a time.
This is our routine for now; it won’t be long before this is all over and I/we will look back on this as a part of our farm life. Even if things still go wrong I know that I have given Ema the best chance and now it is up to ‘nature’.
Nice chatting with you even if it is one sided.
Hope you enjoy the blogs… see you all again soon. Maybe Nico will put his stamp on this ‘lambing’ business.
If I said that last week was a joy and pain, you will understand what I mean if you have been following my stories. Today I’d like to tell you a little of my personal journey thus far …
I care very deeply about my family, friends, animals in my family and, in fact, most living things. I also have this ability to ‘deal with a crisis’ at the time, but heaven help me if I don’t stop and take stock a few days later because sooner or later I’ll reach the point that I have a ‘crash’.
Well that crash happened last night. I’d been on an adrenalin high for about a week (brought on by the lamb Ema, Sugar dying, and then yesterday thinking one of the mums had an infection in her udder). Just as well I have a great husband in Leigh who talked me through it and I am now back to my normal self. This type of thing has only happened a few times in my life but one I have found does make me stronger (when I come out the other end).
I’m telling you my story simply because living on our farm and raising our flock isn’t all ‘wonderful and beautiful’. Having the responsibility to ensure that we take the ‘best’ possible care of our animals, young and old, sick and well, does also take a toll on our mental wellbeing sometimes.
I’d like to think I’m a pragmatist and I do understand about life and death on a farm, but sometimes I tend to make it too personal for me … but that’s my love of life in all things.
It is 6.20am on a beautiful Sunday morning, Ema has had her first big feed (250mls) of milk and is now going onto four feeds a day instead of the 4 hourly feeds, so she has feeds at 6am, 12pm, 6pm and 12am. She has had her injection of antibiotics and pain relief (I gave last night) and is bouncing around like a ‘jack in the box’.
I will now start sitting with her (during the fine days) in the paddock where she can mingle with the other lambs so that she is known and accepted by the flock. She will still stay in her pen in the garage at night for a long while yet, probably until she’s weaned.
Oh, by the way, the picture on the home page is of Nickel. If you are wondering why I’ve changed the picture on the home page, please go to the ‘memorial’ page here.
Nice to chat again … see you all soon.
silva kurls 