Category: New Zealand

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Fleece for sale…

Hi everyone, well now that shearing is finished and I have tidied and cleaned up the wool it is now ready for sale.

If anyone would like to visit us in Springfield, Canterbury to talk fleece either in the raw or carded, please contact me and we will arrange a viewing or send samples to you.

The price of the fleece depends on the quantity and whether you want the fleece in the raw (as is) or whether you want it ready for spinning (washed, carded, gilled) in which case the price will vary. You will also be given information on the individual animal as part of my ‘Living flock’ process.

At this point I do not have enough spun wool to offer for sale unfortunately.

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Nico and the lambs…

Well I know… all new ‘parents’ think their kids are the greatest… and shepherds’ are no exception, they think their ‘lambs’ are the best and cutest…but just look at this… I just think that the combination of the ‘shepherd’s cat, Nico and the lambs is just too cute not to take photos of… and that Mama Lumpy #2 is the best mum for allowing Nico to ‘talk to her babies.

 

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New lambs 2020 … #2 Lumpy first to have twins

We are really excited to see that we now have three generations of Gotland Pelt sheep on our farm. Lumpy birthed twins today at 12.15 pm. At this point I don’t know if they are girls or boys but they are both doing well and mamma let me get up close at 4.00 pm feeding time with nuts.So Lumpy #2 is the daughter of Pepper, one of the foundation ewes.

These lambs were breed from a fellow Gotland Pelt breeder here in Canterbury, and the ram was an excellent silver so we have hopes of some good fleece from the lambs.

We will let them bond with the flock and look at them again tomorrow. All looks positive at this point.

The other 6 girls are waiting for their babies now…

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Processing the fleece from the flock… and expectant mums

The shearing is finished and so I spent the next four days looking over the ten fleece to get rid of vegetable matter and short locks… and of course clean up any ‘dirty’ wool.

Luckily I recently purchased a sorting table which was very useful in laying out the fleece and then sorting for matter. I am not a professional sorter by any means, but it is cleaner and tidier than doing nothing.

The fleeces are dated and individually named from each sheep so we can identify each fleece.

The fleece below is the first that I wanted to trial for spinning in the raw (unwashed). The sheep this is from is Number 3, Bob. You may know him because I have talked about him a lot; he is the throw-back to the Gute. He is much taller than the other sheep, has always had a lighter fleece than any of the others, and did have a shadow of horns for a while.

His fleece is lighter this year than last year, see below for 2019 fleece in comparison to this year.

The difference in the colours from year to year are very interesting as I thought that the wool would get darker as the sheep aged, but this is not the case here.

I will be back with more information on the fleece later….

We are waiting for our first lambs…. which are due any day.

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Shearing time…

The flock are now shorn and I have my work cut out in cleaning and preparing the fleece for sale and for me to spin.

We have a very good (and have to say patient) shearer who looks after our shearing twice a year. The gotties fleece tends to felt very easily if left too long on the sheep so they are being shorn every 8 to 9 months.

Getting them into the yard can be very tricky but thank goodness we have 2 good yards so if we only get a few in first, then we transfer them to the other yard and open the yard gate, put a few nuts on the ground and usually the others will come into the yard on their own. We tend to entice the flock with nuts rather than ‘drive’ them into the yards. I have a very capable husband who is very handy at driving the flock into the yards… sometimes I get a little impatient with them…but he manages to entice them.

The flock are being shorn now because the ‘girls’ are due to lamb in about 2 weeks time. This means that they will be ‘clean’ and have nice free teats for the lambs.

The next part of this process is for me to sort and clean the fleece of vegetable matter and take out the short-end parts of the clip, then I will label the boxes with the name, number and year of shearing.

I have started the sorting process, and will keep 3 or 4 out of the 10 fleeces for my own use, whether I do the whole process myself or get some spun up by commercial spinning is yet to be decided.

Next time I will have photos of the sorted fleeces ready for spinning, washing or selling.

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Knitting Alpaca wool …

So it seems that we are going to have another little girl added to our family (not me haha). I have decided to spin and knit up some alpaca wool that I swapped for some of my Gotland Pelt sheep wool. The alpaca is great for baby garments as it is soft and calming on baby skin.

The fleece I have started is a cream, which I did think might take a dyeing quite well, but at this point I will just knit it up as a jersey and experiment with dyeing on the next spin I do with this fleece.

The fleece (wool) is very soft but it does not have much elasticity so I did think of blending another ‘sheep’ wool in with the Alpaca but in this instance I have decided to do a straight 100% Alpaca and see how the garment turns out. The next spin I do with the fleece may include some other wool, and I would like to see how the Gotland and Alpaca work together as well.

If you do not know these animals, I have included a photo below (not one of my photos).

Photo by LARAINE DAVIS on Pexels.com

Over the next week or so I will post the finished garment…. in the mean time we have our own flock to shear today…so I will also be posting photos on the shear…fleeces…and other interesting events.

Bye for now…

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Update on the farm…

It has been a while since I have written … Nico seems to be taking over this farm website.

We have had a quiet time recently with winter there has only been the odd day where we have done any farm work although the flock always get breakfast of nuts, and hay when the frost is on the ground, that is standard practice here now.

Last weekend was the end of school holidays so we had the grandkids out to stay for the night. Tia is 12 years old and loves to visit the farm, Piera is 5 years old and it is the first time she’s stayed overnight. We had a nice fire in the firebox at night.

Pizza for dinner and in the morning the girls were very helpful feeding out the nuts and hay to the sheep.

On the Sunday we stopped at the Springfield park which has the ‘famous Donut’ and the girls played before they went home to Christchurch.

We are preparing for shearing, hopefully next week, as the flock are now well due and I am worried that they will drop their lambs early in August. We have purchased a sorting table to aid our fleece cleaning process. This year my aim is to sort all the fleeces either on the same day or the day after. It is a process which should help me sell the fleeces in a better condition than previous years. Although I don’t know a lot about this process the internet has been very helpful, so with the aid of the shearer (who is super knowledgeable) I know we will manage to get some beautiful fleeces for sale soon.

The other thing that we have purchased for the lambing season is a set of hurdles. These are gate-like structures that can go up inside the barn if any of the mothers or lambs are in trouble. They hook together to form a square, or you can put them up inside the barn using the barn walls to make two square holding pens. The other purchases will be a ‘nursery basket’ with things that I might need when lambing, my list is simple: gloves, scissors, iodine, feeding equipment, towels and such for difficult lambing. I am hopeful though, that being Gotlands’ they will not require any special handling.

Bye for now… next time will be shearing photos and lessons learnt…

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Going to the dairy to get milk …

I thought it was time to tell Nico to go outside. He’s spending far too much time in front of the computer and it is my turn to tell you all about a typical day for us.

I don’t know if you know the saying, “going to the dairy to get milk”. It is a common saying in New Zealand and possibly some other countries, and it means that you go down to the local shop (in the village or town) to buy your extra daily supplies like milk, eggs etc prior to a main grocery shopping expedition.

In our case “going to the dairy” has a slightly different meaning. It literally means going to a farm and buying our milk straight from the farmer and their cows. There are certain farms in New Zealand that are allowed to sell milk directly to customers but of course, there are strict health and hygiene regulations that the farmer must comply with in order to sell his milk, there must be strict adherence to hygiene for the cows, the milk must be kept at a specific temperature and the bottles must be sterilised and kept in a chiller, as is the milk.

I have been drinking this milk for over five years now and have not had the stomach problems I use to have when drinking the pasteurised, A1 milk that you buy in the supermarkets.

Click here to read about this topic.

So of course every few days we have to take a trip to get our milk. Yesterday we decided to take the sports car for a run. It is always a treat to go out in ‘Silk’ as she’s not suitable for most of the ‘farm’ shopping we do. The diary (farm) that we go to is about 1/2 hour drive to a small village called Oxford, the farm is called Caven Farm.

The milk keeps in the fridge for about 1 week and we sterilise the bottles before we visit the farm. It tastes like the old fashioned milk with the cream on the top (lovely on porridge for breakfast).

So that’s our trip to the dairy….take care… Nico will probably be back soon with more antics..

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June… mid winter? Not really but we had a celebration though…

It has been a long autumn and now that we have snow on the mountains, lovely balmy days of sun and frosty mornings we can be forgiven if we think winter is here.

Since we celebrate Christmas in the summer months there is a small tradition (by some people) to have a mid-winter celebration (or sometimes called Yule) here in the southern hemisphere… so Saturday, being the 20th of June we had a mid-winter feast with friends from the West Coast, New Zealand.

We sat outside by the firebox (Nico as well), had cheese, nibbles mulled wine and good conversation then inside for a stew of venison, cranberries and vegetables with fresh bread and salad. Next a mid-winter cake (smaller version of my Christmas cake) and other beverages to add to the celebration. In the morning I cooked up waffles, bacon and fruit for breakfast with coffee and tea.

An all-round great mid-winter festival and one that I will remember.

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Nico the Shepherd’s Cat …. my story

I is Nico…..this is my story. The human mamma – “Shepherd Clare” told you how I come to live with her and other human.
https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/thebirchesspringfield.com/1483

Now I will tell you wot I do in my life on the farm as Shepherd’s Cat. My new life started when I got to the farm….oooo lots of new things to see and smells…waz a very happy kitten……I haz lots of toys…

I went outside in the ‘big world’ ….tiz huge…. has forest n (Shepherd says paddocks) grasses n mices n rabbits.

When it rains… or is cold I’z stay indoors and play…humans gives me toys…n boxes..

I start my day by helping Shepherd Clare feed da sheeps…I like to visit with them… they are my woolly friends…I’z good with da sheep…I’z help…

Iz big now and allow outside at night time…though Mamma worries when I don’t come home till late….(7pm)…

Next time I’z tell you about my best friend…Louie he lives next door…