Warm and woolly wishes

Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a lot of wool around this Christmas? (And no, I don't mean just at my house. My house always has a lot of wool around!) I keep seeing lots of cute felted ornaments, tree skirts, stockings and other Christmas decorations in all the catalogs that show up in my mailbox. About a month ago I spied a few wool felt ornaments hanging amongst the glittery and gaudy on a rack at Home Goods. I was thrilled to find them and promptly bought them. When I read the attached label I was even more glad I had brought them home with me. They are Fair Trade Holiday handmade ornaments and I love the sweet simplicity of them. For the next few weeks, every time I had a chance, I checked the rack at Homegoods and managed to come up with a nice little collection of ornaments, one or two at a time. Last week I found some different ones at the Good Foods Co-op in Lexington and added a few more. I've put them all on a little iron tree that came from Smith & Hawken years ago and set it in the middle of our kitchen table, where I can see them all the time. Later this week I intend to get our big tree and maybe we will get it into the house sometime over the weekend. For the time being though, I'm enjoying looking at these bright, cheerful, simple little ornaments.

My warm and woolly wishes are to simplify our Christmas celebration this year. I want so much to have less stress and more time to enjoy my family and friends.

That's what I'd really like for Christmas. How about you?

What does it mean?

Yes, it truly is winter here in Kentucky. Last night the temperature was down in the 20's and this morning we woke up to a dusting of snow. Then, as I was walking into the barn for morning chores, I spied this!

What does it mean when the forsythia bushes are blooming on December 5th?

It's official

Yesterday morning I loaded a bale of hay into my little cart, took it out into the field where the ewe lambs have been grazing and gave them their first taste of hay since last spring. Last year, because of the drought, I started feeding hay in September, which is much earlier than usual. Luckily for us, this past summer and fall have been unusually wet and the grass has continued to grow and stay green. In fact, the pasture where the alpaca boys and ram lambs are hanging out still has abundant grazing, but the little girls have been on "slim pickin's" land. As you can see by Teeny's expression, they were sooo happy to munch right into it.

Starting to feed hay basically doubles my barn chore time and is a sign that winter is officially here. There are plenty of mornings when it is cold or wet (or worse...cold and wet) and I don't want to leave the warmth of the house to go to the barn for morning chores. Nearly always a funny thing happens once I actually get there. I end up staying out much longer than I need to or even intend. I interact with the animals a lot more during the winter because I see them up close at least twice a day and that's a good thing for all of us. We all slow down and socialize a bit. You can see that Pippi is still her sweet, sociable self and is still coming to give sniffs and nuzzles when she sees me.

Tomorrow will officially mark the end of the breeding season here at Tanglewood Farm. Ollie has bred all but one of the ewes who have been pastured with him and none of them have recycled. One of the CVM ewe lambs has apparently not cycled in the three weeks since I put them into the breeding group and I've decided to give her a pass until next year. If she got bred at this point, she would be much later than the rest of the flock and would be lambing in early May, which I really don't want. Of course, taking Ollie away from the ewes means he will go back in with the other two rams and that can sometimes be traumatic. I'll write a post next week about how we handle putting the rams back together after breeding season.

I hope you all have just the kind of weekend you want and I'm hoping mine will be the right combination of productive and relaxing.

In recovery

After a long holiday weekend, I think all of us here at sheep dreams are still in recovery mode. The last of the turkey was made into turkey hash over the weekend and the cranberry relish dish is finally empty. I'm not sad to see it all go. I feel as though I should go on some kind of cleansing fast for a week or two!

Holly and Hannah have been working hard at night lately and they spend their days sleeping on the mulch pile or out in the fields with the sheep. It's deer hunting season here in Kentucky and though we do not give permission for anyone to hunt our land, we have evidence that poachers come onto the back of the farm. The sound of gunshot upsets both of the dogs, so it is even more of a nuisance when hunters trespass. This time of year, I just hope and pray that all of our animals will get through another hunting season without being mistaken for a deer.