Clementine

Clementine was the first of our yearlings to lamb this year. She is daughter to Chloe and sister of Clara. And like her mom and her sister she is an easy lamber and had twins as a yearling!

I knew she carried color genetics but I am super happy to have two more black lambs, and one is a ewe lamb. Clementine is half Royal White hair sheep and half Coopworth and her fleece was pretty nice considering. Her lambs are 75% Coopworth and the ewe lamb's fleece feels like a nice Coopworth fleece. The ram lamb's fleece feels more like our mixed lamb fleece. I was hoping to get at least one ewe lamb from this year's crop to keep. Hopefully this little ewe lamb will continue to grow into a good replacement sheep for us. We'll see what the last two yearlings give us in the coming weeks.

The Flax Plot

Thursday was spent in the garden. The pound of "Lisette" flax seeds I bought from Landis Valley Farm went into the approx 150 square foot plot.

Since it is hard to weed flax once it gets more than a few inches tall I wanted to reduce the weed seed load as much as possible in this area. Over the last two weeks I hoed it four times in hopes that a large number of weed seeds would germinate and then be butchered. This is my first planting of flax and it will be interesting to see how this progresses.

Steel City Fiber Festival

I set up a booth at a local (30 min away) fiber festival last weekend. I took yarn, roving and three spinning wheels. Two of the wheels sold and I sold a decent amount of yarn and roving. All in all a pretty good weekend. And I am pleased with how the booth turned out.

I demonstrated spinning on a great wheel (that I then sold) even though I am still learning myself. The public was great to talk with. And the other vendors were very interesting. I let a few vendors try out the great wheel; amazing how many people have a hidden desire to try one. Next up, MD Sheep and Wool with the American Coopworth Registry booth.