Catching Up

I've been a very bad blogger.........its been months since I posted anything, and lots of things have happened!! Where has the time gone??

Let's see........since my last post in April, we had another wet spring (and so far a wet summer too), and with all that rain came grass in abundance! The cows have all calved, the calves have been branded and vaccinated and all are turned out in the south quarter, there's so much grass they'll be there until fall!

In May a new fellow joined us from Maureen Elgert of MRE Farm at 100 Mile House, BC. Coal has been a joy to raise, he has exceeded every hope so far, and I am SO looking forward to starting him on stock! Coal is like an old soul in a puppy suit, its really hard to believe how good a pup he is......looking forward to some good stuff from this young man :o)

Coal and Shay relaxing on a rare warm day!
MRE's Knight Moves - "Coal"

In June our ASCA club hosted a 2 day stockdog clinic with Sharon Simmons and then 4 stock trials over 2 days, at SwedeLee Farm in Donalda, Alberta. The clinic and trials were hugely successful despite the torrential downpours that haunted one day of the clinic and both days of the trials! The winds were near hurricane force driving the rains sideways! The stores in town did a booming business in rain gear! Chili had an awesome weekend, earning ALL her Open titles (cattle, sheep & ducks) on Saturday, leaving Sunday for us to relax and enjoy the trials.

July came and I am so happy to say that I found a really good young ram for my ewes! I have been working on upgrading my small flock of sheep from my collection of "mutt" sheep that I use to train my dogs on, to what I hope will be a good flock of registered Katahdin's. I expect I will always have some Barbados ewes as they offer a very different challenge for the dogs, and besides I really like my Barbs :o) But I wanted to add some good Katahdin's for meat production and with any luck I'll be able to raise some excellent breeding ewes as well. When I purchased my ram lamb, I was lucky enough to also be able to buy a really nice 2 yr old ewe to add to my flock. (pictured above is the young ram, and beautiful dark red ewe) I'm so looking forward to lambing season next spring, its been a *long* time since I've raised lambs! My ram and ewe came from Averys Katahdin's, www.averyshairsheep.blogspot.com - thank you Dee for the opportunity to acquire such quality animals!