Well, I was wrong when I said spring was just around the corner in February.  Here in Minnesota we are still having "spring".  It has snowed all through April and into May, which makes it tough for the pastures to grow!  But, the ground has finally cleared, and the grass is greening for this year's wonderful lamb crop.

We had an outstanding year of lamb production at 180%.  Moreover, the lambs are fat, the ewes are fat, and all run and play out in the pasture.  It is truly rejuvenating to watch.

Sadly, we lost two lambs.  One from a set of triplets and one due to injury.  But, that is the way it often is with farming; good days are greeted with sad and sad days greeted with good.  It would seem that the balance of each is needed to truly understand the miracle of life.

The flock has grown much more colorful with the introduction of our new moorit (brown) ewes.  We now have all different shades of brown ranging to jet black.  Also, we got two white lambs.  One from a white ewe and one from a black ewe.  Therefore, my previous postulation that Bucky was homozygous black has been disproven.  Still, our cross of Bucky on Rush produced two beautiful, coal black, and horned, ram lambs.  We also got our first true katmoget (light on top, dark on belly) ewe and lamb.  Both will be registered animals from the White Pine flock.  The ewe's name is Basotho and she produced a beautiful little ewe lamb.  They each make excellent additions to our rapidly expanding flock.

Bucky, separated from the ewes for now to allow the ewes some peace, is cantankerous as ever.  His bad mood is received by anything he can ram, except humans (thankfully).  So far, he has managed to destroy several barn doors that I will be replacing this summer.  It is too bad that he likes to bash things so much because for the rest of the time he really is a docile ram.  He is in great shape and looks a bit devilish in his all black coat with his tightly curled horns.

All the sheep are shorn, except Basotho.  I was very glad of my classes at SDSU and showed off my new skills to my dad.  He was amazed at how docile the animals were under the holds that I was taught.  I also got to use my new clipper, a Shearmaster from Oster.  It worked excellently and made the job much easier.  As an aside, we have all of our fleeces rolled and bagged if anyone out there is interested.

We are still very dry and as previously stated, very cold here.  We will be praying for warmer wetter weather and continued health of our fun little flock.
(Pictures to come)
Joe