Well, lots has happened in the last seven months. You may remember I was on the point of starting the first lambing I’d done in several years (Call the Midwife). As it turned out, none of the things I was worried about, and therefore prepared for, eventuated. Unfortunately, I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of an infection that would cause most of my lambs to be stillborn, late in pregnancy. Of the 25 or so lambs conceived, only eight survived. Unusually severe spring weather contributed to the losses.
One of the first lambs on the ground. The campylobacter epidemic didn’t start until part way through lambing.
In the weeks before lambing started, I lost two of my border collies: Blaze, who was diabetic, to suspected pancreatitis, and Jax to suspected pyometra. And in the middle of that, I was hospitalised with appendicitis, which happily was resolved with antibiotics, in time for me to start lambing.
One bright spark in an otherwise depressing lambing season was a new pet lamb, Rocky. I think he was one of twins whose mama wandered off in one of the bad storms with one twin and left Rocky waiting patiently in shelter for her to return.
Rocky at about 3 days old, in his favourite sheltered spot on the back porch. That’s one of Fly’s toys keeping him company. There was a LOT of laundry done in the early weeks!
Taking care of Rocky helped take my mind off the sadness of all the other losses, and happily for me (and him), he turned out to be bullet-proof: drank everything I gave him and asked for more, never once looked peaky or ill, and now, at 7 months, is a picture of health and happiness. It’s lovely to have a young pet lamb about the farm. Zac, Freddie, Clara and Georgie are my only other pet lambs, ranging in age from 7 to 11.
Rocky coming to see me a few days ago.
After we recovered physically and emotionally from lambing (by ‘we’ I mean me and the ewes), the usual spring and early summer jobs were lining up: lamb marking, crutching, jetting to prevent flystrike, treating the sheep for a mite that gets into the wool, and, just a couple of weeks ago, putting the ewes out with the ram for this year’s lambing. While we had good rains in July, spring, summer, and now autumn have been exceptionally dry. Queensland and New South Wales seem to have gotten our summer rain. We had a lovely 14 mm (½ inch) of rain in February during a slow-moving train of thunderstorms, but nothing since.
Because it has been so dry, I had another unexpected cause of death in the flock: exposure to phalaris grass when it has developed a neurotoxin due to extended dry weather. This causes fatal seizures, and is pretty distressing for the animals. I was lucky to only have exposed the flock to the phalaris, which is otherwise a perfectly good introduced pasture species, for less than 24 hours. I lost 3 sheep to the toxin, but spent a couple of weeks worrying about losing more, as the onset of symptoms can be delayed.
All in all, I think I’ve had enough of new and exciting sheep diseases to last me for quite a while.
Throughout the last few months, I’ve been shepherding a large consignment of greasy wool through the shipping, scouring and milling process. In a similar vein to my sheep dramas, nothing about this process has been easy. My usual bun-fights with AQIS about documentation to ship the greasy wool to New Zealand took on a whole new level of frustrating, quite literally bringing me to tears at one point. The lot of wool I sent was a combination of two annual clips, one of which was too short to be processed on its own. Blended together, the mill was confident of being able to make our high quality yarn, but it was harder work than they expected, and not only were the combing and spinning losses higher than usual, there was a fair bit of frustration for the mill, and delays (and frustration for me). The shipment is leaving New Zealand next week, and I think the mill folk are as happy to see the back of it as I will be to see it finally here!
I’m starting to see why I haven’t written a Yarn in a while — it hasn’t been the sort of time one is excited to write about!
A further complication in the yarn processing story is that the mill, Design Spun, has been up for sale for a year. As of this writing, despite several serious expressions of interest, there isn’t a buyer. If one doesn’t show up soon, the mill will close later this year. To hedge against this possibility, I wanted to get as much fibre processed as I could. With the new shipment and my existing inventory, I should have enough yarn to keep WGW going for 5 years, which will hopefully give me time to figure out an alternative. I have to say I’m really spoiled by working with Design Spun and the NZ scouring company Canterbury Wool Scourers. They have been wonderful partners, with amazing depth of skill and experience. Not to mention reasonable pricing compared to anything I’ve looked at in other countries.
For the yarnies among you, there’s a lot to be excited about in the upcoming shipment. I’ve expanded the range of colours to the full palette (or nearly so) for 100% merino 10 ply, silk merino 4 and 5 ply, and added a new weight, 10 ply, in the silk merino. As soon as the shipment arrives, I’ll send out another Yarn with photos of the new goodies. Meanwhile, they are all available to pre-order on the website.
Coming up soon on the farm: shearing in May. Stay tuned.
Back in June of last year, I was given 3 cross-bred lambs who’d wandered into a suburban back yard in George Town, northern Tasmania: Zach, Maxine and Jumper. Suffice it say, they are culturally entirely different from my merinos!