Sheep in the driveway

This is Dulcie.  She's a St. Croix X sheep.  If you're wondering about her funky hair cut, she's just shedding her winter coat, and the winter bits are hanging onto her back, giving her a kind of mohawk look.  They are in the front yard today to mow down the grass a bit as they are getting a little grumpy being confined to the upper pasture due to the vetch germinating in the lower pasture.  (More on that later.)
We bought 4 of these lovelies a year ago as "practice": Dulcie, Moo, Sunshine and Stella, all bottle-fed lambs.

By "practice" I mean that I wanted to see if I actually liked sheep, how easy they were to care for, how much they cost to keep, that sort of thing.  And if they didn't work out, because they are meat sheep (as opposed to fleece/woolly sheep or milk sheep), we could sell them for meat or eat them ourselves.  (For the record, I could never eat one of our lambs, and I haven't eaten red meat in almost 20 years, no matter how it's raised.)  So, really, it comes down to knitting and how much I love That.  I know now that I adore sheep, everything about them.  We plan to breed these guys in the future, hopefully this fall and sell their lambs, yes, for meat.  But back to the knitting: I will most certainly fork out the dough for a high-quality woolly sheep in the near future.  I want to go "sheep to sweater" -- raise sheep, shear them, wash, card, dye, spin, and knit the wool.  And then do it all again.  The particular sheep breed I want is a Blue Faced Leister, or BFL for short.  These are not cheap.  So, again, to check it out, I have bought a full BFL fleece that I will eventually knit up.  (more on that later).

I love this.  Keeping chickens and sheep.  Honeybees too, eventually.  I love the animals and how they interact with us, and each other.  I love how the children know how to care for the animals, and where food really comes from.  I love what they teach us about life, and subsequently, death.  I love how what they do naturally enhances our lives, not only aesthetically, but how they add to the compost, break down kitchen scraps, turn over the soil, and yes, mow the grass. We have 2 acres.  It's not a lot, but it's more that a lot of people are able to enjoy.  I want to use this land to its fullest potential.  Wish me luck :)


Have yourselves a wonderful day, sheep or no sheep.