Skirting Fleeces

Finally the weather has warmed up outside. It was nearly 90 degrees the past few days. It has given me the opportunity to start skirting the fleeces. Although time consuming I enjoy looking at the individual fleeces. In the barn I only have a couple seconds to glance at each fleece while preparing for the next sheep, but on the skirting table I can spend time with each one.

I have about 7 or 8 of the 30 or so fleeces already skirted. There have been a several pleasant surprises among the bunch. So far I am really excited about the over all quality of the fleeces. I think our fiber enthusiasts will be pleased.

The skirting process for us consists of laying the fleece (sheep side up) on a large screened table. Once on the table I pull out any glaring vegetative matter and soiled areas as well as large changes in fleece grade. This usually consists of going around table and taking off the outside portion of the fleece. I try to leave only the good stuff. If it is borderline then I generally put it into an "ends" sack and use it or sell it at a discount. Once I am finished cleaning the fleece then I roll it up into a ball with the outer side of the fleece to the inside. I generally take a gallon size sample for the sample boxes and weigh the finished fleece.

It has been a family affair as my mom is the general recording secretary noting the fleece qualities and characteristics and my father is the generally the mechanical expert and general supervisor:)

Below are a sampling of the fleeces I have skirted so far.

Raven's fleece was really nice this year. It is a great variegated gray color. It is a very eye appealing and elastic fleece.

This is Moo's first fleece. It is a gorgeous dark brown and white spotted fleece with grey pimming in the white areas. It has a gorgeous crimp and it is wonderfully soft!

We had two white medium fleeces and boy are they both gorgeous! This is from Bobbie, one of our favorites from 2008. I have been spinning some of her 2008 fleece and I am having a lot of fun with it.

Yarn & More Yarn

It is interesting how something simple like raising sheep can develop into such a multi-faceted hobby. Up until a couple of years ago we had a local wool pool where we sold our wool in bulk with other producers from around the region. By blindly following the KISS principle we took our meager returns and some years barely earned enough to pay the shearer.

Today we ship handspinning fleeces coast-to-coast. However we never developed a specialty market for the blackface wool from the wetherdams. When the wool pool ceased to exist a couple of years ago and the blackface wool started piling up in the barn, we decided to act before we were buried in wool. Last fall we took matters into our own hands and skirted some of our fleeces to send to the processor.

We recently received the yarn and it is beautiful!!!

After having all of the natural colored sheep, I am like a kid in a candy store with the dyes. So it didn't take long for me to grab a jar of dye, heat up a pot of water, and drop in a few skeins of yarn. I ended up with a very unique variegated color pattern which I quickly decided to knit into my favorite beanie hat pattern while travelling over spring break. The variegated color combined well with the natural textural variations to create a very homey hat that received rave reviews from many at a fiber festival last weekend. In fact we sold several skeins of yarn that day.

For more information about purchasing a few skeins of yarn for your next project or if you have an idea to share feel free to email me at ktjones@crestviewcable.com.

Kristie Sheep Farm

Home of great Lincolns, Montadales, Romeldales & NCWGA Registered Sheep

Prineville, Oregon

Dyeing Wool with Easter Egg Dye

With homework for my college class behind me(yah!) I decided to relax and have fun this afternoon. Hannah and I decided to use Easter Egg dye to color some of the Lincoln wool given to me by Penny Dodds. The ultimate goal is to create an Easter basket filled with brightly colored felted eggs.

I use the Easter Egg dye regularly at grade school workshops as it is relatively inexpensive (4/$1 after Easter), safe and it works well in warm water. However I rarely get a chance to play with it at home on my own time. It was very fun... I feel five again.

The process is exetremely simple.

1. Pour warm/hot water in a disposable container.

2. Add a couple of teaspoons of white vinigar to the water.

3. Add 2-4 color tablets (use the same color together) to the warm water.

4. Place clean dry wool in the container for a few minutes to soak up the dye.

5. Remove from dye and place in a safe area to dry.

Today I used the basic food colors to stretch out my dye and make the colors more vivid. It was a blast!!! The Lincoln wool took the Easter Egg dye exetremely well!

If you have questions, ideas for a project, or would just like to comment, please feel free to email me at ktjones@crestviewcable.com.

Kris Jones

Kristie Lincolns, Montadales, Romeldales, and NCWGA registered Natural Colored Sheep

Prineville, Oregon

First Shearing

The annual right of passage for the teenagers took place last week...their first shearing. With show season fast approaching and fleece length requirements at some of the earlier shows we decided to shear the yearling ewes.

The day before the weather had been sunny and in the 60's. On the day we sheared it was barely in the 40's with a cold, wet drizzle by afternoon. As the local weatherman said it has been a "wintery mix" since that time. Fortunately for the girls they have taken over the hay barn "playland" we made for the lambs and appear to be warm and toasty. With daily outings to their pasture they seem to be enjoying the freedom of going naked for a few days since I haven't put their blankets back on yet.

The great news is there are some gorgeous fleeces among the lot. I haven't had time to skirt them yet, however I think there will be some crowd pleasers. In fact, we had a spinner friend of my neighbors stop by to look at the babies about a week ago and she reserved one of the fleeces while it was still on the ewe.

Although I really like the overall quality, I think there are a few fleeces that deserve mention. First is Moo, our little Romeldale cross fine ewe out of Star. She is a black and white ewe colored like a Holstein cow. She also has varigation throughout her white spots under the wool. It is a gorgeous fleece to look at and it doesn't disapoint when you get your hands on it. It is soooo soft...just like her mom. It has not been reserved for this year.

The two Lincoln fleeces are also nice. Sparkle, the black girl has a wonderful silver to it and Lily's fleece is really long with a lot of luster. I need to get these fleeces on the skirting table to get a better look, but at first glance they are really nice.

I also have several of the dark brown yearling fleeces that have a lot of character to them.

We should be skirting the fleeces somtime between now and the first part of April. If the weather starts to warm up we wil also be shearing the older ewes and rams soon.

If you have questions or comments, please email me at ktjones@crestviewcable.com.

Sincerely,

Kris Jones

Kristie Sheep Farm

Home of great Montadales, Lincolns, Romeldales and Natural Colored Sheep

Prineville, OR

A comfortable Spot

Baby season is always a fun time. There are always moments when you wish you had a camera at hand. Today was one of those moments.

While driving up the lane next to the field I stopped to see our little Lincoln lamb trying to get comfortable on top of her mom. This is not an unusual act for the lambs, however with 12 plus inches of dreads for a bed, it looked a bit like the princess and the pea.

As it was the "princess" afforded me time to stop the pickup, go to the house to fetch the camera and return to photograph her. She must be a true "princess" as it took her several tries to finally get comfortable.

Finally comfortable she spent a great deal of time napping on her plush mattress with her mom's head as a pillow. Very cute to watch:)

Sincerely,

Kris Jones

Kristie Montadales, Lincolns, Romedales & Natural Colored Sheep

Kristie Sheep Farm

ktjones@crestviewcable.com

The babies are here!!!

It is hard to believe at the time of my last post we didn't have any babies and in just a few short weeks our barn is overflowing. The great news is that we have several really nice lambs in a very short time, however the drawback has been a brutal couple of weeks filled with sleepless nights and a lot of hard work. Fortunately we only have a couple of ewes left to lamb.

Lambing season with Natural Colored sheep is a bit like celebrating Christmas in February. You never know what you are going to get until you take off the wrapper. This year was no exception and with the wide variety of breeds it makes the process even more interesting.

We started the season with a really nice set of twin Romedale lambs born to a first time mom. You would have thought she was a veteran as I found the lambs healthy, happy and nursing in the morning. Both lambs have a nice CVM color pattern and will be nice lambs to take to the national show to be held at the Estes Park Wool Market in June.

After the initial babies we were inundated with a few days of what I like to refer to as a "lambing storm". There were so many lambs in such a short time that I can barely remember which order they came in. It was a time when dinners went cold and my husband really came to the rescue on several occasions to make sure my daughters didn't think they were orphans. In addition to the high influx of babies the weather turned crazy. For the first time in flock history we had to make a "nursery annex" in the hay barn. The new lambs thought this was a great idea as they had a warm place to play and it turned out to be a bit like McDonald's playland on a weekend with babies going everywhere:)

We have had a few sets of triplets and a couple of singles, but most have been nice twins delivered with little extra work on my part. In my opinion, this year's lamb crop is an exceptional set of lambs! We used several new rams this year and so far they are yet to disappoint.

I really like the Natural Colored (NCWGA) lambs by my daughter's ram lamb Diego and out of a set of Forest Grove FFA ewes we have used for a few years. Diego is out of a Southwest Sheep Company ewe we purchased a couple of years ago.

I am also really happy with the lambs we have by Horton, a ram lamb purchased from Burns Montadales in the spring of 2008. These Montadale lambs have some of the best breed character I have seen on a Montadale in years. They are like peas in a pod and they are great!

So far I have been excited by the two sets of Romedale lambs in the barn. They are both by a home bred ram lamb named Calico who is out of a Kristie ewe "Star" and by a Custom Colored Critters Romedale ram by the name of Gabe. The lambs are healthy, vigorous lambs who seem to get the job of life done on their own. All of them have an amazing growth rate. I think the term "butterball" might be most fitting in this case.

Our newest addition to the flock are the bred Lincoln ewes I purchased from Reister Farms this winter. I came home to find my newest "hippy sheep" born in the pasture with mom doing her best to clean her off. It was a really nice Valentine's Day surprise! The little "fuzzball" as my father commonly refers to her is growing well and adds a great bit of character to the flock. She is definitely unique in personality and has stole all of our hearts.

As we move into the end of February, I will try to take a moment to post about my new Lincoln ram I purchased from Penny Dodds, as well as start to post pictures of shearing, and hopefully talk about the history behind some of our breeds.

I have included pictures of some of the babies from today. It was a beautiful sunny day where the lambs stretched out for a nap and spent much of the day soaking up the rays. I will try to post more photos as I take them.

Feel free to email me at ktjones@crestviewcable.com with any questions or comments.

Kristie Flock History

The Kristie Sheep Farm flock started over 30 years ago with the purchase of bummer lambs from the historic Haycreek Ranch in Central Oregon. After a short time we moved on to a few crossbred ewes and started raising our own lambs. This was in the late 1970's. It wasn't long before I moved on to 4-H and then FFA. It was the move into 4-H that spurred my family to purchase our first registered sheep.

I fell in love with the beautiful black points of the Suffolk breed and it wasn't long before my parents caved into the relentless lobbying from their almost teenage daughter. With that we became the proud owners of a few fine Suffok ewes. By the end of high school and my FFA career we raised a number of lambs every year.

It wasn't until about 1988 when we purchased our first Montadale ewe lamb. She was white. I can remember the day vividly. Our family was at a purebred sheep sale and it was a cold fall day. We were still actively raising Suffolk sheep at the time, but we had taken notice of the success of the Montadale/Suffolk cross market lambs recently introduced into our area. It was becoming more apparent to us, if we wanted to keep up with selling competitive market lambs then we might want to start crossbreeding. As fate would have it, R & G Montadales, one of the premier Montadale flocks in the nation at the time was selling three ewe lambs. Luckily we ended up winning the bid on what would become our first Montadale ewe. We brought Jody home and turned her out with our blackface ewes, where she promptly spent three days following them around as the blackface ewes were a bit slow to pickup on the desegregation movement happening around our house.

It turned out the Montadales fit perfectly with our flock. I was away at Oregon State University for a few years and my parents enjoyed working with the breed. During that time we started to focus on the Montadales and kept a few blackface ewes around for crossbreeding. Mom and Dad invested in a few ewes from the national show and sale and then also a few nice rams. By the time I returned home in 1996, the flock had developed into a competitive show flock. It was at this time we started showing regularly at the Oregon State Fair and a number of county fairs.

By the mid-1990's we started turning our blackface ewes into a flock of market lamb mamas in order to produce project lambs for 4-H & FFA members. We worked hard to create a very complete set of locally competitive wether sire/dam sheep. We chose to liquidate the club lamb flock in the fall of 2008 selling them to a good friend and his children from the Willamette Valley.

Another change that came about in 2000 was the birth of our first black Montadale. A surprise to all of us we decided to keep the ewe lamb and we named her Lucky's Charm or Charmer for short. Little did we know at the time that she would change our outlook on the sheep industry and have such a profound affect on the type of sheep we would be raising a few years later. To our surprise, this beautiful ewe pictured at the top of blog went on to place extremely well at the Natural Colored Wool Growers Association National Show held at the Oregon State Fair in 2001.

In the meantime, I had literally snuck a black ram lamb in the trailer following 2000 Oregon State Fair. We named him Blackie and together, Balckie and Charmer would become the foundation of our natural colored flock.

Although we lost Charmer about a year ago and sold Blackie to a new family, we have many of their descendants. We have enjoyed getting involved in the fiber and hand-spinning industry enough to add on a few new breeds. We were able to purchase a dispersal of wonderful black ewes based with a lot of elite Columbia genetics. Within the last year we have also added a few high quality Romadale ewes as well as a small flock of Lincolns with Dodds and Reister genetics.

As we have now expanded the Kristie Flock into a true hand spinners flock we will be proud to provide a variety of fleece grades to our fiber customers in 2009. We will also continue to offer a select number of high quality locker lambs each year as well as some wonderful breeding stock.

When I was little I always wanted a black sheep, with that said, I never dreamed there would be a day the black sheep outnumbered the white sheep, which is the scenario today.

Stay tuned for weekly updates. February will be full of lambing details, the introduction of our new flock members, and possibly shearing if the weather holds. As we move into Spring, I would like to focus on fleece sales and highlight some of the special projects our fiber enthusiasts undertake throughout the year. By summer we will be into show season and of course post show results as well as highlight some wonderful lamb recipes for our locker lamb folks.

Keep checking back to see new baby pictures!
Sincerely,
Kris Jones & Family