Sat. May 26

10 AM  – 4 PM

Cormo Sheep & Wool Farm, Orland, CA (email or call for directions)

Purchase fleeces before they go up on the website.

Processed Cormo wool; top, roving, yarns and sheepskins will also be available.

Meet the sheep and the 101 new lambs.

Bring your spinning, knitting, crocheting or ?? projects and sit and enjoy the company of other fiber artists.  We may even have some live musical entertainment!

Bring a picnic lunch. Lemonade will be provided.

Come alone, with your family or with a group. Children are welcome.

No dogs please. It is the job of the  3 livestock guardian dogs to protect all the critters from other dogs.

RSVP would be appreciated but not required.

530-514-0910   wool@cormo.us

   Fleeces will be sold by appointment also on Monday for those who might be traveling. We are less than 10 minutes from I-5.

The new boy

Yes, I’m here and keeping my eye on 100 new lambs.  This is and will be my all time record.  There is one more ewe waiting to deliver. They came fast and close together this year which made for some crazy days and nights.  Thank you for your patience. I love the personal contact with my customers but it is impossible for me to respond consistently and promptly between shearing, during lambing and until the fleeces are prepared for sale.  I’m experimenting with the best ways to get updates out to my friends, customers and new inquirers with the newsletters, website and blog. It all takes time and as you will see from a few pictures these lambs have a very powerful draw.

We had nice dry days for shearing but we all rejoiced when it started to rain in March.  It seemed like the lambs were sprouting faster than the new green grass.  It made it a bit more work to make sure everyone had a place to come in and dry off when they wanted. At one point the lamb jugs (don’t know why but they call a small pen where a ewe and her lambs can get acquainted for a day or 2 a jug) were getting full and more days of rain were predicted.

Communal jug with 3 ewes and 5 lambs

These ewes had decided to give birth in this area of the barn so I just moved the fence a little and gave each a corner. They seemed to understand the situation and respected each others space. The day after I took this photo another ewe came in and gave birth to twins in the fourth corner. It’s too bad that I didn’t get a picture of the other side of the barn with the moms and babies in their individual jugs.

There is nothing prettier a field of ewes and lambs under fluffy clouds in BLUE sky after days of rain.

Those who have bought parts of Kay’s 2011 fleece through “Fibershed”  may use this photo of Kay and her lamb to put with their finished wool products.

Note the ewe laying down in back of “Kay” is due any day and the ewe grazing on the other side of the fence is not due of over a week.

Note the neighbor’s prune trees in full bloom in the back.  A glorious day!

As the lambing season starts to wind down,  the last of the “ladies in waiting” come into my yard to mow the grass.  A couple of the open ewes, Farrah and Fella came in too  since there is so much grass. Everyone who comes to the farm meets Farrah, the official greeter of the flock. She is the one on the left with the mouth full of chard. Thanks Farrah, for pruning my overgrown chard.  There is not one leaf left. They also worked on the ivy … (yes little lambs and big lambs love ivy), roses, redwoods and potted flowers. I planted some sweet peas for the first time and they are gone but so far they haven’t found the sugar snaps I stashed on the porch.  I’ve been eating them one at a time as soon as I see them just in case. Delicious!

Unfortunately, there are always some heartaches that go along with the blessings. This lamb was Hour’s second born twin. The birthing and both lambs appeared to be normal but when I went back to check to see if the second lamb had nursed yet I found her laying on her side and she was getting a little cold. Here she is in my oven where she hung out until her temp was slowly brought up to normal. Mom was milked for some colostrum and she was tube fed that and a little sheep Nutra drench for a little extra boost.  She just did not respond well and died at about 24 hours old.

This ewe was keeping watch over the new mom who was cleaning her baby just after giving birth. She did not seem to appreciate me coming up to snap a picture.

Fleeces

I know that there are a lot of people waiting for the 2012 fleeces to go up for sale. They are all still safely in the shop waiting to be re-skirted. I’ll be sending out a newsletter shortly with more information about fleece sales. I’m also looking into the possibility of having an open farm to show off the the lambs and fleece sale in May. Please let me know if you would be interested in attending.

Even though the ewes are done (almost) giving birth there are plenty of chores to do. Here a group of lambs are getting a weight check and their first vaccination.

Sheep

It’s time to start planning if you are interested in buying sheep. There will be some traveling to NAILE in KY in Nov. I’ll try to snap more photos of these lambs and show the variations of the colored ones. There are some really cute ones.

It would have been nicer to have the rain in December and January but I’m glad the we are finally getting some. It just makes lambing a bit more challenging for me and I’m afraid that we won’t have pictures of bright shiny white lambs for awhile. The rain doesn’t slow them down much and they soon learn to negotiate the puddles (lakes to them) and find the shelter of the barn. There are now over 80 new lambs so I haven’t had much time to answer emails about fleeces or sheep sales. Thank you for your understanding and patience. I will try to catch up as things slow down in the barn but there will be plenty of chores for awhile just taking care of the new lambs and moms.

The fleeces will not be ready to sell until May. Taking care of the critters always comes first.  Notification for fleece sales is  by email “News from the Farm”  newsletter.  If you would like to receive the newsletters please send me an email with your full name.  wool@cormo.us

I’ve had some help from my friend Maggie with this blog.  I hope that we can made it more useful and keep it up to date. There are lots of possibilities. Please note the new “Subscribe” feature that should send you an email when there is a new post.  Let me know how this is working for you and I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.

Maggie didn’t have all of the cutest photos of the short visitors to the lambs last year. So here are a few more.

And another family

I have yet to get my pictures organized from this lambing season; you’ll have to forgive me! I’m sure you understand seeing as I am still in the thick of it all, but I expect by June things will have slowed down. At least enough for me to share some photos of the cute little critters and a few stories of how the farm survived another Spring. But I would hate to leave you all without a taste what is to come, so until then, I will leave you with a few of the treasured photos from last year during lambing time. Last Spring we had a couple cute little girlies come and visit the lamb friends on the farm. They’re the granddaughters of my friend, Joann. They were in town visiting and really wanted to come see all the babies so how could I refuse! I had a lot of fun showing them around and they handled themselves very well.  As you can tell… they’re kind of adorable, so it wasn’t to hard to have a good time.

Here are some photos from our fun day:

They learned the way to any sheep’s heart: Nom noms.

The girls made fast friends with this little guy.

—

E.K. learned how to feed the babes. More nom noms.

Little E.K. took to shepherd(ess)ing like a little duck to water.

Hopefully that will tide everybody over… but I think we can all agree that these little guys are pretty adorable. The lambs.. but especially our little visitors. Thanks K. Girls for coming to visit the farm! You’re always welcome back.

My friend Janice and I have been preparing the 2011 fleeces for sale the  past few weeks. It is a time consuming process as it involves going over each fleece and removing debris and vm (vegetable matter), testing soundness, sampling for scanning for the website, recording length, description and weight, rolling, bagging and labeling.  The descriptions are very difficult, especially for the white Cormo fleeces. They should be and are very similar. How would you describe fifty Delicious apples individually?

Part way through I remembered that I had a phone that has a camera in my pocket.

The white with lots of colored spots is Vandy’s fleece. That one is unmistakeable but it took me awhile to figure out that it would really be helpful to label the fleeces.

Ready to roll

Janice got a little frustrated with me. She was trying to keep me on task and stick to the schedule and I just couldn’t resist stopping to take pictures.

Chief - Grand Champ Monterey 2010

Garnet - another 2010 winner

Joe hung out with us in the shop constantly and protected us from the weed eater.  Border Collies can be a little obsessive.

Midori bought his hogget fleece last year. She named him Valentine “because his fleece made me fall in love with Cormo wool”.

I agree. After skirting his fleece this year it made me fall in love with him. His fleece is just what I would like a Cormo fleece to be.

The fleeces aren’t on the website yet but will be very soon.

Who will be going to the spinning day at Retzlaff Winery in Livermore, CA next Saturday? Jane and I will be there looking forward to meeting new people and visiting with friends. I’m also looking forward to seeing what dyed Cormo creations Shari (Morro Fleece Works) will be bringing to me.

Diamond had her ram lamb in Feb. They were supposed to get sheared before lambing.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. What can I say? I’d rather be out with the sheep than sitting here at the computer.  I do want to share some of the pictures  with you though. I’ll try to get a newsletter out soon too. I know that lots of people are waiting patiently for fleeces.

Sheep make great lawn mowers. Some of the lambs were born here in my yard. It was great to look out my window or step out my door and be right there with them. (Do you think that the tops of the redwood trees I just planted will straighten up? )

Wow, she's flashy!

 I wonder what her fleece will look like next year.

Ruby says, "It's time to get up little one."

Just a little wobbly!

It sure is tiring to get born, and learn to stand and walk.

 It’s hard to get work done when there are all these animals to watch. Even when mom takes care of them just fine it is hard to leave them.

Diane with her colored triplets. The two with white are girls and the all black is a boy.

There was a reason why Diane just kept getting wider and wider.  I figured that she was carrying twins but I didn’t expect three. She is a great mom and feeding all three. She loves to eat so she is very happy that she is getting special treatment and extra food.

Hey, what’s this? I think these ladies have been watching the goats and dogs too much. Give them and inch …. OK, off the hay stack!

Alex is watching over the ewe and  newborn lamb.  Even when there is not a fence separating them she will respect the mom and keep her distance.  When Alex was a pup, I spent some time with her teaching her to be quiet around the sheep and to respect the moms and babies. For the first couple of days even my ewes would rather not have anyone close to their babies, even the other flock members.

Farrah and her little girl caught sleeping

I thought that this was a sweet scene with the lamb cuddled up to mom. It was completely dark and I tried out the flash on the camera on my new phone.  The phone seems to do as well as my old digital camera when they are close. It sure is convenient.  I love this technology! I think that everyone who has visited here knows Farrah and has scratched her ears.  She has a nice fleece too. This year (and last?) it left the day it was sheared.

The Precious Miracle

This lamb was born 4/3/11 by cesarean after her mom, Janice had to be euthanized. She was very weak and her first day was a real struggle. She was born at 8AM and wasn’t able to take her first few sucks from a bottle until 5PM. She was tube fed colostrum during the day. Everything worked out so I was here to take care of her. Here she is in my living room with me watching “General Conference”, our semi-annual special church service that is broadcast on TV from Salt Lake. More of her story later, but I will say that she is doing great now.

Vanna's first twin

It looks like Vanna’s first twin is going to get a head start on the milk bar before his brother is born.

Vanna and twins

 Here she is a few days later with both lambs. It looks like she is posing.

S’More was expected  to be the first goat to kid. Remember Toasty? She was the one who kept opening the gates for the other goats and the rams to get into the barn. She was first this year and had twin doe kids yesterday. They were up nursing in just minutes. Toasty is a very good mother and she and the kids are doing great.

Toasty and her twin doe kids, 2011

Mom(Toast) and Dad 2010