Gotland Sheep for Sale

Gotlands are a medium size, Northern Short Tail breed originating on the Isle of Gotland off the coast of Sweden. They were developed as a pelt sheep. We are focusing on handspinning fleeces through selection and our choice of Foundation ewes (mainly Finnsheep and Shetlands). They are generally friendly and rather inquisitive sheep, and quite calm. Halter training is a breeze, but you need to watch any supplies and tools that come within their reach!

The original Gotland color is a unique blue grey. In our flock, due to the influence of our foundation ewes, we have black, white and brown sheep in addition to the classic grey. All of the colors are beautiful in the field and spun, either natural or dyed. Gotland wool is on the fine side of the luster longwools and has wonderful luster in the mass of curls. The white Gotland/Finn cross especially tends to produce a soft handling, wavy, eye popping lustrous fleece.

EverRanch Snickers

Our Gotland sheep for sale are posted on Washington Wool dot Net. I would keep them all if we had space and resources. They are really nice!

http://www.washingtonwool.net/show2b/EverRanch_Farm

EverRanch Angie

The ewes and rams are listed as separately. We're also offering Gotland semen from 3 rams in New Zealand - at our cost. These genetics will offer diverse bloodlines and complement those from the UK, and we'll truly have "Global Gotlands". These rams are from Hamish Black's Chocolate Wool NZ flock. Hamish selects for handspinning fleeces and sells them worldwide.

"Flash", Gotland ram in New Zealand

EverRanch Bunny - one of our 50% Gotland/50% Shetland ewes. (NFS)

We will send fleece samples, photos and/or videos on request.

- Franna

How does your Garden grow?

This is the first year in many that I've put in a garden. It just seemed to be the "right" time. Even though I'm working at Take Root Farm and get to share in the bounty there, some things are just better from your own garden - and in quantity!

There are Peas, Beans, Carrots, Leeks, Tomatoes, Corn, Spaghetti Squash, Sugar Pumpkins, Yukon Gold and Red Potatoes. The peas (center front) and beans (left front) had disappointing germination rates, but there still should be enough for the two of us. The single row of carrots (more rows were/are planned) are in the far left front corner, leeks are in the center front between the snap peas and shelling peas. The potato "jungle" is at the right, with tomatoes between the potatoes and peas. The corn is well past my knees, and the squashes are starting to crawl :-)

Here's a closeup of the Roma tomatoes. For such wimpy bushes, they sure have nice tomatoes set on already. There are eight tomato bushes, each a different variety, cherry and regular size, red and orange, round and roma shape. The weather here has been wonderful for tomatoes this year - maybe we'll even get a decent crop!I just let the lambs out in the pasture surrounding the garden, so had to fence it off with electronet. Just imagine (Nancy...!) what havoc sheep can do in a garden! Even if they don't eat everything, those little hooves could trample everything beyond recognition. Later, sheepies, later you get the garden surplus and plants - but not tomatoes!

I bring rejects and trimmings home from the TRF sometimes. This week, the rams got turnip greens, beets, and reject carrots complete with tops. They were like wooly gourmets!

... looking forward to harvest at home,

Franna

Gotland Lamb Update

It just never ceases to amaze me how fast time goes. In my last post the chickens had just arrived, lambs were still coming, and it was cold and rainy. Well, the chicks are half grown, lambing is complete (I think!), and the weather is the best it's been on Memorial Day weekend for many years! The kittens, Toby and Catrina, we started bottle raising in April are now racing around the room, climbing up my legs and generally taking over the house.

I started back to work at Take Root Farm for the second year (VERY busy right now), planted a garden (or half a garden yet), am trying to purchase 20 acreas adjacent to ERN (wish us luck!), working on semen and possible sheep import from New Zealand (more luck needed), started feeding and selling Chaffhaye (WONDERFUL product!), finished Clifford's Junior Hunter title (Yeaaaaaaa!), judged agility for the Irish Water Spaniel Club of America (excellent working teams), and am making progress toward our move to Whidbey Island (it's **sooooooo** hard to wait).

It's been busy. All the while the lambs are growing. A couple are BIG, a couple are small, and most are in between. Several of the % Gotland lambs are shown below:

This handsome lad isn't one of the lambs - this is the sire to many of our % Gotland lambs. We used 3 sires this year, the AI sire - Daniel, our white 50% Gotland/50% Finn - Kibbles and this boy. His name is EverRanch Jack, and he is 75% Gotland/25% Shetland. He has a very attractive face and lovely curly, lustrous fleece.


Two of the ewes in Jack's group are not part of our Gotland foundation flock. They're Scottish Blackface ewes Sweet Pea and Eve. Their lambs will be market lambs. They are still very cute. This is Borax, Sweet Pea's son. He has a lot of presence, and is very stocky.



This is Eve's ewe lamb. Just look at the fleece on her! If Jack can produce this type of fleece with a Scottie, he has a good future producing % Gotlands!


These next two are very interesting. The first one, Ricki, is one of Niblet's quadruplets. It is very interesting to see that her body "spots" aren't really spots at all, but part of the grey pattern, seen often in Shetlands as wild body swirls that change over to a fairly uniform grey as the secondary fibers come in. You can see this change to grey already in her lighter body areas. I expect her to keep quite a bit of white on her head, although I've seen Shetlands with this type of marking change to grey, as well.


Next is "Ricki Clone" or Cloe, one of Freckles' twins. Her body is also turning grey. Both of these girls are Jack daughters, so are 37% Gotland/13% Shetland/50% Finnsheep. Cloe is a real standout among the lambs with her long legs and statuesque carriage.



This boy is a Jack son out of Anneke. He is 62% Gotland/38% Shetland/25% Lincoln. Both he and his white twin brother have gorgeous lustrous curls showing their partial Lincoln heritage.


This next photo is Charcoal, a 50% Gotland/50% Finn (Freckles) ewe. She has triplets this year out of the AI ram, Daniel. Charcoal has the softest handling fleece of our adult % Gotland ewes.

Here is Charcoal's threesome - 2 ewes and 1 ram - 75% Gotland/25% Finnsheep. I'm very pleased with them.

Brain the white Finnsheep was our other ewe that had Daniel lambs. Below are 2 of her triplet girls. First is her grey girl...

and her larger white girl, Chamois. Chamois has a very soft fleece, and is another lamb with nice presence - long straight topline, excellent, long legs, and that way of carrying herself that is just special. The Finn/Gotland combination will be very useful for producing finer fleeces with the unique Gotland luster and curl.


This last little one is also very special. Angie is out of Bunny (Gotland/Shetland) and Kibbles (Gotland/Finn). She is therefore 50% Gotland, a double F2. She's the first of our white % Gotlands to have the looser curl typical of the grey % Gotlands rather than the tight pincurls seen on Chamois.


There are quite a few more, of course. Their photos will be posted in time. Many are for sale! I can deliver to Black Sheep Gathering.

Of course, over time, there are crises large and small that have to be dealt with. We lost the Scottish Blackface ram near-yearling a couple weeks ago. Most likely he was mortally bashed by one of the other rams. He was a gentle soul, and low ram in the group. It's always sad to lose one of the sheep. The most recent crisis - this afternoon, the "Big Ewe" group got into the pasture with the bird feeder. I had just filled the feeder (of course!), and (also of course) the sheep emptied it. They're confined in the Hilton for closer observation and so far, look okay (knock on wood!).

My Economic Stimulus Plan is coming along. We've sold a few fleeces, a couple of sheep, some used equipment, and some Chaffhaye. The businesses that we've supported as a result include Superior Fibers, Meadowwood Dairy, Skagit Fresh Natural Beverages, and the local espresso joint. We have plans to eat at the local "Five Star Diner" but went there on a Monday when they were closed. It is still to come.

My own Pay It Forward projects are coming slowly. Tina and Tina, I hope you can wait a little longer. It'll be worth it!

sheesh. Each of these topics could take a whole blog by itself. More is to come!

- Franna

Teaser Photos

- Franna

Coming up for Air ... or Down for the Third Time?

I know some of you have more sheep than we do, and more lambs in a short period of time - Theresa, for one. We've had 21 lambs in the last 3 1/2 days, including the third set of triplets and a set of quads! I haven't really kept track (other than writing them down) of who's got what, who're possible keepers and who's for sale. There WILL BE Shetlands and % Gotlands for sale! There are still at least 6 ewes left to go.

In addition to lambing, we are bottle feeding a couple of kittens every 6 hours (down from every 4 hours) I found in our hay and straw hauling horse trailer, this morning took delivery of 102 Colored Range chicks, are (supposed to be) helping at the Shepherds' Extravaganza through Sunday, are trying to get the garden in, on top of the rest of the usual chores.

The individual sheep are gestating 3 to 6 days longer than previous years, and that's thrown our whole schedule off. No one appears to be in labor at this time, so I actually might get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight. Yeaaaa!

We got to see Joey + Rory in concert tonight at the Puyallup Spring Fair/Shepherds' Extravaganza. Joey + Rory were finalists from the TV show Can You Duet, and Rory is a very successful Country songwriter with hits including Blake Shelton's number 1 "Some Beach" and one of my favorites, the as yet unreleased "Welcome Home". It was a fun mix of serious and lighthearted songs, including one about Granny in her 'Daisy Dukes', their version of Free Bird, and their hit "Cheater, Cheater". Dave got his CD signed and we got to talk briefly with them (as did many! other fans). If you get a chance to hear them, do it!

(image from http://www.myspace.com/joeyandrory)

As an aside, while searching for information on the songs Rory's written, I found out that he co-produced Blaine Larsen's first album, as well as co-writing Blaine's single "How Do You Get That Lonely?" Blaine is a local boy, and another of my (and my mom's) favorite artists.

Okay - break time's over! Back to barn checks, feeding and BED!

- Franna

My Economic Stimulus Package

I've been thinking about the economy for quite a while. We, the people, seem to be waiting for a handout, watching to see what everyone else is doing, going about our lives, scrimping and grumbling, and just hoping it will all "get better".

High gas prices last year hiked everything up *a lot*, and prices didn't come back down with the gas prices. Prices at the grocery store are insane, power and gas went up and aren't coming down. People, including us, have cut way back in spending on non-necessities and on luxury items. This is hurting small businesses, many of whom are really struggling or have even gone out of business.

This is not news.

The gut reaction is to raise your own prices and cut spending wherever possible. However, one of the few things I remember from my economics class in college - ages ago - was that in a healthy economy, every dollar spent, is respent, respent again, and respent some more. One dollar put into the system can end up making 6 to 8 times that in a chain of sales.

So, to counter my tendency to stop all unnecessary spending and reduce that dollar in the economy to only a dollar in sales, and instead of waiting for someone else to do "something", I'm going to do my little piece.

Our farm sells a few things - sheep, wool, roving, chickens, pigs, Chaffhaye, some services. For the rest of 2009, I'm going to CUT my prices by 10%, PLUS take 10% to spend in the local economy on items that I've cut out.

Hopefully, this will do a little bit to put more money in the economy. My customers save 10%, 10% of our sales will go back into our local economy, and I get a little luxury. Sounds like a Win-Win-Win to me!

I challenge you all to do the same or something similar. If you buy something from us, please spend the 10% you save on another local, small business. Think about challenging your suppliers, customers, friends and relatives to do the same. My 10% will make a very small difference. Many 10%'s will make more difference. Let's make a difference together.

- Franna

April Fool!

The calendar says it's April First. I think it's an April Fool's joke.

It can't be April First. It's snowing outside. And it's sticking! It's darned cold.

At least it isn't sticking to the pavement... yet.

Lambs are due. Lambs are overdue. Maybe the ewes have a comlink to Mother Nature and they're waiting for the Real Spring.

Hello? Real Spring? - We're READY for you....!

- Franna