Limerick Link

January  continued the fairly pleasant weather, not much snow and moderate temperatures.  Even though it is still really winter, our thoughts are now turning toward shearing, lambing and puppies; all wonderful spring events.  Of course there are still lots of fences to finish and other spring chores that are not as much fun but the boost of energy that comes with the anticipation of spring and birth makes up for those ones.

Fibre Works Alpacas:  Our big news on the alpaca front is that the Canadian Camelid Fibre Co-operative is now incorporated.  Plans are in the works for the first meeting of members in February and then the much anticipated launch of a membership drive.  We are all very optimistic about this step forward for our industry and hope our Co-op will be able to collect and process the member's fibre clip from this year.

Fibre Works Shetlands:   Our back up rams went in to the ewes on January 2, 2000.  We are using two back up rams this year; one in with a consolidated group of younger ewes and one in with the rest of the mature ewes.  This allows us to direct more feed to the younger group to insure that they are getting enough to finish growing as well as grow their lambs.   In future years, we may put older ewes in with the youngsters.  Ewes past the age of seven or eight can also often benefit from a little extra feed, especially if they are carrying twins.  Our fist lambs are due in early March, then there is a break with the majority ewes due to lamb in April.  We may still have some younger ewes lambing in May.

Fibre, Yarn and the Fibre Works Gallery:  We have sent fibre off to Exotic Fibres of Canada (the Innisfail mill), Thetis Island Spinning Wheel Fibre Works and Custom Woolen Mills of Carstairs.  Depending on turn a around times, we should have yarn coming back to us next month and throughout the spring.  We are doing some 100% alpaca, some alpaca/silk blends as well as blends with our Shetland and other wools.  We think we will have some very exciting products back on the shelves in the next few months.  We will be adding new pictures to the Gallery photo pages in the next week or two as well.

Bergen Norwegian Buhunds:   Treva and Tjalfi had a very nice honeymoon in early January.  If the breeding took, we are expecting puppies around March 11 or 12.  This is our first litter with these dogs and we are very excited about it.  We will be sending out applications to purchase to everyone on our puppy waiting list in the next little while.   The really hard part will be waiting!

Farm Stuff:  We are still waiting for the electrician to finish off some key things at the barn before we can finish some plumbing, before we can get on to the insulation, before we can put up the wall board, etc., etc.  Like I said, the really hard part is waiting.  We had some frost heaving on some of the sheep fencing, so in addition to the new fencing that we have planned for this spring, we will have to fix up a number of other sections, which we hadn't planned for.  After working with the sheep at Crossfield this winter, I am going to try to design a permanent livestock chute with sorting gate for the fencing around our barn.  It would be really handy and would cut down on a lot of work moving panels.