Spring has been an on again, off again thing this year.  First warm balmy temps in February followed by a deep freeze shortly after we sheared the sheep.  More coats on sheep, funny to see but verging on ridiculous if you are into a minimal animal husbandry style!  Then a warm balmy start to March followed by a deep freeze as we approached lambing.  As the mud deepens, we realize that in addition to more fences and more gates, we desperately need more gravel!

Fibre Works Alpacas:  Shelly, Zoe and Raya all look fat and happy as do the geldings.  The winter was not hard on these easy keepers.   We have added two black females and a dark fawn female weanling to the herd.  We are presently shopping for a black stud prospect, to coincide with our permanent move to Bergen.  Moonshine and Diamante are for sale:  Alpacas for Sale .

Fibre Works Shetlands:  Lambing got off to a slow start.  First possible due date was March 11 but no body got going until Wild Rose on April 1 with two ewe lambs.  We ended lambing with 11 ewe lambs and 7 rams lambs, a much better gender split than last year!   We will assess fleece and colour and horn development and then put our sales list together, likely in early summer.  We have a few lambs with head spots, some nice blacks and moorits, greys and fawns, no whites.  We  are looking for another fine fleeced, single coated, black ram with decent horns and temperament to purchase.  We may consider importing from the US again to diversify bloodlines.

Fibre, Yarn and the Fibre Works Gallery:  We have a wonderful new white cria yarn and a fawn cria marled yarn back from Thetis Island.  A bit of vegetation still in the fibre but beautiful hand.   We also have some Shetland fleeces up on the Gallery shelves now.  We have some very clean, fine lamb fleeces in beautiful colours.  More should be available once we finish shearing the alpacas.

Bergen Norwegian Buhunds:   Nissa has arrived from Norway.  She has a wonderful temperament and nice conformation.  We call her the little Viking barbarian as she does not know our house rules yet.  She loves to jump on everything and everyone but she is so happy and exuberant about it that it is infectious.  She came into season at the end of March so has not had too much obedience work yet.   Nissa passed her annual eye check in May and we expect that our next litter will be Nissa x Tjalfi.  We had some sad news as the May eye check revealed that Treva has developed cataracts that may be heritable so she will be pulled from our breeding program.  The good news is that the cataracts appear to be stable and do not seem to affect her vision.