Leicester Longwool Sheep!

So, I've been drooling over these sheep for a while now. Yes, drooling. I know I'm odd, but it's in a good way. They are the classic Beatrix Potter English countryside fluffy white sheep. And, as per my usual luck, extremely hard to find (i.e. EXPENSIVE). Only a handful of people in the US even raise them, and they're classified as 'critically rare' by the American Livestock Breed Conservancy. I had looked for this breed online only to find a very small number of breeders, none closeby and only one in my state. The out of state breeders wanted $600+ for a single lamb, and that wasn't including shipping, veterinary certificates and state mandated lab work. Around $1000 for ONE sheep was a little to steep a price for me. I gave up.


Remember I said there was a breeder in Utah? Yeah, I tried to contact her before I even bought these soay sheep, but she never got back to me. Until today! The one breeder here has been trying to sell her flock off and on for nearly a year. The last time I saw the ad it had been up for almost a month, and dropped off the board before I could get the number. Today I saw the same ad up with 2 days left before expiring. I texted her, and they're still available.I'll be contacting her to see if she's willing to sell them individually next year, maybe in the spring! Since it doesn't look like she's in a huge hurry to sell them, I'm hoping she'll be receptive to the idea. Yup. I'm a little excited. :D

My goals for the farm would then have to be changed if we do get these sheep. Instead of goats, we'd be doing sheep, which would be ok by me. I do really love sheep and they're much easier to contain than goats. Our fences would be ok for sheep; they wouldn't keep a wanderlusting goat in for more than 10 seconds, max. I was talking to my mom (aka the fiber diva) about possibly marketing the sheep products (rovings, batts, yarn, fleeces, etc.), as she's in an area much more receptive to humanely produced, sustainable farm-to-consumer type products. Salt Lake City has a small, family run fiber mill that handles smaller farm orders. We could get batts, roving, yarn - basically whatever would sell. Instead of trying to market raw fleeces, which probably wouldn't go very well, we could make it a value added product for knitters, fiber enthusiasts, spinners, etc. I think they'd do well out her way, especially with the number of year round farmers markets, yarn shops and other venues to market the products. Utah, unfortunately, just doesn't excel in those areas. We have very limited farmers markets, not a lot of yarn shops and somehow an almost non-existent fiber arts community. For a state that profited greatly from the sheep industry, you wouldn't know it by the lack of fiber anything in this place. Ugh. Sometimes I really miss California. If I could earn enough $$$ off the sheep products to pay for the feed it'd be worth it. Keep ya posted!

Meet the girls!

Here at Saudafell we have a few new residents...12 to be exact. Meet the girls! This is the look chickens give when thinking: 'What in the &*%!$ is THAT?!'. Yeah, they weren't too enthused about having a big silver camera stuck in their cage.

We have 2 Austra Whites, 2 Buff Brahmas, 1 Light Brahma, 1 Black Langshan, 2 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Rhode Island Red, 1 Delaware and 2 Black Sex Link (aka Black Star) chicks.

The Brahmas, Langshan, Orpingtons and Delaware are heirloom breeds that have 'threatened' and 'watch' status according to the ALBC - American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. With fewer people raising these wonderful birds on family farms, and with the introduction of production breeds in commercial chicken operations, many of these old-timey chicken breeds are in danger of extinction. Yes, extinction. Crazy, huh? If the work of countless numbers of old farmers in developing these breeds is lost, we're facing a bigger problem as human beings on this planet. The genetics these birds bring with them were developed through methodical selection for various factors over long periods of time (sometimes hundreds of years) including hardiness in heat/cold, laying ability, activity in foraging, calmness and even ability to resist frost bite. Just like the threat of monocultures in modern agriculture, the threat of bottlenecking genetics in animal species is also clear and present. We are happy to do our part in keeping these breeds around and thriving on our little piece of the world, and look forward to lots of eggs this summer! And quiche...and custard...and omelets..and..well,you get the idea. As you can tell, I'm pretty excited about the food part of their contributions!