Kristin Kimball shares the news from Essex Farm in Essex, NY:
I was traveling the last two Fridays and did not write the weekly notes. In this season of rapid transition, it feels like the entire world has changed since the last one. Grass grass grass. Seeds seeds seeds. A string of those evanescent days when your sun side is warm and your shade side is cold. The fragile wildflowers in the woods gave way to their assertive, domesticated sisters, the daffodils and the tulips.
All animals are on pasture now, even though the grass is not quite as luxurious as it usually is by May 9th. The ewes were sheared before they went. Mary Lake came over from Vermont to do it. She brought her wall-mounted clippers as well as a helpful sheep-catching friend, and buzzed through 24 head in the first part of a morning. I love to watch her. Her forearms and biceps remind me why I don’t do this work myself. Shearing reveals so much! As the wool comes off, you see the body condition that you were mostly guessing at for the whole winter. There was wide variation this year. Lambs, the new fall-born ewes, and some of the mothers ranged from healthy to fat, while a few – older gals nursing multiples – were thin. Josh, of our full time staff, helped us set up, and then practiced shearing one ewe by hand. It took ten times longer with hand shears than with Mary’s clippers, but it was fun to watch. Mary joked that when he was finished, that ewe looked like she’d been to the fancy salon, while hers had gone to the $8 barber…” [Continue reading the Essex Farm Note.]
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