Desert Weyr Blog
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Garden Bounty
I have a black thumb. I have been known to kill plants easily. However, this year, my stepdad is staying up here, and he always has a garden. We’re doing one, too. It’s been a wild success – lots of peppers and tomatoes, and even a large batch of peas, not to mention the lettuce… Continue reading
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Hay Is Arriving
It’s a bad year for hay with the drought, so we’re getting what we can get, when we can get it. This is a nice batch of grass/alfalfa mix hay that we’ll use to flush the ewes for breeding this winter. Our goal is to go into winter with the barn full. We’ve stored hay… Continue reading
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Dog Days of Summer
It’s summer, and things are very hot. We’re going through a major drought. The hot weather is coming about a month early; we’re getting late July-early August weather in late June and early July. The guard dogs are still on duty, though. Leena and her lambs enjoy finding some shade in the heat of the… Continue reading
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Mountain Mutton
We were honored to provide meat for the celebration of life for Jerry Hatem of Aspen. Our mutton was featured at the barbecue on the back side of Aspen Mountain, overlooking Mt. Hayden, where family and friends gathered to celebrate his life. Take care, everyone. Continue reading
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COVID-19 and Our Farm
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an immediate effect on our farm. Although Colorado has opened up starting this week, we’ve made the decision to close the farm to tours and visits this year. I realize that this is a difficult time and that visiting our farm is a special treat for many, but we cannot… Continue reading
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Not Dead Yet!
OK, so posting on this blog has been low on my priority list, and it hasn’t been getting done lately. However, both the farm and the sheep are doing well, despite almost no online activity. 2020 lambing has finished successfully. We had 23 ewes bred and 43 live lambs. No stillborns and no triplets, which… Continue reading
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2019 Lambing Is Done!
Lambing for 2019 has officially finished. We bred 36 ewes, and every single one of them became pregnant. This is a first for us! Usually, at least one ewe fails to conceive. Sadly, we lost two ewes. One was an accident, and the other was pregnancy toxemia. Our lambing percentages were decent – 57 live… Continue reading
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AI Class Results
We’ve finished our first round of lambing, and the AI Class results are in. Nine total ewes lambed to AI, giving a 26% result. However, as everyone knows, we had some straw failures and other issues where the ewe did not get proper doses of semen. If I remove those sheep from the group, 28… Continue reading
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Scone Recipe and AI Class, Completed
We hosted a class on sheep artificial insemination during the first week of December. Eleven students from all over North America came to learn about the non-surgical AI procedure that Dr. Purdy developed. Students got to practice thawing straws of frozen semen and performing the procedure on our sheep. All told, we inseminated 34 ewes.… Continue reading
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How I Got 15 Meals From a Nine-Pound Heritage Turkey
Thanksgiving is over for this year, and all of the leftover turkey is gone, too (finally). For the last several years, we haven’t had turkey on Thanksgiving. It was because I couldn’t find a locally raised heritage bird. I like the flavor of heritage breeds, and I want to support rare breed conservation. If I… Continue reading