Shiloh Wool at Bolwarra - new lambs and lots of rain!

 

It's been an interesting year for Shiloh Wool! We've settled into our new home  at Bolwarra and I've got the 'shop' and dyeing area sort of organized - a bit of work to do yet. I did lots of yarn-dyeing prior to the Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo in July and I discovered that although I had plenty of water (once the rains came and filled the tanks!) the cooler weather meant the dyes took longer to set. In the summer the opposite occurs - lots of warm sunshine so it's easy to set the dyes quickly but conserving water is a challenge. We're all learning how to cope with tank water only.
It's also been a very wet year - even for this high rainfall area so the locals say! We lost two lambs because their mothers became caste and couldn't get up on their feet to tend to their newborn lambs. We usually lamb in autumn/early winter and in my eagerness to increase the number of coloured sheep I joined six ewes in March which meant lambing in august. I didn't consider the fact that they would be heavy with wool at lambing, plus I couldn't have known it would be so wet, and these factors combined caused the problems. However we have four healthy lambs, two ewes and two rams, one brown and one black of each praise God!

 

We will be shearing again in early November. This year we are setting up a shearing area in our new shed so it can all be done at home without having to transport sheep to the shearing shed. It's a

work in progress!

I will post pics of the fleeces here as soon as I have them weighed and classed. Stay tuned!