Here is a picture of Goblin at 7 weeks old. He's smaller than all his buddies because he was a quad and was born a couple of kilos lighter.
He's also not going to win any prizes for the quality of his fleece or his conformation. But damn he's cute.
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Tatjna
@Tatjna@moo.nz
mastodon 4.7.3Sheep farmer, responsible hedonist, founder of KnowYourStuffNZ. Mostly I post pics of cute lambs but occasionally have a political rant. I know a lot about drugs and drug policy which is a weird juxtaposition to sheep and fibre nerdery but there you go.
Currently in a year long rabbit hole on BCE and deep history that started from learning te reo Māori and being encouraged to explore my whakapapa and kind of got out of hand.
341 Followers
125 Following
48 Posts
Joined April 03, 2023
This morning the three hoggets that wintered with the neighbours came home. Because Joel obligingly agreed to help, we also had assistance from Tempest, who is pictured smugly returning after making sure the sheep were going in the right direction.
Not pictured - Tempest running away from the sheep after she accidentally got in front of them as they came down the driveway.
But hey, not every farm has a sheepcat.
This is Genie. She thinks she is the queen and loves to look down her nose at you.
She's not wrong in terms of her breeding but I feel her grooming could use some work.
She's due to be shorn within the next 3 weeks - it'll be interesting to see how haughty she is without her floof.
This little brown dude doesn't yet have a name and I feel like that's an oversight.
Like his extrovert mum, he's super confident and is the ringleader in any zoomies or other lamb shenanigens.
Here he is flanked by two minions. On the right is Fairy, showing the pretty little features that gave her her name. On the left is I dunno, some thug.
I feel like all Peek needs is a remote and a beer and she'll be set for life.
Puku's belly trap is not the same as other cats'. His is more like trapping you there for ages. He will literally grab your hand and put it back on his belly if he thinks you haven't patted it enough.
I think he was a dog in a past life
Back in May I lost my old sheepdog Minty. She was 15 and had been blind for about 4 years but was still keen and worked right up to the day she died.
I've just agreed to take on another old working dog. Meet Noss. He's 11 and ready to retire from a 3000 hectare sheep station to a cushy job on a small flat farm with lazy sheep. I'll be picking him up in early October.
I'm excited about having a dog again, and also working with a dog that can actually see.
Here is the result of my spinning marathon over the weekend. This will eventually be yarn from which I'll make a couple of my competition entries for next year's conference.
I'm especially pleased with myself that I've managed to spin about twice the diameter of my default yarn for four whole spools and it's more or less consistent.
I see much plying in my future.
Harking back to the leaner tree from 11 Sept, it came down yesterday with three others, as predicted.
Surprisingly, it took only about half an hour to clear this with hand saws.
There are more trees to come but no wind today so hopefully this lot will be sorted before the next lot come down.
This video is a bit like one of those sneezes where you do all the gasping and prep but never actually sneeze.
Lil shits stopped popcorning as soon as they saw me and just sort of gawped like a bunch of tiny muppet clones.
They are so similar that I'm afraid I might end up taking the wrong lambs to a show with the wrong ewe. I know someone who did that once and this year I can see how it happened!
Today, after several years of relative obscurity on here, I received two messages from different men, neither of whom I know, attempting to persuade me to DM with them.
Gents, fyi this totally doesn't come across suss AT ALL. Except it does, and any woman who's been on the internet more than 5 minutes is not going to be flattered or interested.
I have been on the internet more than 5 minutes, just saying.
For interest, here is a picture of my muddy gumboot.
First lambs have arrived on Random Farm, a couple of days early but lively and healthy. From here it'll probably be nothing but lamb spam for the next few weeks so brace yourselves.
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
I am baffled by the kind of thinking that suggests we don't have the grid capacity to support NZ moving to EVs, while simultaneously supporting plonking giant data centres all over the shop.
I suspect that it's just people being arses, but if it isn't I'd love to hear a clear argument for how this works.
It's been a few days so please have a few lambs to play catch up.
The oldest are a month old now so they'll all be getting vaccinated next weekend.
In this pic I love how the youngest lamb (the little brown guy) has one pricked up ear and appears to be the ringleader of all the older lambs around him.
His mum is like this too and makes herself popular at shows by hanging her head over the yard rail asking for pats.
Boosted by @DataKnightmare@mastodon.xyz
"And in the middle of it all, Moore lobbed up the one line that every Republican has been clinging to like a man on a sinking dinghy:
“Every immigrant in the world wants to come to the United States.”
And Steve Keen, bless his fucking heart, just looked at him and said:
“Nobody wants to go there now, mate.”
https://ifloz.substack.com/p/nobody-wants-to-come-to-america-mate
Today's pic is Amber, Panda, and Mist looming in a vaguely threatening but not actually kind of way.
This is what happens when I try to get enough distance to fit them all in the pic. Otherwise all I get is nostril close ups. Thus, you get to see my lily white leg too.
Dyeing weekend is going better than the photo would indicate.
This is step 1: indigo (acid dye cos alkalinity destroys protein) at 2/3 strength. It's actually more vibrant than the photo suggests.
Now step 2 mordanting, ready for step 3 dyeing with goldenrod flowers for hopefully a foresty green.
I've not done this 3-step process before, wish me luck.
Here is a picture of our farm manager. She was photographed while having a short rest in between inspecting the garden shed for rodents, and touring us around the farm to give us our jobs for the winter.
She is a hard taskmistress - the list is now longer than her tail.
Replying to
@chopsstephens@mastodon.nzoss.nz I knew about it because of being on the land and getting regular updates about it from Ravensdown.
We put fert on this year at an elevated cost because we don't know when we'll be able to do it again, either price or availability wise.
Meanwhile, we're exploring options for other forms of soil fertility maintenance. Because yeah, thanks America. Not.
Replying to
@mttaggart@infosec.exchange I've never worked in online safety but I have decades of experience in drug harm reduction and the headline learning from all that is that banning stuff doesn't stop people from doing it, it just makes it more harmful.
My little flock of deck sheep is growing! The latest (the small ones) just appeared one day. I do know where they came from, but acquiring deck sheep by having them show up with no fanfare is my absolute favourite way to get them. Just look and there's more, yay!
Last night we cracked the first bottle of 2026 cider - this is an Asian pear variety and is beautifully clear, slightly sparkling, and quite mild. Probably the best cider we've produced so far - hats off to @j@moo.nz for his efforts on this one.
The apple cider was bottled yesterday so we'll give that a month and hopefully that will be just as good!
Have a picture of more spaghetti squash than we know what to do with (and two sad little butternuts).
Anyone got good recipes? We normally stuff them but looking for a few more options.
Replying to
@futuresprog Additionally, FE is generally picked up during low grazing (eg it lives in the base of the pasture). If the panels increase pasture growth you'd be less likely to be grazing the base.
Also, grass that grows in shade is less palatable so the grass directly under the panels won't be grazed as hard.
Finally, FE creates photosensitivity, so if you have sheep with it in your flock, they will absolutely love having easy shade to hide in.
Does that help?
Here is a picture of this morning's Wairarapa Drama Sky.
Taking bets on what the "appendage" might signify.
The final dyed skeins. This isn't quite what I was aiming for but I quite like the effect. So does Mr Random so I've decided to try to repeat the process and see if I get the same result. I need about the same amount again for a jersey.
Luckily I wrote down what I did!
Score from Capital Fibre Fest: a Swedish gotland lamb fleece in medium silver grey from Asty Farms.
I like how soft gotland is for its micron, and this being a lamb fleece is extra soft but still has beautiful long locks.
I intend to use it for overdying and also to knit items that look like chainmail.
Replying to
@cstross Meanwhile there's a whole lot of people trying to convince us that solar farms cause heat under the panels and it just doesn't compute how they come to that conclusion.
Submissions aren't open yet but it's good news that this bill passed its first reading despite the usual suspects saying the usual things.
How it started, and how it's going
Replying to
@futuresprog PS I doubt that solar panels would necessarily improve fleece yield and quality here except by having generally healthier sheep.
Given how robust our sheep are and how little their fleece is worth compared with Australian merinos, I can see the $$ benefits to us being less than for them.
Replying to
@kudra@aus.social I have read it and yes, we all are. It's a tough time. I feel privileged to be in a position of already growing some of our own food and having knowledge that allows us to continue, but it's still hard not to let it all *waves hands vaguely at the world* get under your skin.
Replying to
@sabik@rants.au @fasnix@fe.disroot.org @vampirdaddy@chaos.social @chopsstephens@mastodon.nzoss.nz I have heard that many Aussie farmers are doing sheep instead of grain this year because of fuel costs. This means keeping all the ewe lambs to build up flocks instead of selling them. Price of lamb likely to go up (at farm gate and in supermarket) in NZ as a result, since we share a lot of markets with them.
Don't know how true it is but seems feasible
Replying to
@futuresprog Yeah, Te Aroha is in the humidity band that has higher FE likelihood than here. We get it, but anywhere north of central plateau is worse off.
I think dairy results could be translated to fleece, given the quantity and quality of both are reliant on the wellbeing of the sheep. Fleece from humid areas isn't high quality anyway, it tends to be yellow, so I think focusing on the dollar value returns on healthier animals might be the key, such as meat and milk.
Replying to
@the_wub@mastodon.social Do not get me started on Harry Anslinger and his bullshit. Him and his thinly disguised racist vendettas are responsible for more deaths that we can even count, never mind how much money has been wasted that could have been spent on making the world a better place.
Replying to
@kudra@aus.social Joel got a bit preppy and his main concern was making sure that our pets had enough food. So now we have a massive stash of Tux lol
Replying to
@kudra@aus.social Barley is a crop that's grown around here so might be a good alternative option for us in terms of climate. Also - beer!
Replying to
@kudra@aus.social Apparently oats are one of the best crops for home grows. I wish I liked them better. Mixed with other stuff they'd be ok though, so probably worth a look for us anyway.
I feel a bit bad that I cracked up at the idea of panic buying a hoe but also it's way more useful than toilet paper.
Replying to
@kudra@aus.social We basically bought ourselves 3ish years by doing it this year but I think the future (for us at least) is likely to be destocking by about half, utilising fallow and cover crops, and bringing in a mob of cattle once or twice a year to eat and poop.
Which we can do because we're small and not reliant on intensive production for our livelihood. Not sure how those who are will cope.
Replying to
@kudra@aus.social I think it's likely to be any food that's intensively farmed tbh. I remember the fert requirements for things like grain cropping and market gardening way back when, and they were fuel heavy too. Like, many people can cut back meat and dairy but if staples like bread and cornflakes become luxuries we are in serious trouble.
Replying to
@civillibertynz@mastodon.social
This is so many levels of gross.
My personal protest of pointedly giving my tax cut to beggars will continue regardless.
Replying to
@Adrenochrome@mastodon.social It's probably got lots of uses but my first thought on seeing the one on the right was "wow it even has an orifice hook!" 🤣
Replying to
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social Yes I thought it was clear that my pity is for those who are stuck there.
As you can probably imagine, here in NZ we're one of the fantasy countries that rich USians want to bolt to. Our govt is not as blatantly fascist as their and will hopefully get booted at the next election.
However, what we don't need is a bunch of them bringing their cultural imperialism here.
Replying to
@samueljohnson@mstdn.social Yep. I mean everyone's allowed one mistake but did he have to be our one? 🤣