Come see us at . . .

Stay Fluffed Farm will be doing spinning demonstrations at the Macon County Flywheel on Saturday,  July 30!  We won't have any of the sheep but I'll be spinning & have several things available to look at from sheep to shawl.  There'll be many other great things to look at old & new, other demonstrations going on & plenty of vendors with good food!

We hope you'll say hi & be sure to let me know if you're reading my blog!

County Fair Results

So our county fair was last week.  Randolph County fair, you may have seen us! This was our first year showing our animals & we had a great time! 

 Our silkie rooster placed 3rd in a class of 8 in roosters 1 year & older. 

Our hen placed 3rd in a class of 9 in hens 1 year & older.  The judge was very detailed & helpful.  He gave us some good tips on what to improve in our stock. 

 Fluffy Girl made 3 projects for achievement night.  A poster of colors & markings for her Horseless Horse, which received blue.  A nice travel chicken cage for Chickens, also a blue. Then pictured is the recycled jeans hay bag for Sheep, which not only received blue but also best of show & was chosen to be displayed at the Missouri State Fair!

In 4h, they use a slightly different ribbon system.  A blue ribbon means that the member has done a job & learned to the best of their ability.  It rewards the honest effort of doing their best! They also award the animal shows this way.    A red ribbon is when a judge feels the member has not put their best efforts into their animal or project.  A white is the lowest & pretty well explains itself at this point. 

  Here's our Kenny, the Randolph County in-county reserve champion ram! He earned a nice blanket for this honor.  

Here's a picture of the shetland ewe championship class. The left is Minnie Pearl, our jr ewe lamb as reserve champion shetland ewe.  The right is Loretta, our yearling & champion shetland ewe. 

 This is a nice picture of Loretta & Fluffy Girl during their lead line class.  I made her skirt from sheep to shawl from Loretta's fleece this spring.  She will be added to the breeding group this fall. 

 All loaded & ready to go home! We had a great time at the fair!  They were very supportive of our different little sheep!  We brought home some nice prizes.  We tried to be good breed ambassadors & educate all the people interested in our guys!

Next up Missouri State Fair on August 13 for 4 of our sheep!  If you're there please find us & say hi! 

Busy time

Whew! We've been busy getting ready for our county fair. It seems like we've done so much, but I don't have many pictures to show for it.  LOL.  Achievement night is tomorrow night and we're all ready with our projects.  Fluffy Girl made a travel chicken pen, a hay bag from old jeans, and a poster showing horse colors & some markings.  I'll post pictures with our results in a few days. The important thing is she had very little help & did her best.

We washed our 2 white silkies yesterday so they would be clean & fluffy for the show Tuesday morning.

On a note about chickens, my lovely little cochin hatched 3 blue silkie chicks! 

We worked on more halter training with the lambs. 

We also did a bit of blackberry picking.  We got a nice gallon with easy picking, but haven't had a chance to go again yet.  

That's it for now.  I'll have a post of Fluffy Girl's leadline outfit.  I spun & crocheted her skirt from Loretta's fleece. But I'm going to wait until I can get a picture of her & Loretta together at the show. 

Lots to catch up with!

I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post! It's been busy around the farm.  I'll try to catch you up. 

First off, our breeding program has hit a bit of a snag. Upon closer inspection, more of the yearlings & weanlings than the 1 I thought have bad tails.  For a shetland this is very important! I've tried to include a couple pictures to show what I'm talking about.  In the picture below are some of the weanlings. The white ram lamb on the right is the 1 I knew had a bad tail.  First off, you can actually see it.  LOL. It's long and bushy or wooly! Notice how on the black & morrit (brown) lambs you can't really see their tails. This is good! 

 This picture is a close up of the morrit lamb.  Notice how his tail is pretty short, shaped like a club, and doesn't have wool on the end like the rest of his body.  This is how it should look.  I'm not saying this is a perfect tail, but correct.

Not all is lost! The bad tails will still make good fiber animals or the ewes will make fit a crossbred program. We're going to get through 4h shows over the next 2 months and then make solid decisions for their future! I've thought about starting a crossbred fiber flock. 

If you followed us on Instagram, you'll have seen our baby bunnies. Which the doe ate the next day.  :(  Now, she could have easily stayed on as a fiber animal.  However we have 2 other angoras the same color.  I had a friend who recently had a litter of French angora babies. She wanted one of my color & i wanted one of hers.  So we traded.  Win-win situation! Below is Josephine, which is a mouthful for such a little bunny.  Her nickname is Jo-Jo. Her name comes from the Empress Josephine & the character in Little Women. She's only 9 weeks old! 

We went to a natural dying party last Saturday at a local favorite! It was a girls day & an annual event for 2 friends & myself. It's called the Blue Party, featuring indigo, woad, & Saxon blue. They also have cochineal red & yellow made from the inner bark of the black walnut.

 Here's a bag of my fleece drying a bit, done in saxon blue. 

 Here are the shorts that i dyed using indigo for Fluffy Girl! They used to be white & that just wasn't going to work! LOL. 

All of the natural dying processes could fill numerous posts, but I'm not good enough with it to tell you.  LOL. If you are local and  interested, please check out Hillcreek Fiber Studeo! She is amazing! 

On to the fiber results! 

Saxon blue 

Cochineal red, which came out salmon pink! This is a great example of how different fibers take color differently. 

This is saxon blue followed by a yellow soak! This picture doesn't do this justice! It has such a variety of color in it from the deep saxon blue to almost a seagreen at the tips and the mix in between! It looks like a Caribbean explosion!

This is cochineal red followed by a dip into saxon blue.  It's a nice mix of mauve to purple to blue & i think it'll spin up nicely! 

Below is a picture of them drying. These will all be for sale as spun yarns.