Sheep Shearing

It's that time of year again when we must shear our sheep.  It is a long job for us as homesteaders because we are not professionals nor do we have those thousand dollar shears!  This is our fifth year shearing our sheep.  We started off with three sheep; now we have over thiry. 

Our sheep have been bred for their fiber.  We have Gulf Coast Sheep which is also known as Gulf Coast Native, LA Native and FL Native.  It is a surviver...like the Cracker cow, Cracker horse, or Mustang.  It is naturally foot rot resistant and parasite resistant.  In fact, even though we live in the south, we don't have these problems with our sheep!  We honest only worm them once a year. 

Our sheep come from the Perkin's line which has been bred for many years specifically for fleece quality.  In fact, our first two sheep came straight from Dempsey's farm.  Spinners love to get their hands on our fleece because it is so nice...and rare. 

We have only sheared three sheep so far, but tomorrow we will be getting three more done as they are sold and will be leaving the farm this week.  I will take pictures and show you more in depth how we shear and talk about the different shears that homesteaders can purchase...the pros and the cons. 

Gardening Outside the Box

This spring I noticed a lush, tender weed growing in my garden. My compost pile at the time lined the outside of my garden on one side. I noticed on the inside of the fence abutting the pile, the weed was up to triple the size of the same type weed growing in other parts of the garden. After looking at the situation, I decided that would be a perfect spot for my lettuce and spinach! I pulled up the weed plant, and replanted with spinach and a mesclun mix, which did quite well. The moisture and leached nutrients from the pile on the other side of the fence really made a difference! I decided to line another side of my garden with leaves and brush to increase the benefit along my garden’s edge. So far, so good!

HOWEVER. I am kicking myself for one part of that great idea. I just researched what type of weed I was pulling, and discovered that it was chick weed. This is a highly nutritious wild food that can be eaten fresh or cooked, and tastes very similar to spinach. And here I was just yanking it and throwing it over the fence on the compost pile! I tried some today and it really does taste like spinach. Live and learn!

The Benefits of Mulching!

Mulching. I started doing it for the first time this year and I really like the results! Mulching is simply putting some kind of material over the roots of a plant. Some people use newspapers, hay, leaves, wood chips, landscape cloth, grass clippings, pine needles/pine straw, or plastic sheeting. I am cheap and I use the hay that the goats don’t eat…works superbly! Whatever you use, the benefits of mulching are many-fold.

It really cuts down on weeds, which certainly helps the plant.

Mulching helps retain moisture, and keeps the plant roots from drying out and stressing, which will reduce productivity.

It has the benefit of keeping the soil temperature at a more uniform constant, which helps the plant not to stress so much in the high temperature part of the day. In the winter, a thick layer of mulch will help protect plant roots from freezing temperatures.

A mulch of organic material will break down and help enrich the soil. I have been using perennial peanut hay for mulching everything in my garden, from blueberries and strawberries to garlic and green beans…they love it!

Now…some plants don’t really need the helping hand that mulch provides. My prickly pear cactuses are on their own, as are most of my herbs that really don’t seem to need much help. Also…if you are in an area where slugs and snails might be a problem, I would suggest applying diatomaceous earth on the ground before putting down the mulch, and maybe a sprinkling over the top when you are done.

Happy mulching!