From the Pastures: Time to get outside

March is a month that I sometimes struggle with. The weather is starting to warm up, then a cold snap comes through. It is a month of anticipation for the upcoming spring and summer projects. I do like planning our vegetable and flower gardens. This year, my granddaughter wants to grow a lot of sunflowers.

There are a lot of activities to anticipate on the farm, also. We will be shearing soon and lambing starts the first of May. March is a good time to check supplies for both events. Also getting the barn ready by setting up lambing pens and making sure buckets, gates and feed pans are clean. After the cold winter months, I am looking forward to getting outside.

In the mill we have been busy spinning yarn again. In January there were some equipment issues we had to work through that caused some delays. Everything is running well again. A customer asked to have some of their white wool dyed and then spun. The green, blue and red colors came out nicely and the yarn looks great. They will have a lot of yarn to use for some fun knitting projects.

We were recently a vendor at the Illinois Fiber Festival in Bloomington. It was amazing how many people attended that love to do hand-spinning. They were very interested in the roving from our Shetland sheep. I met a lot of creative people who do amazing work with wool. A couple more events are happening this spring. April 5 is the Stephenson County Fiber in Cedarville. There are several classes available on different fiber arts. If you like to travel, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is very interesting. It is held on May 3-4 at the fairgrounds in West Friendship, Maryland. There are a lot of sheep at this festival.

Closer to home, the Illinois Lamb & Wool Producers are planning the annual sheep day for March 22 at the University of Illinois Animal Sciences building. The event starts at 8:30 a.m. and includes talks on sheep nutrition, vaccinations for flocks, information on the National Sheep Improvement program and opportunities for the U.S. sheep Industry.

Have a great month!