Winners All Around

A friend who raises Jacob sheep in Pennsylvania emailed me that a ewe that came from here won Champion Jacob ewe at the Garden State Sheep & Fiber Festival in New Jersey. Since all the shows I might have gone to out here were cancelled I’ll live vicariously through others’ fun events, and this news prompted me to write this blog post.

This is Royal Unzicker of Ivy Brook Meadows with Meridian Saffron. At the shows I attend in California and Oregon sheep are shown as lambs and yearlings, but Royal was able to enter Saffron in an Aged Ewe class at this show. (Thanks to Brittany Smith for this photo and the one of the ram.)

Here is a baby picture of Saffron in 2017.

Here she is after her first shearing.

This is what her fleece looked like before shearing. Royal bought Saffron in 2018 with the plan that she and two other yearlings could make it to Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival in May by catching a ride with the sheep of another friend who shows back there every year.

Saffron’s sire is bide a wee Buster of the Bide a Wee farm in Oregon. This is a photo from his first season of breeding here.

Buster is on the left with Clark, one of his sons, on the right. I find it interesting to compare the lamb and adult photos. Buster has sired a lot of sheep, some of whom are still here.

The combination of Sonata (the ewe in this photo) and Buster produced another nice lamb, Soprano, in 2018.

This is Soprano as a yearling at Black Sheep Gathering in 2019.

Royal did very well at the show where he showed the Champion Jacob ewe. He also showed the Champion Jacob ram, the Reserve Champions, and Best Flock. This is Patchwork Cooper. Patchwork Farm is where two of my new lambs came from and I think Cooper is somehow related but now I don’t remember how. I sure love those horns.

I think that I should add here, that it’s not all about the showing. All of us have plenty of nice sheep that have never won awards and we all point out that it is just one person’s opinion on one day so it’s not really that important. But, hey, the shows are fun and why not brag when you have the chance? I hope that we’ll be able to do a little bragging next year, but the first step will be that the shows won’t be cancelled. The biggest news I heard about the California State Fair for 2022 is that they have a new category to enter—Cannabis. Is that enough to make sure the fair goes ahead as planned?