I always like to get photos of all the sheep before shearing. I can go back and compare before and after shearing photos (which I find interesting) and I can find photos of some of the favorites as they have grown up. Yesterday I spent a ridiculous amount of time editing the sheep pages on the website to reflect which sheep are in the flock now. That included making sure I had photos of all the sheep—and I do have updated photos of almost all of them. You can view Our Ewes here and The Rams (and wethers) here.

When I post photos on those pages they are usually of the whole sheep, but I’ll include some close-up head shots here.

Meridian Cashew (Meridian Jasper x Meridian Dilly), born in 2020 and bred to Meridian Silverado. I love this ewe’s horns.

This is Dilly, the dam of Cashew, above. She will be 5 this spring.

I plan to start paying better attention to my ewes’ horn growth. A friend has focused on horns for quite awhile and she has a flock full of ewes with stunning horns. See PatchworkFarm.

Dilly is out of Honey, a ewe who also has nice horns. She will be 7 when she lambs this year.

I was thrilled to be able to bring in a couple of Patchwork ewe lambs last summer. This is Patchwork BettyLou.

This is BettyLou’s friend, Patchwork Amara. She is a beautiful lilac ewe. I did not breed them in the fall because I thought they were too small. It will be exciting to see what lambs they will produce next year. In the meantime I’ll enjoy their lovely fleeces.

At the same time I brought in BettyLou and Amara, Hillside Hannah’s Grace came from Michigan, another ewe with nice horns. I have a T-shirt that reads “You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy a sheep and it’s almost the same thing.” I agree with that sentiment.

A friend of mine is the one who arranged shipping for sheep from three different flocks and I was lucky enough to be able to include sheep in the trailer. If those three lambs made me happy, adding another sheep would make me happier still, right? This is Sweetgrass Tranquility, a three year old ewe due to lamb in March. She is from the Sweetgrass flock in Michigan.

Sweetgrass Eilwen is Tranquility’s buddy.

Since I have gone off the original track to the sheep I bought this summer I thought I should be thorough. This is Hillside Gabby’s Barrett, a ram lamb who bred 7 or 8 ewes in October. I can’t wait for lambing!

Back to the home-grown sheep. This is Meridian Trina (Meridian Axle x Meridian Terri). You can see that her horns, although acceptable, are not as desirable. She is a 4-horn ewe with horns that are fused and therefore somewhat funky looking.

Trina’s dam is Meridian Terri, a ewe who also has fused horns on one side.

Look at Terri’s fleece. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s not all about the horns. There is a lot to try and get right with this breed.

Meridian Sonata is the oldest ewe here. She’ll be 10 when she lambs in March.

Meridian Sylvia is Sonata’s daughter. She has nice upper horns, but the lateral horns aren’t very stout. She was a ewe worth keeping though.

Soprano is another Sonata daughter. I don’t like putting coats on the sheep because I’d rather see the sheep than the coat (and it’s a lot of work to keep up with coats). But this fleece will be stunning because it will be so clean.

Maybe I’ll share more sheep photos tomorrow.