Catch up

When spring rolls around the time to blog drops dramatically.
the days are longer and that means more to do outside.
The pastures need fence checking, and this year we need to build an entire fence on  some pastures.

The weather has gone from one extreme to the other. With a very dry and high fire risk, to torrential rains and even snow a few weeks back.
The dry weather caused very much concern, and now the rain has slowed all the fencing down, and we cannot get the cows moved to pasture due to the road ways being so muddy.

The spring time also means the wrap up of the 4-H year for the kids, so their achievement day shows and awards nights all needed wrapping up.

The kids did well at achievement day, Roy won with his steer the club and District Rate of Gain, and Sr District Showmanship, Jess did well with her heifer. Roy rocked his flock and ewe classes, and Jess rocked her ewe lamb, grooming and showmanship classes.

The kids are now preparing for their Summer Synergy week coming up in July.
This year, they had to make a marketing video project for Summer Synergy.

You can see their videos here, their videos had to be about Rural lifestyle, quality food production and or Farm Safety.

As for ranch  news,
the March/April lambs were weaned today and the ewes turned out on grass.
We culled heavily in the flock after lambing time, we got selected out all the original ewes we started with when we moved to Canada. These are good solid old ewes, and have been with us since the beginning. I can't help but feel a little sad to see them go, however they start to battle getting through the winter when they get older, so it is time for them to go.

Some more news, we have two new sarplaninac male pups here on the ranch.
One, Kushi, was gifted to us by a good shepherd friend in Macedonia.
When we visited Macedonia last year, we saw the sire and the dam in with their stock.
These are true, old line sheep dogs. I am excited to see how Kushi will grow out.

The other male ( who has no name yet), comes from a totally different line.
I have know this breeder for some time as I have a dog from one of his males already.
I was given the opportunity to take the only male from this litter.

They had a long journey here, first by road from Montenegro and the other from Macedonia, to Serbia and then on to Czech Republic, before boarding a flight to Calgary.
I did an up and down trip to go and collect the two boys.

A very big thank you to a long term friend Stepanka, for helping facilitate the import, transport, papers, flights and great care for the two pups before they arrived here.

So, a quick meet and greet of the two pups:

We wasted no time in letting them meet their future charges.

Other sarplaninac news is that we think and hope we are getting a litter from our Beli and Mali.
Beli will be 10  this fall, so we decided it was probably a now or never situation if we still wanted a litter of pup from him.
This will be Mali's first litter.
More news of this litter and all the details will follow soon.

Mali leading the way for the sheep during a down pour.

So, despite the lack of blogs, a lot of things have been happening here.
Come winter, I will have plenty of stories to share again.