Our hostess, Rhonda Jaacks introduced us to her flock of Finn Sheep, at her Harlequin Farm in Limerock, CT. Finns are rapidly growing in popularity because of their hardiness and tendency to throw healthy twins, triplets, and quadruplets. For sheep, they make plenty of milk so their offspring grow rapidly, producing a lot of meat. Their fiber is long and very soft making it ideal for spinning. Because Rhonda handles her lambs frequently, they are all very friendly. She showed us how to pick them up and hold them, scooping one arm under their back end and reaching around their neck just above their front legs. Rhonda's twin daughters Gabby and Sarah were also on hand to show us how.
We saw several shed arrangements for housing sheep including some built with "prefab" frames of metal tubing with plywood siding. The shed in the next photo has an electric light at the back so Rhonda can leave the light on all night when her ewes are due to lamb and can easily check on them from her kitchen window.
Rhonda also keeps a few miniature horses that chase away coyotes.
Margaret was delighted to visit her old friend Irish who (with Rhonda's help) taught her to ride 14 years ago.
We saw several different types of fencing. Rhonda prefers "pagewire" fencing with an electric fence wire running along the top and near the bottom of of the woven wire fencing. She sells her sheep for $3-400 a piece. Other take-home highlights, included the name of Harvest Moon timber-framer Jim Davenport of Morris, CT and our own drop spindles.
(we thank Lauren Hermele for sharing these photos)
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