4H Banquet 2009

The PEC 4H Sheep Club was in charge of hosting the event this year. It's such a small club that they have never been hosts before, but the kids (and leaders ;-) ...) did a masterful job. I just have a few photos of the event. My favourite is this one :-).


MC's for the evening were Katlyn and Mikaela (centre); Shannon and Alison assisted by gathering up awards and passing them to the appropriate presenter.

The theme was "4H Members are Stars" and one of the things the club did was prepare stars showcasing each of the clubs, ranging from 6 weekers to yearlong clubs, that happened in Prince Edward County in 2009. Here is the Wall of Stars.



Getting ready (Katlyn, Mikaela, and Mikaela's mom, Patti, who is the head Club honcho ;-) ...)


Getting ready ...


It was such a delight to watch the event ... the club members did a fabulous job. My only regret was not getting a photograph of the three guys in the club (Iain, Jaret and Mitchell) -- by the time my camera came out the three lads (all 12 and under) were starting to look pretty disheveled ;-). But at the start they were all in black dress pants/cargo pants, blue dress shirts and dark blue ties! They also threw themselves wholeheartedly into the dance portion afterwards, which impressed the leaders no end.

Lastly, Alison once again won the Top Member award for the 2009 Sheep Club. Here are the two trophies she received:


4H sign-up night is tonight. Claire has decided that she is done with 4H for the most part. She may continue to occasionally do lifestyle clubs, but she is no longer interested in livestock projects. Iain is looking forward to 4H sign-up night this Wednesday; he has been wanting to do the beef club for two years and I wouldn't let him until he proved his ability to persevere with an animal in the sheep club. He proved it this past summer, so I suppose I may have to consider letting him have a go at beef next year. In the mean time, he will be doing wool club this fall, along with Alison, and is quite pumped about the weaving emphasis this year.

Alison is not sure what to do about livestock club next year. Because of her planned mission trip to Brazil, she will be hard pressed to work with a lamb. As well, after having won the Top Member award two years in a row, she will not allow her name to stand next year. She may try to aim for a junior leadership position instead, if it will work out with her busy schedule.

That's it for now! More later :-).

Introducing WillowGarden Daniel Day-Lewis :-)

We once again borrowed a ram lamb from Bill Stearman this fall. He's a cute little (VERY LITTLE) guy ... a lovely fawn katmoget. Here is is all decked out in a marking harness, a device that is supposed to allow us to know who he has covered when. However, we had a few issues with the harness, including size, and Jasmine (who kept untying it with her teeth ... sigh). Because he is brown (moorit) - based, any lamb that Kivu has will be some degree of moorit in colour, and either katmoget (like the ram) or gulmoget (like Kivu) or a gul-kat. Katmoget and gulmoget are patterns, not colours, and are co-dominant.


I have had much encouragement to find a large, meat-type ram to breed to the flock. As much as it makes sense, though, a few things keep me coming back to the smaller animals. For one, I get great joy out of cool fleeces (see pic below). Additionally, our sheep are easy to handle, and easy to transport (we use a dog crate in the van).


His fleece is not super-fine, however it is nice and crimpy, and quite a nice colour. Once spun it should result in an oatmeal coloured wool. However, he will be going back to Bill, so we can only hope one of the babies duplicates his colour :-).

You can see the orange crayon well in this photo.

We didn't pick him up until mid-November, so our lambs won't start arriving until mid-April in the spring. And although we only planned on breeding the ewes, we had a lot of rain over the past week and the fence separating the two ewe lambs fell over. Sensibly, they decided they should rejoin the main flock. We may try to move them again later on ... I don't think WillowGarden Daniel Day-Lewis has paid them too much attention yet :-).

Jasmine will once again produce white lambs since her genotype is Awt/Awt. Lambs from Rosemary or Loralei could be Awt/Aa B?/B? (white in colour) or Aa/Aa (brown or black). Lambs from Babette will likely be black, but there is a remote chance she could also have brown-based lambs. The genetics of colour inheritance is fascinating :-). The fuzzy babies are cute too! ;-).

Belleville Christmas Parade, November 13 (!!!) 2009

Our family volunteered to help with the UCB float, passing out candy canes. Despite the incredibly long wait, and sore feet, we had a lot of fun. So much so, that on our way back to the van, Kevin was stopped by a police officer who told him that our group was the most cheerful and "Christmas-like" bunch in the parade. She asked him "So what is UCB Canada?" Smile.

A couple of fun things ...

Number 1: Family photo taken for our church directory ->



Number 2: Family picture after bored Kevin subjected it to Photoshop ->


Number 3: Last night at a 4H event (annual banquet) one of our lovely senior farmers mentioned that our family was Youtube'd after squaredancing at Allisonville Hall in May. Our friend Blake found is fiddling, and his mom Michelle is playing the piano. Embedded here for your amusement/entertainment lol. ->