This past week my garden catalogs have started coming in and some of the new an amazing fruit trees and veggies are looking just wonderful but this post is all about my new woolgrowers catalog.

If you have never heard of WoolGrowers, its the largest (to my knowledge) Canadian Co-op for sheep producers, it has all the things you would need as a sheep flock owner, but also carries a large line of wool and wool products, along with many other livestock farm needs. The catalog also has a large area for breeders to list their farms and breeding programs.

http://www.seregonmap.com/SCM/index.htm

They have a number of stores and or agents across Canada, they also offer classes thoughtout the year. including a number of sheep shearing seminars for all skill levels, along with courses on Spinners and knitters. One of the things they promote is the International Back to Back wool challange, A huge congrats to the 2011 Winning Team from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, their winning time was 5hr 53min 34sec.

There is an International Back to Back Wool Challenge spinning competition held every year around the world in countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Japan, USA and Canada. The event may be held in a public location of the team’s choice, during the months of May and June, and the rules are the same for everyone. A team consists of 7 handspinners and knitters and 1 blade shearer. The objective is to complete a sweater following the same pattern within 8 hours. Some teams use the event to raise funds for charity, and all teams are interested in promoting the wool industry locally and in establishing a world wide network among the participants.

I have been doing some felting with my own wool, from my sweet sheep called Wooly, as most of my sheep are hair sheep, it was fairly easy to call find her name of Wooly :), however the quality is not the best, and I have been buying enough wool and want to get into spinning as well as felting more, and while I am able to get high quality wool locally.

 I think its only makes sense to add in one very high quality wool ewe to my flock. I’m looking at these to breeds at the moment, any thoughts on them are welcome. Photos are from the woolgrowers site, the one below is the canadian Arcott, I want the ewe to be right around the same size as my girls, and well matched for birthing lambs to my ram. the one’s above are suffolks, both will give me a nice white fleese for me to be able to not only make into wool but also allow me to play with growing and or wild harvesting my own natural dyes, I loved drying materal with the lichens found in the high artic.

Woolgrowers not only has one of the best selection of lambing products but they also have the now required ear tags as of Jan 2012, the canadian sheep identication program comes into play. I personally don’t agree with the RFID tags for a number of reason’s, not in the least because someone on my road could therefor read their tags with the right equipment, which is enough to make me darn right grumpy, the only good thing is that the sheep are not required to be tagged until they are to be moved, sold or taken to the butcher. For more info on this program, please refer to the CSF website  www.cansheep.ca

Hard to be believe that my girls will start lambing out as early as a month from now, and I am looking forward to it!