More new faces on the farm

We've been talking about getting sheep for quite a while but I couldn't make up my mind what breed to get. It's strange but I had a very set image in my mind of what to me, constituted a "real" sheep. When I was in England last year I found out that the sheep I was thinking of were the Herdwick breed. The ones you see running wild up on the high fells in Cumberland, shrouded in mist and fog. Alas, no Herdwicks to be had in these parts. Then just before Easter I saw a for sale ad for three Scottish Blackface ewes! Now they are also my idea of "real" sheep. They're the ones you see up in the Highlands, also shrouded in mist and fog, or standing in the middle of the road stopping traffic- no fences up there. Wild, ancient, extremely hardy, curly horns. Yes! real sheep!

We drove 4 hours to go and get them.

First, they had to be caught. 

Then pointed in the direction of the stock trailer. 

"I'm not going, I'm not go-iiing Really, I'm not!"

 Phew, all loaded up.

From left to right: Cornelia, Morag and Kirsty.

Our route home took us through Appomattox, a place steeped in civil war history. We decided to take a break and stop at the restored village of Appomattox Court House, the site of Lee's surrender.

So, we parked the trailer.

And left the sheep...

to go sight-seeing.

And what a nice afternoon it was.

Dry Stone Wall Pics, finally!

Oh it was so nice to see comments from you guys when I signed on just now! I thought I'd lost any followers long ago. Thank you so much for waiting for me. Hugs to you all.

Well, we have had the strangest mildest winter imaginable. I think we only had one snow storm. It dropped about 6 inches of snow that lasted two days and was gone. We hardly used the woodstove. I tried tapping the maple trees but didn't get enough sap to be worth boiling down for syrup. But it's been a great winter for working outside. And here at last, are some pictures. Click on them to make them bigger.

Ok, here's Damascus. It wasn't the picture I intended to post but for some reason Blogger insited on loading it. Isn't she beautiful?

There we go. Here's the creek that runs down the length of our "holler". So many times I've looked at that ugly culvert and thought: Surely there's something I could do to that thing" Well, one day in October, inspiration struck and  I got busy.

I thought of the lovely stone bridges back home in the Lake District. Removing the culvert and building a bridge wasn't something I was ready to tackle so instead, I decided to rock in around it. Which led to other things like steps and hmm, why not dig the creek wider and have an island in the middle? With a tree on it... and daffodils ... and oh, I know, it could become a memorial garden for my Mum! So that's what it's slowly evolving into.

Here it is with the coping stones added.

As you can see we'd had a storm during the night and the stream was in spate.

This little Redbud sappling was growing in the woods. Ken dug it up for me last weekend and we planted it by the bridge. That pool is quite deep. It was full of little minnows today. -Sorry about the sagging electic tape in the background.

That's another Redbud we planted on the island. We bought that one - before I spotted the wild one growing in the woods. We also found Daffodils growing by the big creek across the road so we dug those up also and transplanted them.

It's coming along