Saturday, April 13, 2013

Sheep and Wool Festival

 Elayne and I went on an adventure today while her husband offered to stay home and keep Bill company!  We loaded the address into the Garmin and took off for Ocala where they were holding the second annual Sheep and Wool Festival!  What a great group of people!  We learned a lot about the meat sheep of Florida and some hair sheep breeds like Barbados Blackbelly and Katahdin sheep of Maine.  There were also fleece sheep like Suffolk, Icelandic and BabyDoll.  It is always nice to get close to the sheep and feel the different fibers for yourself!
 A very nice couple were showing their Icelandics and they won the blue ribbon for the day.  The wife does most of their herd of 60 sheep and the husband also tends bees so they had lots of beeswax products, too.  What an amazing team!
 I also bought this basket and Nyki immediately had to smell everything and give it a good inspection!  This basket is a reed basket for wool-it is quite large-18" wide and 12" tall.  It is just beautiful to me!
There was a neat demo for shearing-they breeders offer one of their sheep for the 'newbies' to learn on and then they offer the fleece for a donation of $1.  Of course, we sweetened the pot, but both Elayne and I bought a fleece.  The info on the fleeces were scanty since the sheep were all in a large holding area and selected randomly but I believe we  each got a Suffolk.  We learned a lot by watching and decided the sheep didn't think much of the handling!
We had a fun adventure on the other end of our day, too.  I had left the lights on in the car and the battery was DEAD!   We did find a willing donor to jump start the car-all part of the adventure!
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6 comments:

  1. BethanyApril 13, 2013 at 8:12 PM

    What a fun outing and I love that basket as well! I need to go to a Sheep Festival sometime. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. LynneApril 13, 2013 at 8:55 PM

    Sounds like fun was had -- even with the flat battery!

    ReplyDelete
  3. benitaApril 14, 2013 at 7:30 AM

    That looks like a big fleece! Do you know how much it weighs. Are you going to wash it and spin it all up? Dye it? Whatcha going to make from it? Huh? Huh?

    Sorry, my inner 5-year-old takes over when I see a fresh fleece.

    Nyki is like my Pete. Everything is subjected to the nose test. Although Pete would have been in the fleece bag so fast and have bits of it scattered all over the house.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Woolly BitsApril 14, 2013 at 10:02 AM

    I love the basket - it's much more practical for wool than a willow basket would be! of course - you could always donate it to a basket loving cat:) I think that is what they call snoopervizing:)
    enjoy the fleece - I still have 3 boxes full to wash over here....

    ReplyDelete
  5. MarselApril 14, 2013 at 2:54 PM

    Wow, that is a very adventurous day for my homebody mother! :)

    What great memories and fun souvenirs to boot!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Loree JacksonApril 15, 2013 at 11:57 AM

    Wow, this is so cool! How did you hear about this? I didn't think there were any wool and sheep festivals in Florida. I would love to go next year

    ReplyDelete

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