Back from Portland and in the thick of end-of-the-semester crises, I realized I never wrote about our experience at the Sheep to Shawl festival two weekends ago. What a fun time! Jamie and I left the festivities quite seriously considering training Mieko as a sheepdog and raising some sheep of our own.
Did you know that, when sheep are flipped onto their backs to be shorn, they become kind of stunned and just lie there? This sheep, sugar, actually belongs to one of my colleagues.
The herding dogs were out of this world. See the two on the left watching the sheep? And the two on the right watching their person? After one dog drove the sheep out into the hills, another herded them up and brought them back, then--as if to show off--had them line up in a row to face the person. It was like watching the movie Babe. Jamie and I wondered what Mieko would do if faced with a row of sheep and had to laugh.
Afterwards, we stopped by Cricket Creek, our local farm, where we regularly buy raw milk, eggs, cheese, and bread. We visited with the infamous "pants chickens" (chickens with so many feathers on their legs that it looks like they're wearing pantaloons) and a great big pile of pigs.
Do you see the head and ears sticking up in the middle? The portly brown gentleman in the front came up to the fence to see if Jamie had any food. We were sorry to disappoint, but they seemed far from wasting away.
A fun day all around!
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