End of spring review!

Wow, I'm pretty excited to finally be writing this. This has been a crazy spring with tons of ups and downs but I can say we made it through and it's been one of the best seasons I've ever had. Folks have been amazingly supportive and encouraging all spring and for the most part they have done all they can to make my job as easy as possible (for sheep shearing!) I added up my numbers and figured out I've sheared a hair over 7,000 sheep since January 1. I'm pretty excited to be doing so well and look to have a new high year tally by the end of the year.   

Let's sum up the spring, February and March were extremely cold and delayed many folks from their normal shearing schedules. April and May were perfect weather wise and I was able to get a ton of animals done with almost no weather related interruptions (with a little help from Kevin:). June has been very wet and hot, the weather shifted so quickly but I have seen fewer cases of fly strike and sheep have only been minimally stressed because of the milder weather in the earlier months.

A year ago as of July 3 I hurt my hand. This year has only been mildly overshadowed by that injury. My hand is still not 100 percent but for the most part it doesn't phase me. It's just harder to trim feet and shear big goats, both of which I didn't enjoy doing before so giving that up entirely didn't hurt my feelings at all:) Last week I had a "life pass before my eyes" moment once again when a big ram charged me and bruised up my leg but Ill take that any day over surgery! 

So as I reflect back on spring of 2014, I'm grateful for all the wonderful people I am privileged to work for, the beautiful sheep I get to handle, the lustrous wool I get to harvest and the honest work I love to do. So many of my clients have become family to me and your constant encouragement and support keeps me going when I'm exhausted, frustrated and tired. I can't thank everyone enough for keeping me going. 

As I write this I am sitting at my second home in Iowa enjoying a blissful easy day off. It is time well earned and I am happy to finally be back working with Kevin. We are both looking forward to getting married at the end of August and we are now finalizing all the plans for that:) It's going to be a ton of fun!

As my last course of business I was so busy after getting back from Ireland that I never announced the winners of my prize giveaway! I have 3 shirts and one skein of yarn to giveaway so if the following individuals could shoot me their addresses ill put their prizes in the mail this week! Thanks to everyone who follows my sheepy adventures and lives vicariously through my travels:)

Elizabeth Milosevich

April Miskimon

Adelaide Lewis

Ruth Lamb

Thanks to everyone who shared out my blog while I was away! Ill be heading to two competitions in the next week, the first one will be in Holstein Ontario Canada and another in Eastern Iowa. Ill keep you posted on how it goes:) hope everyone is having a beautiful summer so far.