It’s a mild, nice “Chinooky” winter morning here at the foot of the Rockies. I am only working in the office one day this week so due to having a few tenders scheduled to close I will likely be spending most of my day right here. Thought I would post a couple of brief updates this morning so that I don’t forget these adventures as the busy-ness of the week unfolds.

Friday was an awesome regular day, however both the sunrise and sunset were worthy of pictures and had a nice way of book-ending a normal day.

Sunrise the start of a new day.

Sunset the end of a normal day and a busy week

Saturday was a busy day of moving sheep, some sorting had to be done and four ewe lambs were sold to a client that needed to be delivered. Larry the ram was going to accompany them for a visit to their new home. Larry didn't think he wanted to go with them so we had a little set too! A few nicks and a pair of glasses later, Larry was successfully loaded on the trailer.

Later in the day I would also trip when running through a sheep pen and do a full on face plant in the muck. I don't think I was smiling as much after that, however it wasn't worthy of a picture so didn't take one.

Sunday after an amazing mtg and "Potluck" lunch I went to work helping pack some wool sacks with fleeces for shipping this week. Then I cleaned and prepped the barn for some new tenants. 

This makes a difficult job a whole lot easier.

This was the barn when I started (Had some ongoing residents for about a month)

All cleaned up ready for some tweaking and the new tenants can move in.

My mom has spent several weeks in Alberta this fall, she was helping us get our house in town ready for renting and also a few projects at the Sheep Ranch to make the small Cabin there feel a little more like home. We so appreciated all she did and the time she spent. One of the highlights of her visit was the three weeks she and Kelsey spent together at the Riding Academy where Kelsey works and trains.

She insisted that she wanted a family picture before she left, so last evening we all were clothed and in our right minds and having corralled the cat and the dog we managed to get a picture as follows.

Once again, downloading plans and while this is going on decided I would post a small update. I was at my second Grand Opening of a Divine showroom yesterday. The first was slightly after I joined the company 9 ¾, years ago. Last night was very spectacular as we launched what promises to be a new way of selling flooring. One client as they walked through the space said, “This feels and looks like an Art Gallery not a Flooring Store!”

The food and beverage for the Grand Opening was provided by CRAFT.

 It was very good, very nicely presented and if I had been at all on the ball I would have recorded what each one was. The standout of the evening was the Rack of Lamb pictured above as of course seeing this caught my attention due to the past few months living on the sheep ranch.

The showroom has several vignettes of several "life styles" which are to be used to select and direct people to the products we sell that fit this description. Below are some shots of vignettes to give an illustration of what we are talking about.

You can then narrow down your choices and quickly find what goes together.

Then further into the showroom the actual samples are cataloged and stored so that large sections can be viewed and selected from.

So there you have it a very abridged version of our new showroom. Please contact me for your own personal tour.

Life has been a blur to say the least… as you are aware if you are reading this, we undertook a move to a Sheep Ranch earlier this year. This has unfolded in a huge learning curve and interesting adventures that continue. I have been remiss in that I haven’t updated this in forever; however working on tenders at my desk today so maybe will post some pictures of various activities up until today!

Lets go a little back in time:

It was down right hot outside:

Time to shear sheep... a new experience and the following pictures better tell the story than my feeble typing.

This then was followed by some cleaning duties as we scrambled to get the barn cleaned before the snow arrived.

I will not post all the before and after pictures but here are a couple that help you understand why I counted this cleaning as my workout!

Before (Note it was almost to the top rail)

After... clean as can be ready for a new tenant

Soon a bobcat arrived onsite and this was then used to address the corrals and feedlots. This was surprisingly hard work as things were relatively firmly packed and took a fair bit of digging to get it loose.

The following are some sunrise pictures taken over the past months...we get some very stunning morning pictures on our way to work.

The next adventure was the process of artificially impregnating some sheep to introduce new bloodlines to the flock. This was interesting and its interesting to note that the vet who did this is flown all over the world to do the procedure that took place right on the ranch.

Breaking News! A hail storm hit the farm last night and the following are pictures of the damage. We will heal, we will repair, however let this be a lesson not to ever take Mother Nature lightly and when she gets pissy its not pretty!

The following are my pictures:

Hail in the ditch as I was driving to the farm.

The leaves and such on the road

The lawn was white and crunched underfoot.

Hail was drifted up against the back door

The front yard, not a flower left.

The shepherd checking his brothers barley crop

Not a seed left on the stem.

Fortunately this car was already destined for the scrap yard.

The siding damage to our cabin in the woods

Gloria's garden... nothing left but to dig the potato's.

First please let me introduce you to Duke, he was born when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were visiting Canada for the first time as a couple so hence the name. Duke is a large Suffolk ram that is pretty much king of the ram pen. He really isn't a mean sort; however he does like to get fed promptly and if you get between him and the feed trough he will move you!

To better facilitate growth and wellbeing in the sheep we did a ton of sorting this weekend. The recently weaned babies were sorted and bigger ones were put together, smaller “runts” were separated to better enable them to compete for feed.

The little ewe lamb pictured below is “Nicki 2” she is #317 the first new lamb that was my father’s day gift this year. She is named after a tiny black orphan lamb that my parents gave me as a birthday gift one year. She has strong Suffolk roots and hopefully has babies next year.

One of the hard things for me has been the “deaths” that happen frequently on the farm. There are numerous contributing factors. While this is part of it, is not an easy part, I felt for a poor ewe who didn’t survive the weaning process. Everything I tried to help her was too little too late.

Now that the last round of ewes has had their babies weaned it was time to “process” them and get them turned out to summer pasture; this included several immunizations, rounds of medicine and of course pedicures (some which hadn’t had them for a long time.) It was grueling, muscle numbing work. It also was an opportunity to separate a number of “culls” from the flock. These were loaded and taken to be shipped for meat. The following show the process right from the start of the sorting process to the final weighing of the culls at the feedlot where they will be shipped from.

Kelsey has been travelling most of the summer, time at Salmon Arm, Didsbury and then a week in Kelowna predated her recent trip to Manitoba to spend the next two weeks with my Mom and some of her relatives. She did however while passing through Calgary squeeze in a ride on Arizona and there is a picture of her jumping below.

The following are pictures of her arriving in Manitoba. I understand it was a good trip although the plane was tiny, full and the flight a little bumpy.

Finally in conclusion a little touch of cuteness to complete the post. There are several barn cats that help keep the mice at bay. A few of them had kittens this summer and due to the attention of Kelsey and the shepherds grandchildren some of them are very tame. The little fellow pictured below is my favorite and always comes to say hi as we are working on chores around the front of the barn.

It is late in the afternoon on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend. This office is virtually a ghost town and any calls I have made lately have resulted in extended absence greetings.  So now before I too wrap up my week, here is a little update on the week that was.

I helped haul some of the last loads of hay last weekend at the Sheep Ranch. This helped me get to the point where I logged over 90 hours on the farm this month. It also wrapped up the move out from the little farm house of the previous residents and now the cleanup and move in process begins in earnest.

All loaded up

Hay all put away

The next item on the agenda was to get the cleaning accomplished and new carpet installed in the basement and one room upstairs.

I didn't get to spend alot of time at the farm this week, Monday night I drove to a job site in Maple Creek Saskatchewan and then Tuesday night I worked at the farm for a few hours. The following is a picture of the three girls I hangout with while I am working. It was hot on Tuesday afternoon so they chose the coolest spot they could find.

Breena, Keevee and Ginny

Wednesday I met the bus as Kelsey and Jelayne returned from Kelowna, Jelayne to begin her new adventures here in Calgary as a student and Kelsey to briefly stop over on her way too visit her relatives in Manitoba for a couple of weeks. 

Thursday I got to play in a company golf tournament. For some of my co-workers this happens on a regular basis throughout the summer. For me its not a very routine occurrence, in fact to illustrate this I will tell you the dust on my golf clubs was so thick I washed them with the high pressure hose at the car wash on my to work. I stocked up on golf balls and felt very positive about this as I lost three balls per hole on the first two holes of the game. Actually things did get a bit better until the lightening came and chased us all in for supper. The following are some pictures to document the day.

We started with lunch.

Found our cart

Headed out for our afternoon

The following are some of the shots from the adventure.

Off to play for the afternoon

My professional co-workers

My loosing streak ended
with the hot pink ball.

A thunderstorm blew in and the result was that we were all pulled off the course to avoid getting zapped.

A wild Ring Necked Pheasant that was zeroing in on some Robbins and not paying any attention to us.

The following was shared for my daughter. She gets it she said.