The Tenderfoot Collective (which includes me) will be showing art on the walls of Mother Fools Coffee House at 1101 Williamson Street, Madison, Wisconsin, for the month of August. You are invited to come and see our art and have some coffee and vegan fare any time during August. If you would like to see me personally, I will be there at the opening reception on Sunday, August 4, from 6 PM to 8 PM. That’s this Sunday! I’d love to see you there. -Shoshanah
These two year old ewes are sisters and like to be together. They are a part of a group of dark brown sheep born two years ago that we have named, “The Chocolate Club,” so they all are named after kinds of chocolate. They would be a lot darker if we had coats on them. They are very sun-bleached. These sheep have never lived inside a barn.
Breed: Jacob / Corriedale Cross (More Jacob than Corriedale, about 75% Jacob, 25% Corriedale)
Temperament: Afraid of people. Skittish.
Wool: Dark, thick, dense, soft, and plentiful. They have ten month’s growth on them right now. I have not shorn them this year, and I got to them late summer last year.
Size: Small. 60-70 pounds.
Horns: No horns, but their offspring maybe would have them. These sheep have not been bred.
Asking: $100 Each.
Located in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Email me at shoshanahm@yahoo.com if you are interested.
Hershey is a two year old ewe, and this is her one week old lamb, who is also female.
Breed: Jacob / Corriedale Cross 50/50
Temperament: Honestly a little crazy. Mother does not like people.
Wool: soft, dense and dark. I sheared her myself a month ago. (I am not a professional, obviously. I only shear my own sheep.) I did not shear around the head.
Size: Small. Maybe sixty pounds. You could mistake the mother for a lamb of another breed, she’s so little.
Horns: No horns, though the lamb might have them. It’s too soon to tell.
Asking: $75 each.
Located in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Email me at shoshanahm@yahoo.com if you are interested.
I have seven yearling wethers that I would like to sell as a group.
Breed: Jacob / Corriedale Cross (More Jacob than Corriedale, about 75% Jacob, 25% Corriedale)
Temperament: Surprisingly mellow for being so much Jacob. Most of them let me pet them on the nose.
Wool: Some are dark brown/ black, some are white with spots in the traditional Jacob marking. All have thick wool. (See pictures.)
Size: Small. They are all under 100 pounds, I’m sure. Maybe average 70 pounds. These are wool sheep.
Horns: Yes, big. But they don’t ram people.
Asking: $75 each or $375 for all seven.
Located in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Email me at shoshanahm@yahoo.com if you are interested.
I’ve been waking up at the crack of dawn to feed the little bottle lamb in the barn. Then the puppy, Mike Vivaldi, always wants to go for a walk. I took him along this morning to check and see if any lambs were born in the night.
Not quite… But Mimi was on the ground, moaning. Mike and I went into the pen and I could see a little mouth and a big red tongue sticking out of her lady sheep parts (technical language). As we approached, Mimi got up and ran! She obviously needed help, but she was going to be difficult about it.
I tied up Mike to a fence post, because he is not yet skilled in the arts of shepherding and lamb doulaing (though I expect great things from him, someday). After some awkward running and dodging other sheep, I caught her in a catch pen, stuck my hands up in her, grabbed those slippery slimy lamb legs and pulled out a most enormous ram lamb. She yelled. Pretty sure it didn’t feel that great! Then she just stood there and stared at that slimy, bloody ram on the ground with no recognition, like, “What the hell is that?”
And then I walked Mike Vivaldi back and drove my daughter to band practice. All before breakfast!
I left them penned up together for three hours, went back, and he was all fluffy. Mimi had cleaned him up. She was bonded to him, except when I put a lamb sweater on him, she didn’t seem to know who he was, suddenly, so I took the sweater off again. Fashion be damned. It’s supposed to rain tonight, but honestly, he looks pretty hearty.
These words brought to you by Birds in Beards.
I have been accepted to show my lovely wool sculptures next Friday, May 3 at the Jackie Macaulay Gallery, The Social Justice Center, 1202 Williamson Street, Madison. The opening is 5-9, though I’m not sure I will be there the entire time. This is Gallery night, where basically every place in Madison becomes an art gallery. It’s a good time for all.
If you’ve never been to the Social Justice Center, look for the big seventies-style mural of the social justice struggle on the side of the building.
I am mainly just showing my fun Wooly Heads of Whimsy. A few new ones will be unveiled on Friday night. Then, the pieces will stay up for the month of May.
I hope to see you there!
| pin | Jackie Macaulay Gallery, The Social Justice Center, 1202 Williamson Street, Madison |
Have you contacted the FCC to tell them how important you think net neutrality is? Please do! John Oliver’s handy “gofccyourself” shortcut is still active and makes it very easy!
1. Click gofccyourself.com
This redirects you to the FCC’s misleadingly named “Restoring Internet Freedom” proceedings page.
2. Click “+Express”
3. Check that “Proceeding(s)” is pre-populated with 17-108. If not, type 17-108 and click enter
4. Under the “Name(s) of Filer(s)” field, add your name, then click enter
5. Add your address
6. Under “Brief Comments” — comment away!
Here’s a basic template:
“Dear FCC Chairman Ajit Pai,
I support the existing Net Neutrality rules, which classify internet service providers under the Title II provision of the Telecommunications Act. Please DO NOT roll back these regulations. Thanks!”
7. Click “Continue to review screen,” check your submission, click submit
Someone please tell me who originated this meme.
We got new sheep on Sunday. Two lambs, a black and a white one, and then an old sheep named Sofi. Sofi was Melissa’s pet. All three of these sheep are adorable and very sheep like. They don’t have horns or anything, like our other ones. The new ones are Corriedales. Zanimal wanted to take care of the new sheep, so I didn’t feed them today. I just looked at them over the fence, and decided they looked fine.
After Zanimal got home from school, she immediately went out to feed the new sheep some hay and corn. And then came back with a strange and horrified look on her face.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, but… there’s some pigs or something dead in the pasture? I don’t really know what they are.”
“Maybe they are half eaten pumpkins?” I said.
“Then why do they have hooves?”
We went out to investigate. And, inside the small pasture where we are keeping Sofi and the two lambs, there were… ugh. Weird looking dead things. Looking up close, I decided they were deformed, hairless lambs that Sofi must have birthed. Sofi watched from a distance. So did Zanimal. The pink things had hoofs, and tails, and they had no hair, but they were just the right shape for lambs, except they had some deformity in the face. It was like their jaw bones were soft as pudding.
Both were clearly dead.
Looking at them, I could so easily see how people in old times believed in witches and strange, terrifying things in the night. And terrifying things in the day the day. I was queasy and I asked if Zanimal was okay.
“Yeah, I just want to go play Minecraft now,” she said.
So, I found a container with a lid. I put them into it. I carried it across the yard, and I started to dig a hole.
It takes an incredibly long time to dig a hole. It’s a pet peeve of mine in movies, how little time it seems to take people to dig a hole. Digging a hole to bury something (or someone) is difficult and time consuming. Sometimes, the ground is so hard that you just can’t dig a hole at all. I would like to see a murder mystery show where the entire program, the person is just desperately trying to dig a hole and failing at it. But I digress…
I dug the hole and them put them into it. I apologized to them.
“I’m so sorry. You just weren’t meant to live in this world.”
Then I covered them with dirt.
I reflected that, if they were just a little bit more deformed, I could have put them in a glass jar and sold them to some perverse curiosity shop, probably in San Francisco.
A petting zoo up the road lets people pay to come and watch sheep be born. Those people who own the petting zoo are insane. So much can go wrong! And when it goes wrong, it goes so, so wrong.
My friend Jane used to have sheep, before the internet. She once had a sheep born with two heads. It lived for a couple of weeks. They fed it with a bottle.
“The only problem,” she said, “was that we didn’t know which head to feed.”
