Spring comes with lambs!

My blog post about March is going to be short and sweet. 

I promised to write about the inspiration in this month's blog post, but I will have to postpone it for now. As the spring is very slowly arriving here in the north, I believe the next month will bring more sunshine and a better vibe for writing about it as well. 

I do have quite a good “excuse” for that. Spring comes with lambs here at Oruveski Talu since 2008, when we had our first lambing. So, I spent last month in the lambing shed and unexpectedly it turned out to be my first lambing managing everything by myself. My husband had a great opportunity to share his skills and knowledge abroad this spring, so I gathered up all my courage and promised to look after all of our animals by myself for this lambing time. 

One of my fluffiest and cutest lambs this spring! She is tiny having two massive siblings, hopefully I will get better photos of her by the next blog post except her mother does not like any photoshoots of her lambs.

Most of our sheep have lambed by now and as we predicted, the Swedish finewool sheep managed very well by themselves and of course, they had numerous amounts of triplets, 6 quads and 1 sheep surprised us with 5 lambs. So as you can imagine, I have quite a few megs and my life runs around their feeding time at the moment. I have not counted the lambs yet, but in total we had about 60 sheep lambing. As I have written before, we used to have a much bigger production flock. Still, for different reasons, we have decided to move towards a more sustainable way of farming also growing vegetables and having free-range chickens as well.

Two of my meg lambs sleeping.

I only have a few sheep left to lamb and hopefully, it will get a bit warmer here as I cannot feed them inside forever. There is a point when lambs get into the naughty stage and start making too much trouble inside the shed. 

Everybody loves the sun!

The weather a week ago was absolutely lovely up to 15-18 degrees and it felt like proper spring. It is not common here in March & April to be that warm, so as expected, today is back to only 2 degrees and nights are frosty again.. I did manage to squeeze a few hours of raking in the garden between going to the farm some days. 

My garden in very early spring this year.

At the end of March, I had the opportunity to talk about the different connections behind my artwork at the International Feltmakers Association's AGM. It was so lovely to chat with other feltmakers and I am still so happy that I joined this organisation years ago. Even though I haven't very actively taken part in it always, it is still nice to know that there are so many like-minded people out there if you need to connect with them. 

I did take part in the annual online exhibition with my new work “Connections”.  This is my wet felted work made of my sheep wool and luffas grown in our greenhouse last summer. The work “Connections” is inspired by the interlocking relationships and connections surrounding us. It symbolises the seasonal growth of plants and animals connected through permanent symbioses, creating a unique bond expressing new possibilities and challenges. 

You can check out this exhibition here - 90 submissions are waiting to be discovered!

"Connections" 60 cm round wall hanging made of luffa and our own fibre.

Despite being an extremely busy and challenging time this spring, I found myself thinking how grateful I am for spending so much time with our sheep and hopefully, I will stay connected with new additions to our fibre flock for a long time.

It is my first spring not having other work commitments and I have to say that every day I feel more aligned with living with seasons and I am truly enjoying this time.

If you would like to know more about our farm life here, you can check out our website www.oruveskitalu.com or our social media channels here - www,instagram/oruveskitalu or Facebook.

Happy Spring and until next time,

Reena