If you are not eating Hawk Hill lamb, you are just eating sheep.

We have had two meals based on our purebred Tunis lamb and personally we thought the meat was delectable. A delicate aroma and flavour with fine-grained tender meat. Exactly what we had been led to believe by Tunis boosters.

We decided to put the lamb to a taste test and compared four different breeds of sheep. We tested our pure Tunis, our cross-bred Tunis/Cheviot, another Ontario lamb of a different breed from an organic farm and commercially available lamb from New Zealand. All were loin chops and all were cooked the same with no flavour additions. The lambs originating from our farm were both raised under the same regime though the Tunis Cheviot cross was about one month younger than the pure Tunis. There were four of us testing flavour, texture, aroma and taste. While not a true blind taste test it was the best we could do in a social dinner setting.

Well there was a significant difference in all the lamb. The least difference was between the Tunis and the Tunis/Cheviot cross. All of us preferred the Tunis and or the Tunis Cheviot. The Ontario lamb from another farm was not liked by any of us and the New Zealand lamb was in between. The Tunis and the Tunis/Cheviot had a more pleasant aroma, texture and flavour. The meat was more tender and the flavour was rich without a "wooly" after taste.

At one point I was considering selling our Tunis ewes and just using the Tunis/Cheviot crossbreds. Welllll.... the taste test has made me reconsider and the Tunis ewes are going to remain as part of our lamb production flock.

We then had the balance of the New Zealand lamb for our meal the next night. I am totally spoiled. Tunis rocks.

We are trying to encourage a meat marketing agency here in Ontario to run a chef-judged taste challenge. Growth statistics, conformation, carcass structure etc are all important but in your breeding program you cannot forget the most important factor - taste.

Later
Laurie

Hawk Hill Thanksgiving

We are well past the Canadian Thanksgiving and even that celebrated in the United States but tonight we are celebrating Hawk Hill Thanksgiving.

Our Thanksgiving is close to the original reason for the celebration. All our animals are in their winter shelters and they are set for snow and cold to come. The barn is full of hay. The rams are in with their ewes starting the whole new cycle of life. The snow blower is on the tractor and the wood is stacked in the shed. The last of the vegetables (frost and snow hardy brussel sprouts) have finally been harvested.

We also have a new crop of ewe lambs to be thankful for. I can't help but smile when I look at those beauties.

Tonight we sit down to a meal that has all been grown at Hawk Hill: roast lamb (even the rosemary and garlic flavourings are grown here), potatoes, beets and brussel sprouts.

We are thankful for another good year heading into a winter where we take as many courses as possible and read in front of the fire.

Let it snow.

Cheers,
Laurie

Hawk Hill Tribute to the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street

We are finishing up the late fall chores: getting winter paddocks set up, shipping the last of the lambs, doing some fencing and spreading the manure pile. As Bob took out load after load the pile evolved into what looked amazingly like Sesame Street's Snuffleupagus. So in tribute to the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street we are posting our manure pile "art". Snuffy is now spread over the back hay field.

Cheers,
Laurie

"To a Maus"

My favorite Robert Burns poem is "To a Mouse" that he wrote after ploughing up a mouse nest.Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

That poem came to mind the other day as we found we had a mouse resident in our tractor. Every time we turned on the engine she scurried out of the engine compartment and onto either the loader or the central console by the gear shift. She is a deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, with big Mickey Mouse ears and a dove white belly. All in all a lovely beast but not in my tractor where she can strip my wiring for bedding and generally cause havoc. So yesterday she was "relocated" to the back field. I hope she knows the back field dialect.

Mankind gripes about wildlife invading our space but it was us that invaded theirs. As much as possible we try to amicably coexist with wildlife but draw the line with the skunk in the garage... and the mouse in the tractor.

Later,
Laurie

Royal Winter Fair Trip

We just returned from our annual trip to the Royal Winter Fair and tucked in a trip to the Stock Yards at Cookstown for the sheep sale. It is nice to get away from the farm for a few days and nice to get back home.

First we went to the stock yards at Cookstown for the sheep sale. Some of the lamb prices made sense and some didn't. There seemed to be an aversion to black fleeced lamb with their prices being lower than equivalent quality white fleeced lamb. The buyers also didn't like Katahdin sheep. Their prices were low compared to equivalent quality wool breeds. The buyers bidding price was established by the worst lamb in the lot. If there was a lot of 10 lambs, 9 of which were good and 1 which was poor, the poor lamb set the price for the whole lot. Definitely a reason for having consistent quality and type in your lots. Finally the buyers were more focused on length and quality of loin rather than the quality of the hind leg. That would make sense considering there was a number of buyers for restaurants. Restaurant cuts also focus mainly on the loin and the ribs.

We attended the Market Lamb classes at the Royal and the Market Lamb Auction. We wanted to see what both the judge and buyers were looking for. As we have always done at the Royal, we did a bit of ring-side judging to see how our placements of the class compared to the judge. We were pretty consistent in placing the top end of the class, sometimes not in exactly the same order as the judge but we had the top 5 in the top 5 and more often than not within one placement of the judge's. I have been doing this at the Royal and other shows since I was a kid and entered judging competitions when I was in 4 H so I have a pretty good eye for a good animal. Unlike the sale barn the judge was focusing equally on the leg and the loin with even a lean towards leg quality. The Grand Champion market lamb sold for close to what I expected - ~$10 per pound live weight for a total of about $1000. A nice price for the owner but it was an excellent market lamb.

The one thing that was obvious with the market lamb classes is how far the purebred breeding stock classes have strayed from that type wanted for market lamb. That is quite a head scratcher for me. Breeding lines especially in Suffolk and Dorset have focused on large, very leggy animals.

Because we want to focus on lamb quality rather than breeding stock, if we show it will be limited to market lamb and carcass classes... the sheep equivalent of performance classes.

We also got a chance to visit Pax in his new digs. Nice place and nice people. He looks great and is doing very well. It is such a relief to know that our horses are well loved and cared for once they leave Hawk Hill.

Time to finish trimming some horses,
Cheers
Laurie

Prior

First Snow at Hawk Hill

We have been working non-stop building fences so I have been outside all day every day this week. There has been the feel of snow in the air and in the sky. Last night at about 2 am, I looked outside to see everything covered in a blanket of snow. It probably will not last long but it is a stark reminder that fall is leaving and winter is about to start.

We still have to finish a fence line or two and then the horses move to their winter pasture and the ewe lambs and rams head into their winter pastures. The last of the market lambs leave at the end of this month. The word back from all our clients has been a unanimous "Yum"! Two lambs are already booked for 2010.

We are taking a much needed break and heading to the Royal Winter Fair and then on a farm tour in Quebec. I am looking forward to meeting other shepherds and viewing other farms. There is still so much to learn.

The one advantage of downsizing our horse herd is also downsizing (big time) our hay requirements. We now have the opportunity to experiment with other crops and forage management systems. I am really intrigued with "cocktail" cover crop planting for soil improvement and fall forages. Maybe it is the scientist in me but we are already planning for different plantings to test.

Coming soon are two more steers and then the rams go in with the ewes.... and it all starts over again.

So as winter comes our animals are settling in for the long haul. In total we will have 34 animal residents for the winter: 2 dogs, 3 cats, 6 horses, 4 steers, 17 ewes and 2 rams; that is more than enough to keep us busy.

Give me another couple of weeks of clear weather and then... let is snow, let it snow, let it snow.

TTFN
Laurie

Chores for a blustery day

The English language has some words that perfectly describe something and "blustery" is one of them. It is wet, windy and generally miserable. We are doing some repairs to the fire brick on our stove so the house is only marginally more comfortable without the drying heat of burning wood. So what do you do on a blustery day.... things that you have put off doing because it is too nice outside to miss an opportunity for outside chores. In this case it was vaccinate, hoof trim and weigh the ewe lambs and weigh the two remaining ram lambs.

The whole process of vaccinating, trimming and weighing the ewes was done in less than an hour and most of that was catching and moving them. Once we have all our chutes and tilt table set up we hope to cut that time down considerably. The ewes were all in good body condition and have gained at a reasonable rate. We don't want them to get fat so they are growing on mainly second cut hay and a small amount of grain.

The two remaining ram lambs were not able to compete with the bigger rams for feed and had not gained at the same rate which is why they had not been shipped yet. Now that they are alone and we have upped their grain and added a bit of soy meal their rate of gain as jumped with one gaining nearly a pound a day. They will both get shipped at the end of November.

Now into the house to add the data to the growth charts.

A blustery night is popcorn in front the TV.

Later
Laurie