Spring Rains

When it rains it pours! Record rainfall amounts in the Ozarks this year.

The last few days it has not been pretty. Grandpa use to call them gully washers, when the clouds burst dumping intense and heavy amounts of rain. At last count, the rain beaker had 3.5 inches, that was just one day of rain.
The farm is a soggy, muddy mess. I mean the kind of wet when the mud sucks the boots right off your feet wet. Not a pretty sight and definitely nothing to enjoy working out in. Even though it is raining the farm work does not stop. Still have goats to milk, hay feeders to fill, all the other animals to feed.
The rain and mud plays heck on our Angora's fleece. The Angoras don’t mind venturing out in the rain unlike the other goats that have an adverse fear of getting wet. The rain mats the fleece, the mud cakes in their curls, anything and everything seems to stick to their underbelly and legs like Velcro. Skirting their fleeces while shearing this year will be interesting.
We have had to postpone shearing twice now this year due to rain. You can’t shear a wet fleece. Thankfully the temperatures have remained cool so they are not suffering from heat under their heavy winter fleece.

For those of you who might not be familiar with Angora goats, they are fiber-producing goats. Their fiber/fleece is called Mohair. Many of the farm visitors think they are sheep. Mohair is similar in composition to sheep wool, though there are different properties in the fiber. Mohair has a smoother surface than wool, it does not have scales as wool that can irritate the skin. It does not felt as well as wool so there is less shrinkage. It does take dye easy, is soft, very elastic and I think is easy to work with.
We have a small herd of Angoras. Concentrating on black and white fleece.