Beersheba Farm

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Winter Ramblings – 11th June 2025

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Winter has finally arrived – and so did some very welcome rain over last weekend.

Last Saturday saw us at the Shepparton and District Handweavers & Spinners’ Wool Day. It was a lovely day – much better inside the hall compared to outdoors – and involved many conversations and piles of coloured wool.

Meanwhile, down south our latest batch of Castledale combed tops is underway. The scoured fleece is now going through the steps to being double-combed and delicious! Today it was on the carder in one of the preliminary steps to open the fleece and prepare it for the gill and comb (photo below of the carded sliver in “cans”). It won’t be long before it is all done and we will be dyeing it frantically before the Australian Sheep & Wool Show next month. If you’re quick you may still be able to grab a bargain on a Bulk Buy pre-sale which is on until 30th June 2025 (unless it sells out prior). The Castledale combed top is one of our licensed products with the Australian Fibre Collective (promotion of 100% Australian grown & processed fibre) as well as with the Australian Made Campaign at the highest level as “Product of Australia”. In fact, we only just recently completed our latest audit with the Australian Made Campaign to prove compliance.

Castledale Wool, off the carder being wound into cans

As we prepare for the Australian Sheep & Wool Show at Bendigo Showgrounds (July 18-20, 2025) we realised that this will be our 10-year anniversary of the very first Merino and Castledale processing runs!! Oh my goodness!!! Time flies when we’re having fun. LOL And in the spirit of Birthdays and Anniversaries…. we will have something a bit Special at this year’s “Sheep Show”. You’ll have to come along to see us at the “Flower Shed” (left hand side as you drive in via Gate 1) More details soon….!

Here on the farm it has been an anxious wait for the “autumn break” (we received a “false break” in March and then nothing until Winter.  Ooops). Trying to juggle the expenses to keep the sheep well has been challenging at times. Lambing will be in August this year.

For those of you who remember our dear departed Drysdale ram Gilbert – we still have his older sister, Minty. She turns 13 this year which a grand old age for a sheep. No front teeth at all and is now blind and mostly deaf like her mother became. She’s fully retired and living in the garden with a couple of companions and enjoying her mealtimes. (So much so that I can never get a good pic of her except with her head in the food dish!) Not sure how much longer she has but we will try and give her the good things while we can.

Time to wind up for the evening – the workshop is calling with more wool that needs dyeing! If you haven’t pre-ordered your fibre Advent Calendar then you may want to get a move on….

100% Australian Grown & Processed

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Did you know that the Australian Fibre Collective has been set up by Australian Fibre processors and growers to give consumers confidence that what they are buying is 100% Australian Grown & Processed.
To be a licencee and use the logo a rigorous application process has been undergone to prove all claims are accurate.
Many fibre products available to consumers have varying (or no) Australian processing.
To be certain of supporting Australian manufacturing look for the Australian Fibre Collective logo.
Details of current licencees and the Collective are on the AFC website:
 
PS. Beersheba Farm is Licencee #0011 ! ??

Floss update – September 12th 2020

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Floss (August 1st, 2020)

For those who had been following LambMetrics you’d have known that the youngest member of the (aging) sheepdog pack, Floss, hasn’t been too well lately and had had a couple of trips to the vet.

Yesterday I was really not happy with the way her temperature was stubbornly staying high despite the antibiotics and so Floss went back to the vet clinic for further investigation.

Long story short – septic pericarditis (icky infection around the heart) most likely caused by an inhaled grass seed months ago. Apparently it’s quite rare in dogs. Great. At least we got it before she collapsed….

Pretty serious stuff indeed.

So, I left her with my awesome vet while I went and checked out Merino rams and then later in the afternoon learnt they had successfully sucked out about 100ml of ‘gross icky stuff’ (not the technical term but essentially it was pus) from the outer lining of the heart and that she was going to stay at the vet clinic over the weekend hooked up to an IV of different antibiotics (designed for anaerobic bacteria, rather than the more regular aerobic ones she’d been initially treated for.)

As of this evening she has improved – her temperature has come down below 40C – and eating well.

The vet is still pretty guarded with his prognoses for her but temperature down and eating are all good things so I’m determined to be hopeful.

If you can spare a little prayer for her that would be amazing.

LambMetrics – 12th August 2020

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#LAMBMETRICS for the day

Drysdale & English Leicester Flocks

Born today: 6
Total Lambs Born: 45
Drysdale lambs (live total): 22
English Leicester lambs (live total): 14
English Leicester X lambs (live total): 5
Total Sets of Twins born: 14
Total Sets of Triplets born: 1
Total ewe lambs: 25
Total ram lambs: 20
Ewes lambed /76: 29  (38.1 %)
Lamb % : 141 % [live]
Assisted/Dystocias: 5
Losses: 4 [lamb]; 0 [ewe]

Notable Midwifery tales:

Checking the nooks and crannies of the paddocks on morning rounds. In the rain.
A maiden Drysdale ewe with her first lambs
Hermione’s triplets are doing well.
Hanging looooooow and trying to steal lambs is a good indicator of “nearly ready”
Only two in there?!?
Hazards of lamb photography!
Yay! The first lambs by the silver English Leicester ram!
*smooch*

When is a Rose not a rose?

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Followers of our Facebook page and Instagram will probably be aware that roses are rather popular at Beersheba Farm. (Over 100 bushes and we aren’t counting!) So, a few years ago when a product called “Rose Fiber” came on the market we were very excited. Wool and roses! Our world was complete!

However, initial research yielded very little information on what this glorious fibre was made of and how. Basically all that could be found was marketing sales pitch from one or two large fibre-selling companies that it was “made from rose bushes”.

This didn’t bode well for the marketing pitch to be accurate.

It would be generally thought among the fibrecraft community from the marketing that “rose fiber” is made as a bast fibre (where the actual fibre structures of the plant are used to produce the yarn, like Hemp, Linen/Flax, Raimie/Nettle or Jute).

This is not the case.

“Rose fiber” is a Viscose. Viscose being a regenerated cellulose product and common sources of cellulose being wood pulp, soy, bamboo, and sugar cane. The environmental concerns with viscose/rayon production are well known.

….the term “rose fiber” refers to a protein-enriched cellulose fiber, particularly a blend of cellulose and rice protein. Synonyms for “rose fiber” are “rousi fiber” and “rose fiber viscose”. The raw material of rose fiber is derived from plants. […] In particular, the protein is rice protein. [….] The handfeel is fairly soft like the surface of the rose leaf, so it called rose fiber. However, rose fiber does not necessarily have to be derived from rose bushes. Rose fiber is produced by viscose spinning.

patents.google.com/patent/WO2018158391A1/en

One website also lists it as being: Protein “Rose” Fiber derived from “mixed cereals”. (Cereal crops are things like rice, wheat, oats. Rose bushes aren’t a cereal crop)

The suspicion felt about the source of the cellulose in “rose fiber” would appear to be justified. There aren’t too many places in the world with large tracts of rose bushes grown for their wood…..

Now, when you google for “rose fiber” there is an absolute plethora of websites eagerly selling this fibre “made from rose bushes”. It is quite disheartening to see people taken in by this without proper investigation into the truth of the claims.

New products coming out include yarn that is a pretty rose pink as its “natural” colour. The manufacturer claims (along with a whole bunch of large, scientific words that may or may not be used accurately) that rose flowers are turned into powder and then added to the viscose solution prior to spinning (like “pearl fibre”) and so it is natural (!) and lists a bunch of supposed health benefits. Am looking forward to some proof in the way of scientific analysis on that?! How many natural “health benefits” are going to survive the highly chemical viscose process?

Bottom line is: this product is highly unlikely to be made from ACTUAL rose bushes.

The “rose fiber” feels lovely and is a novelty to spin and use but let’s try stop the misinformation that it is anything but viscose rayon from undefined sources.