 Welcome to our barn. Of course the old barn isn't safe for animals so on the other side of our two-car garage we have a small space for tack and feed and hay and then a section where we keep our six Shetland sheep and some laying hens. Now I wanted to share our barn and our livestock with you and of course our livestock guardian dog Patara who is a great Pyrenees because Imulk is right around the corner and we so often think of Imulk as the first spring festival. We think of lambs and spring flowers and all that is potential just around the corner. Our chickens are still not quite laying and maybe we'll be laying by Imulk but it really depends on how much light we're getting and how cold it is. In Wisconsin Imulk might mean that there are lambs but we're worried about how much hay we have left and it's still dark and often there's more snow than there was in December for Wisconsin. This connection to our agrarian roots and where our personal food and fiber comes from means that my association with Imulk is a little different than most. I see cute lambs and flowers as symbols of spring but I also think of cleaning the barn and trying to get the pruning on the fruit trees done in time and yet it's mornings like these when I step into the barn and it's warm and everyone just wants to have a little bit of snuggle time. I look forward to what our wool will be like when it's really spring and what we'll do together.