Snow fell as I fed sheep this morning. Hopefully BigEars cheers you up
Channel: Zwartbles Ireland Suzanna Crampton
Date: 24/02/2022

With all the bad news these days, weather still happens and livestock still must be fed. Sweet black lambs will hopefully momentarily distract from wars of this world. Ebony's lamb comes over for a head rub and BigEars shows off his wonderful ears.
Awake at 2am Irish time I saw the first tweets out about Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was a sleepless night I had afterwards thinking of the Ukrainian people, an independent Democratic EU country. Also what this all will mean to those of us living in Europe. Another war in Europe and in this particular region it will mean food and fuel will become even more expensive.
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Zwartbles Ireland is a small company run from a farm in County Kilkenny in Ireland. We are a regenerative farm which means restoring soils health and regenerating its natural carbon and nutrient cycle with biodiversity of pasture sward with grasses, legumes, forbs and herbs. This also means we farm with nature. Healthy soils are important for healthy environment. So we encourage all life from the microbial to dung beetles, ants, pollinators to flora biodiversity, birds, hare, hedgehogs, rabbits, fox, badger as well as our livestock. This mean we farm in a style of mob grazing and giving fields long rest times between grazings. We have seen a huge increase and return of wildlife including woodcock and snipe in winter months foraging for dung beetle larvae, red squirrel, wood peckers and pine martens. We also have the rare natter bat and previously thought extinct Tawny Mining bees.
We sell, Zwartbles sheep, Zwartbles blankets and yarn made from the sheep, and calendars featuring Inca the World's Smallest Sheepdog and her coworkers. We also sell alpaca yarn spun for our own alpaca. Our yarns are 100 percent natural, grown by our sheep which grazing our small green Irish fields. This wool is naturally sequestered carbon which you can then knit into warm environmental friendly clothing.