First Post

I never thought I would be writing a blog, but then again, I never thought I would do a lot of things. Seeing that this the first post I should probably describe the purpose of this blog, just so I don't confuse people. Well this is all part of a larger plan to build an online presence for my farm, Windswept Acres. I was working on making the website when it showed I could link a blog to it. So I figured "Why not?". I hope to make this a weekly thing but we'll see if other stuff gets in the way. 

Here's the quick introduction: I'm from a small sheep farm in central New Jersey called Windswept Acres. We have about 20 romney ewes and 8-10 meat breed ewes. It all started as a 4-H project and has grown from there. We are starting to focus on the romney breed more and marketing the different products stronger than we have in the past. You can read more about it at windsweptacresfarm.com. 
 
I'm going to talk about lambing cameras. Lambing cameras are wonderful devices. In the cold nights of Jan, Feb and even into March, it is never fun to bundle up in 5 layers and walk several hundred feet to the barn to check sheep and find no new lambs. It makes the treks that more annoying since you crawled out of the warmth of a bed, into the pitch black night, then to the barn to find nothing exciting happening. That's where the cameras come in. The cameras are installed so that you can view the barn from a computer. (it's especially helpful when you're 200 miles away at school. as shown in the picture above.) The interface allows you to see all the cameras at once, and you can make each individual camera screen larger if you need to focus on a specific ewe. So the cameras give the shepherd a complete view of the barn so all the sheep are seen. The resolution is pretty good too so it's easy to see if a ewe is lambing or there are lambs already born. The beautiful thing about the cameras is there is no need to go out into the frigid cold unless something is happening. It's wonderful!

Sorry if this blog isn't well-written, hopefully I improve as this continues.
For my next post I'll probably explain some more sheep stuff like lambing since it's that time of year. Hopefully there will be more lambs born by the time of my next post too!