{Blogiversary Giveaway #2} Sheep Soap

Happy Tuesday!

Let's get right to it!

So...remember the time I had the grand plan to milk the goats and make goat cheese? Yeah, well after I failed miserably I lost all motivation or desire to try it again. I have however, since tried Goat's Milk Soap (I admit, I bought some at a farmer's market) and was totally impressed. Knowing that it is super rich in vitamins and minerals was comforting too. I could tell my skin felt moisturized which says a lot because I have seriously dry skin. 

The second item to give away this week is from Cedar Tree Farms.

This adorable curly sheep soap comes with a 100% hand knit bath cloth.

Char is the owner behind Cedar Tree Farms and I love her story. She's a fellow county-girl!
I can call myself that now, right?

"I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase the farm that I grew up on from my parents 17 years ago.  I was born on this farm and lived here until I graduated high school. Growing up we basically lived off this land with a large garden for vegetables, fruit trees and bushes, and a father who loved to hunt and fish.

Since retiring my husband and I have both started online businesses. I make all natural goat milk soap and hand knit clothing; my husband makes beautiful wooden items mostly from wood we have reclaimed from our farm, or from wood that washes up on the local beaches. We raise a few cattle and have a garden and fruit trees. My husband is also an avid hunter and fisherman.

We truly feel blessed to have this beautiful piece of property and were recently given permission to name the creek that flows through the pasture after my father who passed away 8 years ago."

{Thanks Char!}

Here is how you enter. 

Please leave one comment for each entry for multiple chances to win. 

Mandatory Entry – head on over to Cedar Tree Farms and come back and tell me what item is your favorite. This entry is mandatory and no others will count if this is not completed.

Additional Entries –
1. Be a follower of this blog. 
2. Add Cedar Tree Farms to your Etsy favorites.
3. Tell me - If you can raise a hundred of any one animal, what would it be? 

Winners will be announced on my one year blogiversary - Monday, August 8th.

Don't forget to enter yesterday's Border Collie card set giveaway!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.

Happy One Year Blogiversary to Me! {and a giveaway!}

I can't believe one week from today is my one year blogiversary!

..I'm still here..

Back when I wrote my first entry I wasn't sure how this was going to go. I definitely knew there was a chance I would hate it here at the ranch and I'd just delete this blog, but I didn't hate it, I didn't delete and I'm still here.

This blog isn't just a blog, for me it's kind of like my therapy. It's my happy place. You see, not everything is peachy perfect on the ranch. We (like many other families) have our financial worries, we have the stress of caring for a furry family that is quite dependent on us and we have the pressure of succeeding. We have the stress of the unknown aka Mother Nature and I have really bad days when I miss my family.

For these reasons and because I do enjoy it, I blog.

Coming here, to my little itty bitty corner of the blogosphere,  I feel at home and always excited to share with you what is going on in our lives. Because of this I am always challenging myself and taking in each moment I have here on the ranch. I owe that to you.

Thank you!  

This next year I have set a few goals for my blog that will force me to step out of my comfort zone and put even more of myself out there in the world. eeek! There will be more agvocation, creativity and a little more honesty.

Sooo, we are celebrating a few things this month.

1. My 100+ followers (yes, I am still celebrating.)

2. My August 8th blogiversary 

3. My one year anniversary (August 28th) of being a sheep rancher’s wife and…

4. The recent completion of my father-in-law’s treatment!

In honor of all these things and THANKS to a few awesome ETSY shops I have a week of giveaways for you, my friends!

How awesome is that?!

Here is a list of the ETSY Shops participating. Go and check out the goods!

Stay Gold Media

Tragedies Cheesecake

JuJu Bees And Co.

Susan Alison Art

Heidzz

Cedar Tree Farm Soap

Switch Designs NYC

Outside Peg

Lather and Lace

Let's get it started in her'! 

Ya'll know how much I love my Jigs

so the first giveaway item should come as no surprise.

This pack of greeting cards comes from the ever so artistic and talented, Susan of Susan Alison Art.

Are you seeing the adorable sheep slippers. LOVE this.

The winner of this giveaway will win a pack of these Well... Um... Because it's bedtime... greeting cards set. My only request is that you mail one to me.  No, I'm not serious... 

Well, kinda.


Here is how you enter.

Please leave one comment for each entry for multiple chances to win. 

Mandatory Entry – head on over to Susan Alison Art and come back and tell me what item is your favorite. There are so many things Border Collie that I love in her shop! This entry is mandatory and no others will count if this is not completed. Sorry...rules is rules.

Additional Entries –
1. Be a follower of this blog.
2.  Add Susan Alison Art to your Etsy Favorites. 
3.  Follow Monty and Rosie, Alison's blog.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.

Barnyard Animal Print Winner!

I apologize for the delay in posting the results from Wednesday's giveaway, mi familia is in town and I totally spaced it. oops!

Without further ado...the winner of the Barnyard Animal print is comment #6, Colette of Little Lion's Life!

Congratulations! 

Colette, send your address to me via the Let's Connect form!

Random Wednesday Giveaway!

Remember when I told you I have some awesome giveaways coming up in celebration of my one year blogiversary starting Monday? Well, that is still happening, but here is a little fun to start the fun!

I recently hit 100 Followers and that is pretty darn cool to me! 

 

I don't get paid to blog; I blog simply to share my story about ranching life.  

So, the fact that you are here because you like what I write is flattering and pretty awesome!

{Thank You!}  

Stay Gold Media is going to help us celebrate by giving away an 8 x 10 Barnyard Animal Print!

 

Here's how you get your hands on this adorable print. 

Please post a separate comment for each entry.


Mandatory Entry – head on over to Stay Gold Media and come back and tell me what item is your favorite. This entry is mandatory and no others will count if this is not completed.

Additional Entries –
1. Follow my blog. You are already here so why not?! If you are already a follower, just leave a comment so I know you were here.
2. Like Stay Gold Media on Facebook. 
3. Follow Stay Gold Media on Tumblr.

Winner will be announced Friday, July 29th!

Wordless Wednesdays - Summertime Jigs.

Mutton Mondays - "Sweetgrass"

I recently had the opportunity to watch a documentary on sheep ranching. The film is titled, Sweetgrass and although it is a purely observational film (aka sans narration) I found it interesting to watch.

I welcomed Aubrey Gallegos the Community Engagement and Education Department at POV to give a brief synopsis about the film. Hope you enjoy and check it out!

Here's Aubrey!

This summer, POV, a social issues documentary film series on PBS, is including in its 24th season line-up a film about a dying tradition in sheep ranching. Sweetgrass, which is now streaming on-line for free, follows the Allestad family who, in 2001, led three thousand sheep and five dogs through Montana's Beartooth Absaroka Mountains for the last time, due to public land grazing policies. Described by the filmmakers as "an unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed."

]

For a quiet film about sheep, Sweetgrass has stirred up quite a bit of conversation concerning its unique observational style, which does not mince around the realities of sheep ranching. Sweetgrass is a sensory ethnography, applying anthropological and ethnographical research methods to filmmaking in the telling of this real-life story. The film forgoes narration, even during the more startling scenes, such as the unsentimental sorting of lamb orphans to pair them up with ewes, docking tails, and shearing the sheep. The result is a meditative film, unadulterated by commentary, interviews, or explanation, that puts the viewers in the midst of these massive herds of sheep and the raw, solitary life of the people who lead them 150 miles through the mountains and back again.


In a Live Chat interview on POV, one viewer asked directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, “Were you ever concerned that the purely observational style of the film would lead some viewers to false or premature conclusions about the rough handling of the sheep by the herders?” Castaing-Taylor responded, “Not really. The advantage of observational styles is that they let viewers come to their own conclusions, rather than being spoon-fed something by a journalist or producer. Anyone can draw conclusions, false or true. Many urban folks whose experience of non-human animals is just of pets or in zoos have little idea of human-animal interactions over the last 10,000 years…Narration is a way to control and disempower the viewer, to tell them what YOU the filmmaker want him/her to think and know and feel. Fiction films don’t usually have an omniscient narrator or on-screen commentator. No reason why documentaries have to use narration as such a crutch either.” Barbash adds, “We did not want to tell people how and what to think. We have too much respect for viewers…We wanted people to sit back and watch the film for themselves and have their minds changed again and again...”

- Aubrey Gallegos, Community Engagement and Education Department at POV

This video is the first observational film I’ve watched. I do wish the video offered some narration, for purely educational purposes. One that doesn’t know sheep might misinterpret some parts of the movie, but I also understand the goal of the producers.

There are quite a few similarities between the family in the film and how we run our sheep. So if you are interested in getting an idea as to how our ranch is run or about the sheep ranching industry, this film is for you! 

If you’ve seen the film I would love to hear what you think. If you haven’t you can view Sweetgrass on-line here until October 4th.

I was not compensated for this post.