June, 2014
It was time to go and pick up our starter flock of lambs in Culpepper, VA. We had purchased a new stock trailer and were borrowing my Mom's F150 pickup. Our F250 did not have an adequate rear seat for a car seat for Samantha, and room for Trevor to stretch out. We headed out on a Thursday morning, made it to our first gas fill up and had a major heart attack! We were only getting 7 miles to the gallon! Oh, boy, this was going to be an expensive trip!
Twenty-four hours later, after an overnighter in St. Louis, we made it to Culpepper and checked into our hotel. Samantha, our four year old at the time, was quite the trooper and traveled great. We would not be getting to Old Gjerpen Farm until late afternoon on Saturday, so we decided to do some site seeing, and as Culpepper is the home of Monticello, it was a no brainer.
We really enjoyed touring Monticello, it has been beautifully restored and the gardens are absolutely amazing!
After a bite of lunch, we headed out to the farm and met Richard. What a wonderful source of information and an obvious love of the breed. We toured his farm and had several hours of great information sharing. Sunday we visited Ferry Farm, which was George Washington's boyhood home, and several battlefields. We got a good night of sleep and headed back out to the farm to load up our flock and head back home.
This is Elsa, our eldest ewe lamb
The ewe lambs getting ready to be loaded onto the trailer.
We headed out on Monday morning, bright and early. We made it to Columbia, MO late in the day, and headed for home the next morning. After one flat tire, we made it home early afternoon. It was a long trip, but very enjoyable and we were totally excited to introduce our new sheep to the farm.