You mean I actually won something?

I am never the guy holding the winning ticket. The lottery has ignored me. The peel-off games at fast food joints have never brought me anything more than a free bag of fries, and a small bag at that. I've come to view a raffle ticket as just a receipt for a charitable contribution. So you can imagine my surprise when Susan told me that we had won a sheep. I had kicked in a buck at the Sheep and Wool festival for a chance on a Katahdin ram and thought nothing more of it until Susan picked up the phone and was told I had the winning ticket. Katahdins sheep are a little different from anything we have on the farm. For one thing their coat is different from normal wool. They are considered "hair" sheep. They shed. No shearing involved, it just drops off in the spring. Our prize sheep is down in Waynesboro, Virginia due south of us on Triple L Farms. Check out their web page if you are interested. For some great pictures of hair sheep go here.

I am not sure when we will go and pick up our prize. We have been too busy shearing for a road trip, which, I suppose, makes the case for the Katahdin all by itself.

Kitchen Companions

Not being naturally gifted in the kitchen and having an inordinate trust in books, I naturally turned to cook books when I first started fending for myself. The first one I ever bought was From A Monastery Kitchen. I know, a copy of The Joy of Cooking would have been a lot more practical, but the simple recipes accompanied by prayers, apt quotations and drawings made preparing meals beyond scrambled eggs seem not only possible but actually enjoyable. The edition I linked to is now out of print, but a revised and expanded version is still available.