https://www.facebook.com/111705827965108/

Canyon River Ranch Icelandics, Salida, CO (2026)

12/16/2024

Icelandic Magical Staves are one of those niche & nerdy small pieces of history that have a larger impact in our modern culture than most people realize. You've probably seen Icelandic Magical Staves, but might not have known that's what they were. In fact, there is a popular stave called the Vegvísir, or Way Finder that is often mistakenly called a "Viking Compass." While it is indeed meant to be a magical compass, the only instance of it comes from a grimoire written in 1860, (so about 800 years after the Viking era.) Anyways, like I said, a super niche & nerdy small piece of history, one that I'm quite fascinated with! Aside from the Vegvísir, you've also probably seen the "Helm Of Awe" or Ægishjálmar. This Magical Stave might actually date back to Viking era, as it is referenced in Norse Mythology as a symbol or object on the forehead of the dragon Fáfnir. Regardless of how old or modern a specific stave might be, I find them all fascinating and beautiful! As a shepherdess of Icelandic Sheep, I have a fondness for honoring my sheep & their heritage by painting Icelandic Magical Staves on their skulls. As two of the most popular (with good reason) staves, I often paint the Vegvísir & Ægishjálmar, one a symbol of guidance & the other protection. I enjoy finding other meaningful and beautiful staves to paint as well. (BTW, I am happy to take deep nerdy dives into any of these staves if you want!) I do offer these skull for three hundred ninety five. (BTW, these are skulls of my own sheep that I have raised, loved, cared for, & in many cases, humanely harvested for meat.) I can ship skulls, but will also be at the on Solstice (next Saturday 12/21) I can also create custom skulls, help you find the perfect Magical Stave, pick out colors, paint with specific intentions, create a kind of thoughtful Magic... Please reach out with questions or for more information, like I said I am always happy to nerd out on this stuff! 🥰

12/05/2024

Harvest looked a little different this year. My fourth season, barely a fledgling in my own mind, I shifted into the roll of teacher, mentor. It's fortunate that these are rolls I'm comfortable with, though usually the subject I'm teaching is one with which I have that 10,000 hours of mastery, know intimately inside & out, back & forth, with my eyes closed, have complete total & utter comfort in... This time I found myself teaching a subject that I'm still very much learning, one in which I make mistakes, have only a foundational knowledge of, an awareness that I don't know what I don't know, & that there is SO much more to know!

Last season's harvest was a test, a right of passage I feel lucky to have passed... I harvested six lambs alone. That in itself was an immense learning process, & definitely ingrained some fundamentals into my neural network. But shifting so quickly from apprentice to sensei was a little nerve wracking! I'm beyond grateful to my mentor, who is that 10,000 hour master in the art of butchery. I'm grateful to be able to share my harvest, & the knowledge that Jason has imparted upon me, as well as for the continued support, mentorship & friendship that Jason brings to my life, I am so very grateful! 💖

Not that it needs to be said, but since Gratitude is such a powerful thing, I like to be intentional with it & speak it often. So, I'm incredibly grateful for the freezer full of nutrient dense delicious Colorado Raised Icelandic Lamb (my favorite food.) I'm grateful for the ability to process on farm, to harvest in the most humane way possible, to know that these animals lived the best life possible & had the easiest death possible, (all they know is they got a treat, their systems were flush with happy hormones, not stress hormones.) I'm grateful for the relationship that I have with these animals. Each & every one of them has enriched my life, from the first two butcher lambs I got five years ago, to my snuggly ewes who are always solace for me, to my stately ram from whom I've learned so much as we have grown together, to each lamb who has nourished my body... I am SO incredibly and humbly Grateful. ✨🐏✨

06/04/2024

I have been eyeball deep in teaching super intensive instructor level raft and swiftwater rescue courses, on top of getting our regular river season started! But I finally got the ewes & lambs moved out to pasture with the rams. (They are all SO stoked!) And my Alpine doe Finally kidded at 10pm last night... Whew! Just in time for me to hop on another plane and be gone for two more weeks... 😅 Whitewater and farming are weirdly not the most symbiotic timing... 🌊🌊🌊🐐🐏🐏 Still not entirely sure how I'm managing to pull this all off... Incredibly Grateful for it all though! 🥰

04/29/2024

Lambing season 2024
I've been gone for most of the winter... Whitewater is my day job, & this winter it's had me all over the world.

Spring is my crazy season though, it's when we open the doors of our CO based rafting company for the season, & when I teach the bulk of my instructor level training courses (read: "super intensive.")

I planned breeding groups last fall to accommodate my crazy spring schedule. (Read: "I didn't schedule any courses for the last two weeks of April in hopes that all the lambs would happen then, but that also because it was the only open time on my calendar it's when everything else that hasn't happened all winter & won't happen all summer got scheduled...")

I got home on the afternoon of 4/18 after having been gone for almost a solid three months.

Our shared business & family calendar is a veritable rainbow of anxiety inducting colored blocks, the little teal block on the 4/19 square states "7:00am Lambs Due" That morning, my first morning home, the first lamb hit the ground around 6:50am. (How's that for timing!)

He was a healthy badgerface ram lamb born unassisted to an OWE (One Winter Ewe, read: "teenage mom") who surprised us as the first to go! Days before, I'd been in WA state finishing up a rafting course there, when I got pictures of what my farm hand Cass, thought was a ewe going into labor, but fortunately she's the one ewe who always tricks me and I think she's going to lamb any second for like a week...

It was literally a week after Cass sent me those first photos, when that ewe finally lambed... & I was 3 hours away in Denver. Things weren't well. Labor was taking too long, discharge was bright yellow. I was on my phone back & forth between my mentor, vet & farm hand. Cass ended up pulling, the first lamb was stillborn, with no eyes. (Eye sockets, just no eye balls... 🤷🏼‍♀️) The second was a healthy ewe lamb. After much back & forth between the vet & two of the most experienced Icelandic Sheep breeders this side of the pond, we finally concluded that it was probably just one of those weird freak things that can happen sometimes, that the yellow was meconium from the second lamb being stressed, and that it probably wasn't some highly contagious infection that required hazmat style handling... 😅😬

My star ewe had only a normal sized single ewe lamb, and didn't pass her placenta for over four hours! I was sure she must have another lamb in there, so did a deep dive (literally...😅) to find said missing lamb... Who never actually existed... 🤷🏼‍♀️

My other star ewe ended up being a 2am lamb pulling night when she had lamb one with a leg back, knee getting caught on the pelvis, & lamb two with massive horn buds! (She kept thinking she had already lambed & looking for her lambs that weren't out yet!)

It's been a bit of an awkward lambing season, but all in all I have five healthy ewes and seven healthy lambs... Four white ewe lambs, & three black ram lambs.

There is one more OWE who could potentially still lamb, but I'm not entirely sure she's pregnant... Another couple of weeks and I'll know for sure. In the meantime, I'm grateful for the beautiful lambs I have, and in looking at that colorful anxiety inducing calendar, am wondering why in the world my Alpine Does are scheduled to kidd during the middle of one of my most intensive instructor level classes! While my lambing timing actually worked out this year, apparently my kidding timing is less than desirable... 😅

I'm not entirely sure why I do this to myself, other than that Icelandic Lamb and fresh goats milk are literally my two most favorite foods on the planet, & that I am insatiably passionate about my work... So I just kinda make it all work I guess! Life is a lot, my life an extra lot... It's hard, I'm exhausted, but it's all 💯 worth it!

01/09/2024

I have a couple of pretty darn special ewe lambs at the moment that just constantly melt my heart and bring a smile to my face… 💖 These two, Gaulder & Freydis, are just too sweet and adorable for words! Even my husband, (who barely tolerates my sheep on the best of days,) will regularly comment on how adorable they are, how sweet they are or how much he actually likes them! 🤯🥰 Feeling incredibly blessed to have these two in my life right now… 💖

11/18/2023

This week
Felt very much like
A right of passage.
I processed six lambs.
All by myself.
I had no intention of doing it by myself.
It’s just the way the cards landed.
Though in retrospect, it feels more like,
The way the Norns dealt the cards…
My window to process was small.
My farm hand was out of town.
My mentor had to cancel last minute.
I had no choice but to tackle the task alone.
I had no choice but to finish in the time allotted.
I had no choice but to do.
I’d never done this alone before.
I’m still a beginner really, a fledgling.
I’d never done this many before.
Last year I did three, with help.
I’d never done my own before.
This spring was my first lambing season.
This was my first time processing lambs
That I started planning for last fall.
That I cared for from their first breath
To their last.
Nothing about any of it was easy.
But I can do hard things.
Once I accepted that it was my task and mine alone,
I knew it was appropriate.
I knew it was meant to be.
And I tried my best to rise to the occasion.
It took me all four days.
They were long days,
Hard days.
Day one
I made all of the mistakes,
Learned all of the hard lessons,
And took the biggest emotional hit.
I only harvested one lamb.
Day two
I harvested, dressed and hung,
Five lambs,
Alone.
Or mostly alone anyways-
My daughter
Helped me with one small, but gruesome task, on each lamb, that required a second set of hands to hold the hanging bar still.
She’s incredible.
The most amazing teenager I know.
My husband
Emptied the bin of intestines,
In between each lamb,
In a remote corner of the property,
An offering to scavengers.
He’s incredible.
The most amazing, supportive man I know,
Who constantly blows my mind.
The poor guy was a vegetarian for most of his life.
The farm is not his jam. At all.
But he indulges me,
Empties buckets of guts for me.
My river rescue skills
Came in handy
I used a Z-Drag
To hang the lambs
So I didn’t have to ask them for help hoisting.
I hadn’t realized,
That processing sheep
Is a full body contact sport.
I was sore and achy
By the end of the night.
The third day
I fleshed all five hides.
There was lots to flesh,
As my beginner hands,
Did a poor job
Of removing hides.
Fleshing hides is tedious, hard work
But the first lamb had already hung
For more than a day
So I burned the midnight oil
And got one lamb
All the way into the freezer.
On the fourth day,
I bucked up the other five lambs,
Alone.
Though my daughter rallied
To help wrap roasts
In freezer paper
As the day wained,
And the night grew deep.
But I did it!
I put all six lambs
Of my own first crop
Into the freezer
To nourish my family for the year.
Those first bites,
Tenderloin,
Pan fried for breakfast,
Melted like ambrosia on my tongue,
Tingled in every cell of my body.
Icelandic Lamb.
This is the food that nourishes me
Most deeply.
On a molecular level.
Though to source it is not easy.
And as I was raised,
Like the rest of us,
In a Modern Western World,
Where we are all
So disconnected
From our food sources
So disconnected
From the cycles of Life and Death
From the Sanctity of Sacrifice.
For all life
Is dependent
Upon life.
From soil microbes
To salads
Sourdough
Eggs
Tenderloin.
All of life
Is sustained
By death.
Yet our modern world
So shelters us
From said cycle
That to experience it
As a Western Woman
Finding her Roots
Feeding herself
In the healthiest
And most honorable way possible
Is downright painful…
I didn’t know if I could do it.
But I knew I had to.
I am tired,
I am sore,
My heart and body ache.
But I feel good
I feel strong
I feel grateful
I feel connected
I have learned
I have grown
And I feel proud

11/13/2023

Today was hard.
Today I butchered by myself for the first time ever.
It didn’t go very well.
It took me all day, and I only got one lamb dressed and hung. One out of six.
I made (almost) every rookie mistake possible.
I forgot key steps early on that made for challenges further on.
I couldn’t remember what to do at certain steps.
I moved entirely way too slow.
I fu**ed up big time,
and got fire hosed by green rumen juice…
This is my fourth year processing lambs, but it is my first year doing it without my mentor.
This is also my first year processing lambs that I bred… Lambs that were born right here at CRR, that I have cared for from moment one.
It’s amazing how much you can forget in a year, especially when it’s something you’ve only done three times before…
Learning is hard.
What made today extra hard,
Is that of course when I shook the bucket at the gate, the first lamb to come running was the one that I had bottle fed…
He was Lamb Chop #5 (LC5 for short)
LC5 was a lot of firsts for me.
He was the first lamb I swung to get breathing.
He was the first lamb I intubated to get eating.
He would have been the first lamb I pulled, but I’d pulled his sister shortly before him.
He, along with his sister, were my first bottle lambs.
I remember being so scared to reach in and feel around for him, realizing he was backwards and knowing I had to pull quickly.
I was so scared slipping that tube down his throat to get some colostrum in his belly.
I tried to graft him onto another ewe, so I didn’t have to bottle feed him, knowing he was destined for the freezer.
It didn’t work. So I bottle fed him. During my river season. Every three hours for the first week, while I was teaching a super intensive raft instructor certification course.
I brought him into the classroom on those couple of snowy days. It made the bottle feeding easier, though was probably a distraction to the students.
He followed me everywhere.
Would come when I called.
It is no surprise to me that he was the first to come running today.
Today, LC5 was my first solo butcher.
Fortunately the killing went seamlessly. LC5 was beside himself, excitedly eating grain, (a big treat!) and then knew nothing… He ended on a note of bliss, no fear, no stress. (I am beyond relieved that this part went well, my biggest fear is messing that up…)
It was the dressing that I royally fu**ed up. I even feel like it was probably the worst job of skinning I’ve ever done too. (I lost a lot of meat and fat to my sloppy skinning job, fu**ed up roasts, made the rumen explosion damage worse, was a lot of fleshing to do in order to be able to salt the hide…)
I’m going to loose more meat off him once I process him and have to cut away the rumen contaminated bits.
On one level, I feel like I did an injustice to this sweet little lamb.
That he deserves a prettier dressing than I gave him, a more streamlined processing. I really kinda beat myself up over it. He was a sweet little guy, with such a goofy little face, and silly little scoops on the ends of his horns… LC5 was the only lamb I could tell apart from the rest, aside from the overly handsome LC1 who went on to be a ram at another farm. And not just because he was so personable. He really did have the sweetest goofiest little face with those funny little scoops on his horns. Like LC1 he stood out, just in a different way… He deserved better than the hack job I gave him.
On another level, I know that he was the perfect teacher for me.
This little lamb has taught me so much, has been so many firsts for me, that it seems only appropriate that even in death he continued to teach me.
That of all my lambs, he was the one to hold space for me to learn, to make all of those rookie mistakes…
Tomorrow, I have five more lambs to do… I know they will go much more quickly and smoothly because LC5 gave me time and space to make all of the mistakes I could, to learn from every one, and the opportunity to do better tomorrow.
Today was hard.
I cried.
A lot.
(In fact I’m still crying as I’m writing this.)
I sobbed.
I screamed.
I cried.
I stopped part way through, to clean the carcass, clean the workspace, and change my clothes.
I cried some more.
They say that first step in learning is allowing yourself to suck.
I sucked today.
Sucking is hard.
Processing a bottle lamb was harder than I expected.
Especially one who has taught me so much…
I will take the lessons that LC5 so graciously let me learn on him today,
And tomorrow,
I hope to do better.

11/11/2023

This handsome little man, was originally named LC1 (short for “Lamb Chop #1 as he was the first ram lamb born this spring, and all ram lambs here get named “Lamb Chop.” Actually, he was the first lamb ever born at Canyon River Ranch!💖) He stood out from the beginning, almost twice the size of his twin brother, and with a distinct spot on his left shoulder, he quickly grew to be the largest lamb in the flock, with the longest wool, biggest horns, and also the best temperament: Just super chill, easy to handle, calm & cool. 😎 I hadn’t planed on selling breeding stock out of my first crop of lambs, but LC1 just stood out as being exceptional, so I decided to put him out there and give him a chance! He got his chance… LC1 has been officially named Aslan (swoon!) and has gone to live with a flock in Southwestern CO. I am grateful that this little guy got his gold card and gets to live a happy ram life! I can’t wait to see the beauty he’s sure to turn into, and the lambs he’ll throw… ✨💖✨

11/02/2023

In this time of transition, of the world preparing for the slumber of winter, in the shedding, the dying, the turning within… That I find myself in a place where I am finally ready to put some of my farm goods out there in the world…💖 I do not yet have meat for sale, as I hope that this years harvest will be enough to feed my family through until next years harvest… I do hope to sell CO raised Icelandic lamb in the coming years though! 🥩
In the meantime, what I have to offer are two lamb pelts, and two painted skulls.
The pelts are small, (about 3’x2’) and are tanned by traditional natural methods. I am asking $275 for each.
The skulls are hand painted with Icelandic magical staves. The gold one has the Vegvísir or “Way Finder” a magical stave wherein “One will never loose one’s way in storms or bad weather, even when the way is not known.”
The silver one has the Ægishjálmur or “Helm of Awe” that is said to bring courage and protection. I am asking $395 for each skull.
I also currently have eight 4oz jars of Calendula Dreams lotion available, and four bottles of Rugged River Hydrating Beard Oil. While these are things that I made long before my little farm (especially the lotion- I’ve been making that for raft guide hands for almost 20 years!) The lotion is now made with calendula from my garden and milk from my goats! 🌼🥛🐐🌼And the beard oil is also made with herbs from my garden. 🌼🌿🌱🌾The lotion is $24 a jar and the beard oil is $22 a bottle.
Please DM me to order.

10/19/2023

I realize that haven’t posted any farm updates since April… 😬There’s a reason though, for those of you who don’t know, I run a whitewater rafting company So summer is a particularly intensive season for me (ok, spring through fall… 😅) This was my first lambing season, and it was both beautiful and challenging (as I’ve gathered lambing seasons are wont to be.) We had eight beautiful lambs, seven white ram lambs and one all black ewe lamb. (I named her Gaulder which means “magic” in Icelandic, because she is pure magic!) All eight lambs survived and thrived! But I lost a ewe, and ended up with two bottle lambs. One of the ram lambs has stood out as exceptional from day one, and he is going on to live as a ram at another farm. The other six ram lambs are going to nourish my family and I for the winter, and I am beyond excited to have so many to fill my freezer with! This season has been challenging but beautiful, on SO many levels. I’ll try to fill in some more regular updates, and maybe even stories from the season, now that fall is here and I am (potentially) sitting still for more than a five minutes at a time.

04/16/2023

I call this one:
“Not Crying Over Spilled Milk”
Was definitely not intending on training a new milker this year! Damn life is weird sometimes... Rolling with the punches as best I can. Not always pretty, bust mostly functioning, mostly. 😣

04/09/2023

I just still can’t get over these three! 💖🥰💖

Canyon River Ranch Icelandics

12/16/2024

12/05/2024

06/04/2024

04/29/2024

01/09/2024

11/18/2023

11/13/2023

11/11/2023

11/02/2023

10/19/2023

04/16/2023

04/09/2023

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category