English Gardens Lamb & Fleece is located near Caledonia, MN. We started our flock in 1997 and now consists of 60-70 sheep and 3 llamas. We raise Registered Blue-Faced Leicester, Columbia/Texel X, and English Leicester X. Our lambs are raised as natural as possible with no antibiotics or growth hormones. Spring lambing starts the end of March and continues to the middle of May. All breeds do excellent on grass. Breeding stock will be available and posted in July/August.

Our flock has been completely tested for scrapie with the aid of the State of MN. All of our rams are RR. All of our ewes are RR, QR, and the 6 ewes that tested QQ have been third eyelid tested and are scrapie free. As those ewes age they will be taken out. We are producing only RR and QR breeding stock. All ram lambs for sale are RR.

Blue-Faced Leicester was added to our flock in 2006. We currently have 3 and are not ready to sell these as breeding stock. However, we have many Columbia/Texel ewes that were crossed with the Blue-Faced Leicester. The lambs have an outstanding growth along with the beautiful Blue-Faced Leicester wool. The meat has an extra mild taste that almost melts in your mouth. The wool is a joy to spin, very smooth, comparable to Corriedale in fineness with a 6"staple and makes a beautiful light weight draping garment.

Columbia/Texel X has been our main breed for 10 years. These are an excellent dual purpose breed. The lambs finish mainly on grass in 6 months. They produce a nice mild taste. Excellent lambing, mothering and calmer sheep. We mainly have twins and triplets. The twins are 70-75 lbs, the triplets are 65-70 lbs at weaning time. Ram Lambs are kept only from the best ewes which produce triplets that have a weaning weight of 75lbs per lamb. Only RR ram lambs are kept and available for breeding stock. With the Texel breeding the wool can be finer like Columbia or coarser. We have been crossing for the finer wool. The wool is used for batting, felting. spinning, and has good elasticity with a 4"staple.

English Leicester/Lincoln X was brought in mainly for spinning and color. We have found this to be an easy keeper, excellent mothering with twins. The meat has a mild taste with a little bit more lamb flavor. We first found the lambs took forever to be market weight so the crossing began. We crossed the first ewe with Columbia/Texel and found the lambs will finish in the 6 months. It also added more softness to their wool. We presently have those crosses and 3/4 English Leicester X. The 3/4 English Leicester crosses do finish in 8 months. We also have Blue-Faced Leicester/English Leicester X this year. This added extra growth to the lambs and wonderful soft long wool. The wool is beautiful with a long staple, 6" or so, and easy to learn to spin with. The colors are light cream, dark cream, black, black with a silver or gray saddle. The wool has beautiful luster and is used for batting, felting, spinning, and makes great outter wear and rugs.

Our llamas do a wonderful job of quarding our sheep. We have 3 cili-bols and a half Argentine Cria. The llamas are sheared in June and give us more beautiful fiber to work with.

We shear our flock the last week of October, then all fiber is skirted, washed, and dyed at home. The fiber process is finished near Minnesota City at Carothers Country MIll. We have the fiber made into batting which is used for felting or quilting, rovings, top rovings, blending of color and fibers, and millspun yarns. All handspun yarns and handmade products are made on our farm.