The lambs are settling in quite nicely… coming in for head counts in the morning and evening. They are scattering while grazing, a sure sign that they are growing more confident now that they are on their own. Saturday they will come back to the barn for a bi-weekly health check. We are excited to see how they are progressing.
A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a single moment from the week
A simple, special extraordinary moment.
A moment to pause, savor and remember.
Saturday was weaning day. We set up moving lanes on Friday, and moved everyone, including the yearling ewes and wethers, into the corral overnight. Bright and early the next morning, we got to work. All the sheep were scored with the FAMACHA card and treated. The adults went out the side door and back the moving lane into fresh pasture behind the house. Liam and Strider have such pleasant personalities that we left them in with the ewes for the next couple weeks. The lambs went out through the corral and out a moving lane into the graveyard field where hay had been made a couple weeks ago.
After a late lunch and a brief rest, we headed back to the barn to finish taking down the temporary fencing for the moving lanes. A rapid change of plans had to be made as the lambs had torn down a corner of their fencing and had moved into the pen with Poseidon and Aragorn, our two biggest rams. There they were bunched up in the corner closest to the barn bawling for their mamas. We set to work repairing and moving fencing, and, of course, by the time we were done they had scattered and were happily munching poison ivy leaves off the locust tree trunks. Finally after much coaxing and gentle herding (all the while trying very hard not to attract the attention of the rams) we got (what we thought) was everybody moved back. On the walk back to the barn we heard a lamb echoing down over the hill. Of course it turned out not to be an echo, but 6 or 7 lambs down below the rams. Luckily they had meandered back up to the top closer to the other lambs and we were able to coax them over the next morning.
The ewes spent that evening and the next day wandering from one end of their paddock to the other looking for their lambs, calling them all the while. That always pulls at our heartstrings. Everybody has now settled in nicely and things are much calmer… and much quieter.
And the winner is…. Boo’s Mom!
Thank you all for your comments!
(Sorry it took so long to make the announcement; experiencing a few technical difficulties.)
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A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a single moment from the week
A simple, special extraordinary moment.
The butterfly bush is full of blossoms, and of course, now full of butterflies!
Don’t forget to comment on last Wednesday’s post for a chance to win a farm mug!
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
We thought you might enjoy a peek at Farm Fall Fashion Week. This is what all the best dressed lambs will be wearing. We are very excited that this preview shows that the hot trend will be long, curly, lustrous, and very beautiful fleeces!
Please don’t forget to enter our farm mug giveaway! Simply comment on Wednesday’s post for a chance to win.
joining Madge from The View From Right Here for Weekly Top Shot(s)
A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a single moment from the week
