C’mon Sheep

Usually when we go out to feed the lambs there is a pretty large group waiting at the gate, but there are always others that we need to find.  Starting out over the top of the field, if you look over your shoulder the scene looks like this — much like ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, but with many lambs following — we go to find the others.

As many shepherd/ess/s before us, we call the lambs – “C’mon Sheep!”, “Sheeee-eep!”, “C’mon Sheep!”  First one, and then another looks up.  “Baa, baa” the word is passed from one to another and then as if the spirit strikes them all at once… they come.

Week-Ending

Whew… what a weekend.   In addition to all our usual chores we… mucked out the barn and spread manure… doctored a yearling stricken by meningeal worm… moved feeders and one of the big shelters… brought the yearlings over to the barn paddock… brush-hogged… mowed down hay…put up temporary fence for a new paddock in the barnyard…and so on… and so on…
We also managed to squeeze in a neighborhood pig roast, a family get together with visiting cousins and a little bit of this…

Aaahhh… summer…

The Old Barn

Great Aunt Nellie and Grandma Lena
family barn built 1900

We are so excited to have been working on our old family barn this summer. Terry has been doing some of the work, and we have also had the help of the crew from EcoStructures.   When we were growing up it was full of dairy cows and calves.  There was a tall silo, a grainary and a pigsty out back.  Right now we use it to house most of the hay that we have harvested for the long winter ahead.  Five generations of our family have made use of this sturdy shelter.  We hope that given a good dose of TLC a couple more will have at least the opportunity to build upon this legacy within its comforting walls.  We love this old barn full of friendly ghosts and fond memories.

Fairy Lace

When I got up this morning guess what I found
Frilly lace doilies all over the ground.
Some call them cobwebs but they are not that to me
They are lace doilies made by the fairies and left there you see.
Frilly lace doilies, oh hasten to see
Frilly lace doilies made especially for me.

Their midsummer social was held on my lawn
They danced by the light of the firefly till dawn
And in their haste to leave before light
They left all their napkins behind in their flight.
Frilly lace doilies that’s what I found.
Frilly lace doilies all over the ground.

I believe they were left there as thanks to me,
For the use of my lawn, I’m Irish you see.
No lovelier lace can be found
Than made by the fairies and left on the ground.
Frilly lace doilies, oh hasten to see
Frilly lace doilies made especially for me.

by Lena Gertrude Dixon Wiles, our grandmother

Fairy stories were often told to us by our grandmother while we were growing up. 
We still believe 🙂 

Weaning Day

Saturday was weaning day… a day full of lots of noise and confusion.  All the ewes’ body conditions were checked, they were scored using the FAMACHA system, then put out the side door and into the paddock below the barn.  The lambs were weighed, scored with FAMACHA and kept in the barn until, in a grand exodus, we made our way to the graveyard field. 

By Sunday morning, about half the lambs had adjusted well and were moving about the field without a care in the world.  However the other half were doing a whole lot of what really can only be described as pouting.

In a few days the lambs will, once again, become quite frisky.  There will be plenty of cavorting and romping.  They will have developed new friendships and be having a grand time.   Lambs will be… lambs.