Another busy week…but, at least I found a truck!

My Toyota Tacoma was one of the 20,000 in New England reclaimed by Toyota a month or two ago.  I’ve been truckless ever since.  Doing the NH Festival with just a car to load up was difficult: not enough room, and I’ve been looking, but with all those Tacomas off the road and all those people looking for vehicles, it hasn’t been easy.  To make it even more interesting, all the American made trucks, given the lack of Tacomas, raised their prices to the level of used Tacomas (which keep their value longer!).  But I found one.  It is unfortunately red.  I hate red vehicles…but otherwise, it is nice.  It is a Ford Ranger.  Today we will go get a cap put on it.  Then, I’ll be all ready to load up for my yard sale/perennial sale with a neighbor this week, and early next week, and later next week, to load up for the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Festival on Memorial Day weekend as well. (I can’t bilocate, no, but I am at the plant sale on Friday, and Dottie does Saturday on her own.)  So far, I’ve dug about 90 plants.  I dig about 10 a day, beginning sometime in early May.  I dig small ones and larger ones, and we then try to charge about l/2 of what the local nurseries charge.  We’ve gotten quite a following over the years.  I take a portion of my profit and go to nurseries and buy new stock for the following year’s splitting, and to satisfy my perennial addiction.  (Both John and I have vowed NOT to have more than one perennial garden each, for othewise, like Dottie, we would be spending every day out there weeding and cultivating and such.  And there are many other things to do…like feeding the animals, fencing, spinning, knitting, visiting friends, walking, etc.  So, we are limiting our space.  You would be amazed at how many plants I can stuff into this garden!  And now, with “culling” and splitting every year, it keeps it all under control.

The New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival was a joy, as always.  It is the first big show of the season, and there are so many people to visit  whom we haven’t seen since last Fall, news to catch up on, etc.  The sales were excellent on Saturday; on Sunday it was dead.  We didn’t sell but two pieces of “ready to wear” garments.  People were there for fiber, for yarn, for fleeces.  A lot of people were looking for patterns for items we had for sale.  We hadn’t made up patterns for them.  We didn’t bring any sock yarn, just handspun yarn, but Deb and company, from Maine, sold out of sock yarn, so to Massachusetts, we will bring a selection of sock yarns and PATTERNS: we’ve been busily making up samples and writing down the patterns in an easy to understand manner, with every row written down. (None of that, “continue in that manner until…” which stymies beginners.)  And we’ll bring the fleeces left unsold, the rovings we’ve dyed, handspun yarn, and a few wearables.  My theory this year is that winter was SO long and so snowy that people are just not wanting to look at or buy winter clothing right now.  We probably should have made up a bunch of summer weight wool clothing, shawls and socks, and short sleeved, fine, lightweight tops and such.  But we didn’t.  You live and learn.

The goslings are growing like weeds. (Why on earth I ever decided to buy geese I don’t know, but a friend, years ago, suggested that American Buff geese are not like other geese (i.e., nasty and aggressive) so I decided to find out.  I got someone to brood out the turkey poults for a couple of weeks for me, since I’ve run out of room.  The piglets arrived last Thursday.  They are LITTLE, smaller than last year.  Younger, I guess.  The grass is not growing fast enough to keep up with the sheep, and because it’s not high, I’ve had to change pastures, which means putting up fencing, and keep them in very small every other day paddocks, to let as much of the grass grow undisturbed as possible.  I probably should change them every day anyway, but I don’t have enough fencing to put it up and leave it up for daily paddocks, and frankly, spending an hour every day putting up fencing is just not high on my list of things to do every morning. Once a week works.  Until the grass really comes in, however, it is every day or every other day…which cuts into my time needed for other stuff.

This morning’s project will be to clean out the “under the loft stairs” potting mess.  I have tons of pots needed for the plant sale, and have just been throwing things in there all year.  It’s time to get them all out and get them organized into sizes, to facilitate the digging of plants for the sale.  I also have to buy more milk: those piglets go through a gallon a day.  Giving them milk with their food while they are young is a good thing.  Last year I got my milk from Lisa, the raw milk lady, who gave it to me at $3 a gallon, half the normal price, for animal feed.  And she never mentioned that it was something she didn’t want to do for long, until after three months…I feel like I took advantage of her, unwittingly, so this year, I am trying to not do so.  Hence, it’s commercial milk.  There are a few other people with raw milk around, but they don’t ship, and hence, are not subject to regular tests, and I’m a little nervous about drinking and feeding out milk that isn’t tested regularly.  So, it’s the local dairy, no BGH, but pasteurized.  I will look for other sources for raw milk when I have time.

Okay, it’s time to take LIzzie out (Do you know that adorable little puppy  had diarrhea for two days while I was at the festival…stress, my friends say, because mama isn’t there…and didn’t have ONE single accident in the house?  She called me at night if she had “emergency”.  She went out regularly and had her “squirts” until it was over and she was back to normal.  What a puppy-girl! (more than you wanted to know, right?)

And after taking Lizzie out, time to do morning chores.  Have a lovely weekend.  They are predicting some showers on four of the next five days, but the likelihood percentage isn’t that high.  We need rain.

Busy day in a busy week!

Today I have quilting in the a.m., home 15 minutes, then off to Lasell’s shearing.  She and I will then have yarn made from her fleeces.  Before I go, however, I have to put up more fencing and switch the sheep into new pasture.  Hopefully, from here on in, the grass will be growing more quickly and I won’t have to switch them around quite so quickly.  Tomorrow, the piglets come, and will start off in the winter ram pen, until they get used to me and come when called, which might take a week or so.  That gives me time to get fencing up behind the house for them and the goats.  And since they will be right next to the goats for that week, hopefully, they’ll also make friends with the goatie girls.  I’d like to keep them together; not sure how that will work out.  But at the least, they will be right next to each other.

This weekend is the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival, so I’ll be gone most of the time.  John will deal with the animals.  Before then, I have to get “playyard” (a small kenneled in area) fixed up for Lizzie, so she can have time outside without someone watching over her the whole time, so John can get some gardening done this weekend.  Right now, the playyard fencing is serving the winter quarters of the chickens, so they have to be moved as well before then.  This evening will be a good time to do that, if I can get their fencing and housing set up by then.  Otherwise tomorrow, I guess, and save the kennel fencing til Friday mid=day, between runs to Contoocook.  The festival is at the Hopkinton Fairgrounds, in Contoocook, N.H., just off exit 7 of I-89.  Hope to see you there.

Back to normal…well, as normal as I get!

Shiloh went home yesterday, so it’s just us now here on the farm.  Poor Shiloh.  The people who recently adopted her are totally overwhelmed with the whipworm dilemna: yes, Shiloh has whipworms.  I took a sample to the vet for analyzing after finding a particularly disturbing looking pile of diarrhea she had.  Whipworms are not fun.  The eggs from them live in the ground for five years, so until you get rid of the problem, you have to scoop up the poop, which means no outside without being on a leash…this is just not the way Shiloh’s adopted family operates.  Plus, they have a grand dog who frequents the place, which makes him susceptible.  Shiloh’s had her first series of meds, and is looking much happier. I think the poor girl’s had a belly ache for several months from infestation, and is probably somewhat anemic.  Meanwhile, around here, I was able to find 10 of the possibly 14 piles of poop that she deposited on the grounds in the 8 days or so she was here; I’ve cloroxed all the wood floors and vacuumed all the rugs.  Given that the mature worms lay eggs sporadically (to be declared negative, you need four negative fecal samples in a row.) the chances that Lizzie will walk through a pile and then lick her feet, when there are maybe 4 piles on 42 acres, or more realistically, on the about 4 acres we’ve been wandering around on, are slim.  But I’ll have her checked in the requisite 12 weeks it takes, and then regularly checked for five years.  I feel bad for Shiloh, who’s just gotten used to her new family, but there was a woman here last Tuesday, a spinning friend, and a dear heart, who would like Shiloh.  I have suggested she talk to her vet first to be absolutely sure.  She lives in a place where one can only have dogs on leashes, and must scoop poop anyway, so that eliminates the major difficulties of caring for a dog with this condition.  I hope her vet has no major issues and she will take Shiloh.  Shiloh spent a lot of time with her while she was here.  I think it is a good match, perhaps even a better one than her current family.  It means another adjustment for her, but she is very good natured, and I’m sure will do fine.

Meanwhile, this morning the sheep got their last hay.  This afternoon, hopefully when it is not raining, I will put them out on pasture by extending their winter pasture. Tomorrow, I will worm them and put them out on major pasture, and they will not return to the winter quarters until next November.  Somewhere in there I have to figure out what to do with the goats, where to put them where there’s some browse for them.  And I have to check with Walter about the piglets, which I thought would be here by now.  The cockerals in the barn are almost feathered out and ready to go to their new home.  The straight run chickens which will stay here will then go out in a large cage or two in chicken village, until they are a little older and able to run free, surrounded by poultry netting.  The geese are growing like weeds, and I will have to prop up their netting so they don’t get caught in it.  They still have another two weeks before they can go out, and will then go down behind the shed in the turkey pen.  And the turkey poults will be ready soon.  ARGH!  It will be busy around here starting next week.

To add to that, next weekend is the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festival in Contoocook, N.H. at the Hopkinton State Fairgrounds.  It is always on Mother’s Day weekend.  I’ve done close to nothing in the way of handwork this last six months, between the healing wrist and hand, and the extra animals…but I do have 22 nice fleeces to sell, raw, clean, skirted.  I’m hoping that it will go well, and that people will like them and I’ll sell a lot.  A few I’ll give to Pogo at Friends’ Folly Farm to process into rovings.  Later I will be sending some to her to make into yarn.  Oh, wait, maybe I’ll be bringing them to the festival: the yarn is a combined project of myself and another jacob breeder, and her shearing is Wednesday.  So, I will be there helping with skirting and can bring home some of the fleeces which will be made into yarn.  That will save us some money on postage.  Good!

If you are of a mind to do so, please drop in at the festival on Mother’s Day weekend: it is a wondrous thing: over 100 vendors, I think, sheep dog demos, camelids as well, sheep show, mini courses, lots to do…and if you come, look for me at the HodgePodge Yarns and Fibers booth.  Sue and I share the booth.  Make yourself known to us.  Happy knitting and spinning!

Kids and Dogs

Well, the grandkids left yesterday…Lizzie is missing them like crazy and is expecting total attention 24/7, which just isn’t happening, but she’s making do.  One of her tricks is to hide under John’s recliner:

To make matters more interesting, our neighbor’s dog, Shiloh, is visiting while they are off visiting family in the south for a week.  Shiloh is a mild mannered, sweet dog, who sometimes seems depressed to me.  She didn’t want to eat the food her family left for her, and preferred LIzzie’s Wellness Puppy food, so I got her some Wellness dogfood which she seems to like.  She is not fond of Lizzie’s exuberance, and has snapped at her once, and bared her teeth a couple of times, so I’m not real comfortable having them in the same room without leashes on them, which leashes are firmly in my hands, so I can separate them if necessary.  Constant Vigilance!  Just like Professor Moody suggests…however, that is very tiring, so they take turns at various times in the day, being in one room or another without the other one.  And at nap time, both are crated, Lizzie in her night-night bed, and Shiloh in her room. (The downstairs bathroom, with bed in shower.  It works, and has the added benefit that I’m climbing the stairs every time I need to use the bathroom, good exercise and calorie use! Here is Shiloh:

I really have to start digging plants soon, and putting out fencing.  I guess it will wait til next week and I’m down to one dog.  Or at least til the weekend, when I’m not carrying so much water. Boy, are they drinking a lot!  I’m hauling two 5 gallon buckets, 3/4 full, four times a day!

Soon they will be out on pasture. The grass is not high enough yet to let them out, but it is high enough so that they can smell it, and in comparison, the hay pales, so they are whining for fresh grass a lot.  Too bad, kiddos!  You’ll just have to wait one more week!

Nanny’s Birthday!

Today was Nanny’s birthday, which I didn’t know until I arrived at the store to bring a bottle baby lamb to Sue, who likes bottle babies. (blech!)  Anyway, Nanny and her friends, and Aunt Betsy, who, unfortunately, didn’t get into the photo below, celebrated by going out to lunch, and then back to the store for cake.  I came in on this, with said lamb, everyone oohed and aahed, and I whipped out the camera.  The red haired woman is Nanny’s daughter, Sue, of HodgePodge.  Carol, if you’re checking this out, since I don’t have Nanny’s email, would you send her this photo? Thanks.

Meeting “Nanny”

This morning, Lizzie went to meet her Nanny (Sue’s mother).  She was a big hit but very wiggly, making it hard for Nanny to hold her easily.  And for me to get a good shot.  But I managed to get this one:

Lizzie got some new toys from Nanny and spent the rest of the morning playing with the toys and alternately barking at Henry.  A busy morning, for sure.

Spring=overwhelmed?

Okay, Spring has sprung…the grass is beginning to rise, peeking under the snow.  The snow is about 2/3 melted, with large patches of pastures opened up.  Thirteen of the fourteen ewes are lambed out; some interesting looking lambs, but a lot with small eye patches and one ram yielded 9 ram lambs and one ewe lamb: this has never happened before here, where the land is acidic, or is it basic…whichever consistently yields more ewe lambs…so this ram has to go. I can’t afford to keep a ram who doesn’t give me enough stock to sell.  I have to sell stock to keep sheep.  Maybe it’s just the luck of the year, but I can’t afford to wait another year to find out, and have lots of ram lambs next year as well…

The baby chicks are in the barn growing.  The chickens are still at Julie’s for I haven’t found the hour I need to repair the chicken tractor and get them out on the garden to till it.  And I have a bottle baby…had two, but managed to find a home for the little ram lamb who will be wethered at the first opportunity.  The little ewe lamb is lovely, probably the best lamb this year, but I sure don’t WANT a bottle baby under foot and obnoxious til the day she dies.  So, what to do.  Her mother died, unfortunately, so to keep the line I either have to keep the lamb, or give her to someone to raise, in exchange for my breeding her here in two years, and getting first dibs on any ewe lamb, for free…maybe I can find someone who’d like a bottle lamb with excellent Hardy Hill lines, and be willing to have me breed her to the ram of my choice and give me one ewe lamb in exchange…near enough so that transport isn’t an issue…maybe not. AND, Lizzie is here. I’d forgotten just what a full time job having a puppy is…It’s tiring me out for sure.  She’s a love, but doesn’t yet get through the night so every night’s sleep is interrupted with midnight potty stops.  She’s got another three or four days before I start getting tough…My kids slept through the night…well, six or seven hours, at least, at 5 days old…surely this puppy can make it soon!  It’s just an overwhelming morning, so I’m tired and grumpy.  I’m sure I’ll be fine in an hour or so!  A little nappy perhaps while she is taking one…

With all this, it is great having Lizzie.  It is great being just about finished with lambing. It’s great having the chicks growing, the weasels killed, the chickens on their way back, the sun peeking through the clouds up there. (Part of the grouchies is that it was cold this morning, and there were snow showers last night: grrrr…

So, a new week begins, and hopefully, things will calm down and be a little easier…happy Spring.

Got the second one!

Having discovered there was a second weasel, when the trap was sprung but no weasel in it, we kept it out.  The next day we caught the weasel, I called Joyce, looked down at the weasel and said, “You can’t get out.”  I swear she looked up at me and said, “Oh, yeah, watch this!” and went straight to a place we hadn’t seen where one of the wires was bent back so there was a 1 x 2 space instead of a 1 x 1, turned her head sideways and slid right through it and away, while I watched dumbfounded.  John fixed the trap with some coat hanger wire, and we put the trap out again.  It took two days and new bait (a nice two days rotted chicken head and some chopped beef) before we got her.  This one had a long black tail…so I think they weren’t Least Weasels at all, but plain ol’ weasels, and he was just not mature enough to have his black tail yet or just changed from white and hadn’t gotten it yet? No idea, but she had a long black tail, and was a little larger.  Joyce shot her, took both pelts, has them salted now.  Waste not, want not.  Mittens?  Ermine collar for her barn coat?  No idea: but the weasels will be honored by the use of their pelts.  Now, I hope it was a breeding pair (tis the season, I’m told) and not a family reunion, and we’re finished with weasels for the season.  I am eager to get my chickens home from Julie’s, but will wait a couple of days just to make sure…

Now, I see that wordpress has changed their format and I have to figure out how to add photos…why do they do this.  It’s like the supermarket, who, every time you figure out where the Wheat Chex are, they change their location, or the bra companies, who, every time you find one that fits right and is comfortable, they discontinue it.  GRRR!!! Why fix it if it ain’t broke?

Got ‘im!

This evening about an hour ago, when I went out to check the ewes for the night, there he was, the little devil, in the havaheart…a lesser weasel, if my tracks book can be believed (no black on end of tail), about 8″ long.  My friend, Joyce, came over and shot him through the cage.  It was a quick and humane death.  He was very cute, but it isn’t very cute to eat my chickens, for sure.  I will put the cage out again for a couple of days. From what I’ve read, these guys are very solitary except during mating season, but just to be sure…

Lydia Coopworth had a lovely little (?) 10 pound black girl this morning. Mother and daughter are doing fine.  Daughter is very friendly.  At the moment, two ewes, the other coopworth and one jacob, are looking ready.  I’ll go out and check them one more time in about 15 minutes and then go to bed if there aren’t any clear signs.  Last check, the signs were ambiguous.

Weasel!

Yesterday afternoon around 1 p.m. I decided it was time for a little relaxation/contemplation/meditation, so I put on my very wonderful Dalai Lama chant tape, given to me by my acupuncturist/friend, Charles Meyers, and lay down to let it draw the stress out of me and put me in touch with the NOW…and I heard this terrible clatter of noise coming from the chickens.  It was not ignorable.  So, boots on, and out…to find a little weasel (they are very cute, 8″ long or so) trying to drag a dead chicken and alternately have some snacks from her neck flesh.  He/she looked up at me like “Who are you and what are you doing disturbing my work?” and continued working.  Called Julie: Greg wasn’t home.  Called Nancy: Mike would come over with his 22.  In my panic, I forgot that Mike is only 15 and doesn’t drive, and by the time he got here, old Mr. Weasel had decided it was nap time, and disappeared.  Meanwhile, a ewe went into labor.  Michael came, we moved a garbage pail full of minerals so that when Weasel came back, he’d have a clearer shot…and under it was a dead rat, obviously poisoned (blood, poison is anticoagulant, with no wounds), nasty enough, BUT also 10 little squirming, squeaking 1-1/2 inch long baby rats, pink and hairless.  Now, I thought we had gotten rid of all the rats way back in December…so this was not good news.  I drowned them.  Checked on the ewe.  Still laboring.  Raining, drove Michael home, since the weasel was clearly not coming out again.  Lambs born, twins, two ewes, in the house to make dinner, came out again with John while he brought water out while dinner was cooking, and there’s the weasel again.  Called Nancy back; Doug came over with shotgun, but sheep were in the shed, and we were afraid that some of the shot might go through the walls, so had to move the sheep: too much action for weasel; disappeared again.  Doug went home.  Ate dinner. Checked again, no weasel.  Chicken still there.  Checked 20 minutes later: chicken gone.  Friend, Joyce, whom I had consulted, allowed as how the weasel would kill all the chickens that night and one by one, drag them to a cache point…I was so tired…did I care?  Well, turned out I did: John and I went out with cages and thunder and lightning started…in the rain we loaded all the chickens up (by now it was pitch dark, so they were catatonic on their perches) in cages and put them in the back of the capped truck for the night.  Joyce will come over with a trap this morning.  Then we have to figure out what to do with the chickens in the interim.  Oh, bait: hmm…it says in the book that these little weasels are fond of rats…I wonder…the mama and 10 dead babies?  maybe.  I’ll see what Joyce says.  Somehow, I don’t think it will be easy catching a weasel.  “Weaseling out of things” seems to me to indicate that they don’t catch easy.  And I don’t have a gun…not that I’m likely to see it if there are no chickens in there for it to kill and drag…

Oh, and when I went out for the last check, and found the chicken missing, I looked out and there at the end of the winter paddock was Benjie, with two newborn twins…so had to get them in the shed and penned up.  She is from a non-penning sort of flock, new here this year, and was most unhappy to be penned up, but I noticed this morning, she seems much more calm and accepting of the situation.

Anyway, I’m hoping today is not quite so exciting.  Actually, I could do with a nice boring day!  What a year this has been!