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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
Here’s Susanna’s little ewe lamb:
She was born last night around 7 p.m. And this morning, when I went out to feed them at around 7 a.m., I found Fiona with a little ewe lamb, all dried off, so must have been born middle of the night, I’d say.
Hmm…doesn’t look like she has knee patches on her front legs…will have to check…and if she’s wearing black socks, they are that kind that stop at the ankles! We shall see…
Yesterday around noon, I went out to check the sheep and found Turtle with two little ram lambs. I had checked at 10 a.m. and no one was showing any signs of immanent birth. That line is like that: just pops them out with no problems. Here’s the babies:
Here’s the other one:
Another lamb was born last night, a single ewe lamb, a bit dark but cute nevertheless. I’m about to go out and see if there were more in the night, and take a photo of the little girl.
Well, it is lovely outside, though I think it would be a lot lovelier in say, December, or January, or even February…we had just commented last night that the driveway is finally free of most of the ice and snow which has covered it all winter and made traversing it to the shed an act of faith, and they are saying 3-7 inches. Well, we easily have three so far: N.J. type snow: wet and heavy, weighing down the trees, big flakes. I was going to the grain store this a.m. but it will be a lot easier to wait til the afternoon when the snow is scheduled to stop…so instead I mixed up some sweet bread dough to make sticky buns.
Still no lambs, though they should start any day now. None of them looks REALLY ready, so I’m guessing that the rams just missed one cycle and rebred those few who WERE mounted when they didn’t settle, nine days later…We shall see…Anyway, fifteen of them are bred, by three different rams, so sometime in the next three weeks we WILL have lambs!
I will be taking the services on Sunday at church. The interim rector is off in Florida for the week, recovering from Holy Week and Easter, always exhausting. (It’s so nice not to be doing that anymore!) So, I suppose I could also work on my sermon (I hate sermons!) but I think it’s already in there, ready to go, so it just requires writing it down in case some poor soul, for some reason, actually wants a copy of it. (I would think that hard of hearing would be a blessing during most sermons, but I seem to be in the minority: for some reason, people in churches seem to like being preached at. I don’t. I have heard a few good sermons in my life. But for the most part, I think it is not a very effective way to foster spiritual growth, and instead tends to get people stuck in their heads. Nevertheless, for all those years, it was something I had to do: part of the job! Oh, well. )
With the flu, I still haven’t finished my St. Patrick’s Day sweater. Luckily, it will work next year as well, and in between. Last night I kitchenered (okay, made up word) the shoulder seams, so I’m ready to start a sleeve tonight, while we continue to watch “The First Churchills”. I can sort out patterns as I sort out Charles II, JamesII, William and Mary and the other characters in this well done British costume drama. I love it. Susan Hampshire, of course, who played in most all of those BBC costume dramas, it seemed, back in the 60’s and 70’s…and beyond, plays Sarah Churchill…forgot the guy who plays her husband, but he’s very good. I recommend it. Good ol’ Netflix.
…though I admit the sun was shining most of the day, except this morning, when we went over Terrible Mountain to Weston to see Elizabeth Ann. John went with me. She has grown a lot and her face has changed some…Here she is…
…in my lap, with a Margaret-look about her. Later I took a photo of her sitting up in her communal bed, which she shares with her sisters and brother, a friendly cat, and her mother…with supervised visits from her father, who apparently is too rough with the puppies without supervision.
She will be able to come home in about 2 weeks. I can’t wait…
Boy, this flu thing is something I sure don’t feel inclined to want to repeat anytime in the next, say, 40 years! The week of the “acute” stage was not fun, and now we look forward to another week or two of coughing and tiredness, but feel so much better as to not complain about where we are now. We did cancel the kids and grandkids’ coming for the weekend, though…just too much in our condition. A nice quiet Easter weekend, with Easter dinner at Cedar Hill with John’s mother, assuming we are convinced we are no longer contagious, which I think is the case.
Happy Easter to all. We sure feel resurrected this year!
Or maybe just a virus…anyway, yesterday was shearing. I was out there at 7 a.m. setting up. Lucas arrived at 8:15 to help with the heavy stuff. John was in bed, having brought the flu home with him from work on Wednesday. David, the shearer, arrived at 9:10, unusual for him to be even five minutes late, but it was that kind of day. Some visitors showed up and the fleece mavens (Lise and Suzie, minus Sally)…and we started. David asked me several times how I was; said I didn’t look all that good. I just figured it was because Margaret wasn’t there for the first time in 10 years…but when they left at 1:30 or so after lunch, with fleeces all in bags on the porch, and the shed all cleaned up, I collapsed on the sofa for a short nap…which lasted several hours. Then got up and ate a yogurt, and went to bed and slept most of the night, got up for pills, and back to bed until 7, fed the sheep, back to bed until 11, checked email, back to bed…all day long. I did accomplish weighing the fleeces, and making dinner. John couldn’t eat for two days. I didn’t have that problem: I think when I’m sick, I actually eat more, trying to find the magic food that will restore me. He stops eating, like the sheep. Today he was finally able to eat something. So, now I’m ready for another nap, and then bed, hoping by tomorrow, I’ll be much better since Lise is shearing and I am one of the fleece mavens there. We shall see…It is supposed to snow tonight, I believe, 1-3 inches, and another inch tomorrow. I think I’m ready to give up snow for the year! The 2 feet on the ground has been rained on and is now solid ice: you can walk on it without sinking in. Luckily, it was warm today, much appreciated by the shorn sheep. (Last year, the temp dipped to zero or something akin the day after they were shorn: they needed extra grain and hay to burrow down into. This coming week it is not supposed to go below 20, and then only the one day at 20, the rest in the 30’s and 40’s, so they will have it easy.
Two weeks to lambing. I guess I’d better check my supplies and make sure I have everything I need…
