Bernard has her own style and way of doing things. Here’s a picture of the outfit she chose for cleaning her room, a bar graph she did for a school assignment, and her own special way of filling the bird feeder.
I wondered how this little guy was staying warm on these 18° nights! On top of mom looks perfect.
Well Molly lambed—not with two ramlets as we’d hoped, but one somewhat runty little guy. He is very, very cute, and very little. We weren’t too sure about him for a couple of days, but he’s doing fine. He even seems to be enjoying the snow!
Well it’s a good thing we sheared those sheep, what with this wind, cold, and snow. Poor things—they don’t seem overly impressed. Me either. So many things are in full bloom; DH and I have been out making a half-assed attempt to cover the blueberries. Which had the heaviest bloom I’ve ever seen. Please be ok, blueberries!
Family came over today and we had a leg of homegrown lamb dinner. It was so nice to have everybody here, and as a bonus, my BIL (that’s Grumpy in the picture) brought and installed a kick-BUTT stereo and speakers, which all hooks up to the dvd player for fantastic movie-watching sound. We keep playing just the first few minutes of all our cd’s—they all sound new and different!
The lamb was great—I’m telling y’all—Cotswold is the way to go!
I’m not sure why it has been so difficult to keep up with posting lately. Probably because it’s spring and there is so freaking much going on! I am going to try to give a quick rundown of all the latest news.
Rosemary never went into heat, and the bull had appointments elsewhere, so we have given up on the old gal, and she’s moved on to a neighbor’s. So we are currently without large animals, which is lovely. The pasture is actually turning green! The sheep are in a “sheep tractor”—a 16′ by 16′ pen made of stock panels, and we’re moving them around the yard, which is much more lush and green than the pasture, and which would have to be mowed by us otherwise. Our lamb count is at two—both ewes—with one more due to lamb sometime soon. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that she has twin rams, because the two we put in the freezer are so good. So good—I highly recommend Cotswolds if you like to eat lamb!
Maggie the goat is not pregnant, so kidding is done for the year. We had four doe kids again, and the two bucklings we had have already been given away. That’s going to be the new system, I think—wethers are a pain in the rear and a drain on resources, and it doesn’t seem like they’re meaty enough to justify raising them for that, so from now on, they are out of here as soon as possible. Tallulah is skin and bones, so we’re just leaving her baby on her, but not milking her ourselves. As soon as her kid is ready to be weaned Tallulah is going to go live with the breeder I bought her from (eight years ago!)—-aka the “Old Goat’s Home”.
The pigs have been moved into the goat stall in the barn. It has been in desperate need of cleaning out—-it has about a three foot manure pack!—and we’ve been rather reluctant to get started. So we put the piggies in there in hopes that they’d dig it up enough for us to get it out of there. They, too, were reluctant at first, but now—finally!—they’ve started digging trenches through it. We’ll still have to shovel it out of there, of course, but at least we won’t have to peel it up in reeking, wet, heavy, felted layers.
In the garden we’ve planted turnips, beets, lettuce, spring mix, onions, cilantro, peas and cabbage. I should have potatoes in, but I haven’t picked any up yet. The weather’s been quite warm, but they’re calling for snow showers on Easter. Maybe to make up for the white Christmas we didn’t get this year?
