Equinox Lamb
I know, I know—enough with the cute lamb pictures, already. It’s just that she’s so. darn. cute. I can’t stand it, and the girls are always doing things like putting kerchiefs and flower garlands on her!
In Case the Street Sign Wasn’t Enough
Awesome ED (with really cute lamb pictures)
Last week Bernard and I went to town to run errands. We took our time, having lunch at the Diner, and looking at art books at the library. When we got home, relaxed and cheerful, we found that ED had had a very different kind of day here at the farm. Evidently, as soon as we left, babies started popping out all over: Maggie had two very cute and vigorous kids—one spotted doe, one buck—and then Molly, the ewe had two lambs. One of the lambs was very weak, unable to suck, and going downhill fast. ED (and our excellent neighbor T*) brought the lamb in the house and warmed her in a sink of water. Then ED went down to the barn and found an old tube we had used for tubing goats in the past, sterilized it, milked out some colostrum from the ewe, and tubed the lamb. Who is now, 6 days later, doing fine. She lives in the house and is just about the cutest thing you can imagine. Isn’t ED amazing?
Oh, and for those who like to know these things, her name is Fanny, and Bernard is responsible for dressing her up! Also Dana posted about it over on her blog, if you haven’t gotten enough here.
Two Unrelated Items
- Dixie, our pig, smells like maple syrup, particularly when she’s excited about food. The scent is very strong, and if you pet her when she smells like that, you’ll smell like that, too. It’s very nice—sort of like Log Cabin fake maple syrup. I looked it up online, and others have had maple syrup-scented pigs, too.
- There’s a blue jay that perches in a tree over the bird feeder and makes sounds like a hawk. All the other birds fly off in a fright, and the jay comes down and enjoys the feeder all by him-or-her-self.
The List
I have a bazillion things to do, so many, in fact, that I’ve decided to sit here and start a list to help organize my thoughts so that I am better able to figure out where to begin. There are several things that prevent me from getting it all done:
- My inherent laziness
- My scatterbrained lack of focus
- The enormity of all that needs doing
- Lack of money
(Just so you can see what I’m up against.)
OK, here’s the list (in no particular order) :
- Finish shearing the sheep
- Fence the garden
- Build a chicken house
- Start seeds: tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc.
- Dig garden beds
- Dig potato area, plant potatoes
- Clean off front porch
- Paint windows
- Hang curtains back up
- Butcher the rest of the gargantuan meat chicken
- Butcher all drakes
- Buy a new, unrelated drake
- Put together a rainwater collection system
- Catch and use grey water for garden
- Clean out all barn stalls
- Transport manure from barn to garden
- Weed and mulch asparagus
- Fence chickens out of flower beds
- Lime and seed pasture
- Seed front yard
- Scrape, de-nail and paint porch ceiling
- Remove vinyl siding from whole house
- Scrape and paint house
- Build a barn
- Build an outhouse
- Paint porch floor
- Redo pasture fences
- Sand and refinish floors in house
Good grief. I think I’ll post this in the sidebar, and mark things off as I get them done. Obviously, this list is for lucky DH, too, who may have a worse problem with focus than I do! And it also doesn’t include any of my daily chores, that on some days seem to take all my available energy. Oh, dear—it’s hopeless, isn’t it?
Spring
After a spell of really cold weather, today is supposed to be in the 50s, tomorrow in the 60s and Saturday in the 70s. I feel as if I’m being released from prison. Saturday we’re going to set up in Hot Springs at the new tailgate market and sell milk, cheese, eggs and cajeta.
The greenhouse is doing well—all my little lettuces and greens are growing beautifully, except for the few things that got zapped by the cold the other night (it was 10°). I’ve been watering every other day, but it looks like I’m going to have to switch to every day, which is going to motivate me to get the hoses all hooked up, because this old body is protesting hauling five-gallon buckets of water to the greenhouse and the sheep pens. Maybe I’ll do that today—the trick is keeping them empty when it’s going to be below freezing at night.
Nothing can happen in the garden until we build a fence around it—the chickens have completely taken over, and there’s no way I can put the beds back together until I’ve come up with a way to prevent the chickens just scratching them back down! It’s kind of frustrating, except that I love the chickens so much this year. We have three hens—two Speckled Sussexes and a Rhode Island Red—who lay their eggs on the front porch every day. And there’s one Silver Spangled Hamburg hen who goes across the street to our neighbor’s barn and lays her an egg every day. Even though they’re a nuisance, they’re just all so darn appealing .
Cookie kidded yesterday—one big healthy doe kid. We’ll probably sell her as soon as possible to somebody who wants to bottle-feed her, since we have more use for milk than for more goats. It is so delightful only having three does! Maggie is next, and she’s due Wednesday.
Online for Real
After a frustrating week of no internet, I have finally figured out what the problem is, though not why. It has something to do with my electric fence—as long as the fence is turned off, I can get online just fine! How redneck is that?! It was quite a process figuring that out!
We’re gearing up for a snowstorm today and tonight—in like a lion. I’ll take the water however it wants to come—we’re still in drought, and it’s been getting worse the last few weeks.
Two of the goats are due to kid any time—maybe they’ll have the good grace to wait for the end of the week when the temperatures are forecast to be in the 60s, but more likely it’ll be tomorrow night when it’s in the single digits.