Are You My Mommy?
Our little ewe lamb Saffron has been rejected by her mama, no doubt because she’s both the last born and the smallest of a set of triplets. For a couple of days now, she’s been trying to find a new mama.
Today she found Lucy, one of our very special Livestock Guard Dogs. Lucy is a rescued Great Pyrenees, one of three that we have gotten from Dan & Paula Lane at Bountiful Farm in Oklahoma.
Click the picture to see a condensed version of what happened in the six minutes that followed when Saffron met Lucy …
Our Lucy is one special dog. Thanks, Dan & Paula, for entrusting her to us!
Busy day, as usual
Today was a busy day on the Farm, but then that’s not all that unusual. I washed a sheep fleece and two mohair fleeces. I let the sun do some of the work for me with the mohair and pressed the Back Porch Washer into service for the wool.
I also dyed some silk, solar dyed two gallons of mohair curls, wet finished a scarf and two skeins of yarn, etc. etc. The normal stuff. (Tomorrow will be more of the same.)
My day brightened when Ge’mar and Jennee came to visit! Ken teases about me putting all my visitors to work but, for the record, Ge’mar volunteered! He scalped the patch of Egyptian onions (our wild onions), and then sprayed it with a mixture of orange oil and 20″ vinegar. I’m hoping that will go a long way toward killing them, and that some plastic will finish off the job.
He helped me blow the bunnies coats with the shop vac, gathered up the eggs (which he forgot to take with him), and played with Boysenberry. He even brought me a glass of Sweet Tea (my treat for the day) from Sonic. It was a pleasure to visit with Ge’mar and Jennee both.
The alpacas, ewes, and nannies are pretty happy this evening. We’ve let them out on the lush northeast pasture.
We even tried to get Boysenberry to eat some grass. He was generally unimpressed.
Princess seemed to enjoy it though, until she got the option of having Ken love on her!
Mary Kate wouldn’t come until she could convince Olivine to come with her!
Poor Cherry got stuck with babysitting duty as the babies played on the upside-down truck bed that The Welder (“Uncle Bennett”) graciously parked in my pasture for them.
Please do come visit us and see all the animals for yourself, won’t you?
We’ll be waiting on you!
No rest on this Sunday!
There was no rest for anybody at the Fancy Fibers Farm on this Sunday. Cyndi and Deanna arrived for their Beginning Wheel Spinning class an hour early. I love eagerness! Ken was preparing to mow the front yard, but graciously agreed to give them a tour while I tidied up the shop classroom.
And it was off and running from there! I barely had them started when Ken announced that a new baby had joined us, so it was off to the barn we went! Baby Jonquille (Thanks to Shareholder Barb for the name!) was waiting on us. She was all legs, such a skinny little thing, and having a devil of a time standing up, especially when her mama kept trying to clean her up and knocked her down in the process.
Baby Jonquille
While we were in the barn, we noticed a goat in the big chicken coop who looked suspiciously like she was getting ready. I made a mental note to check back on her, and our spinners went back to their wheels.
Meanwhile, Kathy from Waxahachie and her husband had arrived to take Wilber, Moose, and Calgary back to Waxahachie with them where they will be brush clearing machines. Ken helped me haul Calgary up on the shearing stand so that I could give them a quick lesson in trimming goat hooves, and we said our goodbyes.
My next stop was to play gatekeeper so that Ken could get the tractor and mower back out to the back 7 acres and mow, mow, mow. Bless his heart; the unevenness of the pasture practically beat him to death. I will be THRILLED when we get it all mowed (there’s one good day of mowing left), so that Farmer Willard can bring his big beautiful John Deere out here and start plowing it for us.
On my way back to my spinners, I stopped in the barn, and was just in time to oversee the birth of Baby K, another ewe kid. Things have been so busy, I haven’t come up with a name for her yet. A color that begins with K, anyone?
Baby K
With Ken bringing in the tractor and mower, and the spinners spinning, then plying, then wet finishing their yarn, we found ourselves at 4:00 when it was time to feed and put out hay, and take one last look around. Bodacious looks like she could lamb any minute. She’s been panting since Thursday, but just won’t give those babies up. I feel bad for her. She ate a hearty dinner tonight, so maybe in the morning!
We stood out and watched the critters for a while, then gave up and came in. As Ken is fond of saying, he’ll have to go back to work tomorrow to get any rest. Around here, there’s no rest for the weary!
More pictures:
Boysenberry in his diaper and belly belt
Bear seems to have drawn babysitting duty over Carmine
Breakin’ in a new Farm Hand
Brandon putting out hay
This is Brandon, my new Farm Hand. He’s been over here several times, working for a few hours here, and a few hours there, but yesterday he got his first taste of an 8-hour day on the Farm. He survived.
There was much to do and I was glad to have him around to do it. Feed had to be unloaded from the back of my Suburban, and the bags emptied into the feed barrels.
The animals had to be fed their grain, and hay put out twice.
The barn had to be cleaned out. Old straw, etc., had to be swept and shoveled off the false floor, and piled in a garden bed that I’m building up. The alpaca’s poop pile in the barn (why in the barn? grrr) had to be dug out. As friend of the farm Sue observed, Brandon’s choice of shape for the hole is a little suspicious.
The dug out alpaca poop pile in the barn
My husband will know where to start looking if I turn up missing!
All that poop and dirt had to go somewhere to break down. Brandon moved some of it to the garden bed, and then constructed a compost container for me out of pallets.
No doubt he would have liked to have had better tools than my small rusty saw, but he stuck with it. I found out that he’s a whiz with a drill driver.
The finished compost corner
All in all it was a great day of work and visitors. We said goodbye to Ameretti and Jellybean as they went to their new home with a loving new mom in Oklahoma. Sue and her granddaughter had a good time holding the babies (we have 9 on the ground now, with more to come!), and I warned Brandon of bigger jobs to come. It’s good to have good help!
All of the animals continued with their meanderings. Here are a few shots of what else was happening.
Who and what are you?
Ebony (left) and Falu (right), little ewe lamb sisters
One of the hens sharing Princess's supper
Lily curled up in a hay trough
Another busy baby day!
Two sets of twins this morning kept me hopping! Our sheep, Seven (as in Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero), gave us twin ewes.
Ebony, twin to Falu
Falu (a Swedish red)
Gamboge, son of Flower
Harlequin, daughter of Flower
Harlequin, daughter of Flower
Like I said! Busy day!