Where have I been?

I admire those people who blog daily with interesting stories and cute photos. I have been feeling overwhelmed lately and haven't managed to post anything in weeks. But that doesn't mean we've been sitting around on our thumbs. So, what has happened since my last real post 5 weeks ago? Well Brian was traveling three of those weeks and I traveled one other week. Four consecutive weeks of overnight travel. Hmm, no wonder I have felt a bit overwhelmed. Thankfully everything has been clicking along well, no major crises while I was home alone. On January 22 we said good bye to most of our 2011 market lambs. Much less work to feed the nine that are left. They need to be weighed again and we need to line up a couple of custom orders so we can send some more to market. We've spent a little more time working on the basement kitchen. I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out well. We now have the pantry shelves completed, just need to hang the doors and panel the front and back. I am really looking forward to filling those shelves!

We started feeding grain to the ewes last week to increase their nutrition level. Lambing should begin in about 5 weeks, and those little lambs are really growing now. The ewes need a bit more energy and protein than the stockpiled fescue will provide. Speaking of stockpiled fescue, so far we have fed 2 round bales of stored hay to the mature ewes. They have barely eaten any of it, and we are starting to wonder how we are going to clean up the bales come spring. We applied nitrogen to the pasture this fall and got some tremendous growth on the fescue. It looks pretty brown, but the ewes seem to be eating it just fine. Certainly they are also eating some new growth with as warm as the weather has been, but we're hoping that doesn't set the spring growth back too much. We'll move the ewes off of that field in the next couple of weeks. They have plenty of changes in store for them; vaccinations and pedicures next week followed by new haircuts the following week. Construction on our new barn was to begin today, but rain changed our plans. Brian has been working all week to clean up two trees that were in the way for construction. One fell down in December and the other had to be cut down to make room for the barn. The town's water line runs right through the middle of our chosen site, but thankfully they will work with us to move our meter. That saves us from having to run a line from further up the hill down to the barn and saves them from having to re-route our supply line. We will take care of the re-routing to avoid the potentially unpleasant job of digging up a line inside the barn sometime in the future. Why not move the barn? Well, we found the largest flat (sort of) spot anywhere on our land, so moving it would require massive excavation and would be very expensive.

One of my favorite ewes, 89. Her mama was one of my favorites, but she died this fall. Last year as a yearling 89 had a huge single lamb that was breech and a really difficult delivery. I couldn't get it out in time to save the lamb, but I did manage to deliver the lamb, which felt like a victory. No damage done to mama, so I am rooting for her to have a nice set of twins in the next month or so.

 Blue sky above, brown grass below. Here I am, stuck in the middle with ewe.  Click on this photo to see that 44 is sticking her tongue out. No, it wasn't because I sang her the terribly "punny" tune I just typed, it was because she had just dipped her nose in the mineral feeder and this is what they do. See below for more tongue action.

The ewe lambs over in New Hope are eating a bit more hay, they have almost finished 2 round bales, but they do not have stockpiled grass. They are grazing down an older stand of alfalfa (translation, it is mostly grass now) that we are going to be planting into corn this spring. They seem to be growing well and about the time we start lambing here at home, we'll be turning the rams in with the Dorper ewe lambs for our first attempt at lambing in September. That reminds me, we really do need to find a Dorper ram, and soon.

I mentioned the weather. It has been so nice that it feels more like May than February. On February 9 I used my lunch break to do a little work in the flower beds on the bank. I connected the last piece of grass so that now the bank bed is one continuous swath along the entire side yard. I laid some wood posts for an edging and put down a thick layer of newspaper to smother the grass. While doing this, I also moved three clumps of blue fescue grass and planned out the rest of the bed in my mind. I am going to attempt to buy fewer flowers this year since I went a little crazy last year. Instead of buying I will make divisions from what I have; it is good to be in one place long enough now to have plants to divide. Roots are good for the soul.

Here is the newest addition to the bank bed. Yesterday we added some wood chips in a nice thick layer. This should be a much easier way of creating a new bed than my normal method of digging up all the sod, one shovel full at a time.

No matter what the weather, we can count on some gorgeous views of the moon and sun in winter here. The pictures above and below were taken the same morning about a half hour apart. 

I saved the most interesting thing that has happened over the last few weeks for last. On February 10 we were walking down the driveway to feed the ewes, and I looked out across the hill and spotted two bald eagles perched in the trees below the corral. (The same trees that the vultures love.) It was amazing to see them, and a pair of them no less. We had a bald eagle fly over us a few years ago while we were feeding sheep, and we saw one sitting by a creek on our way home from New Hope about two months ago. But a pair of eagles in a tree; that was really cool. Except my next thought was, "Gee, I hope they don't like lamb..." Our biggest predator problems have been ravens and hawks, but that has been with the chickens. Having eagles in the neighborhood could up the ante.

Breeding season is in full swing

Tuesday evening we turned the rams in with the ewes. I also tested out the one person operation of the chute. I sorted the ewes into three groups while Brian finished setting up the fence. It worked great! We put them in three groups because we want to keep the rams from breeding their own daughters. It is a bit more work to manage three groups, but it is an effective way to avoid too much inbreeding.

As expected, Thorne went right to work. By Wednesday evening he had already marked 9 ewes! Bruce had marked 3, and Suffy hadn't gotten any yet. But, by Thursday evening he had figured it out and marked his first ewe, a nice looking 2-year-old. As of today Thorne is still in the lead, but he's the most experienced, so that's not entirely unexpected. You would think Bruce would have this figured out by now, but some guys are slow learners...

Here's a shot of Suffy that shows his marking harness. When he mounts a ewe, the crayon rubs off on the wool on her rump. These are really neat inventions that let us keep track of when each ewe is marked and get a really good idea of each due date. We use a series of crayons, this year it will be red, green, purple. We change them every 17 days, which is the average cycle length in sheep, so that if a ewe doesn't settle on the first attempt it will be very obvious when she is marked during a later cycle because she will have a different colored mark.

I took some pictures of Bruce and Thorne too, but it was too late in the evening and they didn't turn out very well. I'll keep trying. That's one thing about breeding season, I get to spend a lot of time watching the sheep since we have to check for marks every day.

Tonight is the full moon, but the moon has been beautiful all week.

Last night was our first killing frost, with an overnight low of 27. We had experienced three nights that flirted with 32 degrees, but that wasn't enough to kill any of the flowers or the peppers. This frost is almost two weeks later than usual, and I have enjoyed the unexpected blessing. I figured we had to be due soon, so Thursday evening I brought in the remaining dahlia blooms, an end-of-season ritual I have come to enjoy. I enjoyed it even more than usual this year because I cut flowers in daylight and a tee-shirt instead of by headlamp wearing a coat and gloves! I added the cosmos to fill out the bouquet, and because I wasn't sure how the cold would affect them. Turns out they came through pretty well; a little peaked, but not dead. Now I have a bunch more work to do, lifting all of the dahlia and cana tubers and putting them in the basement for the winter.
A brief note on the eggs in the incubator. I candled them again this evening. I think they are progressing, but I don't really know what I'm looking at...all I saw was dark blobs that took up much of the egg. I will turn the automatic turner off and take it out late next week, and time will tell!