to & fro

Zach and I have been trying to take advantage of the last warm and sunny days... He's a good buddy for walking up to the mailbox with me. I can usually bring my camera along and get some pretty pictures while we sweetly saunter...

Aunt Ruth had a birthday this month. We were so glad to celebrate with her.

Asher

It's startin' to be that time of year... the critters are 'adjusting' to hay. I say 'adjusting' because they still see green grass, and would rather get out of their safe and cozy pasture to eat the neighbor's yard rather than eat the yummy hay we provide.
Don't they know that this is, of all seasons, a time to be grateful? :)

I found a little traveler on Aliyah...

A Few Months Worth of News

I did not keep up with blogging as well as I had hoped this year, but good for me, the year's not over yet. So, please bear with the catch-up.

Annabelle and Aliyah both had successful lambing seasons this year each producing a set of triplets. This was Cora's first year, and we lost both of her lambs. Two beautiful white ewe lambs. Eunice and Echo. As the weeks passed on, it became evident that we had a parasite problem. A super wet winter, and overpasturing in the spring, we almost lost Annabelle, but she pulled through. I still don't think that she trusts me with her babies. We did however lose a lamb, my sweet little Ellie Bear. And our ram, Barnaby. Losing critters is so very hard. I still miss them so much.

We tried our hand at foster-shepherding. A friend of ours works full time and couldn't care for a bottle baby so we kept Baby Hannah for a few months, which was a complete joy for all of us. Baby Hannah loves being with people and we were so happy to be a part of that with our friends.

Our sweet friends helped us out in turn, by helping us remove Clive from our flock. After Clive rammed one of the neighbor kids it became evident that he was too dangerous to keep on our farm.

We tried to adopt a Great Pyrenees to guard our flock, but sweet Daisy did not like being apart from us and penned in with a bunch of fluffy sheeps. We miss Daisy, but we're glad that she is in a good home with people who love her.

We moved one of our inside dogs, Chaos (so aptly named) outside. He is doing well and loves playing fetch for hours on end. We actually got some corn out of our garden this year and we believe it's thanks to Chaos for keeping the deer and raccoons out of the garden.

I canned lots of vegetables. Papa made some wild plum jelly. I started weeding the flower gardens more faithfully instead of blogging. :)

We tried a new festival in Indiana - The Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival. I came home with a beautiful BFL lamb, Esmerelda. And Papa bought Mama her very own lamb, little Edie.

We're still trying to get our hay in for the winter.

We were part of the Kenton County Farm Tour at the Pumpkin Patch and met lots of new people!

We're still scrambling to get ready for the KY WoolFest. Where we hope to see you!

Annabelle's Lambs 2014 "the year of 'e'"

Annabelle is such a good mama sheep. She has your textbook delivery, textbook mothering skills,...she's just great. Not to be outdone by Aliyah, our sweet Annabelles gave us triplets too. 

Late in the evening, precisely during the NCAA Kentucky Wildcats defeating the Wisconsin Badgers game. Not cool Annabelles. I made a note to tell the ewes about KY basketball games before lambing season, so that we could schedule labor and delivery around important games.

She gave us a beautiful white ewe lamb, Eppie.

A black ram lamb with white speckles on his ears and nose, Edmund.

And, I thought she was done, but one hour later, out came little Enoch ram lamb all enclosed in his birthing sack. He was black and white spots all over!

Annabelle is very protective of her lambs and though she appreciated my help, let me know early on that I could go ahead and watch KY basketball, she got this. :)

Aliyah's Lambs 2014 "the year of 'e'"

Aliyah went into labor pretty early in the morning April 1, 2014. I sleep with a baby monitor(only during lambing season) in my room so that I can hear any sounds of labor during lambing season. Well, I heard Aliyah making quite a ruckus. She was pawing, getting up and circling, licking and nickering a lot. Poor darling. I bundled up and went out to the barn to be with my baby. I was in for a real surprise. I wasn't out there 5 minutes and out came the most beautiful black lamb! Little Eva. I immediately grabbed my lambing kit out of the corner and got out the nose-sucker-thingy to clear her nose and mouth of mucous so that she could breathe. I rubbed her little body to get her to wake up. Aliyah appreciated all my help, but she liked to do her own licking of her babies. I didn't fight her for that job.

I ran back into the house to wake up mom and dad who had made me promise to wake them up if any of the sheep started having their lambs. And then ran back to the barn and Little Ellie, our little white lamb, was starting to make her way into the world. "Wow!" I thought. "Two ewe lambs! Great job Aliyah!" But, she wasn't finished yet. About a half and hour or so later, Aliyah started pawing and nickering again. I thought she was just finishing her labor and out came Little Eustace, completely enclosed in his birthing sack. A handsome black ram lamb. We were so surprised! Three lambs!

Aliyah did a great job with her delivery this year. If you all remember, last year was pretty hard for her. And we lost both of her lambs. This year she had a super easy delivery, but she decided motherhood just wasn't her thing. She slammed poor little Ellie into the wall. Which is in some cases normal for a ewe to reject one of her triplets, especially one that's a different color. So, I went to work bottle feeding Little Ellie Bear.

But it soon became evident that though she wasn't hurting Eva and Eustace, she wasn't letting them nurse. My folks and I took shifts trying to get her to work with her babies for a good 48 hours, but it was no use. She didn't want them near her. She wanted to be with her buddies. She'd stare out into the pasture so pitifully. So, finally I opened the door of her lambing jug and let her out. She never looked back. And I got 3 bottle babies out of that deal, and a grumpy ewe to milk.

Eva wants to grow up to be just like her mama, Aliyah.

Ellie Bear

Eva

Eustace

Thankful for Wildflowers & A Life of Sacrifice

I haven't been very diligent in my writing or picture taking for that matter. We, as a family, are learning to adjust to a new way of life around these here parts. My father's aunt fell recently and needs a lot of help during her healing process. So, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jerry have moved in our home. It's pretty fun. Sitting with tea or coffee, helping Aunt Ruth do word searches or crossword puzzles. Teasing Uncle Jerry as we do the dishes together. Watching the Reds win! 

I am very thankful to have grown up in a home where my parents taught good values. Not just the Ten Commandments-kind-of-values, but the lifestyle values that have shaped my personality and my life. The kind of values that I end up living out. Respecting your elders has been given life and new meaning to all of us this past week. Not just giving up your comfy chair, or using your most polite words. But the true respect of really loving your elders by giving up your life for them. Serving them. Loving them unconditionally. Treating them like they really matter. 

"People are what we do. People are more important," says my Papa.

and so we live.  

Thankful for life on a farm. Sweet walks around the farm gathering armfuls of wildflowers.

Bubba Roo

Yesterday was graduation day for 20 of our chickens. Nineteen of them were planned...and one of them certainly was not.

Hannah took pictures of the turkeys instead of looking at the violence.

We had been raising a brood of Cornish crosses to harvest for fall and winter chicken, maybe even enough to get us into spring. After eight weeks, these marvels of chicken genetics had reached a very nice harvest weight. This time around, we decided to try something new. For the past few hundred chickens that we have harvested, we did the harvesting. It isn't my favorite job. I value the life that God gives to His creatures, including the chickens. It is not a happy thing for me to bring their lives to an end. But I realize that these are God's gifts, fulfilling His purpose, and we are grateful for God's provision of home-grown, well kept chicken. However this fall has been a particularly busy time, and it takes several hours to process so many birds. So...we loaded up the graduates and took them to a nearby poultry farm. What would have taken me several hours took them 30 minutes. Hannah and I came home with coolers filled with fresh chicken...and a certain "appreciation" for the process. Let's move on.

This spring, we purchased some chicks to raise for eggs and meat. And we decided to keep one of the roosters, sparing him from graduation, in order to trying hatching some of our own Australorp chicks. Bubba-Roo was quite a handsome bird. The glint of green off those jet-black feathers when the sun is shining on them...well, it is just plain beautiful.

Bubba lived alone, which may have delayed his entrance into rooster-meanness for a while, but eventually he went the way of nearly all roosters. Even though we couldn't really socialize with him, we tried to give him a comfortable home in a nice large pen. Feeding and watering was a little bit dicey, but we managed. And we looked forward to letting him move in with one of our smaller flocks to hopefully prepare some eggs for hatching in late winter.

I don't know exactly what happened, but yesterday morning when I went out to start preparing the graduates to march, I saw Bubba-Roo lying down too strangely in his pen. Even at a distance, I knew that Bubba had left us. I say I don't know exactly what happened, but I have a pretty good idea. Something - probably one of our neighborhood raccoons - made a persistent effort to get to Bubba. The chicken wire was stretched and bent, but not broken. Bubba didn't have a mark on him. My conclusion is that he simply died of fright.

And even in this I am reminded of the dark power of fear and how it destroys life. And I hear the Voice speaking to us, "Fear not, for I am with you..." I hear the Psalmist testify, "I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears."

I would be lying to you if I did not confess that I have some fears, some very deep fears, very terrible fears. I want to learn, I need to learn to trust the One who gives Life and who gave the Life of His Son to destroy fear. And I look for a Better Day when fear shall be no more.

Tom