It’s that time again

Kate wants to know if I have anything more interesting up my sleeve than just plain old hay!

The daylight is finally long enough that I am not driving home from work in the dark!  I am feeling the pull to be outside more these days and most afternoons I am actually feeding the ewes and does without the headlamp firmly attached to my hat.  It’s a good thing, too, because lambing and kidding is right around the corner.  I had a few minutes to make my lambing/kidding spreadsheet the other night and we have discovered that I never wrote down the date that our ewe Meadow was marked by Hamish the ram.  I don’t know how I could have missed that, but I have checked everywhere and can’t find it.  Usually I keep a list in my trusty palm pilot, but her name is not there.  Sigh!  I’ve always been very punctual at keeping track of those things, but this one got by me for sure!  Ah well, it’s not total chaos, it just adds a little more mystery into the whole birthing month of March.  1st lambs are due on March 4th, shearing is Feb. 20th.  It’s going to be close :*)

It’s a fiber party!

No, no metamucil on the menu.  Our friends Kali and Chloe came over for a little fiber arts celebration yesterday afternoon as Kali and I had secretly procured a used Louet s-10 spinning wheel for Chloe.  It wasn’t easy keeping it quiet!  This past summer Chloe spent quite a bit of time hand washing and carding her black Coopworth ewe’s fleece and she has been doing quite a bit of spinning with her Hatchtown spindle.  She already is an accomplished knitter, and as she really seems to have an ongoing love of the fiber process, finding a wheel really seemed like it was meant to be.  And who can beat a Louet for getting someone started.

Chloe gets to work

Last night was the unveiling.  Chips and dip, hot chocolate and a little wine were brought out to aid in the celebration.  And we have another spinner setting out on a lifetime of fibery adventures!

Wintery days

January seems to be slipping by at incredible speed.  My asthma has been acting up a little bit and I don’t feel as though I am getting quality sleep… not a shock, really, but always a downer.  Between that and the Haiti earthquake and all the snow that has been dumping on us, it’s just been quite the month all around.

Fuzzy Lumpkin and friends looking for more breakfast

The sheep and goats are handling the new scenery with their usual aplomb, however.  I must say it does look beautiful out there and it is dazzling today in the sunshine.  Any winter day with sunshine is a wonderful thing!

Our friends Kali and Chloe came over to help out with some goat hoof trimming this morning.  We got 3 of our 6 girls trimmed up and then took the milking stand over to their house to get two of their goats done.  It never seems like it will take a lot of energy, but when we were finished I felt like I could use a good rest :*)

Salsa and daughter Pippi after the manicure

I know that most bloggers have gotten their word out about donating to the Red Cross for Haiti relief, but I will put in my two cents for a couple of organizations that I feel cross all boundaries throughout the world and also put donations to excellent use (I am not knocking the Red Cross, they are wonderful):  Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and the American Friends Service Committee.  I am always in awe of the good work that those organizations do; they both seem to be able to get anywhere in the world and do their thing, regardless of the politics in the region.  Any of you fiber folk that read Stephanie Pearl McPhee’s blog, YarnHarlot, are aware that she is asking knitters to donate to MSF, email and alert her as to how much you donated, then she is tallying the knitters’ contribution!  Kind of a nice thing for us in the fiber community to notice and be proud of.  Her goal is $1,000,000 and it is looking like it is close.  Today her tally is over $900,000.  Way to go knitters!

Big snow for the new year

The girls wait patiently for breakfast

When I got out there this morning there was at least a foot of snow on the ground.  It wasn’t too heavy, so shoveling to the gates was easily do-able.  Running a little later than usual, the girls were really hungry and giving me those faces… but the sheep are never quite as expressive as those goaties!

SnowPea and Oreo begging for breakfast

Happy New Year

It’s just about time to say goodnight on the first day of the new year.  We have had a very laid-back vacation this time around.  We kept the holiday spending to a minimum this year and my favorite gifts were two:  the gift of our son and our grandson being with us, as well as a visit from wonderful old friends from New York.  It made for a crowded household:  5 adults, two teenagers, one baby and 6 dogs :*)  It was a great visit.  We always enjoy sharing our home and our little corner of Maine with good friends.  And I don’t think that anyone minded the lobster dinner!

Lobster all around!

Dog magnets

Mealtime is a busy time of day

Are the words “dog” and “magnet” written over our front door or on our foreheads???  Maybe.  Or just:  2 big animal suckers live here?  We have had a chihuahua and a lab for many years, but then few years ago we inherited a Jack Russell from friends, and now it appears that our son’s dog is staying with us for awhile.  Daisy the Bluetick/Walker hound mix, 8 months old.  She is a sweetheart, big and gormless :*)   I guess our 20 acres is perfect for a dog like a hound.  She and Bear the Lab have a great time wandering and checking out the sights and smells. They look like two best friends going out the back door and heading into the woods in the snow.  And then two funny faces wait for us at the back door. But… it also makes for a pretty busy household!   Everyone has their place and a different relationship with their people:  Tesser the Chihuahua makes sure to sleep with us at night; Josie the Jack Russell sleeps in the dog bed in the bathroom; Daisy sleeps in her crate, and Bear spends her evenings outside the bathroom door, and daytimes she spends it on her blanket in front of the south-facing french doors.  I guess maybe everyone likes that location pretty well, come to think of it!

Naptime for the big 3!

Greenhouse revealed

Winter has hit us with a windy vengeance.  By the middle of last week we were having arctic wind gusts at approximately 30 mph, and it sounded as though a freight train was traveling through the neighborhood.  With the ice on the ground, it was a challenge to even reach the animal paddocks in one piece.  Last Thursday I was running up the driveway at dusk, head down to make sure I didn’t fall, threw open the gate to my work area that connects all three paddocks, and instead of a nicely covered temporary milking greenhouse, this is what I saw:

Greenhouse skeleton, laid bare :*(

Salsa and I were not pleased!  The lights were swinging in the wind and I couldn’t raise a soul in the house to come and help.  I guess in the end, it didn’t make any difference… I don’t think we could have hoisted that heavy covering over in the face of those winds, even if there were two of us.  We had to wait until the winds died down to get that lid back on.  The greenhouse needs a totally new covering, but they are not cheap, and I don’t want to replace it until we re-site the whole structure.  Before we really knew the lay of the land and how the winter winds travel across the front of the property, we put this and one other livestock greenhouse up, with the gable ends facing east/west.  Not the best planning on our parts!  The winds hoot down from the northwest and get into the gable ends and lift the whole heavy covering up and down, shifting it just ever so slightly, over and over again.  Eventually it just starts to come apart and lose its integrity.  We did finally get the cover back on and tied down again.  Not much more milking to be done this year, thank goodness.  Although I have to say, it was a beautiful, clear evening, and I got to snuggle up against a nice warm body and stargaze.

Happy Hanukkah! Merry Winter

It’s definitely feeling like winter out there today and we are feeling quite festive at our house.  John really did a nice job attaching some twinkle lights to the major beams in the living room.  I love having them up, we don’t end up turning the beam lights on as much.

All twinkled up

I hope that everyone who celebrates Hanukkah has had a peaceful holiday. We have enjoyed our latkes and the menorah with our son and grandson very much.  It’s certainly a nice way to bring some light into the darkest afternoons of the year!

John's copper tubing menorah

Snow day

Yesterday was our first snow day of the school year.  It was a great call as once the snow started it really came down.  And then of course it was followed by torrential, windswept rains.  Totally yucky by the end of the day.

I had finally picked up our smoked pork last Friday and we were forced to cook one of the hams over the weekend (held my feet to the fire and all… not!).

Leftover ham

It was fantastic, some of the best pork we have raised yet.  The breed cross is my personal favorite (Tamworth boar on Large Black Sows) and then they had all of that goat milk and whey, they couldn’t not be wonderful!  Even though we have our hams cut in half, they are still pretty impressive hunks of meat and we ate from it all weekend and into the early part of this week.  So yesterday my husband looked at me and begged for lima bean and ham soup.  One of my all-time favorites as well.   Trouble was, only a few dried limas were hiding in the pantry.  So I dug through the containers and unearthed two different kinds of beans

Locally grown beans

that were grown locally in Jefferson, Maine, at Bluebird Hill Farm.  Wild Goose beans and cannellini beans.  The wild goose beans are small and multicolored, with little swirly markings on them.  Then I found a handful of black beans, not locally grown, and decided to throw those in as well.  It cuts down on the ‘locavore’ listing of this meal, but that’s o.k., it was awesome, and we have a huge pot of leftovers that will be welcome again tonight. To make it even better, a neighbor invited us over to share supper with them so we ended up having a small feast.  Can’t beat that on a stormy night!

Ham and bean soup

Seasonal updates

It’s been awhile since I last posted and I feel like a slacker.  Starting the week before Thanksgiving we have had a crazy schedule which is partly to blame, and holidays always kind of knock me out of sync with my usual daily patterns.  I dried off our doe Elf, as she was having some shyness about being milked during the whole breeding craziness, and I just didn’t want to fight her!  Salsa and SnowPea’s milk amounts dropped, and

Salsa on the milkstand

Salsa’s appetite wasn’t what it usually is, but that has changed drastically in the last week.  So I am down to two goaties on the milk stand and am probably going to start the drying-off process toward the end of the month.  I like having some milk coming in so I can make mad batches of chevre and throw them into the freezer for our winter and spring dining pleasure!  Choretime isn’t the same without the milking routines, and I miss that closeness with the does, but on the other hand, below 20F temps and howling wind make the whole milking experience less than fun.  It’s all part of the flow of the seasons and the year.  It’s also been a relief to note that Elvis the stink-o has returned more to his normal self and is not constantly trying to impress the girls.  I actually got into the pen with him the other day and he didn’t act as though I needed to be inspected and snurlfed like crazy.  Hopefully that means that everyone is bred and all’s right with the herd!

As for the sheep, we disbanded the breeding group that was up at the house with Mr. Big

Mr. Big with his girls

the week before Thanksgiving.  He hadn’t been showing any interest in the ewes he was hanging out with (and hadn’t marked any either), so he went back to the boys’ pen and the girls went up the hill into the group with Zorro the llama.  That left our breeding group down in the pasture to handle.  Everything appeared to be fine with the breeding:  our little Hamish the ram lamb took care of business promptly and they have had what is left of the grass in the pasture in a huge area.  I had been getting a little nervous about them being in the field as there have been a very vocal group of coyotes in the area.  Around dusk I have been hearing them yapping and calling, and then very clearly, an answering bray from Jingle the donkey, who was down there with those 6 sheep.  She had also been doing her perimeter run about the same time of day, so I guess she let them know who is the boss! (That. Or a combination of that and the electric fence).  The weather has been so balmy that I haven’t felt the usual frantic need to get them home and into the winter paddock, but the threat of this snowstorm got my attention at last.  So with Chloe and our son’s help on Saturday, we made 3 trips down to the pasture and loaded them two-by-two into the Subaru and brought them home.  Then Jingle walked with Chloe and I up the street and home at last.  Another chapter closed as the year ends and our minds turn to lambing!