Monday, September 26, 2016

Falling Trees

The state game lands surrounding our property routinely drop trees onto our property. Thursday night when I got home from work Alan told me about his near brush with having a dead tree drop on top of him. He was mowing the lawn and had just finished the little strip between a large clump of lilacs and the garden fence. He did a loop through the next portion of lawn and when he drove by that little strip, about a minute later, there was a large dead tree.
The tree missed the garden fencing and the lilacs and fell exactly in between. It crossed our barn access road:
And went up into the woods.
Alan thinks its ash and has been dead a while. The wood is ready for burning this season.

A few weeks ago another tree, a locust this time, fell out of the game lands and missed the barn and fencing.
This tree fell right between the barn and a jog in our pasture fence, damaging nothing. Once seasoned this tree will provide close to a cord of wood.





Monday, September 19, 2016

Sheep Updates

Lots of sheepy updates from the past couple days. Saturday morning I found Moose in with the rams. She went through two sets of electric fence and a stream to get there. She looked very happy and Elwood had definitely claimed her.
Sunday we took Rufus up to his new home so we moved everybody around. Moose went into a breeding group with Mercer, Mama and Ruthie. And Elwood's new girlfriends are Hazel, Clara and Chloe. Rufus and Clementine were put into a small stall together (Clementine would ride up with Rufus for company and then be the quarantine buddy for the new ewe lamb we swapped for Rufus.) That left Salem and Hiram to hang out in the barn. I decided to keep the young ones away from the commotion of breeding.  I am pretty certain that Elwood bred Moose on Saturday and Ruth was marked by Mercer's red crayon this morning. It's hard to believe that lambing will be coming around before we know it.

So here is our new ewe lamb, Della.
She has lovely fleece, just need to get a coat on her! She is adjusting well and getting along just fine with Clementine. She has been sniffing my hand and doesn't run away from me when I am feeding her. She will let me pick hay off her fleece while she is eating.

Monday, September 5, 2016

The Rams Meet Matilda

The rams are sporting their new Matilda sheep coats.
This summer I bought a few Matilda coats and liked them a lot, so I bought more. Mercer hasn't had a coat all summer because the only one I had that fit him was black. The poor guy would have been way too hot in a black coat with the record high temps we had this summer. The Matilda coats are a shiny almost reflective silver nylon that seems much better in heat. Hazel is always warm and has been much more comfortable in her silver coat.
Of course now the rams have to check each other out and have been slightly working out their dominance issues again. Thankfully they are just pushing against each other and licking their tongues at each other. They have been smelling the ewes and are getting anxious to start breeding. Soon guys, soon.