Archive for The Gathering Place "The Gathering Place" is a web community where people can gather and make new friends, share ideas, enjoy a few laughs and learn about many interesting things together. It is a safe place where friends can correspond with each other about what they love.
Welcome to my journal. My life is not very average, so it might be interesting for you to read.
I am 63 years old and have been a born again Christian since April 1963. My husband and I have been married for 46 years and are the parents of 2 sons, and we are grandparents as well. We have had an interesting life, certainly nothing like we would have expected. At some point this winter I will fill you in on the details of that. Spring, summer and fall are very busy with outdoor activities, whereas winter is long and slow making me look for interesting things to fill the time.
Mary
Although it looks like I'm replying to myself here, while I was out in the pasture changing the irrigation water I thought maybe I could make this thread a daily or few times a week narrative to give you an idea of the events (or non-events) of life here.
Neut, our 15 pound cat who thinks he needs to help with everything, followed me out along the ditch, meowing, then hiding under the edge of the plastic irrigation tarp, then meowing all the way back to the house. I try to sneak away from him when I am going way down in the field so that I won't have to carry him back. Sometimes I put him in the shop when I go because I don't want him to go so far out into coyote territory. Today's water change was within sight of the house.
I have my 2nd planting of corn to put into the vegie garden today, weeds to pull, potatoes and beans to hoe, watering to do, horse trailer to clean and pack for my trip to another endurance ride tomorrow, so I had better not be sitting here. See you soon.
smokey the dog
Woof Woof!
Smokey the dog greets you!
Sounds like you have a lot of work to do there
Mary
Today was lamb weaning day. We put the ewes (about 120 of them) and all their lambs through a narrow single file chute and sorted all the lambs into a corral. The ewes will be kept in another corral for a couple of days (fasting) to help them dry up their milk supply, and the lambs will be put out on to a good fresh pasture this afternoon. They will miss each other for a few days and we'll be hearing lots of sheep music. Baaaa, baaaaaa.
The rest of my day will be taken up with changing irrigation water, doing laundry, mowing the lawn, watering the vegie garden and other more domestic things. There is a lot of catching up to be done after being gone for the weekend to my endurance ride.
Mary
We are moving the ewes down the road from the corrals to my pasture this afternoon. First the neighbor needs to get a hot fence set up and the lambs moved to another field so they won't see their mothers going down the road. Our neighbor leases pasture from us, so we sometimes have sheep here, sometimes cattle, and sometimes both together.
This morning I got a few broken bales of new hay for my horses. They didn't like the old (last year's) marsh hay from the stack that he brought yesterday, but they finally resigned themselves to eating it overnight and this morning. I had 2 horses looking over the fence at the house for a couple of hours last evening expecting something that tasted better. Even horses can be fussy about their food.
Mary
I went to an endurance ride over the weekend and returned home Sunday about noon. There was a dead ewe out in the pasture, so I called the owner to remove it. Later in the evening we saw a coyote returning to the carcass. We could tell that he had been there before, he wasn't following scent, he was going to a place where he knew there was an easy meal. He is history now. The ewes are still in our pasture, content and feeling reasonably safe, well, as safe as sheep ever feel. They are flighty animals, completely defenseless, and the more I have learned about sheep over the years the better I understand people. The Bible has quite a lot to say about sheep and people acting like them.
Mary
Today I helped my neighbor with cattle. We brought the cows and calves to the corrals, sorted them, branded and eartagged a few calves, then moved them up the county road to a fresh pasture. It's a slow trip, lots of it is uphill, the cows just amble along at a slow walk, wonder where their calf is, stop and get a few bites of grass, move again when somebody makes them move, stop again, socialize with cows across the fence, eat again, you get the idea, it is SLOW. It took over 2 hours to go 5 miles. It was a hot day without any shade. Breezy likes moving cattle, it is a nice change of pace from endurance events.
Mary
Summer on farms and ranches is a busy time. The neighbors are all making hay while the sun shines. We hear balers working at 4am since there is some moisture in the air, and on the hay in the windrows, early in the morning, making it pack just a bit better when it is compressed into a bale. The tricky part is to have the windrow dry enough, add a bit of dew (we have very little of that out here in our desert climate) and have the bales at the perfect amount of moisture so they don't get moldy.
Sometimes the baler doesn't tie a bale for some reason. My neighbor lets me pick up the broken bales and bring them home for my horses, so I have been busy with that in the last few days. He will deliver several loads of mostly grass hay in a few days that will be stored in the barn for the winter, but this is getting us by right now for the horses that can't handle grassy pasture (too rich and it causes problems). Last year's hay is gone. You can see that farming is pretty much of a balancing act in many ways.
Today I am leaving for another endurance ride. I'm still a few rides behind with the postings in my 2006 journal but eventually I will catch up. That's another balancing act between activity, time, and sleep.
Mary
Today was another sunny, hot one. I worked in my vegie garden most of the day, taking breaks to cool off. The weeds have really gotten ahead of me but I'm gaining on them. While I weeded I had the overflow water from the spring running through some miscellaneous pipes that just get stuck together any old way to carry the water to the rows. Even through the garden is on a slope, the water only runs so far over the ground and then I add another pipe to carry it farther. This system takes a lot of tending, adjusting, and time, but gets a lot more water into the ground than the sprinkler, and more of it where I actually want it.
A couple of weeks ago I took my lame horse to a ride so that a vet who was working at the ride could give him a chiropractic adjustment. Now I have to put a lot of long slow hours and miles on him to build up the muscles that hold everything in place. I prefer to ride in the morning before it gets hot, but today I was busy with watering and so I rode this evening just before dark. The sun was just about to go behind the hills when I started out, and soon the sky ahead of me was a peachy color, and when I started home about half an hour later the sky in the other direction had pink streaky clouds. There was just enough breeze to feel pretty good even though the temperature was still about 80.
On my way home I met my neighbor on his 4-wheeler motorcycle, with his new Border Collie puppy going for her first ride. He stopped and we talked about the sheep who have been getting out of the pasture where they are supposed to stay and getting into my horse pasture every evening. I have to watch them because they will eventually go under another fence and be where I really don't want them, munching the flowers. The pup was worried about the horse, and the horse was suspicious of that wiggly black and white thing on the 4-wheeler, so I didn't stay long.
You may wonder why the pup was getting a ride, well it comes in handy to train them to ride there because often we move the sheep or cattle several miles and then the dog who has been helping can get a ride back to the ranch.
Mary
The ewes have been here too long, they are bored and looking for someplace with fresh grass. We had them in the small orchard pasture for the past 4 days and they really did a mowing job on it, but then yesterday started rearranging the hot fence. Somehow they didn't realize the fence wasn't there,(short grass on their side, taller grass on the other making a visual barrier) and so they stayed on the right side of the line until this evening. Good thing because the owner was gone for the day. He got back just in time to hear my phone message "the ewes are escaping" and came over to put them somewhere else, which was right back where they had been a few days ago. Now it is almost "new" and might satisfy them for tomorrow. After that they will really get a new place to go.
Mary
We moved the ewes to a fresh pasture yesterday, oh, boy, happy sheep again! And then this morning we moved some cattle. It was a job we started at 5:30 this morning, about half an hour after daylight.
I rode Breezy to the neighbors and loaded him into their stock trailer for the trip to the pasture where the cows are. We got out at the top of the hill, and the owner continued down the hill on the road to the improvised corral. Breezy and I went down through the hilly pasture getting cows out of the brush along the creek and eventually we all ended up in the same place.
The cows were calm and not sure about the hot fence forming 2 sides of the temporary corral. But they know a hot fence when they see one, and they respected it. I tied Breezy to the trailer and stood in the open gate to allow certain cattle out and stop others. The sorting went fine and soon all the cows with calves, plus the bull were out in the pasture again, leaving the yearlings in the pen. We opened another gate and took them up through the hills to the road. The cows and calves followed on the opposite side of the fence.
When we got on the road one cow was following at a trot. After we passed the gate I heard the sound of wire stretching and looked back to see the cow had jumped part way over it and was tearing the gate down, determined to come with us. She caught up with the herd of yearlings, went with them for a couple of minutes, and then her nose told her that her calf was not with them, so she turned around and went back. Meanwhile the owner had gone back to see what damage she had done to the gate, and to see if all the rest of them were going to be coming down the road after us.
He arrived at the gate just about the same time as the cow. Her calf was still inside the pasture with the rest of the herd, so he got her back in, wired the gate back together enough to keep the rest of them in, and joined me in herding the yearlings.
The rest of the 5 mile trip went smoothly, they were a bit tired when we got to the ranch, and so we put them through the corrals and sorted steers into one group, heifers into another, and then looked at the records on the heifers and picked out the replacements. They will be trailered back to the herd, and the steers and heifers to sell will be put into a good pasture near the ranch to put on a bit more weight before being sold.
We were all done before it got hot!
Mary
At last we have a cooler day, the forecast says 75 for a high today. I'll take it! After a week or 10 days of 95 and higher, I am ready for a break! It's been a challenge to keep the gardens watered because we have humidity of about 15-20% which really pulls the moisture out of the plants and the soil. It also pulls the moisture out of me, I think my eyeballs dry out between blinks when the wind blows on one of those blistering hot days.
This morning I rode Breezy to see how his cough is reacting to another round of antihistamine. I made him climb some hills at a trot, and we cantered up a couple of them. NO coughs at all, Praise the Lord! Now I can get him back to work without feeling guilty, and I can also get him back into some endurance rides in a few weeks since he needs some miles to recondition him. He has been coughing for about 4 weeks, and has pretty much just been standing around except for the cow work last week. My first "treatment was to do nothing" and let it go away naturally. That didn't work. The first medicine I got from the vet was tried for a week, it didn't help, the second kind has finally cleared it up, but it took 2 bottles of the stuff and it wasn't cheap.
Patch, my other horse, was lame and I got him a chiropractic adjustment a couple of weeks ago, so I am doing slow short rehab rides on him. It's boring but next week we can go farther. My day today also involves picking up broken bales of hay in the neighbor's field, and getting my vegie garden watered. If there is time (and energy) I will also mow the lawn before I start watering the yard again. Most of the perennials have gone into survival mode with the heat. I can't blame them at all, I feel like doing the same thing.
God's Warrior
I am sorry you and the horses are having such a rough time. Hopefully you can have cooler days now and it won't be quite so miserable for all of you. Lots of my perennials are in survival mode too. We have just about worn ourselves out watering and it has just been too miserable out there except for very early in the morning. That is about the only time there is enough water pressure to actually do much good anyway. It seems that everyone must be watering later in the day. I am just hoping the heat and drought conditions will ease up soon. I hate it!
Mary
Today (at least this morning) is cooler, we have some clouds and the sun is behind them from time to time. I sprayed some wasp nests with Raid yesterday morning, missed at least one so that is on the Do list for this morning while it is cool. There are also some in the barn that I might be able to get close enough to now that we have some hay in there to stand on. That haystack gets me about 15 ft closer to the nests. I hope I'm a good shot from a distance with the Raid.
I have to ride Breezy again today. Since he is off his medicine he is coughing again but it is not as bad as it was at first. I think I just need to keep him moving now, make him work hard enough to cough and get the gunk moving. Yesterday I rode Patch out into the hills on jeep roads and cow trails, he was happy to be going somewhere besides the county road and neighbor's hayfields and seems to be doing well.
My first planting of corn has small ears now. Hubby brought home some corn from the local vegie stand yesterday. It is a bit over mature but it's corn and the season is short, so we don't wait for our own before we start eating corn on the cob. He also brought home a nice canteloupe, something I haven't grown here because of our short growing season. I did try watermellon once, it was cute but never got very big or ripe.
Mary
Last evening after dinner when the sun was getting low and the day was cooling off, I went for a short ride on Breezy to keep him moving and see how much he would cough. A nice breeze had come up so it was pleasant riding along with the sky turning various shades of pink, orange and purple. Cows are in the pasture I went through so there were two gates to open and close. The gate posts are often supported by a rock jack, they are built using a framework piled with rocks (we have a lot of rocks) in places where it is not possible to dig a posthole. I always kick the things a few times to check for rattlesnakes before I move close enough to open the gate.
We rode in a circle, with a nice detour up a steep hill which Breezy took at a trot without a cough. That put a smile on my face because he had been coughing in the pasture and he coughed a few times when we started our ride. We came out through an open gate on to the graveled county road about a mile from home. It was starting to get dusky and I was watching one of our neighbors working in his field with his tractor lights on, raking hay. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something on the road, a rattlesnake which Breezy almost stepped on!
We moved over, the snake didn't react. He was dead but still moving slightly like dead snakes do for a few hours. Somebody had killed him and cut off his head and rattles, however it did startle me. I wonder if Breezy knew it was dead? I'm thanking and praising God that it wasn't alive and defensive.
Mary
Yesterday afternoon I decided on the spur of the moment to take Breezy and go to a moonlight trail ride (different from my endurance rides). It was put on by a riding club that I belong to, and they work a lot to preserve trails for us to ride, so besides being a nice outing for Breezy who is bored with the trails around home, I had a chance to support the trail group's efforts.
We started about dusk and rode an 11 mile loop trail along jeep roads and cow trails, up and over a lot of big treeless hills, down through draws and across little valleys, then up more hills. The trail was marked with chemical light sticks called glolights and the mostly full moon also helped with the lighting. That keeps us on the trail and gives the riders a bit of confidence, the horses see very well in the dark so they don't need lights.
Most of the riders were just walking along the trails, but I wanted to test Breezy's lungs and give him a workout, so we trotted wherever possible. Some of the riders had started out before it was dark, so we kept catching up with them as we went along. Breezy loves the game of passing one group of horses and trotting quickly down the trail looking for more! We both had a good time. He only coughed once! so I think the gunk is finally out of his lungs.
After the ride we were treated to a hot dog roast and other snacks and refreshments. I stayed awake until about midnight visiting and then went to sleep in my trailer, got up early this morning and came home to a nice hot shower, went to church and then out for Chinese food for lunch. Brought home enough of the leftovers for dinner tonight.
Mary
Yesterday afternoon I was hand watering a new flower bed that is struggling just to survive our hot, dry conditions, a quick last minute job before catching Patch to go for a ride. And then I saw him. Breezy, standing there on three legs trying not to put any weight on the fourth one. Bad news!
He had stepped over a strand of barbed wire and then backed up with the wire between his hoof and the first joint (the fetlock). It is a hard place to heal because it stretches with every step. Thankfully it was not a deep cut, and it was fresh.
I brought him out of the pasture and used the hose to wash the blood and dirt off the wound, then scrubbed it a bit with a brush we use for scrubbing hands, rinsed it again and squirted it good with betadine to disinfect it as well as I could. I tied him up to the trailer for about half an hour to let the area dry, then squirted it thoroughly with an herbal healing solution. I have a corral so I put him in it and gave him some hay and two buckets of water. The pasture has a spring where they usually drink and the overflow runs down one side making a muddy area that would not be a good thing for him to get into with an open wound on his foot.
Today it looks a little bit better, or at least not any worse. There is not much swelling, no heat, no sign of infection. He seems to be walking just a little bit better. I repeated the clean out and application of the herbal remedy this morning and again tonight. The flies are not bothering it, and with a wound of any kind in the summer that can be a real problem. I think they don't like the herbal stuff. (Breezy sniffs at it and makes faces!) This will heal from the inside and will take some time, and will be an open wound for several days. Meanwhile, he is confined to the corral until further notice.
God's Warrior
Get well soon, Breezy! I hope that Patch is still showing signs of being ok. Bless their hearts, I feel like I need to send each of them a get well card.
Mary
Breezy has been liberated from his confinement in the corral, when I opened the gate he went running up the hill like an idiot. I hope his wire cut didn't open up too much. He will need to be watched carefully and the wound hosed out if (really that's when not if) he gets into the mud along the creek. The gate into another pasture is opened so he spends most of his time up there where there is no water and no mud.
I took about a 2 mile walk with the dog this morning. His little legs were very tired, so he is good to sleep for most of the day.
Yesterday my daughter in law came out and spent the afternoon with me. She and our son lived with us for a few months two years ago before moving into a small rental house in town, then last winter they bought a house. My son has been working for a construction company based in town and daughter in law has been going to college, so it was much more convenient for them to be in town, plus it is close to church and they have become quite involved there. Daughter in law has a job for summer, but will be quitting to go back to school near the end of September.
My neighbor (2 miles or so up the road) lost a cat to snakebite this week. She was still very sad and teary eyed yesterday, so daughter in law and I went to visit her and see her pretty gardens, and console her. Her gardens look far better than mine. She showed me where the kitty is buried in the edge of her flower bed, I thinking about getting her a plant to put there for a memorial. This is the second cat she has lost in about 2 or 3 months, the first one had feline leukemia, so she got the others tested and they were negative and got vaccinated for it and now has lost one of those.
We have 3 big loads of hay in our barn now, hopefully we'll get another one soon and be prepared in that way for the long winter. The firewood is still in the woods, so we have to plan a time for getting that. The woodshed is full of dry wood for this coming winter, but we like to keep a year's supply in reserve. Last year we were unable to get into the woods because of fire season so the wood in the woodshed is the last we have.
Today I need to ride Patch before it gets any hotter, and/or thunderstormy. Day before yesterday we had a doozy and I was glad I wasn't out riding in the hills when it came through. Another neighbor was out gathering hay bales about a half mile from our place and he said he saw the lightening hit the ground in his field, saw smoke coming up from the spot but then a hard rain came right away and he just sat there on his tractor through the whole thing, since he was safer there with the big rubber tires than he would have been on the ground. The tractor is a very big one with a cab with plexiglas all around it, a great view point.
Now I'm off to ride, I'll watch for snakes and watch the sky. One eye looking up and one looking down.
Mary
Breezy and Patch got new shoes today, a little ahead of schedule but better than about 3 weeks from now when my farrier would be available again. He and his wife are going to Germany to visit their daughter who is in the Air Force. They aren't travelers, so this is a really big event for them.
After Patch had his new shoes I rode him for an hour or so in the hills. He and I both felt lazy, I think it is because the barometric pressure has dropped. Rain is in the forecast for tonight but only a 20% chance. We probably won't get any. My hubby said he felt like he was in slow motion all day, he thought it was age, but I told him it was the change in pressure. Birds don't even fly as high when the pressure drops.
Tonight we had some beets from the garden, I pickled them and they are sooooo good! We also had fried summer squash. There's just no eating like fresh garden season. Part of the garden got irrigated today, the rest will get done tomorrow or the next day. I need to call my daughter in law and see if she wants to come out and pick beans again.
We got our last load of hay yesterday. It is a short load but the neighbor says we can take some of a different kind off his stack next spring if we need it. He didn't have enough good quality grass hay to make a full load so he brought us what he had.
Next week I'll be helping move cattle again. Breezy will enjoy that job, he always does. It is always interesting for me to see how much the calves have grown in the few weeks that they have been up on the hill pasture and out of my view.
Mary
Today was overcast and smokey but we did have sun most of the afternoon, so I would say it was about a 50/50 day with a high temperature of about 75.
I rode Breezy for an hour or so, just enough to be sure that his wire cut is not bothering him. I cleaned up the area because he had been into the mud below the spring, and then I put some Desitin on it, yes, diaper rash cream. We use it for a lot of things on endurance rides, both on the horses and on ourselves. In this case it is keeping his wound soft so it has less tendency to crack open.
Our son and daughter in law came out about 5pm and while the guys visited and measured for more new windows in the bedrooms, bathroom and office, our daughter in law and I picked the green beans and also filled a couple of plastic grocery bags with cucumbers, bell peppers, carrots and yellow summer squash. Then we got a few ears of corn and started cooking dinner. The beans were cooked with just salt and a cut up smoked sausage for flavor, and we had corn and leftover potato salad and pickled beets for our dinner. I love summer eating!
God's Warrior
Yum, yum! That is the best eating EVER!
Mary
I'm in fast forward again, trying to get ready to leave on Friday with both horses for a 2 day ride in Idaho. The vegie garden and all the flower beds need to be thoroughly watered so they will be ok for 3 or 4 days or 85 to 90 degree weather. On Friday morning I will run around and water anything that looks like it could use more, and also water everything in the greenhouse. Meanwhile, I have been taking inventory in my trailer, doing laundry, arranging for neighbors to feed my animals and wet down the greenhouse floor while I am gone, and trying to get a whole bunch of little things done. I told one neighbor to help herself to anything in the garden, she loves my fresh vegies!
I just read an email from my team's coordinator, we have ridden over 3800 miles so far this year! The last update I read on team points had us in the lead, but we can't relax until the season is over. Some years we have won by the skinniest of margins, something like 4.3 points when point totals were over 3000! So you can see we can't get complacent.
My neighbor has decided that the cows and calves are ok where they are until next week. I will be home on Monday and told him I could help him round them up and move them on Tuesday. That little bit of space is good for me with so much to do before Friday.
Mary
This morning when I was taking Fritz for our walk (as much for me as for him) we could see a large plume of smoke coming from the valley below us. As we walked toward it I speculated on what it could be. Haystack? the smoke looked the right color. House, I didn't think so because house smoke is usually much darker than that with all the synthetic things houses have in them. Barn, maybe, but field burning looked more likely. As a got past a hill that blocked my view I could see the ground around the source, long streaks putting up different amounts of smoke. A neighbor went past us in his pickup, and about 15 minutes later returned. He must have been going to check it out. He didn't stop, but by then I had concluded that somebody was burning ditch banks and fence lines. The smoke was going straight up, it's a calm day, good for burning, especially down there by the river with irrigated fields all around.
I have some plants that need to go into the ground, so I'd better get to digging. After that I need to take a ride to give Patch one more workout before the ride this weekend.
Mary
We are surrounded by forest fires, thankfully at a safe distance, but for the past few days we have not been able to see the mountains, and some days not even the nearest hills. The sun and moon come up and go down as red balls and the air smells of smoke. As of yesterday we had 3 fires to our southeast, one to our west, a complex (several fires that merged into one big one) farther west of that, and another complex to our east, all within 50 miles of us. One fire jumped the 4 lane freeway (interstate 84) and threatened power lines and a town. In addition there are old fires that have been contained and are not considered active but are still burning themselves out. These are all lightening caused fires. We get the lightening storms but no rain with them. The woods and grassy, brushy hills are tinder dry so lots of fires start every time a storm comes through. More storms are forecast in the next few days. Men and resourses are stretched pretty thin.
The cows and calves got moved back down to the ranch from their pasture in the hills where they had been for the past few weeks. They make the trip home much faster than the trip to it that we took with baby calves a few weeks ago. It is mostly down hill to the ranch, the calves are bigger and so able to travel faster, and they have been wanting somebody to open that gate for a few days previous to moving day. All the best grass was gone, forcing them to move around more to get their stomachs full of the not as good feed. Breezy had an easy job that day because he got a trailer ride up to the starting point. We did ride through the hilly pasture to find all the cattle and then pretty much just followed them down the road. Another neighbor had some very active cattle on the way home but none of them came through the fence to join our bunch. One calf was sure his momma was still back in the pasture and we had to keep him moving forward. Part way home the cows took a turn through a gate that was open, got into an empty pasture and then I got the cow and calf together and all went well after that.
My hubby has been doing a lot of traveling. A few weeks ago he took a weekend trip to Colorado to meet with some cops from Romania who were visiting the USA to learn about how police work is done here. My hubby first met them when he was in Romania a few years ago, later a cop from here went there for a week or so, and after several years of trying to get visas and planefare they were finally able to come to the US.
Last week hubby and our son and daughter in law went to Alaska to visit our other son who lives there, and they went fishing and had a good visit and of course he brought home frozen fish, shrimp and crab that they caught.
Tomorrow hubby leaves for a couple of weeks in Romaina on his annual missions trip, so I am busy getting his clothes ready, printing pictures for him to take, buying gifts for his hosts, etc. I will take him to Boise tomorrow and send him off, then will stop and visit a friend on my way home, a lady I met who is a gardener and will be getting some of my excess plants.
Mary
Today we can see! The wind scoured a lot of the smoke out of the area and so now I can look over at the fire on the mountain to the west. There is smoke coming from at least 5 different places. After dark I probably will be able to see flames. And behind the mountains to the east there is a large plume of smoke coming from the large fire that has been burning for several days.
Yesterday I had a nice visit with my DG friend and she was happy to get my plants. I brought home about as many as I took, and have yet to get them planted, but I did spend a couple of hours today helping my neighbor get her new arrivals planted. She has a lot of shade around her house from some really big old trees and my DG friend had a big patch of something with pink blooms (neighbor is into pinks and purples) and so I brought her a couple of clumps of that and some yucca plants for a dry place along the road. We had to use the pick along with a shovel to dig most of the holes, and so while I did the digging and planting, she kept bringing me soil from her vegie garden to fill the holes. I'm sure they will not only live but thrive there. Yucca are hard to kill even when you are trying.
My hubby has arrived in Romania, and only lost one piece of luggage along the way. He had a nice dinner at the home of one of the cops from Romania who was in the US a two or three weeks ago. I signed on to check my email and got a hello on instant messaging from our missionary family where he is staying. They said he didn't appear to be too tired, but he had gone to bed already since it was well after midnight there.
My plants need to be put into the ground today and I have some weeds that are acting like overachievers! I think they need a ride to the compost heap in the wheelbarrow.
Mary
My neighbors are gone for a short vacation/camping trip, and so I have been watching their animals. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as they leave the weather turns cold and there is even snow on the mountains. And where did they go to camp? to the mountains! I think they might come home earlier than they had planned.
Today I was busy planting some perennials that I bought over a week ago. I've been waiting for cooler weather to put them in the ground since planting when they would be exposed to 85 degrees wouldn't have been kind to them, but this 40 degree day with rain showers was a bit extreme the other way. I have more to plant and tomorrow's forecast looks just the same as today.
The house is cold so I am going to build a fire in the woodstove. I can't remember ever having to do that in September! So much for global warming.
Mary
Our recent rain and lower temperatures with higher humidity has been just what the firefighters needed. I can see snow in the higher mountains, but most likely the fires only got rain. There isn't much smoke coming from the two areas I have been watching. Our air smells fresh and clean again and the view is back to normal. I can see mountains 50 miles away.
Yesterday I planted more of the perennials I bought recently, and cleaned most of a flower bed. I'm sure making a mess on the lawn but that is ok. All of the edges of the beds need to be dug out every year because the quack grass creeps into the beds at the rate of about a foot every year. It's a never ending battle. I think quack grass came with the thorns and thistles to the Garden of Eden.
About 2 weeks ago I pulled up all the onions and spread them out on the ground in a corner of the garden where nothing is growing. I kept thinking I had better get them inside before it frosts, so I found an onion bag that came from the produce department at the store and collected them. I have about 25 pounds of onions for the winter, mostly tennis ball size.
The forecast said we could get down to 31 overnight, so I covered as much of the squash, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers and peppers as possible but I am not sure it frosted, so far I haven't seen any damage. We always get a cold spell followed by about 3 weeks of nights when there is no frost, so if I can protect them for a few nights they will be ok. My butternut squash need time to ripen so they will keep well in the basement this winter. I save seeds every year to be planted the next spring, but this year I have volunteer pumpkins nearby so I will use seed from last year instead of taking a chance on growing squmpkins.
Breezy and I went to check on the neighbor's cattle, they were in the right place and seemed very content. That's great because I didn't want to be rounding them up and fixing the fence.
Mary
It's another beautiful day! We are having crispy nights and sunny days in the 60's. Not enough frost to kill the garden and hopefully my old blankets, bedspreads and curtains will be enough to protect a few of the tender vegies this week while I am gone to my rides. I'm taking both Patch and Breezy and planning to ride all 5 days of the series, 50 miles each day except one day it will be 60.
Rush, rush, rush. This is the day before I am leaving so there is much to do. I have piles of clothes and other things ready to be carried out to the trailer, the propane tank needs to be filled and hooked up, hay needs to be loaded, water buckets and tubs put back into the pickup, etc. Hubby will be holding down the fort while I am gone so I need to cook some food for his meals. Yesterday I bought a chicken to fry and some Italian sausage to use for the spaghetti. This afternoon I will get all that cooked so the poor man won't starve while I am gone. He is also good at opening a can and zapping something, and can make a sandwich, so I don't worry about him, but I do like to leave him with homecooked food.
We are off to church in a little while and will have lunch in town with our son and daughter in law. After we get home I need to ride Patch for a couple of hours, and then get busy in the kitchen.
Mary
Home again, actually since Sunday. Well, yes, it's about time I got here.
That mountain of clothes that went into the trailer clean came out dirty. Very dirty. Our ride camp was in a sandy, dusty field, and with horses and vehicles stirring it up, we all looked pretty much the same color by the end of a week! I still need to make my 2006 endurance journal entries. In the days I have been home I have been trying to catch up with everything including getting a bit of extra rest, so be patient. I might get one day done today. For now all you get to know is that I survived!
Yesterday I started enlarging a narrow flower bed where I want to transplant some roses. It is too narrow and has poor soil, so it a good sized project. Digging out the sod along the edge is probably the hardest, most time consuming part. Today I will work on it some more. There are a lot of tulips in the bed that will need to come out, and then be replanted after I haul sheep barn cleanings to it in my wheelbarrow and mix that in with the existing poor clay soil. Ooof, no wonder I kept putting it off last year!
Mary
Today Breezy and I got to play cow and dog games. The cattle needed to be taken to the corrals to be sorted into 3 groups. My boss has a new Border Collie in training to be a herding dog so she was doing her first real job today. Nip is about 5 or 6 months old. She is enthusiastic but not out of control. Jake, the older dog is about 14 years old now and considerably slower than he was even 2 or 3 years ago, but he knows the commands (both spoken and whistled) and so she will learn from him. Today she tried to herd Breezy and I, but was told NO a couple of times and after that she didn't bother us. Nip is a smart girl, and she watches the cows, watches and helps Jake, and also keeps looking to see if Paul approves of what she is doing. A couple of the older cows chased her a few times and she just circled around and got out of their way. Border Collies and other breeds of herding dogs have a lot of instinct, so they catch on to their job very quickly.
Mary
In about an hour I'll be on my way to another ride. First I have to water all the greenhouse plants and wet down the floor, then finish loading food and clothes into my trailer, add Patch and we will be on our way. I just added another installment to my endurance riding 2006 journal, have 2 more to go there to get caught up, so I won't confuse you by telling you anything about where I am going this week.
Mary
I'm back from my ride which was a good one. Patch is still learning this endurance game, and since we ride alone at home he gets very excited when he is at a ride with other horses. With time, and lots of miles, he is settling down a bit more with every ride.
While I was gone, the sore spot in my mouth kept getting worse. I originally thought maybe I had some food packed up into a deep pocket where I couldn't get it with flossing, so I did some vigorous rinsing with Listerine and thought it would get better in a day or two. Instead it got worse over the weekend. It could be an abcessed tooth. My dentist is out of town this week, how's that for timing? and yesterday I called and got his answering service, they said they would contact him. I'm hoping he called in a prescription for me. My face is badly swollen and hot. I look like a chipmunk but don't feel too chipper! It's probably a good day to be catching up with another installment on the endurance journal.
Mary
Update on the abcess problem: I got some powerful antibiotics at over $1 a capsule. About 3 hours after I took the first one the abcess broke, as I'm sure it would have anyhow with all that pressure, something had to give. Major icky stuff but I was glad to be getting rid of it, finally. My head had been pounding, one eye was partly closed, I could barely open my mouth enough to get a spoon into it. The whole event was no fun at all. Yesterday I felt much better and looked a lot less like a domestic abuse case! Good thing too, because I needed to take a kitty to the vet.
So, I'm on the mend, and you guessed it, I'm going to another ride this weekend. Will keep up with rinsing every few hours with salt water, keep taking the antibiotics, and will see the dentist on the following Monday.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, today I hope to get out and do more fall garden work, moving 3 rose bushes into an enlarged bed that I've been working on for about 2 weeks now, replanting all the tulip bulbs that I found while I was digging, and planting some other bulbs that I got from my daughter in law. We don't know what they are since they came from her old flower bed, but I think they look like daffodills. My project also involved adding a lot of decomposed sheep barn cleanings to the bed and digging that into the old clay soil, plus chopping out some roots from nearby trees. It's hard to believe that fall is falling so fast, but I shouldn't be surprised, after all, this is an annual event.
My vegie garden is pretty much history for the season but I still have a few things under old bedspreads and blankets. There are still about 30 butternut squash that need to be brought up the hill and into the basement, maybe a few tomatoes and bell peppers that could be salvaged, and some summer squash that could be something other than compost. Garden stakes need to be pulled out, vines removed, potatoes and carrots dug and stored, and then the rototiller and I will both get a workout. Last year I was rototilling with snow falling and starting to stick, so I hope to get to that job a bit earlier this year.
Mary
Today I helped with some field burning. We are trying to control an invasion of Medusa Rye. I drove the water truck and helped keep hot spots from getting out of control. It's a smokey job, even inside the truck, an ugly 1 ton jeep with a water tank and gasoline pump mounted on it. I drive along and squirt water on the edge of the fire wherever we want the burning to stop. Once it got through the fence into the edge of a neighbors field, but we got it out before it got too far, and it only burned weeds and brush along the fence line.
Here's the proceedure, my boss was going along on his small motorbike with a propane tank strapped on behind the seat, and a weed burner attatched. He would light the burner, put it on the ground a few feet behind the motorbike and drive across the field making a line of fire. When that had burned far enough we put it out and he made another line behind it. The breeze carried the new fire into the old burned out area. The wind changed direction and the fuel in one area was heavier and that is when it got through the fence. I drove along the fenceline and would put out the fire ahead of me, drive a ways farther, do it again until I could turn around and squirt water on it while I drove. At that point we decided the wind was not in our favor and that we would start again on a calm morning. We circled the perimeter twice to make sure everything was under control, and then the boss checked it again a while later. We got about 10 acres burned today and have about 20 more to go. Maybe tomorrow if the weather is right.
Mary
We have had wind for the past few days and so no more field burning has been possible. Instead I have been transplanting rose bushes and doing some other yard work. I will put some tomato cages around the roses and fill them with straw for winter to protect the newly planted rose bushes. In the spring I need to shop for one more, a creeping type to go under the satelite dish. The rose bushes are now all together in a bed under the porch railing on the south end of the house, and the satelite dish is mounted on one of the posts. Satelite dishes are not prety so it will look better with a rose growing under it.
Today I need to go to town to get a few things for my weekend ride. Number 1 on my list is toe heaters. They are small chemical packs that create heat. Stick 'em on my socks and put my shoes on, and I'm supposed to have warm toes for the next 6 hours. The morning of the ride will be a cold one, probably 25 degrees or less in the morning, then warming up to a nice sunny day, and cooling down quickly when the sun goes down, about the time I will be finishing.
After I get home today I need to ride Breezy for about an hour in the hills. He has been on a mini vacation for the past few weeks while Patch has been doing another 100 miles. Horses don't get out of shape as fast as people do, so this will just remind his muscles that they will have work to do on Saturday.
Mary
The sky is adorned with streaky pink clouds this morning, the temperature at daylight is about 10 degrees and thankfully there is no wind. Our forecast calls for a high of 42 today with a chance of rain or snow by tomorrow. So, today I will try to get a lot of work done outside, saving the housework for an unpleasant day.
My hubby and son trimmed a lot of limbs off our yard trees this past weekend. Our son borrowed a boom truck with a bucket from work and hubby stood in the bucket with a chain saw and cut limbs. Some of them came down piece by piece, and others whole limbs at a time. They also removed the last 4 old windows from the west side of the house and replaced them with double pane, gas filled, low E ones. Hubby will help me with limb clean up this weekend but in the meantime I am cutting small limbs off bigger ones and hauling them to piles for burning. Of course a lot of them came down in the flower beds so I don't want to just drag them out and cause further damage to the plants. Some of the limbs are large enough to be cut into proper lengths for future firewood.
I'll be updating the 2006 endurance journal soon. So, as Paul Harvey would say, "Stand by for NEWS"
Mary
Limb cleanup continues, slowly but surely. I'm working on it with the electric chainsaw. It's mounted on a pole, so is kind of unwieldy, but it gets the job done much quicker than the long handled loppers I used when I began the project.
Yesterday I went to visit with a neighbor and bring home some bulbs. Several months ago we ordered together with another neighbor to take advantage of a $25 coupon and share the shipping charges. It's kind of late for bulb planting I think, but I got them in the ground just when it started to rain. One variety was back ordered so I need to dig a hole to have ready in case it arrives after the ground freezes.
Our car is in the shop for replacement of a head gasket, (we hope that is all that is wrong), so yesterday afternoon hubby called just as I was about to start cooking dinner and asked me to come to town to give him a ride home. We had dinner in town, my choice was Chicken Pasta Alfredo, and the rest of the evening I was so sleepy I just gave up fighting it and went to bed about 8 pm. I would have felt better if I had chosen a big dinner salad instead. Today he took the pickup to work but I still have the old 77 GMC if I need to go anywhere.
It's a pretty day and I'm going to take my walk and then get busy on the limb mess. Cutting and moving the limbs is good exercise, but I need the walk a mile or so several times a week to help keep my pelvis straight. It has been real good for about a month but I haven't been doing as much walking as I should, so today I'm going to walk before I get busy with anything else.
Mary
It's been more than a week since I updated the journal, so here are the highlights to bring it up to date.
The limbs are all cleaned up, firewood pieces hauled out to where they will be stacked for the winter, and more flower bed digging has been done. Our weather has become a bit rainy but nothing like the deluge the coastal area and west side of the state has had in the past week. They had roads washed out, houses floating down rivers and, sadly, a few people either dead or missing.
Last week I took Patch to see a vet who does equine chiropractic work to have him checked to make sure his back and pelvis are still aligned. He is just fine, so I'm pleased with that. It's been several months and a few hundred endurance miles since his treatment, and I had been advised by two different vets to have him checked again before winter, so that if something was out of place it wouldn't be that way all winter.
Tomorrow I am scheduled to take Patch and Breezy to have dental work done. A vet that I know has a mobile equine dental practice and will be in the area tomorrow. Snow would be the only thing to stop me from going, and I won't know how the roads look until tomorrow.
On Friday my hubby and I traveled to Portland to meet our missionary friends at the airport. They have returned from Romania for a few months and will be presenting their ministry and raising support for another season's work. We took them to their house, visited and stayed overnight and then on Saturday started home with a stop to meet a train in Portland and bring another missionary friend home with us for a few days.
Mary
Yesterday I worked on the vegie garden for a while, dug potatoes, pulled carrots and beets, picked up row markers and gathered up a lot of old squash vines to go over the fence into the compost pile. Every year I forget how much time it takes to get all those last minute things done so I can rototill. I have more potatoes to dig and then the rototiller will go into action. It didn't rain yesterday but I thought the ground was too wet to run the tiller, so hopefully today it will get done.
Also yesterday, I helped my neighbor pull up the last of the knapweed in the pasture. We hope it is all gathered up for this year, but we see a lot of rosettes that need to be dealt with before they grow. We think we won a round but the fight is not over. After we took care of that we moved some cattle and sorted out a crippled one that will go to the sale, then moved the rest of that bunch to another pasture. Breezy was a little bit lame so I was glad it was a job that didn't take us too far.
Today I used Patch to help move the rest of the herd a mile and a half up the county road to the corrals where we sorted out a cow and calf and a big black cow I call Meanie who are headed for the sale yard with the crippled cow. Meanie behaved herself and even loaded into the trailer without any problem. Last spring she knocked somebody down for no reason that we could determine, so we haven't trusted her since. She was raising a very nice calf so we were just very careful to give her plenty of space and not get her excited. Today her calf got weaned and the cow is heading for the next chapter in her life.
Nip, the new Border collie helped us with the cows. One cow chases her any time she gets too close, but Nip got right back in her face today and the cow backed off, so I think little Nip who only weighs about 35 pounds must look pretty formidable to a 1000 pound cow. Patch also has not had much cow experience but he did pretty well and is catching on to his part time job.
Mary
Today I'm doing just what most of you are doing, house cleaning and getting organized for company and Thanksgiving. We'll have our family who are missionaries to Romania, they will be arriving this evening after about a 7 or 8 hour drive. Fritz, the Jack Russell Terrier who spends part of his life with us when they are out of the country, will be coming too. He and the kitties will be glad to see each other, they are all pals. Tomorrow our son and daughter in law who live about 20 miles from us will be here for the day. Our other son lives in Alaska and can't come now but will be here for a visit in a week or two.
The bird is thawing, and I will be making cornbread for the stuffing today, then making the stuffing in the morning. We don't eat until our normal supper time, so I don't have to get Mr Turkey in the oven as early as some of you. We'll be cooking breakfast for 8 and making pies before the turkey gets to use the oven.
Here's a happy Thanksgiving wish for all of you. Count your blessings every day, not just tomorrow!
Mary
We had a nice Thanksgiving and the following few days as well with our visiting family. My goodness we put away a lot of food! Our son and his wife came down with the flu so we didn't see them until Sunday at church and then they came out here for lunch and visiting.
Here's a quick recap of the week. Our missionary family arrived about 8pm on Wednesday. By the time we all went to bed there were 2 big fat apple pies cooling on the counter. The next morning after breakfast 2 pumpkin pies and a mincemeat pie were made while I got the dressing made and Mr Turkey ready to go into the oven.
My computer was busy all weekend with 2 of the girls (college students) writing papers and one of them tutoring another student in Math (that one wants to be a teacher). Their mom is a computer whiz, so she installed some upgrades and also a spyware program which found and quaranteened 14 spy things. You can see that I am not a computer whiz, I don't even know what to call them.
Sunday morning the missionary family ministered at our church. The girls and their mom sang 3 Romanian songs and played instruments (piano, violin, mandolin, flute and clarinet). They also showed a 15 minute picture review of their work, nicely done with a musical background. Their husband/father preached a good sermon and the pastor challenged the congregation to do more to support missions and missionaries. Our church is probably typical of most with the missions budget being about 10% of the total contributions. We could do so much more, both as a church and as individuals.
Winter has arrived here in the northwest. We have snow but the sky is blue, the sun is out and everything sparkles. I'll be going to town later today and will be using the 4 wheel drive pickup, so it is now unhitched from my horse trailer for the winter. Our car also has 4 wheel drive, and the old truck gets parked for most of the winter because it doesn't have it.
Mary
What a beautiful day! Actually, it is one of several that we have had lately. Our daytime temperatures are back up to above freezing after several days of hovering around 20, so today I think I will saddle Patch and go riding. I haven't been riding since the end of my endurance season except for when I helped the neighbor move his cattle. We don't have much snow so I could get out into the hills to ride, or I could ride on the county roads which is not as interesting. The past few nights have been spectacular with the moon shining on all the snow, it makes the landscape so light that it is possible to see things half a mile away quite clearly.
Breezy has been lame for the last few weeks. I am not sure if he did something in the pasture to hurt his foot (or maybe leg), or if it all those endurance miles catching up with a middle aged horse which is what I suspect. I'm feeding him some yucca every day to help with any inflamation and he also gets a liquid herbal formula for his joints. Time will tell if he is able to do endurance next year. I might be shopping for a replacement for him soon, but really don't want to think about that now.
Like most people, I am busy getting ready for Christmas. Our tree is up, wreaths hung on the fences and door, and only the outside lights remain to be put up, a job my hubby can do tomorrow.
I am thinking about decorating Breezy for next year's Christmas letter picture, that should be fun. The wreaths I have are too small, so I tried a few homemade grape vines wreaths over his head and determined the right size. He seemed to enjoy the novelty and will do fine with it after I get decorations on it. He is a funny horse, and has found some interesting ways to entertain himself. After Christmas I will try to get decorations for it for half price, fake greenery, etc, so I can use it again. Horse decorating might just become a new tradition! Our Christmas letters are ready for addresses and stamps. I hope to get all of them in the mail next week and then I'll start baking.
Mary
It's Christmas baking time again, but first I have to make a trip to the grocery store to get nuts, fruit, and a few other necessities for cookies and fruitcakes. I also have to make a few more copies of our Christmas letter and buy more stamps.
On Friday we will be making a trip to spend some time with missionary friends. We have gifts to take, I just have to wrap them, and we will also take a basket of baked goodies and a few stocking stuffers. The weather for our trip will be stormy, a big line of storms is coming into the northwest, one hitting today and another Friday. We could be visiting by candlelight, but that is ok.
Mary
Update on the trip I mentioned last time I posted here. Indeed we were visiting with our friends by candlelight and gas lanterns, and also cooking and heating water on a propane stove and keeping warm around the woodstove in the living room. Their power went out on Thursday evening and when we left Saturday about 2pm it still wasn't back on. They had heard that it would be restored the next day, but that was not an official report. Every Sunday they have a Sunday School class for college students at their home. They were going to go ahead with that although their church had cancelled services because of no heat in the building.
On our way there and back we saw a lot of trees broken or tipped over, roots and all. Flooding was minimal, really not any more water standing in fields than they usually have there in the winter, this storm was mostly a big wind event. Gusts in the 90's were registered all along the Oregon coast, with one gust of 106. Our friends live inland behind the coast range of mountains, so it wasn't that strong at their house, but they said some of the gusts shook the house.
On the home front, I have finished my gift shopping, cookie and fruitcake baking, Christmas card mailing, and some of the gift wrapping. I have two more plates of goodies to deliver to some neighbors this evening. We woke up to a snowy landscape this morning and it has continued to snow off and on for the past few hours but we only have a couple inches of snow at this time. Today is the first day of winter, the shortest day of the year I think, or maybe that was yesterday. It doesn't really matter, because now the days will be getting longer and I like that.
And now I'm going to take a walk in the snow.
Mary
Christmas has come and gone, and the new year is here already. What happened to the old one?
Our Christmas festivities were pretty tame compared to Thanksgiving. On Chirstmas eve (Sunday) we went to church and then in the afternoon our son and daughter-in-law came out and we cooked a prime rib roast. Our son does a good job of that so I told him that we would buy it if he would cook it. The rest was easy, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked squash with brown sugar and butter, green salad with lots of extra goodies in it, and pickled beets (home grown and canned). After we stuffed ourselves with all of that, we opened our gifts, we have always done that on Christmas eve. Pumpkin cheesecake with a crunchy topping about 9pm put us all in a semi sleep mode, and I think we were already in bed by the time the kids arrived at their home 20 miles away.
The days are short and cold, the nights long and cold. That's winter! We had a white Christmas but with bare patches of ground showing, and now it is bare ground with patches of snow. Today we have a weather change coming, so might get more snow or rain in the next couple of days.
One day recently I noticed that my oldest horse (25) was lying down a lot. When I fed the horses their late afternoon hay he didn't get up. I watched him a few minutes to see if he seemed to be in any distress, no rolling, but defenitely not comfortable, probably a mild colic but if not treated they can be life threatening for a horse. I spent about half an hour walking him up and down hills in the pasture, then when he didn't seem to be much better I gave him a shot of Banamine and walked him a while longer.
Soon the Banamine relieved his discomfort and he was interested in the grass around the shop (there is none in the pasture) and he started nibbling. I turned him loose and let him eat grass while I came inside to start dinner, then after about half an hour I put him back into the pasture where he went to eat hay with the rest of the horses. I checked him several times before I went to bed and have watched him carefully over the last few days and he has had no further problem. I don't know what caused it but it appeared to be a gas colic. It's always a good idea to have the right medicine handy and also to know when it is serious and when it is not.
Several years ago I lost a nice mare with colic that was a very serious situation before I was aware that she had a problem. It was winter, my trailer was snowed in and I borrowed a trailer from my neighbor. It took me 3 hours after I knew she had a problem to get her to the vet hospital. She either had a blockage or a twisted gut. There was nothing the vet could do to turn that situation around so she was put down to end her suffering. I'm glad this recent case turned out much better. It's always scarry.
CajuninKy
Colic
Mary
Colic is a very scary situation. I have never had a horse to colic but my friend has a RMH mare that I showed and she has begun to colic a lot more often than is comfortable. Her teeth need floating and I believe she is having problems with sand colic. He keeps the same remedy as you do and is relieved that it works so quickly and so well. The mare is 15 now and beginning to show her aging a bit. I worry for her. He is planning to breed her in the spring and I hope he changes his mind. I don't feel good about the prospect but she is not my horse so the decision is not mine. I hope everything turns out well for her. She is really a nice mare.
Mary
Cajun, I agree with you that breeding that colic prone mare would be risky. Pregnancy tends to amplify whatever is wrong, and often a mare will colic after delivery leaving the owner with an orphan foal that needs to be fed every 2 hours. This happened to somebody I know. She was not able to find a wet nurse mare to feed her foal so had to bottle feed him. By the end of a month of this she was exhausted. Sometimes a chiropractic treatment will help a horse with repeated colic episodes. The nerves that regulate digestive functions can get pinched and cause a problem. Someone I know saw a horse collide with another horse at high speed while playing in the pasture. He had a serious colic soon afterward, and 3 days after that he had another serious colic. After the 2nd colic was under control she took him to a vet who did chiropractic work on him and he never coliced again. Prior to the accident he had never coliced.
Today I am helping my neighbor with the ewes. The shearer is coming to do a partial shearing job called crutching, where the ewe is shorn around her tail and udder and belly in preparation for lambing season. It helps us see what is going on when the ewe is in labor and after delivery, is cleaner for the lambs, and prevents a lot of disease problems. Lambs are due about Feb 25 if my memory is accurate.
A couple of days ago it was such a nice day that I couldn't resist taking Patch for a ride. He spooked at a horse in a corral that was all excited and ran into a metal gate causing a big loud clang. Patch did a 180 in the middle of the road and my hip feels like it is out of place again. Actually it didn't feel too good when I got on the horse. So, after I help the neighbor today I'm sure it will feel worse. Therefore, I will call the chiropractor this morning and see if I can get an appointment for tomorrow.
We had a big windstorm last night and this morning I see a 5 gallon bucket that was standing next to the greenhouse has migrated out into the pasture. It had to have rolled about 300 ft and under 2 fences.
My greenhouse has become a ripe tomato producer. A volunteer plant of unknown variety and origin (probably a commercial compost survivor) came up in the greenhouse bed last summer. I left it to see what it would do, put a cage around it for support and kept watering it. And now I have ripe tomatoes! Very cool. You can bet I will be starting some tomatoes in that bed next summer! I grow some to be set out in my garden for summer eating and canning, but haven't ever had ripe ones in the greenhouse before. One fall I brought in some suckers from my summer garden plants to root and also brought in aphids and had a big mess in my winter lettuce and radishes. Won't do that again. Now that I know about when I need to plant some seeds I will do it a better way for fresh tomatoes next winter. Having a greenhouse is a continuous learning experience!
Mary
We are having a cold snap so I am not doing much outside. This morning the thermometer reads -2 and it was about the same for the past couple of nights with the wind blowing hard. Our house is quite well insulated especially now that we replaced the old windows, but I could still hear the wind. The days are getting up to about 15 or 20 with a brisk wind that finds it's way through layers of clothes, so I am not spending any more time outside than is necessary. The mountains on all sides of us have fresh coats of snow and really light up with the bright sunny days. Our snow has mostly gone, we are looking at bare ground with patches of snow. It's a real test of hardiness for my perennials.
My hubby has gone to San Diego for mission board meetings, he will be back on the redeye flight into Boise tomorrow, then drive home. On the way down he went directly from work on Thursday, driving as far as Boise, about 150 miles, stayed for a short night in a motel near the airport where he could leave the car and take a shuttle to the airport and catch the redeye flight to San Diego. He hasn't been there since he was discharged from the Navy in 1959, and all these years has said that he didn't leave anything there so didn't need to go back. Taking the redeye flights saved him more than enough to pay for the motel and dinner without adding unnecessary time to his trip.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I'm keeping the fire going in the woodstove and doing some housecleaning while I don't have anybody but the kitty underfoot. She is fun, chases the vaccuum cleaner and the mop, and has to stick her nose and little feet into everything. One day she even climbed into the dishwasher when I had the door open and my back was turned. She spends a lot of time birdwatching from what she considers to be her special viewing stands. Actually they are windowsills.
leaflady
I've enjoyed your journal, Mary
I finally managed to get onto this site after over a year of trying. Something about cookies caught my eye & I set the computer to accept them. Got right on. We only allowed cookies from DG before and I'm not sure how to go back to only allowing them from DG and now here. Like you I am computer illiterate. In fact when it comes to any kind of electronic gadgets I illeterate.
GOD bless and keep you and yours.
God's Warrior
Hi there leaflady,
Praise the Lord, you have finally been able to join us. That is a miracle in itself. Welcome, dear lady. We will love having you here and I hope that you will enjoy the site as much as we will enjoy having you here.
CajuninKy
Welcome
Hi Leaflady
So nice to see you here. I am from over at DG also but this is the friendliest site in webworld. It must trickle down from the top. (Elena) Looking forward to your posts.
CajuninKy
Mary
Hi Leaflady. I'm so glad you have joined us here.
I have been busy painting, sanding, painting.... the bathroom has new colors! It has been pale yellow for the past 13 years. When we bought this place we remodeled a lot of it, including the bathroom, and put sheetrock on the walls. We painted everything the same color, clean, bright, and fast. Then we put up the trim and built and added cupboards and counter tops. New paint adds so much to the room! All I have to finish in there is the door and a bit of touch up where I missed a spot of got sloppy. The ceeling is a light brown with a touch of pinkish in it, the walls are a bittle bit darker. The door will be 2 tone with those colors, it is one of those old doors with 5 horizontal panels. The panels will be the lighter color, mostly because I have less of that paint left.
Tomorrow morning I will be leaving to drive about 300 miles to Portland Or, for the annual regional endurance riders conference and awards banquet. I'm sharing my room with an old friend who is just getting into endurance. We will have fun and it is always too many late nights (one is too many and there will be 2 of them) and then there is the drive home. I'll check in when I get back.
Mary
The convention was a lot of fun! My friend enjoyed it too. We went to all the lectures, she spent enough at the trade show for both of us (I didn't buy anything), and we just had a great time getting reaquainted after about 25 years! She was easy for me to spot, I knew her the instant I saw her, she looks just like her mom. The last time I saw her was before we moved to Alaska in 1979, she was our church secretary at that time.
After getting settled into our room we visited the trade show and I introduced her to a whole bunch of people. She has been a horse owner most of her life, and presently she and her husband own a hunter/jumper barn with over 30 stalls, 2 trainers, a big indoor arena, outside training areas, trails on adjoining property, their own horse shows, etc. Now she wants to do something fun, and has been exploring endurance riding through the computer. She bought a horse that is suitable for endurance and has started a slow conditioning program, but needed to look at endurance related tack, clothes, etc, so the convention was just the thing. She lives about 3 hours drive from where it was held.
Awards were given out for teams and some other things on Friday evening. My team won 1st place last season and we got one of those tall trophys on long legs, with horses at the corners of the top platform. Somebody had a sense of humor, because they forgot the front half of the horses! Our team members each got a blue ribbon for our collections. Everybody who rides one horse 250 miles in the season got a stick pin type of button with the club logo on it, I got 2 of those. And then there is an award for any horse and rider team who complete 10 consecutive rides, this was a hand tied rope halter that glows in the dark, which would make it much easier to find a wandering horse in the dark. Breezy earned one of those.
The majority of the educational programs were on Saturday along with the general business meeting and election of officers. Before the awards banquet there was a social hour, and by the time we were let into the banquet hall some of the people were, ahh, a bit too lubricated, including one couple that sat at our table. I'd say they were just on the borderline of being obnoxious, but all in all, for a non Christian crowd it wasn't that bad. We had a wonderful prime rib dinner served buffet style, followed by the awards.
Riding as slow as I do has produced a lot of year end awards over the years, (remember the turtle and the hare), and I brough home a bunch more this year. Some awards are calculated based on points earned, some on mileage. Breezy and I were 30th on the top 30 points list, I got the Golden Years Rider award (60 years and over), Breezy got another Drinker of the Wind award which is given to horses that have over 5000 miles in competition and are still competing, and I was top mileage rider in another mileage category. So I have a new fleece vest, 2 crew bags (for sending hay and etc out to the vet checks) and a unique candle holder with an engraved plaque on it.
Road conditions were quite good for this time of year, and I am pleased to have had an eneventful trip both ways except for some dense fog over the highest pass which I encounted in both directions.
I'll update the home front news soon, so stay tuned!
CajuninKy
Great News!
Mary,
It all sounds so exciting. I wish I could get into just half the action you report on.
Our horse activities at the moment are just cleaning stalls, feeding, grooming, ect. All the work and none of the fun. LOL It has either been too muddy to ride or too cold. We were in the single digits this morning and at noon in the sun it hasn't gotten over 22 degrees. I have a muscle disorder and cold really does a number on me so I endure it to get the work done but as much as I love riding, the pain is too much to be out in it for "fun". But spring will be here soon!
We have 4 horses now. Glory is the show horse, Godiva is the brood mare, Gypsy is the trail horse though she is young now and Shaq is the big bruiser we will sell or trade in the spring. His story is heart breaking and a big disappointment but he is a wonderful mover and very breathtaking to look upon. I have to find a better situation for him and for us. Please say a prayer for me on this issue.
I really enjoy your reports and seeing just a bit of your life. Thankyou for sharing.
Cajun
Mary
Patch and I went out for a couple of conditioning rides this week. I don't have to trailer him anywhere, we just ride down the county road (gravel and hardly any traffic) and then through a gate and up into the hills on jeep roads, cow trails and sometimes no trails. Mid week we went out and covered about 15 miles. It was a beautiful day, sunny, just a very light breeze, and the footing out there is perfect. We are having a dry winter so there is hardly any snow, but one creek is icey and slick to cross. Thankfully it is a small creek so I just rode upstream a little way and found a place where he could step over the icey stream. We went about 15 miles in 3 hours, walking the last mile home to cool him off.
Yesterday we repeated that route, and the weather was not so good. It was cloudy and about 30 when we left home, snowing when we came back. I unsaddled Patch and covered him with a blanket for a while before turning him into the pasture. Later our snow turned to rain, and froze on everything.
My painting projects continue. Yesterday I bought paint to use in the dining room. New paint in one place inspired me to put some in another place. It started with painting the end wall in our narrow living room in a bold terra cotta red. We replaced the white mini blinds with Roman roll up shades. It made such a difference! And got me started thinking about painting the bathroom. Now that that project is done I'm on to another one.
One morning this week I helped my neighbor wean calves. We put the cows and calves (mostly 7 to 8 months old now) into the corrals, sorted them into cow and calf groups and turned them out into a pasture with a hot fence between them. By nightfall one calf was back with it's mother, and of course when one goes others decided they can go, too. Next day the sorting was repeated and the calves are now in a corral being fed and watered while the cows have been moved to a pasture that is farther away. They moo at each other but it is getting quieter with each passing day. Usually the hot fence deal works perfectly, but not this year. The new calves are due in about 2 months so the cows need to be dried up and put that energy into the new calf. Lambing will start about Feb 25, and about the time the sheep are finishing the calves will start coming.
CajuninKy
Sounds like you've had a fun and busy week. I love helping our friend with his cows. We have to separate cow/calf sets also and we really don't have a good setup for the work. I know I will be wishing for a good cutting horse and catch dog before it's over. As long as I don't have to milk any of them I won't complain. LOL
I wish I could be riding but the weather is still too cold and with the snows we've had in the last few days it's muddy yet again. I was enjoying the drier footing but it didn't last long.
Sure be glad when Spring has sprung.
Mary
Most of the dining room is painted, and that includes the walls next to the stairway leading to the back door. With these open floor plans there is sometimes no logical place to stop when adding a new color. We took down all the ribbons, plaques and endurance award stuff that covers one wall, painted the wall and put it all back. I took a picture for reference so we would know how we had it. We didn't fill the nail holes, so just stuck the nails back in the holes and didn't want to make new holes unnecessarily. There were a few additions in blank spots. I still have one small wall to paint, maybe tomorrow.
We had some rain and snow so the footing in the hills is gooey, slippery mud. When I rode Patch last week we just did a lot of walking, but walking in mud that sticks to feet is a lot of work, so it wasn't a lost cause. I'm going to try to ride tomorrow if the weather is nice enough. I missed riding today because I was waiting for a phone call which never came, and then went to town in the late afternoon to get some groceries and have Valentines dinner with my hubby. It was nice not to have to cook. I had chicken parmesan, something I do not make.
I see a few tulips and daffodills coming up in one of the flower beds. They are about a month early, and usually find their way up through patches of melting snow. This year we have no snow cover, so I think the ground is warming up sooner.
We made a trip last weekend to visit some friends, stayed overnight with them and came back home the next day. The weather was nice for the trip which always makes it more enjoyable. When we got into rush hour traffic on our return trip we just stopped and had dinner while the commuters went home, then finished the trip mostly in the dark, taking turns driving and arriving home at 11pm. The house was cold and our house kitty was lonesome and very happy to have her people home. Our neighbor fed the outside critters while we were gone.
Mary
I've finished with the painting for this year I think. The weather is nice, at least for now, so I'm doing things outside. Yesterday Patch and I went up the county road about 6 miles over what I call the Roller Coaster Hills. And then back. It took us about 2 hours to cover 12 miles and in all that time I didn't see anybody. No cars, nobody at ranches we passed, just me and Patch and God. We did see about 25 deer, 2 horses, a pony and 2 dogs. And lots of cows, some of them with small calves.
Today I pruned the grape vines. They didn't get pruned last year so it was a big mess. I used a plastic peat moss bag cut in strips to tie the vines to the wires where I want them to stay. They don't look pretty but they are effective and cheap, and will be replaced next year because the plastic eventually breaks down from the UV rays. When the plants were small I had no support for them so just pounded a stake into the ground and tied them so they were up off the ground. Then when I got a support made I tried to make some sense out of the mess. You could say that several years later, I am still trying to make some sense out of the mess.
In the meantime they have produced several nice crops of grapes. Usually I get about 30#, one year I got about 40#. They make good juice. I have 3 varieties, sometimes I mix them and other years I process one variety at a time. Last year the deer got them all just as they got ripe. Now we need to fence the deer out of the garden since they do other damage besides stealing the grapes.
Mary
Yesterday I helped my neighbor with heifer vaccinations. In order to control Brucellosis (sp?), also known as Bangs disease, the law requires all heifers to be vaccinated by a veterinarian. So we brought the weanlings to the corrals, sorted the steers into a different pen and put the heifers through the chute. Each one got a shot, a small orange metal ear tag with a number, and a tatoo in the ear. It was the first trip through the catch chute for them, they will be smarter and less cooperative next time. I helped keep the line moving forward, and recorded bangs tag and ranch ear tag numbers and notes on the appearance on each heifer.
Our weather has gotten more wintery again. Yesterday afternoon and evening we got more snow, and the ground was covered this morning. During the night the temperature warmed up and by mid day most of our snow has melted. I have some Anemone and Liatirs bulbs to plant today. I was almost on my way out the door yesterday afternoon to do it when the wind came up and the snow started coming down sideways.
Lambing will be starting in just a few more days, so stay tuned.
Mary
No lambs yet, but the ewes have been moved into the lambing pastures behind the barn. There are always some early deliveries and it is much better to have the ewes where we have easy access to the barn. That's easy for us and easy for most of them, too, since they had lambs in those pastures and are familiar with getting into the barn through the corral and the back doors. Many of them look huge and uncomfortable, and they waddle when they walk.
The weather is doing it's usual. Sunshine, wind, rain, snow, sometimes all in one day or half an hour. Today I took Scout, our old Border Collie for a walk down around our large pasture, about a mile all together, and he proudly caried an old bone that he found for most of the way. I wanted to check the fences and the possible growth of new grass. It will be a while before there is anything out there for horses, cattle or sheep to eat. The sun was out and I was too warm with my jacket and hat. An hour later it was snowing sideways!
Yesterday I took a ride on Patch. We went down the road to a place where he did a fast 180 turn with me a few weeks ago. The wind was blowing, and there are several horses in a pasture next to the road, corrals, a haystack covered with a plastic tarp blowing in the wind, and a double aluminum panel gate with a chain holding it together and squeeking happily in the wind. It should have taken about 3 minutes to walk past all of it, but with all the stops and starts and zig zags, it took about 15 minutes. No 180 turns this time! On the way home he got worried there again so I stopped him and turned him around so that he could see that there were no monsters following him. He didn't get a very good workout but it was good for his brain. I was very cold by the time we got home because of the wind. Well, the temperature wasn't so great either, only about 34 degrees. It could have been worse, after all it is still February and officially still winter.
Mary
Today the furnace man came to start installing a new furnace, something we have never had here. So, he was measuring, drilling holes, deciding where the duct work would go, and almost all the parts are in our basement. He was missing some essential stuff though, and something else was the wrong size, so he will be back another day. Since our job isn't something we will depend on anytime soon, he is fitting us in between other jobs. Today he left to go install a new furnace for somebody who has no heat because their old furnace died. On the way out here this morning he stopped to assist at an accident, helping a young family until the police got there. Nobody hurt, good thing they had seatbelts, but they were shaken up and it was cold. I think he is a Good Samaratin.
I fussed around about half the day trying to get my computer to work. It's frustrating because I don't know much about it. One day it was working, the next day it wasn't. Finally about an hour ago I called our ISP tech guy and he helped me get it going.
The most exciting thing that has happened here in a few days was one of our neighbor's steers jumped the fence between our places when I was feeding my horses. I ran him out the driveway on to the road before he got any reward for his effort and closed the gate, then called my neighbor. Not much traffic here on our road, and everybody expects either cattle or deer on the road. The neighbor was here about 10 minutes later and put him back with the herd.
Tonight I start checking for lambs. There weren't any as of this morning, but that can change any time now.
Mary
The lambs are coming!
Night before last I checked the sheep at 1am with snow coming down all around, and found a set of twins, unfortunately only one was alive. The ewe followed the lambmobile to the barn with her babies in it, and soon she and the surviving lamb were in a pen with straw bedding. Since it was snowing and I had seen a suspicious hump that might have been another ewe in labor, I made a second trip out to check but it turned out to be a rock. Things look very different from a distance in the dark and in the snow, even with moonlight, headlight on the 4 wheeler and a good flashlight. The sheep are always pretty nervous for the first few nights, so it was hard to look at all of them, but there were none in obvious labor so I called it good and came home to finish my night's sleep.
The lambmobile is a small trailer with the top part of a grocery cart mounted on it, and pulled by a small 4 wheeler motorcycle. A bit of straw padding, add a lamb, momma follows (usually) and off we go to a small pen in the barn. The ewe can see and smell her baby, and the mothering instinct is usually very strong so she will go anywhere the lamb goes. Sometimes the 1st time mothers run back to the flock instead of following the cart. More on that another time, or you can go to my Lambing thread from last year for more details. The lambs are about 8 to 10 pounds at birth, about the size of a grown housecat. The lambmobile will hold a set of triplets with space to spare.
Last night when I did my check there was another set of twins, one on it's feet and the other just trying to figure out how to get all 4 legs under him at the same time going in the same direction. They were in the barn a few minutes later. On my second trip out there was nothing else new, and no ewes in labor, so I came home and went back to my warm and welcome bed.
Mary
Last night I putt-putted out into the field on the 4 wheeler and found a ewe in labor with the water bag showing. She followed the lambmobile part way to the barn but then went back to the birthing spot she had chosen. She is an older ewe who associated the lambmoblie with birthing, (who says sheep are dumb?). I continued to the barn, and since the weather wasn't bad, let her stay outside to deliver her lamb. Half an hour later I went back out and put her lamb into the cart and we went to the barn. The lamb was just a bit on the small side, so I was sure she had another one in there, but she didn't act like she was going to have another one right away, so after some observation I went home. When the owner came to check them at about 5am, she was the mother of triplets.
Another ewe was in a pen in the barn but had no lamb. I watched her a while but she didn't lay down or seem to be in labor. When the owner came to the barn this morning she had a lamb in the pen with her.
About noon I helped with a little cattle sorting job. Patch is learning to be a cow horse, but I do have to say Breezy showed more aptitude for it. However, Patch is happy when he is going just about anywhere. We got the cattle to mill around near the pasture gate, and had our eyes on the heifer we needed to take to the corrals and when she and a few others got close to the gate we pushed them through and closed the gate behind them. The hay feeding truck was nearby and they headed for it and followed it to the corrals with Patch and I following them. We helped sort her out and put her in a different corral with another heifer for company, then took the rest of them back to the herd behind the feed truck. Then it was feeding time and they were all happy!
Mary
The ewes have been on a labor strike for the last 2 nights, and as a result I have been getting more sleep. Today however, things got busy again.
I went to the barn about noon and could see a new lamb way up the hill in the field. And also a set of twins nearby. When I went out to get the twins I decided to check the rest of the flock while the lambmobile was empty, and found a newborn near the hotfence, not good, so I got that one first. Nice momma, she was a good follower. Wow, this was a big lamb! Trip 2 was to get the twins, another good momma who talked to her babies all the way to the barn.
The owner is gone all day today hauling some cattle and then has a meeting in town before he will be home, so his daughter and I are watching things. On the 5am check there was a yearling ewe with a nice lamb, she is as wild as a March hare! The daughter tried to get her into the barn and she jumped a hot fence and ran back to the flock. It was a nice day so she iodined the lamb's navel and left it in the field for the ewe to take care of while she (hopefully) settled down. Now we devised a plan and went to get momma and baby.
All went quite well for a while. The flock came toward the barn for water and I stood near the gate between pastures to keep them from going back while Chris took the 4wheeler/lambmobile around behind the ewe and her lamb. They walked ahead of her toward the other sheep, I moved out of the way and tried to make myself invisable while they walked through the gate and Chris got it closed. So far, the ewe was calm and still with her lamb and moving toward the flock.
Some of the ewes went into the corral and then into the barn since we had left the door open. We eased the ewe and her lamb toward the corral, and after a bit of back and forth, got her and a small bunch in and closed the gate. I picked up the lamb and took it inside the barn door where she could see it and come to it. She did after a few minutes but was not far enough inside the barn for Chris to get the door closed, and out she went.
On about the 5th try we got her and a few ewes to go inside, and the lamb didn't get trampled because I had put him in a pen that the ewe could see from outside. Next I stood near the door and let all the ewes go out except the goofy mom. Then we put the lamb in an open pen and hoped the ewe would go in so we could close the gate. Nope, instead the lamb joined the ewe. Three times. On to plan D, or E or F. It's always good to have more than one plan.
We decided that the pen we call the penthouse at the far end of the front isleway would be the best place for her since she was showing us that she was thinking about jumping through a window. Thankfully the windows are quite high. We opened the gate between sections of the barn and tried using her lamb for bait to get her to go back there. The lamb kept going to mom instead. Time for another plan.
In a side section of the barn are the mothering pens, they are just beyond another gate. So, we decided to open that so she could see other sheep calmly standing there, go into that isleway, then make a turn into the front section of the barn where we wanted to put her. We put her lamb into the pen next to the one where we wanted to put her, but he escaped and had to be put back. Twice!
The ewe finally went though the first gate toward the other sheep, then walked down the isle to the turn and stood there looking. We held our breath because we knew that if she didn't make the turn she was likely to try to find another way out. Her lamb was not making any noise now, he's a tired little guy. We closed the first gate just as she went through the second one, then closed that one behind her and followed her up the isle to the pen. I carefully gave her lamb to her and closed her gate. Success! And what should have taken 5 minutes only took an hour and a half! There's a note on the barn chart to sell this one. We know from experience that they aren't much better the second or third year.
Mary
The night before last was another busy one. The weather had turned cold and windy, so naturally the ladies decided it was time to quit carrying those lambs around.
I unlatched the barn doors and started the 4 wheeler, putted out through the corral where the wind was opening a heavy gate about half way with each gust, but it was almost closing between gusts. I went through it without touching it. Soon I saw a ewe with newborn twins, big lambs! They were in the barn about 3 minutes later, and again I timed my passage through the gate without touching it, tricker this time because I also had to allow for the ewe following. I didn't want to have the gate hit her. It's a little game I play on windy nights, it doesn't take much to entertain me.
On the second trip out there was a ewe whose lamb was just presenting itself. She was a yearling and acted sort of confused by it all and wanted the company of the flock instead of choosing to be alone for the big event. I quickly went back to the barn, put an open bale of hay into an empty pen and put the gate up to keep it from being trampled and wasted, checked to make sure gates to the isleways were closed, and secured the big corral gate on my way back to the field to get the flock, then secured the gate behind them when they were in the corral and entering the barn.
The whole flock can get into the center section of the barn at once. I stopped the 4 wheeler in the corral and walked into the barn, standing just inside the door while I spotted the ewe I wanted. As the sheep circulated around I stepped aside to let a few out, while keeping the one I wanted in sight. I lost track of her a couple of times and had to relocate her. When I got the flock down to about a dozen I didn't move quickly enough and she went out. But only into the corral, the gate was closed so they couldn't go out to the pasture.
Ok, start over. On the second try I got all the others out and kept her in, closed and latched the door, and went to do a barn check, try to get a weak lamb to nurse, and watch from a distance while the mother-to-be settled down, chose a corner, and got back to work. Push, push, push, get up, turn around, lay down, push, push, over and over. I could see that she wasn't moving the lamb and needed some help. For that I would need to get her into an empty pen.
I could get her near the pen but she wouldn't go into it. Back and forth she went from one side of the barn to the other. I moved a bit aggressively to get her to go in, and after a few trips across the barn she went in, and didn't try to get out when I put up the gate. A minute later I was in there with her, flashlight in hand, and I could see two feet and one nose, but one foot was back a bit from where it should have been. I pulled on that foot, she pushed, laid down again, pushed again, I pulled, and out popped junior!
I held the lamb up by his hind legs to allow blood to get into the head and mucous to get out of the mouth and nose, while cleaning his nose and mouth with my other hand. Then when he wiggled, sneezed and shook his head, I put him down near her head. The little momma was tired and made no effort to get up, but with her freshly born lamb under her nose she did start to lick him and talk to him. Ewes make a funny little chuckling type of sound when first talking to their baby. At this point I left the new momma alone to bond with her baby, wrote information on the barn chart, iodined the navels of the set of twins and made a note that this newest one wasn't iodined. When the lamb is too freshly born the iodine doesn't stick well to the umbilical cord or the ewe will lick it off, so it can be done later.
Yearlings don't usually have twins, and since this was a big lamb I guessed that she was finished, and came home to get some sleep. Yesterday I went back to check on her, and she was on her feet, momma and baby were doing well, and in the pen next to her was a look alike yearling with a nice set of twins.
Last night was warmish, calm and great for lambs to be born compared to the night before, but when I checked the sheep they weren't trying to have any babies, so I came home and tried to sleep. Some nights I can go back to sleep, other nights it doesn't work so well.
Mary
Yesterday was a beautiful day, sunny and quite warm especially for mid March. An endurance riding friend came over and we went out riding for about 5 hours, covering about 30 miles, a lot of it at a trot. We saw one bunch of deer that had about 40 animals, and several groups of 4 to 20. The country is rolling grassland with canyons, so the deer usually see anything different before we can get very close to them. Occasionally I also see elk out there, but not yesterday.
We rode out to a place where there is a road that goes down a hill for over a mile, then when the terrain flattened out we turned around and trotted our horses all the way to the top. They are in pretty good shape, about ready to do the first 50 mile ride of the season in 3 weeks.
Last evening hubby and I were invited to our son and daughter in law's for dinner. They live about 20 miles away, in town. It was so nice not to have to cook after riding so many hours. I can tell that even though the horse is about ready to do 50 miles, it will be a stretch for me. The first one always is and I find all kinds of forgotten muscles!
I got about 3 hours of sleep and then it was time to check on the ewes, they were way out on the far side of the far pasture. I putt putted around them twice but couldn't see any signs of any of them wanting to deliver a lamb in the next couple of hours. The temperature was still about 40 degrees, that is warmer than a lot of recent days, too warm for all the layers of clothes I was wearing. Everything inside the barn was ok, so I came home and went back to bed. It is hard to get back to sleep, and so I spent the next 2 1/2 hours thinking about spring projects, gardening, riding, lambs, and praying for people. Sometimes I think God just wants me to be praying during those sleepless hours but my mind wanders. Then he jogs me with another name and it's back to praying.
I got up too late for church so after I did my morning chores we just went to have breakfast, but the restaurant was already serving lunch so I had a chicken sandwich and salad. We were leaving just as most of the churches were letting their people out, so the timing was good.
On the way home we saw the neighbor putting a bunch of ewes and lambs out into a pasture. He said there were 4 ewes with new lambs when he checked just after daylight, and he had to make long trips into the field to get them all. He had forgotten to move them closer to the barn last night before dark, and when I checked them I thought he had left them out on purpose since the weather was so nice.
Mary
Yesterday afternoon a dead and partially eaten lamb was found in the field. We are not sure which ewe it belonged to, it might have been from one of the ewes that were brought in after daylight yesterday morning, there were 4 ewes with only one lamb each. One of the ewes may have moved away from a predator with one lamb while the other was slower and became dinner for something. Or it might have been born dead, we can't really tell.
Last night when I got to the barn there was a note telling me that one of the ewes delivered a set of quints! I've seen quads but never quints. Three survivors from that set are doing well after being tube fed a couple of hours before I got there. I went to check on them this morning, one of them feels so good she is trying to bounce around in the pen. One of the others has a crooked hip and might be raised as a bottle lamb. Most ewes don't raise 3 lambs very well.
I'm working on preparing my vegie garden for planting, hauling old manure from a shed in the horse pasture. I might get some planting done in a few days, things like peas, onion sets, radishes, lettuce, chard, cabbage and brocolli. My hubby got the rototiller out of the shed this weekend, filled the gas tank, checked the oil, checked to make sure everything worked. It's an old Troybuilt tiller that was new in 1982. I put manure along the rows, till it in with some bone meal, and plant my seeds. I ordered bone meal from a local store about 2 weeks ago, so I hope it has arrived.
Mary
I can't get the bone meal, at least that store can't get it since they have changed suppliers since last gardening season. Yesterday I went to another place and asked them to check on it for me, and if I don't hear from them in another couple of days I will call and see what they know. After that there would only be one other local possibility.
Things are busy in the barn again after a lull of a couple of days. Last night I brought in a ewe with a single lamb, another ewe who was showing mucous followed us in to the barn, and when I made another trip outside I found a ewe that had lamb's feet showing, but she was walking around talking, a possible sign that she had been in hard labor and had given up. That meant a hasty trip back to the barn so I could close some gates and move a bale of hay, then another trip to the pasture to bring in the whole flock, sort her out, and assess the situation after I got her into a small pen. Her lamb was in the proper position for birth as far as I could tell. I pulled gently on one foot, then tried the other. She made a couple of quick trips around me and one effort to get out of the pen, then laid down and we got to work. Push, pull, wiggle, push, pull, wiggle. The lamb was a bit on it's side so I was trying to remedy that and pull a bit every time she pushed. A few of minutes later the lamb was out and I put it under her nose.
She licked the lamb and talked to it, I made barn chart notes on the night's activity and watched her a while to see if she would get up or start to deliver another lamb. She did neither, but I couldn't blame her and didn't worry about it. After a tramatic birth they often stay down for half an hour or more, and only get up when the lamb gets to it's feet and starts looking for a meal.
The ewe with the quints was down to 3 last night but 2 of them weren't doing well. They occupy a large pen in the barn where they can be watched easily. I saw one lamb up on it's feet and nursing, another got up and went to the other side of the pen but I didn't see that happen so I don't know if he nursed or not. The third one was very sick and just wanted to sleep but also looked bloated. I didn't have much hope for him.
Today I went back down to the barn to see what is new and help out for about an hour. The ewe with the single lamb had another one, the ewe with the assisted delivery didn't have any more, and the one that followed us inside and was just showing mucous hadn't had any at all. Maybe she is just one of those slow ones and will deliver today or tonight. I helped take a few ewes and their lambs from the barn to the pasture, it's a slow trip with the lambs having no idea where to go, and the ewes turning around to check on their babies. Sort of a two steps forward, one step back situation, but eventually they get to where they are supposed to go. I always think of it as a funny little parade.
Our weather has turned cold and windy again. The sun is out today and the thermometer says 52, but it feels more like 30 something. Brrr. Yesterday was so nice and warm feeling but I spent most of the day doing errands and grocery shopping. Today I found a lot of things to do inside the house and only ventured out for short periods. I'm ready for spring to return and stay, but after all it is only March and a bit early for many days like yesterday.
Speaking of spring, the other kind now, the kind that produces water. We have a spring on our place that used to be our domestic water source. It got slow in late summer every year and wasn't quite adequate for our needs, so 4 or 5 years ago we had a well drilled. The spring has almost dried up, and just produces a trickle, just enough to keep the horse's water trough filled. I'm sure it was the leading of the Lord for us to drill the well. We would just be out of water for everything now if we hadn't had it done. My neighbor says his spring is drying up too, his keeps a stock pond full and the overflow provides water for his sheep and cattle in other pastures. Now he is worrying about his domestic well because it is a very shallow one that just collects ground water. We have had a very dry winter, following several years of drought, so I emagine many springs and wells in the area will be in trouble if we don't have a wet season soon. it's a serious situation for an agricultural area.
Mary
We've had two beautiful days in a row, sun, not much wind, and warmer than normal for mid March. Perfect weather for lambs to be born, so of course the ewes are waiting for some other kind of not so nice weather. They are having some lambs, but it is slow and there was nothing new tonight. It reminds me somehow of watching waves come ashore, there is a steady rhythm for a while, then a surge for some unknown reason, then it slows to the former rhythm again. They all get there, but on some timetable that we can't control or understand.
The ewe that had the quints about a week ago is back outside with her 2 surviving lambs. The one that looked sick and bloated a couple of nights ago died. The one with the crippled leg is learning to get around better all the time, but for now the ewe is being kept in a corral with a shelter to give the little guy time to get stronger and better coordinated before he has to find her in a pasture.
That ewe who followed me to the barn a couple of nights ago and then hadn't had any lambs by the next day was having a problem. The owner got concerned and it was time to investigate. He found the problem, lambs in the wrong position, both lying with their heads turned back. They were delivered successfully and mother and twins are all doing well, just like nothing was ever wrong. I like the happy endings.
Tonight I picked up a very weak lamb from one of the barn pens, one of a set of twins that was born yesterday afternoon. He was almost buried in the straw, an indication that his mother has been trying to get him to get up and nurse. We tube fed him this afternoon, but he looks weaker tonight, and so I put him in what we call the warming oven, a 55 gallon drum mostly filled with straw and lined with sheep fleeces, with a heat lamp suspended over it. He will be protected from his mother's efforts to get him to respond and will get warm there. By now he could have suffered internal injuries if his mother pawed at him too vigorously. His mouth felt cold when I checked it with my finger, not a good sign. If he is alive in the morning I will be surprised. It's just a fact that despite our best efforts, some of them just don't make it. The ewe still has one lamb that appears to be just fine, and she may have already decided that this weak one won't live, she was not at all concerned that I took him away. Sometimes they know long before we do.
The day before yesterday I got a chance to go see my sister who lives about 60 miles from me across a 5300 ft mountain pass in another valley. We usually meet in town because it is between us and more convenient than going to each other's houses, a trip that takes an hour and a half because of the mountain road. My hubby had business in that area so I rode along and visited with sis while he took care of it. She and her husband raise beef cattle for a living and are in the middle of calving, so I think of my sis being out checking for new calves at the same time that I am checking for new lambs. They have also had a very dry winter and the spring that supplies their domestic water is running slower than normal. Not a good sign. At this point with winter almost officially over, we can only hope and pray for a wet season this spring before the hot weather comes. It would help all the ranchers in the area.
During lambing season I sleep in a split shift, about 3-4 hours before my check and about the same after. Of course it takes me a while to get sleepy again after being out in the cold air, so that is what I have been doing here in the middle of my night. And now, thankfully, my eyelids are getting heavy so it is time to go back to my warm bed.
Mary
A set of triplets was born tonight. They are all girls and look like they should have had 3 different mothers, or, maybe they had 3 different fathers. One is very dark, one medium and one white. I have often wondered if a set of lambs can be fathered by more than one male, that sometimes happens with dogs and cats, and this set of triplets has me pretty much convinced that it does happen. The rams that sire the lambs for this flock are different breeds, three are Suffolk (black faced), one is Targhee and one Columbia, both white faced. Black faced lambs are often born with very dark bodies that lighten as they grow, but the face and leg colors remain throughout life.
When I found these babies in the field there were 2 ewes tending them, one dark faced and one white, and at first I thought both might have lambed close together and the babies got mixed up, but on closer inspection I could see that only one ewe was the mother. Both of them followed the lambmobile to the barn. To prevent the extra ewe from getting into the pen with the newborns I pulled the 4 wheeler right up beside the empty pen. Momma was on the right side of it to be put into the pen with the first lamb while the extra ewe was on the opposite side talking to the other lambs that were still in the cart. I put up the gate and "air lifted" the other two lambs over the top.
The extra ewe, (we call them grannys), followed me around because my gloves and clothes smelled like the lambs, and she wants lambs NOW! She is quite agressive, so I left her in the barn thinking that if she has her own lambs soon (hopefully before morning) she will be less trouble than if she has to be brought back inside. Often the ones that follow others inside and act like mothers are very close to lambing but show no outward signs yet.
Forty six ewes are left in the drop band. They look like a very small group compared to the size of that group a couple of weeks ago, so it is getting much easier to check them in the dark. The pasture with the creep feeder and shelter on the opposite side of the road has been expanded into another pasture because of the growing ewe and lamb population. Our weather continues to be very nice for little lambs.
Mary
And now, just a few hours later, we have triplets in triplicate! I brought in the first set last night, and today there have been 2 more sets of triplets and 3 sets of twins! June is busting out all over, except it isn't June.
While I was at the barn a while ago I helped put 2 ewes and their lambs out into the pasture. One ewe thought she needed to go way up the road and one of her lambs followed her. Her other lamb is a big lazy guy, he was bringing up the rear of our little parade, kind of following the other ewe and her twins but mostly investigating the big world, and all of those went where they were supposed to go. However, the wayward mom and her lamb just kept going. We tried to get around them to turn them back, she just went faster, but finally when she went into a field on the other side of the road we just gave her time to settle down while we formulated a plan.
Just then the owner's cousin came in from a field he was working, so he stood near the gate we wanted her to go into. A motorbike was brought into the game and I walked down the road past the ewe, closed another gate and waited while the barn manager (owner's daughter) got around her on the motorbike and followed while the ewe and her lamb walked not so calmly toward an open gate, down the road and finally through the gate where she was supposed to go.
Somebody commented that we just outsmarted a sheep, but I said I didn't think it was anything to be too proud of.
Mary
When I got to the barn last night there was a note to check the granny ewe in the penthouse pen to see if she had any lambs yet. Yes, there they were, all 3 of them! That made 4 sets of triplets in 24 hours! We aim for multiple births, a heritable trait that is one of our selection criteria for replacement ewe lambs, but this many triplets in such a short time is a bit unusual. On my way out to the pasture I noticed that all the recieving pens were full, making it necessary to move a little family or two to the larger mothering pens (community pens) if I brought any more lambs inside.
Except for the sound of the wind, everything was quiet in the pasture, no new lambs, and no ewes in obvious labor. One ewe seemed inclined to follow the lambmobile for a short distance, but then she decided she prefered the company of the flock and stayed in the field. Some nights I have several followers who only want to come into the barn because the alfalfa hay in there is 1st quality, but some follow because they are in the early stages of labor and they associate the lambmobile with lambs. Perhaps they just want to walk into the barn and get lambs automatically without having to go through all the hard work of the delivery process.
The wind was blowing quite strongly so I was happy enough to get back inside the barn and latch the doors so they wouldn't bang in the wind. I looked at the pen where the ewe had delivered the triplets and decided to clean it if she would let me, or just add a lot of dry straw if she wouldn't let me work around her. She was very nice, not exciteable, not agressive, and let me rake wet straw out from under her with a large fork, move her lambs around to clean under them, and put new straw in her pen. I iodined the babies, two males and one female, and watched the youngest and smallest of them looking for the fawcett on the udder. She was so close but not quite finding where to grab it.
Little lambs resist having their head pushed around, so I reached around behind the ewe's hind leg and pushed the nipple into her mouth when she got close to finding it. The slurpy sounds she made told me she was enjoying her first meal. The other lambs looked like they had already found their dinner, their little hollow spots near their flanks were kind of filled out, and they just wanted a nap. Being born is hard work! Momma didn't lay down to rest until after I left.
Mary
Two nights ago the weather was very windy and the temperature had gone down to 24, so the flock was in the barn when I arrived, including the guard llama. A note told me to check a certain pen, and when I looked there was another set of triplets. Two lambs had been born in the field, and the 3rd one in the barn some time before I arrived. I don't know what the problem was, but that newest lamb was dead. Sometimes they are born dead, occasionally the ewe lays down on a lamb but this one didn't have that flat look, he was just dead. Possibly the umbilical cord had been around his neck or around another lamb. He had been licked clean. I removed him from the pen without the ewe being concerned at all. They know when there is no hope for one, but don't grieve unless they have no others. The others had been iodined when they were brought inside and were almost dry already.
Another ewe was in the next pen, waiting for her little miracles to appear, she was showing some mucous but nothing else. I had noticed one ewe standing in a corner before the flock started moving around, she was just a bit apart from the flock and slower to notice that I was there, so I thought she might be in the early stages of labor. A few hours later when I went to the barn to see what was new the owner told me that ewe had delivered twins, one of whom was following another ewe though the flock when he got there.
Last night the weather was nicer and flock was outside again. The owner had left a note to check a ewe whose lamb he had to pull. He thought she probably would deliver another one without a problem. Usually the first lamb is the only problem. The lamb was fine, the ewe was in labor and I hoped she would deliver her lamb in the next few minutes. I left her to do that alone while I checked for activity in the field, there was none. The ewe was still straining when I got back and had changed positions so I checked her more carefully and could see a partly delivered lamb, one foot and a head. I wasn't even sure it belonged to the same lamb since they do get tangled up sometimes.
The ewe kept circling me in the little pen while I was trying to investigate and help with the delivery. I put my finger in the lamb's mouth, it was cold, a very bad sign. This job would take two people, so I used my cell phone and called the owner. Knowing it would take a few minutes for him to arrive, I moved the ewe and lamb to a clean pen and got the wheelbarrow and cleaning fork and busied myself cleaning the wet and dirty pen. After dumping the wet straw on the big pile outside I checked the other ewes and lambs in the barn pens.
We got to work quickly. He had a bucket of hot water with disinfectant soap in it, we got the ewe on her side, he reached in with a wet and soapy hand and found that the lamb's turned back leg was on the lower side. We pulled the ewe around without letting her get up so we had room to turn her on to her other side. A ewe's pelvis is a crowded place and it often takes some manoeuvring to get a hand past a partially born lamb, first to be sure that the parts all belong to the same lamb, and secondly to get the problem solved so it can be born. He pushed the lamb back to get his hand past the neck to pull the turned back leg out next to the other one, then pull both at the same time to help the lamb come out.
I held the ewe so she could not get up while this proceedure was taking place, and in about 2 minutes the lamb was pulled out. It was not alive. The owner put an antibiotic bolus into the ewe's uterus to prevent infection, washed his hands again using the water in the bucket, and we left the ewe with her other lamb. The bolus is about the size of a very small chicken egg, and will dissolve in a short time right where it is needed. Before we left she was on her feet again. Animals continue to amaze me, I can't emagine going through a delivery like that and standing up a few minutes later like nothing ever happened!
CajuninKy
I read this whole page and it is like I book I didn't want to put down. I would love to see what it all looks like. Reading about the lambing makes me think of the James Herriot books. I love those.
God's Warrior
Maybe next year you and I need to take a trip out to Mary's to view all of this fascinating stuff first hand, huh Cajun?
I am only kidding, Mary. You can stop holding your breath now.
Mary
No new lambs tonight, and there haven't been any since last night. I walked out into the field and checked the drop band who were all milling around, none was showing any mucous, little feet or noses, so I checked the ewes and their lambs in the barn pens. One ewe has been a problem for a couple of weeks. She lambed ok and had twins, but has mastitis in one side of her udder so one of the twins was sold to a neighbor and the other one was found dead in the next day or so because the ewe laid on it. She was put into a stancion pen and given a triplet from another set. The stancion looks like a small version of what we associate with cow milking barns, the ewe can stand up or lay down, but can't sniff the lamb. The lamb has the freedom of the pen and can nurse whenever it wants as long as the ewe stands still.
Sometimes we have to make the ewe stand for the lamb to nurse when they only have one lamb. In a few days the lamb will begin to smell like the ewe, or like the other lamb. In cases where there is only one lamb, like this ewe with mastitis, the results are not as likely to be good.
So, this ewe spent a few days in the stancion, and somebody had to make sure she stood still for the lamb to nurse several times a day. Then she went into a nearby pen and although she liked her new lamb, she didn't want to feed him, so the ewe was held against the wall while the lamb nursed and then he was put into the adjoining pen where she could see and smell him through the spaces between the boards. This was for his safety and so he would not be discouraged from getting kicked or butted away. We hoped that in time she would just get used to feeding him and quit protesting.
Fast forward a week, and now she is in a larger pen with her lamb, and tonight I saw her let him nurse. Success! In the past few days she has been in this community pen with other ewes and lambs but tonight is alone with her lamb so I guess they want to watch her a bit longer. The community pen environment may have helped with her mothering instinct. Being out in the pasture might be too much of a distraction for her to be thinking about a lamb. I don't know when she will be turned out into the pasture, but personally I hope she is kept in for observation for a few more days since the barn is not crowded. This ewe has a cull tag, she will be sold when the lamb is weaned because of the mastitis and her mothering problems. She got the cull tag last year, but for some reason was missed when we sold other ewes with problems. We are guessing that she might not have been a good mother last year either, but haven't looked up last year's records to see what her problem was.
The ewe who had the delivery problems last night is looking good. According to her ear tag number, she is 10 years old. One side of her udder has a hard place so it is good that she only has one lamb to feed this year.
Mary
Yesterday we had planned to burn old grass and weeds along our fence lines and irrigation ditches, but it was too windy to to be starting a fire in dry grass, so that will have to wait for another day. Instead my hubby hitched up the pasture harrow and spent a few hours on the tractor dragging that around breaking up manure and roughing up the surface of the ground so any moisture we get will penetrate. Rain showers are forecast for today but I will be surprised if we get even a few drops. We could sure use about a 3 day slow soaker. I'm already watering flower beds.
While hubby was doing that, I went riding on Patch since he was overdue for a workout. The first ride of the endurance season is in a week, so now he gets to rest for a few days. While he cooled off and ate some grain with vitamins, I cleaned tack, then gave him a shower with the hose from the greenhouse. The water was warmish water to start and gradually getting cooler. Patch did a few fast circles but I managed to get a lot of accumulated salty sweat rinsed off. As soon as he was back in the pasture he rolled and got all dirty, but that will brush off easily. Breezy was feeling frisky, probably inspired by the tractor and harrow going round and round through his pasture, so they both had a wild and crazy play time for the next few minutes which was good to keep Patch from chilling.
When my hubby got off the tractor I got on it and scraped the heavily manured areas of the pasture, scooping and hauling about 20 loads with the front end loader bucket. I made a big pile about 30 feet from the vegetable garden gate. It will be handy to take wheelbarrow loads from there to the garden in mid to late summer to feed plants that by then will have pretty much used the goodies in the soil. Hopefully the pile will heat up in the next few days and cook a lot of the weed seeds. The weeds in my vegie garden would be easier to control if I used chemical fertilizer and herbicides, but I prefer to stay organic. We eat too many chemicals as it is from foods we buy.
When I rode home yesterday past the neighbor's sheep pasture I saw a yearling ewe in labor, so a few minutes later when I saw the neighbor I told him about her and tonight there she was in a pen in the barn with her new baby. Another ewe lambed yesterday morning, and 3 the day before, so now we are down to 18. I won't be checking them very many more nights, and that's ok, because as the drop band gets smaller the chances of one lambing between 10pm and 5am also diminish. A whole night's sleep would be a luxury for me at this point since tonight was #23 with a big sleepless space in the middle.
Last night as I was checking the sheep in the barn I heard a noise, looked up and there was the barn owl. Their flight is silent but the noise I heard was the vibration from the owl taking off from the peg below the hole in the nesting box. It flew to the loft and perched on a hay bale, then a few minutes later flew back to the top of the nest box. We have been hearing squeeky peeps from the box for several days, but nobody had seen the parent owl. I feel priviliged! Thanks, Lord.
Mary
After a couple of nights with no lambs, last night was a night with problems. I walked out into the pasture behind the barn where the sheep are locked in for the night, and found the gate open between it and the larger pasture where they spend the days. The sheep were milling around but I shined my flashlight on them as I walked by, and also checked the areas where a lot of lambs have been born, nothing new. Then I walked up through the big pasture looking for eyes shining or big light colored humps, nothing.
Back in the smaller pasture the ewes were still milling around, acting kind of nervous, and I could hear a ewe talking, a sign that one of them is near lambing. I looked more carefully as they walked away from me and finally identified the talker, then looked at her hind end, oops, there was a partly born lamb. The ewe was a yearling, and very nervous about what was happening. I moved the flock toward the barn, but when they got to the corral gate the mother to be turned around and ran back to where we started, taking 3 others with her.
Back I went, got around them and after some zig zagging got them to rejoin the flock. Then they went the other way, and I finally got them back together again. The ewe kept wanting to get back to her chosen birthing spot. It smelled like the water bag fluid, and she kept thinking her lamb must be there. I moved them toward the barn again. It is sometimes easier to herd sheep in the dark than in daylight because I can use the flashlight beam to make my arms really long.
Finally they went into the corral, and then into the barn. With better lighting I could see one lamb foot and the head, the other foot was probably the problem. But my immediate problem was to get her into a pen. There is safety in numbers, especially when dealing with an excited sheep, so it took a while to let most of the others go out of the barn and try to isolate her. When I got the bunch down to 3 I decided that was close enough and the others might have a calming effect on her. However, the others were also yearlings and just as flighty and clueless as she.
I retreated to another part of the barn where I could observe and hoped she would relax, choose an open pen, lie down and push her lamb out into the world. The others got interested in a little hay, and she did relax a bit but just stood there. I tried to see foot number 2, but she was standing in a way that wouldn't let me see much. She was still having contractions but didn't want to push, sometimes a sign of having been in labor for a long time and given up. Not good. After observing for a few minutes I decided to try to get her into a pen. Oops, she and the others were instantly back into flight mode. Reinforcements were needed. Then I realized that my cell phone was still on the kitchen table.
It's only half a mile back to my house, so I got in the pickup and went to get the phone, then sneaked back into the barn to watch for a few more minutes. No change. I would have to call the owner and disturb his sleep for the second time in a week. A sleepy voice answered, I told him I had a flighty yearling with a stuck lamb, and he said he would be there in a few minutes.
When he arrived we teamed up on her, he made several attempts to catch her with a leg hook on a long pole, and finally got her. We wrestled her into the nearest pen, put her on her side and while I held her head and front leg on the lower side, he started to work delivering the lamb. A few minutes later the problem was solved and the lamb was pulled out, but it was dead. He checked to be sure there was not another one, then put an antibiotic bolus into her uterus and we left her with the lamb, hoping another ewe would deliver more than she could feed and we would have a lamb to graft. Last week we had so many triplets, now we need one. So far, 24 hours later, we don't have an extra lamb, and the ewe is back in the drop band looking for her lamb and is quite ready to be a mother, but will it happen? Psychologically she is a good candidate to be a surrogate mother for a lamb that is still inside another sheep. Waiting.....
Tonight there were no new lambs, the weather is wet and windy so the small drop band was in the barn. I was hoping to walk in, see a set of triplets, wave one of them under the poor little ewe's nose and give her a baby. The grafting can only work if we get that extra lamb in the next few hours while she is still receptive, and it needs to be a freshly born lamb to make it work. Three ewes look very round and uncomfortable, but they just chewed their cuds and looked like they were in no hurry. This is the sheep version of a biological clock ticking but with a little different twist.
Mary
Yesterday there was a set of triplets and a set of quads with 3 survivors. The sad little ewe who lost her lamb a couple of nights ago has a new baby that she may or may not be wanting at this point. She is in one of the stancion pens, so the lamb can nurse and she can't do much to protest and can't sniff it to decide it isn't hers. With the passage of a few days and her milk going though the lamb making it smell like her, she might decide it is hers and that the experience of the last couple of days was just a nightmare, (this has me wondering if sheep dream.) When I was at the barn tonight I got the ewe to her feet so the lamb could get a drink. Her udder is very small, I hope that she has enough milk to feed a lamb after all of this... there always seems to be something keeping us in suspense. Her new lamb was acting a bit hungry but is a nice strong lamb and knows where to find the nipples on the lunch box. The ewe didn't stomp her feet at all so that's a good sign. She also was very calm tonight, or maybe she is tired or just resigned to accept whatever happens, an illustration of "A sheep before his shearers is dumb" meaning silent and not protesting.
The weather is still cold and windy, about 26 degrees and with the wind chill factored in, feels like about 5 or 10. It's about half moonlight/stars and half cloud cover, at least not pitch black like the last two nights. The sheep were in the barn again, chewing their cuds, none of them looked like anything was about to happen. I checked the recieving pens, all was well. We are down to 12 ewes now, we started with about 125.
I was thinking today that weather and the calendar make little sense at times. Two weeks ago the weather was warm, sunny, calm, and the calendar said it was winter. Now we have below freezing and strong wind but now the calendar says it is spring.
Tonight, just as it was getting dark I noticed a gold finch still on the thistle seed feeder, all alone and very sleepy. Several hours later it is still there, sheltered from the wind, swinging back and forth just 2 feet outside my kitchen window. I took his picture through the window soon after I noticed him, so I hope it is a good one. He is so cute, a little ball of fluffy feathers about the size of a golf ball. What a great opportunity to see him up close, well most of him, he has his head turned back and tucked in behind one shoulder.
Mary
Things got a bit exciting last night with the cows in the field next to us. They belong to my neighbor, but he has no water source in that field, so we have a hose running from our outside fawcett to a tank next to the fence. A float valve regulates the water, so when the cows drink some of it the float turns the water on, and when the tank is full again it turns the water off, it works like the valve in a toilet. It's pretty much a no maintanance situation which just takes care of itself day and night. The owner feeds the cattle every day and is watching for them to begin calving.
We had company last weekend and somebody used the hose and didn't turn it back on. Then they went home. The owner didn't think about checking the tank for a couple of days. Last evening about an hour before dark I was outside to feed my horses and noticed some of the cattle walking down the fenceline mooing. They stopped near the tank. Mooo mooo. I went to check the tank, uh oh! It was dry. I turned on the water and they all stampeeded toward the tank!
The float valve restricts the flow of water somewhat so I reached over the fence to disconnect it. The cattle were crowding in and all trying to get to the tank at once, the tank was moving and the fence was creaking and the cows were still coming. I yelled for my hubby to come and help. When he got there I handed him the end of the hose and ran to get another hose, leaving him with the mess.
It took 2 hoses hooked together to get another stream going into the tank. The cows were still moving the tank around and it was tipping over. I climbed over the fence and pulled the tank back toward the fence so the stream of water would reach it, then got a buggy whip and stood next to my hubby to try to keep the cattle away from the fence. Hubby said to call Paul (the owner). I ran inside, called, gave him a message that sounded something like "the cows are out of water, we're trying to fill the tank and they are trying to break the fence down and we need help!" Then I ran back out to the fence.
The cows got the tank again, and I went back in with them to retrieve it, then climbed back over the fence to keep them from breaking the fence trying to get to the tank. Paul came, he got in with them and kept them from breaking the fence on one side of the tank and I held them off the other side. Hubby had the hoses and we all kept trying to keep the tank in place.
Cows are not a bit polite when they want something that badly. The ones on the outside of the herd kept shoving and butting the ones that were drinking. About half an hour went by before any of them had enough water and started to leave. It was dark before they were all satisfied enough to go back to their hay. We left the water running to fill the tank.
Paul replaced the float valve which had come off the tank and been stepped on, and he got everything hooked up a while later, using the headlights on the pickup to see. The cows probably came back to the tank a few at a time during the night after eating hay and so the hose that supplies it didn't freeze right away. When we got back in the house the temperature had already dropped to 28, no wonder we were cold standing there. Hubby still had his good clothes on that he wears for work, and they were splattered with mud.
So much for a quiet evening!
When I checked the tank this morning it was about 3/4 full and had some ice on it. The hose is frozen, but will thaw out with the sun shining on it before the cattle get thirsty again, and the fence doesn't look bad, we managed to keep it from being broken although it was creaking a lot in the melee. The first calf was born sometime during the night. I'm glad there weren't any calves in that mess last night, they would have been trampled.
Update on the ewe that got the foster baby, she accepted it and appears to be supplying enough milk for it. They are out with the others now. I love happy endings.
God's Warrior
I love happy endings also.
CajuninKy
Glad to know these things don't happen only to us. LOL I use a buggy whip to keep the cows off my DH when he is pouring feed into the outside trough. They crushed him against the fence one time so they learned some respect with the neon yellow lash of fire!!! We are down to feeding them every couple of days now. The grass is coming out beautifully and many days they don't even come off the pasture for feed. We still keep round bales in the feeders.
Mary
More excitement yesterday. Hubby was on his way to another town on county business, and he dozed off, probably from a caffeine deficiency, and did some flips and crunches with the car. He was wearing a seat belt and was not hurt, but the car is trash! It wasn't designed to bounce and roll, and so later today I need to go to town to sign papers to buy a replacement. He said he was thinking about stopping in the next little town about a mile down the road to get some coffee, but the next thing he saw was the guard rail, up close and personal.
This morning the irrigation water started coming down our ditch, so I had a cleaning job to do on a ditch that should have been cleaned already. It would have been easier without all the dry grass and muddy water. Why didn't I put some 4 legged lawn mowers in there last summer after the water went off? I'll put that item on my DO list. After shoveling enough to make a blood blister on my hand cleaning about 200 ft of ditch, I got on the 4 wheeler and went up the road about a mile to clean sticks and junk out the head gate. I want to make sure we get all the water that we are supposed to get. There won't be much irrigation water this year unless we get a lot of rain.
The dry spring is running just a trickle of water into the horse tank this morning. It will be enough to keep me from having to fill it 2x a week, and this will probably continue for as long as there is water in the irrigation ditch, about the first part of July. It has an underground reservoir of unknown capacity, and a pipe that carries the overflow into the tank for the horses.
I'm on my way to get a load of old hay/mulch from the neighbor's barn cleanings pile to put on the asparagus patch, and will have to get it out of the truck before I need to go to town. That will motivate me to unload it instead of sitting down and thinking I can do that tomorrow.
Mary
Yesterday we burned dry grass and weeds along a couple of ditches, and also torched a big pile of limbs that was mostly the result of our tree trimming project last fall. The hawks screamed at us in protest but I told them this is the price you pay for living in the country. I also worked on a flower bed for a couple of hours.
We got a bit of rain last night, just enough to take the smokey smell out of the air and freshen things up. The rain stopped in time for the Easter Sunrise service, which was cold (as usual) but at least not wet. We skipped that but went for the regular service and Easter brunch that the church has every year.
Good news/bad news on the calving front. One heifer had to have a C-section to deliver her calf. Momma and baby are ok, but the vet bill takes all the profit out of raising her calf. Last year when a heifer had to have a C-section the vet botched the job and the heifer had a crippled leg that never got much better, and her calf was dead, so that one was pretty much a total loss. The neighbor said this heifer appears to be ok but he was having to put her in a chute to get the calf to nurse about 3 times a day until she is feeling better and gets used to being a mother.
Almost all the ewes have lambed now, I think there are only 4 slowpokes to watch.
Mary
Today is partly sunny, mostly cloudy, cold, windy with an occasional snow flurry. My neighbor asked me to help him sort some cattle this morning, so after breakfast I bundled up and went down to help. He had the cows in the corrals already. One cow is so close to calving that she had already picked out her birthing spot and is showing some mucous on her tail. We sorted the cows into two groups: soon to calve and later. The later calving group went to one pasture, and the sooners went to the one right behind the barn so that they will have easier access to the corrals if/when there is a problem.
It takes some guessing to decide which group to put some of them into, but the later group will be sorted again in a couple of weeks and we will pick out a few more that look close. Another reason for this sorting is to keep the pasture cleaner where most of them will calve. We also moved a cow and her 2 day old calf from the calving pasture to the one presently being used for cows with calves.
The heifer that had the C-section has calmed down and is still being kept in a small corral for observation and to give her a chance to heal a bit before risking having another cow butt her. Yesterday she was still quite wild so I couldn't get close enough to get a look at her calf without risking injury to herself or the calf. Today I saw the calf sleeping all curled up out of the wind and the heifer standing there looking unconcerned.
Today we were talking about needing a small trailer to transport calves like we have for the lambs. A small utility trailer could be modified for that purpose, but I suspect that project is waaaay down the list since there are a lot of higher priority projects waiting for somebody to find time. We also talked about needing to update the cows ear tags, some of them are old with numbers that are unreadable, and some tags have been pulled off by cows that stick their heads through a fence, or scratch their heads on brush.
I've been looking for another horse to buy, since Breezy is still looking slightly lame, leaving me with only Patch to use for endurance rides. A friend found a good possibility and emailed me some pictures, then went to look at him and ride him last Saturday. I'm willing to pay the asking price, but want her to be able to take him home for a few days to see how he acts outside of his home arena. The horse is 4-500 miles away, my friend lives much closer. She has good judgement and is an excellent rider. So, now I am waiting to hear if the horse owner will agree.... and trying not to get too excited about it at this point.
Mary
The little clumps of wild phlox are starting to bloom out in the hills. I was out there yesterday giving Patch a workout, and also saw a few deer and a coyote that was running through the sagebrush. The wind was blowing but the sun was out and the forecast said that yesterday would be the better one of the next few, so I went out for a couple of hours and was very cold by the time I got home. Hubby built a fire in the woodstove while I cooked dinner, and after we ate dinner and I washed the dishes I was finally warm again.
Today the garden is waiting for some seeds, so I will work on that. I also want to go check on a cow that looked ready to calve yesterday when I rode past the calving pasture. She was just standing there, but was apart from the rest of the herd and had her tail up higher than normal.
Mary
There are two new calves since I posted, the cow that I thought looked suspicious had a bull calf, another one had a heifer. Yesterday I helped eartag them. We had to put the cows into the corral and then put one that was especially protective into another corral to get ahold of her calf and put in the eartag. It only takes a few seconds, but a protective cow can flatten and seriously hurt a person in that amount of time. We had 2 high corral fences between us and the cow and still wondered if she might try to come at us. Those two cows and their calves and the C-section heifer and another cow with a 3 day old calf were all turned out into the maternity pasture this afternoon.
Today started out at 25 degrees at daylight, but eventually warmed up to about 55. The wind came up again so I still haven't planted any seeds. I want to add bone meal into the row when I put the seeds in, and the wind moves small lightweight things around too much. So, I took a look at my garden spot and decided that the weeds that have sprouted should be chopped up and buried, and got the rototiller going to take care of that. At the same time I was watering the rhubarb clumps with a slow stream from the hose.
Late this afternoon I transplanted some tall phlox and asters into a new flower bed and got a sprinkler going there to make those disturbed roots happy. These are volunteers from some starts of plants I got from friends several years ago. They reseed quite readily so I have patches of them that needed thinning, and a new flower bed needing some plants. A perfect match! Hopefully they won't even wilt.
Mary
This morning we went out for breakfast, something we try to do on Saturday mornings when I am not gone to a ride. After that there was a quick stop at the grocery store and then at the discount store. Hubby went inside and got something, I have no idea what because I stayed outside looking at plants. They get a big truckload or two of plants in once a week, and must be getting close to plant delivery day again because most of what is left looks terrible! I don't know why they don't have somebody taking better care of them, some had frozen, some were dried out and wilted, and then there is the other category; plants that have no business being in our climate for another 6 weeks! Somebody on the mild side of the mountains must do the ordering for the whole chain.
Finally I have some seeds in the ground! Today was calm enough to apply some bone meal in the rows and run the tiller over them, then start planting, making labels as I went along. The Lord decided to water them before I was finished, but at least I am started. Most years I can't plant this early, so I am taking a chance on some things like broccoli and cauliflower that usually don't have time to make heads before the hot weather tells them it's all pointless.
We used to live on the wet side of the mountains where we could count on things like broccoli and cauliflower, but had trouble getting corn or tomatoes to mature. Personally, we enjoy the corn and tomatoes more than the things we can't raise here on a regular basis.
Mary
Today started out innocently enough, 20 degrees, a slight breeze, sunshine.
I turned on the tv to get some news and weather forecasts and got busy with washing 3 loads of laundry and got them hung out on the line, then having my brain saturated and overloaded with the news of the horrible events of the day (the tragic and senseless shootings at Virginia Tech) I went out to plant more seeds in my vegie garden and enjoy some peace and quiet with the Lord... While I was doing that my neighbor came by, said he was needing help with a heifer.
He had the heifer in the chute already and she had a big calf with only the front feet showing. Paul had tried to pull the calf but wasn't making any progress, and the heifer was in some distress when we got to her. Together we pulled, then when we could make no progress with the calf delivery it was time to get the hip sling into the act, and with that we were able to get the calf out. We pulled the stressed and dazed calf around to her head so she could see and smell it, then a few minutes later let her out of the chute. She ran to the other side of the corral but in a few minutes went back to the calf and started licking it. Half an hour or so later the calf was on it's feet.
Another heifer was in the field trying to have a calf, so we decided to intervene to help her since the heifers have nearly all had major problems this year. We got her into the corral, then into the chute, and put the chains on the calf's feet and pulled while she pushed. And out he came, much easier than the first one.
When I got home my hubby was already home from work, so I cooked dinner and got the laundry off the line while he got the lawn mower running for me. After dinner I mowed the lawn for the first time this year, wow! was it ever shaggy! And now I have a big wheelborrow heaped full of clippings to spread around as mulch. I'm not sure where I will put them since I haven't got much bare ground in the flower beds. I guess that means major weeding tomorrow. Spring is just arriving and I am already behind!
I'm on calf watch from noon until about supper time tomorrow while Paul has business to take care of, a meeting to attend, and a root canal. I hope I don't have any problems. Maybe the cows could take a day off???
Mary
It's been a busy week or so. Our son who lives in Alaska came to visit and we were very busy while he was here. He stayed here with us for a few days and helped me with some gardening projects, then spent a couple more days at our other son's place helping with a remodeling project. While he was helping there I went to another endurance ride. We took him to the airport to fly home the day before yesterday.
Yesterday the furnace installer came out to do more work on our installation. It is taking him quite a while because he works on our job when he isn't busy with something else. We are not needing to use the furnace since we still have firewood and are not even building a fire every day. Now we have to have it inspected, and get the propane company to run a gas line from the shop tank to a pipe that goes from the furnace through an outside wall. We will be able to use just the fan in the summer to help with cooling the house, but it is not an air conditioning unit. It's mostly a backup system in case we don't have firewood, or when we need to leave in the winter for a few days.
I also went to apply for SS and Medicare, yep, I'm old enough for that. They will call me next week for a telephone interview since I was in their office too late yesterday to talk to anybody but the receptionist who copied my documents and got some preliminary information.
This morning I need to water my newly planted vegie seeds and maybe I will see that something has come up. Yesterday I put tomato seeds in cups of water so I have to get them planted today. My old waterbed heater that I used for a heat mat died last year so I ordered a real heat mat designed for plants. That should be here in a couple more days. Things will have to be moved around in the greenhouse to make room for it on a bench.
My neighbor will be feeding the sheep in the field next to us in a little while, so I need to watch for him to check with him then to see how the new mommas with calves are doing. He hasn't needed my help in the last few days.
God's Warrior
Welcome to the world of SS and Medicare! It is comforting to be there once you forget about the AGE thing and realize what a blessing it is to have it.
Mary
The sheep are nervous today, understandably so, because a lamb was killed in the pasture last night or early this morning. We checked the carcas and have pretty much concluded it was dogs this time, not coyotes. The manner in which they attack, and the parts not consumed, plus the distance from where the kill occured to the place where the carcas was found, indicate something other than coyotes. Meanwhile, there is a ewe in the pasture who is calling for her dead lamb. She has another one who will be drinking her milk, so will probably not get mastitis.
I see some activity in a pasture that joins ours on the south. Two people, a pickup, and 4 horses belonging to a neighbor who owns property to the west of that land. They'll have fun getting them back where they belong, these horses are mustangs that were adopted from the BLM, and they know how to avoid people. Hopefully, if the people are in the right places, the horses will avoid them all the way back to where they belong.
We are having a furnace installed and now are ready for somebody from the propane company to come out and install the pipe connecting the propane tank to the house, and put some regulator thing on it, supposeably that will happen today. Waiting for people to show up can be very irritating if a person had plans to be somewhere else, (I did), but I will make the best of it and see how many weeds I can eliminate.
Mary
There have not been any more problems for the sheep for the past 2 nights. They have relaxed as much as sheep ever do, and for now at least, all is well.
We got a little bit of rain over the past 2 days and nights that will help the fields and pastures. Our pond is full as well, the runoff from nearby mountains where it rained more than it did here has helped with that. Now we can start irrigating out of the pond to grow more grass below the ditch that carries the overflow water.
Yesterday I went to town to do errands, have the truck tires rotated, and do the grocery shopping before some coupons and store specials expired. I got home just as a lightning storm was rolling through, so I came inside and quickly turned off and unplugged the computer. After the groceries were in the house I went to park the truck where it could be easily rehitched to the trailer. Lightening struck directly ahead of me but probably a mile or more away, close enough that the thunder was very loud and almost instant. I decided to make a run for the house instead of rehitching the trailer.
Our weather has become colder and will be about the same for the next few days with rain and snow showers predicted. I will be going to a ride in the mountains of Idaho about 100 miles directly east of here, so the weather there will not be much better. The forecast for ride day is 24 degrees in the morning and warming up to about 50 but without much chance of rain. I will dress warm. Hubby has filled the propane tank that runs my furnace in the living quarters and will hook it up tonight along with loading a bale of hay into the back of the trailer. I'll be leaving in the morning and will return Sunday. If I leave the ridecamp by about 6am I can get home in time for church.
Mary
I'm back from the ride, the weather was better than the forecast indicated, Patch did well and that is all I will say about that here. If you want the details, check on the Journal 2007 page in a couple of days because I haven't written about it yet.
Today is a nice breezy, sunny day, perfect for drying laundry on the line, gardening, etc, all outside. The inside can wait, but I might make a rhubarb cobbler when I come back inside for lunch.
A ewe died in the pasture last night, apparently of some natural cause since there are no obvious wounds. I will help dispose of her when Paul gets here, we can use the tractor front end loader bucket to lift her up. Sheep look fluffy but they are heavy. She probably weighs close to 200#. We will look at her to try to decide why she died, but we can't always tell. It could have been mastitis, that gets some every year although we check them for it before breeding and at lambing.
Mary
We moved the ewes and lambs into the small orchard pasture about 3 days ago, lush grass, shade, water, what more could a sheep want? Well, evidently something, because they got out the next morning.
There I was hand mixing several pounds of 2 varieties of bulk sausage in a big bowl and out of the corner of my eye saw some unusual movement, the driveway was full of sheep. My hubby started to call Paul but before he could make the call Paul came driving down the driveway. Great timing! I was stuck in the sausage for the next couple of minutes while Paul got them all headed up the driveway toward another pasture across the county road.
After I got the sasuage mixed and got a patty of it cooking for my hubby's breakfast, I went out to see if I could get one lost lamb out of the horse pasture. He had to work to get in there but now the sheep were all gone and the poor little guy had nobody to follow and no clue about how to get out of there.
I opened the gate but it wasn't the same gate he went through to get in there, he didn't seem to notice the big opening that would have let him out going in the right direction. So I walked out around him and hoped he would move away from me toward the gate. Nope. Then I thought maybe he would follow me. Nope.
Neut the cat was also trying to help. He walked right up to the lamb and got himself butted. Wrong species!
And then I thought of it from the lamb's point of view and limited eyesight. All his life he has been following a big light colored thing (his mother) and I was expecting him to follow a big dark colored thing (me). No wonder it didn't work.
So I took off my dark jacket and was down to a white t-shirt on a chilly morning. I untucked it so it would look bigger, walked toward the lamb and he took a couple of steps toward me. I said Baaa a couple of times and walked toward the gate. He followed me! And Neut followed him.
When we got to the county road he could see some other lambs and went running toward them but there was a fence. He followed the fence to an open gate where Paul was waiting for him to go through. Success! I turned around and there was Neut, still bringing up the rear in our little parade, walking right down the middle of the road like he owned it.
I was reminded of the story of the shepherd in Scripture who leaves the 90 and 9 sheep who are safe to go rescue the one who was lost. While this little lamb wasn't lost from our point of view, (we knew where he was) he certainly thought he was.
God's Warrior
Beautiful comparison! Great job of thinking like a lamb too.
I couldn't help but think of Mary's little lamb that followed her to school. Maybe she had on a white dress!
Mary
Today was filled with non-events, but there were plenty of them so we were kept busy.
To start the day, after feeding the horses, we went to town for our usual Saturday morning breakfast at our favorite family owned and operated cafe. Blueberry pancakes with berry syrup really hit the spot.
Back home, hubby filled in a trench that has part of the propane line for our new furnace system. We have to rent a trencher to dig about 150 ft of new ditch before the new system can be hooked up, codes have changed since we installed the propane furnace in the shop and the one in the greenhouse several years ago. Each one has a tank, and we were planning to hook the house system up to the shop tank, so had rented a trencher and made a trench across the yard, under the fence and across the driveway.
Well, now the fire marshall says the tanks cannot be within 10 ft of a building, occupied or not, and both these buildings have tanks within 3 feet of them. One tank has a regulator inside the storage shed attatched to the shop, new regulations say it has to be relocated outside. So, as long as we have to move the tanks we are going to replace the 2 smaller tanks with a big one and put it where we don't have to look at the ugly thing. Anyhow, part of the trench could be filled and now we can use the driveway again.
I've had 5 half whiskey barrels of flowers next to one of the tanks, so they needed to be moved before the propane company comes to take out the old tanks. I spent yesterday digging out and relocating the few surviving plants, emptying the old potting soil and masses of old roots, sifting it through a 1/2 inch screen, mixing it with homemade compost that also had to be sifted, and refilling the barrels. Today we picked them up with the front end loader on the tractor and relocated them to the outside of the rail fence along the end of the yard facing the driveway. Then I planted them with about 9-10 flowers each and watered them with Miracle Grow.
The lawn got a haircut today, and I have a large wheelbarrow full of clippings to add to flower beds as mulch. Part of the yard got watered where the trench has been filled and the grass under where the dirt sat for a couple of weeks (waiting for an inspection) has turned yellow. Hopefully it will turn green again. Right now it is really ugly!
One of my almost daily chores is to water the little vegie seedlings. They don't have a deep root system yet, and so I water them with a watering wand and pull weeds as I go along. The peas are about 3 inches high, the cabbage family is just getting it's first true leaves, onions look like rows of 4 inch soldiers marching along, beets are 2 inches tall, all just babies. I've been faithfully watering the new asparagus and hope to see some signs of life there before much longer. One of these days soon I need to plant the potatoes. There is still a risk of frost so I can't plant beans, squash or corn outside, but could start some in the greenhouse and set them out in a couple of weeks.
The wind came up this afternoon, first blowing from the south and then switching around about an hour later to blow from the north. With our low humidity it made my eyes dry out between blinks. Just think what it was doing to my poor newly planted flowers! Transplant shock times 10. I hope they live.
I spent some time pulling weeds in flower beds, that is a never ending job. Some of the beds look pretty good and others look horrible! It has occurred to me that gardening is an art where we will some plants to live and others to die, and hopefully don't get the two confused.
We have the first hummingbirds of the season chasing each other away from the feeders. They are such delightful little birds, buzzing around like little fighter pilots!
And down in the stock/irrigation pond in the pasture we have 6 newly hatched Canada Geese goslings following their parents around and taking swimming lessons. I spy on them with binocculars and haven't intruded on their privacy.
Mary
Today I tackled a couple of not too pleasant jobs. First, I cleaned loose dirt and rocks out of the trench that my hubby dug over the weekend using a rented trencher. The trencher does a good job, digs though the hard clay and rocks much easier and faster than a person could do it with a shovel, and piles most of the dirt along the side as it goes. But it leaves some, and some always falls back into the trench, and that is what I was cleaning out this morning with a very skinny little shovel that was cut down to do jobs like this. My back was complaining by the time I got finished. And then it was on to the second job.
The garden shed hadn't been cleaned and reorganized in years. It was necessary today because the propane company man said he would come to hook things up today or tomorrow, and he has to be able to get in there to move the regulator and some pipes.
And so, I started taking everything out! What a disorganized mess it had become. Out of sight, out of mind, and this is the result. When I got most of it out I swept the floor on one side and started moving what was left to the clean side, then swept the other half. The amount of nursery pots and other types of flower pots that I have kept over the years is just amazing! I need to find somebody who wants them, but meanwhile I organized them by sizes and types and stacked them up along the walls and in boxes. Yes, I can use a few of them, but why did I keep them all?
Partial bags of peat moss were combined, tools organized, garden stakes put into a bucket, hoses moved to more convenient to reach locations, a lot of "why did I keep this?" junk was thrown away, and well, you get the picture. I even found some things that had been lost for quite a while. By the time I was finished I really had a backache, so found some other things to do that didn't require bending over. Walking made it feel better, and so did some ibuprophen.
Mary
This morning the sheep finally got their annual shearing. For the past 2 weeks or more we have been waiting for the traveling shearing crew to arrive. They were delayed a couple of times by showery weather. Sheep have to be dry to be shorn. The shearing crew just finished a flock of over 1000, so this job was a quick one, lasting just one morning to do 120 ewes and 5 rams.
Last evening I helped Paul get the rams across the county road and down to the corrals, then helped him get the ewes and lambs in. Letting them stay in the corrals fasting overnight makes for much less mess when we are working with them.
This morning at a little after 6 we started moving the sheep through the chute and using a dodge gate, got most of the lambs out and into another pen beside the chute where they could be seen and heard by their mothers. The ewes went though another corral and eventually back to the chute to wait their turn to be shorn. To put it simply, they don't like this at all, and some of them can be very stubborn about going down the chute. They weigh about 225 pounds, so are not easy to push around.
We spend a lot of time and energy pushing and shoving them to get them down the chute and up a ramp into the shearing trailer. Shorn sheep go out one side, the wool goes out the other, under where the next 3 or 4 sheep are standing waiting to be pulled out of the chute sideways and plopped down on their fannys before they know what is happening. A sheep in a sitting position is virtually helpless. And as the Bible says, "a sheep before his shearers is dumb," they don't make a sound.
The actual shearing takes about a minute and a half to two minutes per animal. This year there were 3 shearers, and I had a helper back in the corral to get the sheep into the chute. Paul, the owner, ran the wool compactor (a large version of your kitchen trash compactor) and came back to help us when he had time.
It's quite an operation: dusty, noisy, confusing. The ewes are hollering for their lambs and the lambs are hollering for their mothers, the compactor runs on a gasoline engine, and 3 sets of clippers, all making noise at once. Oh, and people voices too, as we try to communicate over the din.
When they are turned out of the trailer they slide down a ramp, something like going down the slide at the park on your feet!, and when they get to where the other shorn ewes are waiting, they don't recognize each other. Then the lambs and ewes are let back out into the pasture, and the lambs are all confused because they can hear their mothers but everybody looks different. Soon they realize that mom still has dinner, she just doesn't look the same anymore.
Each ewe has from 4 to 12 pounds of wool, depending on her breed. The black faced breeds have less wool and it is coarser quality, so it is good for carpets and upholstry. The white faced sheep have finer, longer wool which is softer and is used for clothing. The rams, each weighing over 300 pounds have more wool of course.
The compactor makes bales in heavy woven plastic bags, each weighing about 700 pounds. I have 3 bales stored in our barn from last year, and these 3 will be added to it, then it will all be sold together, or maybe next year's wool will be added before it is sold. Bigger lots get a better price. As it is, the price of wool is so low it barely pays for the shearing. It's a necessary but not necessarily profitable part of farming.
I am just hoping the heat and drought conditions will ease up soon. I hate it!