Enjoying The Green

I let the cows out yesterday afternoon and they were enjoying the greenery (I hesitate to say grass) immensely.

The little one (I named her Waneata) understood my idea of eating the garden weeds down.

Her mother, on the other hand, felt the need to wander just a bit.

While I was out watching the cows I took a picture of these plum blossoms from the next door neighbors' tree.

Some storms are said to be coming in and we're supposed to have more rainy weather Wednesday through Saturday. From the looks of it outside right now the weather people are probably right.

I was just trimming the ram's feet and it was sprinkling ever so slightly. I'm planning on bringing him to the Western Stockman's Auction Yard on Thursday (they started auctioning sheep after the Jones Auction Yard shut down) and I hope the weather doesn't deter anyone looking for a nice ram!

It's That Time Again

It's time to put the Perry, the ram, with the ewes again. I could not do it without my assistant (above). (Tomorrow I will explain the dot on the forehead. For now just overlook it.)

I had somehow misplaced his ram shield and didn't want to put him with the ewes until I got another. It arrived in today's mail and we went to get everything ready. In case you didn't know, the ram shield is like the blinkers on a horse. On the ram it allows him to see to the side, but not to the front, thus making it difficult or almost impossible to head butt the ewes and possibly hurt them. Not all rams need one, but Perry gets a little aggressive if the girls are being less than cooperative.

Here's my assistant making sure everything is looking right.

Next comes the marking color. I have blue, green, and red. The color is applied to the area between his front legs. The color will be changed every 16 or 17 days (the sheep's cycle). If there is a mark on the sheeps' bottom then I know they've been bred and I can better estimate their due date.

Here he is all marked up and ready to go.

The ewes always freak out the first day he is with them. They just don't know what to think of the freak with the mask!

By tomorrow everything will be good and they'll be happy again.

Here's hoping for another great lamb crop in five or so months!

Smile!

Things that make me smile:

Tomatoes finally turning red!
Actual canteloupes on the vine!

Ollie checking out the new fixtures.

Baby petting sheep.

Hope there are some little things to make you smile too! ☺

My New Best Friend

I mentioned some time ago how the little auction yard I had been going to closed for business. It was a real tragedy for me because it was so convenient. The sheep sales were every Thursday. All I had to do was bring my sheep in, give my name and address, and by the following Tuesday I had a check in my mailbox.

The last time I put an ad in the paper it cost me about $38. (Granted, it was a long time ago.) I called about three weeks ago to advertise the lambs for sale. Basically my ad was going to read: "Dorper cross lambs. $60 each." and then have my name and number. The lady at the newspaper told me the cheapest ad I could get would cost $80. $80! I'd have to sell almost one and a half lambs just to pay for the ad!

I told her "Never mind." Is it any wonder the newspapers are going out of business? Or am I living in some sort of fantasy world? Please don't answer that.

I don't remember if Carli mentioned it to me or I just remembered it from somewhere else (or maybe a bit of both) but suddenly "Craigslist" came to mind. (And no, it wasn't because of the "Craigslist Killer.") I had never looked there before and decided "Why not?"

I posted my ad and within fifteen minutes two people called. One actually came out and the first two rams were sold! Then there was nothing for about a week.

Carli told me the best thing to do would be to take the ad down and repost it. I suddenly understood what she meant. If you aren't familiar with the site, what happens is the most recent day's posts are shown first, then the next day's and then often you have to click to view any further ads. Carli said when she is looking for something she never clicks beyond that first page.

I reposted the ad and got a little more elaborate with the wording. Basically I mentioned how the lambs were "ready to go. Butcher now or raise to size you want. Hormone and antibiotic free."

Lo and behold I had a couple of more calls. Unfortunately they didn't pan out. After four days I reposted and got several new callers and an email. One man came out with his young son and bought two rams and two ewes. He asked if I would hold them for a week or so until he got his place ready and paid me extra. No problem! This morning he called and asked for the third and final ewe. This afternoon another man came and took the final ram lamb.

Now they are all sold and I think I am liking Craigslist!

The first gentleman told me that the Famosa Auction Yard, aka Western Stockman's Market, Inc. was now selling sheep. It's closer to Bakersfield than the next sheep auction yard in Madera. I didn't have to check on that lead and with any luck Craigslist will continue to work for me!

The girls...


The boys...

SOLD!

PS--My only regret is that I didn't keep one for our freezer, but I'd rather have the $$. Next time...

Good Friday!

Happy Good Friday, everybody!

This year I found the number that I thought I had lost to the sheep shearer. I called him and at the time he was in another county on a shearing job. He said he'd call when he got back.

He called me this morning. Originally I was planning on having him come next week, when I wouldn't have the baby, but it turns out her mom had taken the day off and they were going to be spending the weekend in the Sacramento area. So I asked if he could come today and he said yes.

Daniel, the shearer, got here a little early and began setting up. I asked if he would mind me taking photos and he said "Not at all, just let me comb my hair first!" I like a guy with a sense of humor.

I was able to take a few photos and here they are. The rest of the time I was catching the next ewe and cleaning the shorn wool up. Normally I throw it out, but I asked if he wanted it (sometimes they do). Daniel said he'd give it to his boss who eventually brings it to a wool processing place.

The pictures aren't in any particular order, except for the very last one, which shows all the shorn ewes and their babies enjoying a nibble on the grass weeds.

As a last word I'd like to say if there is anybody out there in need of a good shearer I can highly recommend Daniel. He's been shearing sheep (the huge flocks of 100's at a time) for 35 years. He's very reasonable and a really nice guy. E-mail me and I'll get you his number. I'm not sure how far he'll travel but you can always call and check (I'll bet the bigger the flock the further he'll go from our southern San Joaquin Valley, CA location).

First Day Of Spring

Garden Updates

This weekend we tackled some gardening chores. We bought some inexpensive cattle panels. Using t-posts we already had, I was able to fence in the tender young fruit trees to protect them from the browsing sheep, goat, and cows. My efforts even gained my husband's reluctant approval. I think he was afraid I would make the fence out of leftover pallets and odd pieces of board and wire mesh. Right now the panels are being held up to the posts with simple plastic zip ties, but that is only temporary. My plan is to get some snaps that will enable me to remove the panels easily in order to easily access that area to mow the weeds grass. I'll show you what I'm talking about in a later post. (At least the idea makes perfect sense in my head.)

Next up was the out back garden. I was hoping it wasn't too soon to plant plants and I got tomatoes and pepper plants, as well as some bean and melon seeds.

It turns out it was a little too soon. We had a frost Monday night and all the peppers and one or two tomato plants perished. I'm not sure if this poor guy is going to make it or not.

We put a few buckets over the remaining tomatoes overnight and hopefully this will protect them in case of any further frost. (We removed the buckets in the morning.)

Strangely enough, the frost did not affect the side garden, next to the driveway, where we have romaine lettuce, beets, and spinach growing. Maybe those are just naturally hardier or they are more protected by the fence releasing stored day time heat? In any case, the biggest problem here seems to be the snails, which we are keeping a close eye on.

The final garden thing we got done was to rototill and plant the box in neighbor Dean's garden with corn, like we did last year.

I couldn't end this post without a picture of the lambs. Here you can see all eight of them (count the heads). The big guy in the middle is Francine's, the first born of the year.

Sheep Shots

Here are a few pictures of some of the babies. One of Ewenice's girls has a brown left ear and you can plainly see the brown dot on the back of her neck. The only thing I can think of where the brown came from might be from Perry. He's a 7/8 blood Dorper, so it may be from whatever the 1/8 part is. You can also see I've banded all their tails, so at least that job is done. They should be falling off in about 2-3 weeks.
And here are 3of4's boys peeking out from behind her. For some reason they both have rather droopy ears, one obviously more so than the other. They are so terribly cute.

Today I got the fence panels to protect the trees. I'll install those tomorrow and then I'll be able to let all the sheep out so the babies can start gamboling about.

I hope everyone remembered to change their clocks to Daylight Savings time!

Final Count

Ewenice had her babies right before we were about to leave for Monterey on Thursday. I had walked out one more time and there she was with two new baby girl lambs. This delayed the trip by about 45 minutes, as I had to erect some fences to keep her separated from the others, make sure she had a water bucket, iodine their navels, and take a "just born" photo. In the photo above she has not even expelled her afterbirth yet, so you can see how "fresh" the babies are! They are both really cute and for some odd reason one of them has a few brown spots. I'll try and get some more photos tomorrow.

So now my Spring 2009 Lambing Season is over. As I mentioned before I didn't breed Baby this last time because she had gotten so thin. That makes this lamb count

BOYS: 5

GIRLS: 3

That doesn't mean the work is done though!

3of4 Has 2

Thanks again to my peripausal hormones gone amok I awoke this morning at 1:20 to fling the covers off of my poor sweaty and bloated self. After tossing about for a moment I realized I might as well get up. I took the opportunity to run out and check on the the sheep.

There was a fairly thick cloak of fog which dampened not only the usual highway noises but also made everything so wet it looked as if it had poured rain. I checked the sheep in the pen and patted the wet heads of Baby, Annabelle (the goat), and Ewenice. I found 3of4 in the open stall.

It was obvious that 3of4 had just delivered. Her two tiny boy lambs were still soaking wet and she still had the afterbirth dangling from her hinter regions. I snatched each lamb quickly from her vigorous licking efforts and iodined their navels before putting them back in front of her. Then I put fresh water in the bucket and closed off the stall from the remaining sheep and goat, who might be a little too curious.

This morning the fog was still about, so much so that I actually checked to see if there was a school fog delay (there wasn't). It has since burned off and it's looking to be another beautiful, if not chilly day.

Not that it matters anyway. Today my husband and I are headed for Monterey for a day, to meet up with his mom and sister, then on to the sister's home for one night before heading back. I have no doubts that Ewenice will deliver her baby(s) before we get home but I'm also sure that between my two kids they will be able to handle things.

So if all goes well I may be able to post some new pictures of some new sheep on Sunday.

Later!

Triple The Fun

Turns out there was a reason Jamie was so wide. Actually there were three reasons!

I was awake around 1:30 this morning for the usual hormonal related reasons. What better excuse than to check the ewes? I found no babies at that time but Jamie's udder was definately more filled. I felt pretty confident that she would be lambing some time today.

This morning when I woke up and let the dogs out for their morning "constitution" I heard an unfamiliar bleating. I hurried out to the sheep pen and there was Jamie, lying under the pine tree with not one, not two, but three newborn lambs.

I had been a little disappointed when Francine only had one, and Jamie's three sure made up for it! This is the first time we've had triplets and it's pretty exciting for me.

Jamie decided to have the lambs outside the barn and the only thing that really concerned me about that was seeing the freshly dug holes along the edge of the fence where she had been laying. (If you look carefully you can see the afterbirths, one on the left side between the second and third rail from the top, and the other on the right side between the third and fourth rails.) It makes me worry that the fox was here looking for a tender, juicy, fresh born lamb morsel, quite a change from the occasional chicken or grub.

With son Wil's help I got the new family unit moved into the stall so they could have a few days of privacy without a big, dumb Suffolk running over them while she was looking for her next flake of hay and bit of cracked corn. I also quickly snipped and iodined their navels and of course took the opportunity to take a few pictures.

By the way, there are two boys and one girl (in the above photo the girl is in the middle). Well, she almost had three on 3/3/09.

I hope the rest of today is as good as the start, and for you too! ☺

The Latest

One of the things we decided to do this year was to add some fruit trees to our yard. Originally I had been thinking of planting some more pine type trees near the lone redwood tree in the middle of the yard. We already have a few that need to be transplanted. One is a potted Christmas tree from last year, one is a volunteer next to the drive way and the other is a former potted Christmas tree from several years ago that is quickly outgrowing its current pot.

My husband and I got to talking about the trees and I remember asking if he would rather have fruit trees (loosely based on the national economic situation--we could start growing our own fruit). He said he'd rather have fruit trees than the mini forest that I envisioned.

I thought we could still have both and we discussed where we would plant them. I thought they could go in the pond area because of the large availability of space. He reminded me that it isn't really our property there and the pond people could fence us totally out at any given time. Then we would be out of luck for our fruit trees.

So we came up with a plan to plant them next to the fence in our second back area, aka "the pasture" (which really isn't, it just sounds nice when you talk to people). That way it would also be easier to fence off to protect the trees from the animals when we let them out of their pens.

One of my sisters knew about our space constraints and suggested the method of planting more than one tree in each hole. I looked it up on-line and found this video. While we didn't use this method we did plant fairly close. Each tree is six feet apart and six feet from the fence. I figured I can use one older fence panel I have and buy just three more cattle panels and I'll be able to fence the trees off from the animals without having it look too "Okiefied", something my husband detests.

Since we were so late getting our bareroot trees I didn't get all the choices I had wanted. In fact I only got six trees instead of the eight I originally researched. We got: a Bing cherry; a black Tartarian cherry; a Gala apple; a Fuji apple; a Royal apricot; and by mistake a "Fruit Salad" 3 in 1 with a Fantasia nectarine, Mid-Pride Peach, and Double Delight nectarine. We are no experts by any means, but maybe with the help of my sister, who has a great green thumb, and the internet, we're hoping our trees will be fruitful!

And my little trees that need repotting? They will be planted outside in the pond area and if we end up losing them my feelings won't be hurt in the slightest.

And now on to the sheep.

Neither Jamie or 3of4 have had their babies yet. Jamie's due date was February 28 and 3of4's is March 5th. They both look about the same with Jamie actually looking a little wider.I don't know when Ewenice is due but from the looks of her she is about on par with her flockmates.

Meanwhile Ralph, or Valentine, or Valentino is waiting impatiently for some playmates.

The Saga Of...

Everything around here seems like it has to be a saga. I'll fill you in on some of them a little later, but first: The Saga Of The Rototiller!

As I reported a couple of weeks ago, after our little Mantis tiller died for good I decided to order a "real" rototiller. I got on line and ordered one from Sears. I wanted to save the $65 shipping fee and said I'd pick it up at the store. Well, that model wasn't available for pick up at the store. I didn't try to have it shipped to the house so I don't know if that would have worked. I went ahead and ordered the next model which is basically identical with the exception that it is called the "CA model", and it was $10 less. I think it has a little less powerful of an engine. It probably has something to do with being a "CA model". They did something just a tad different with the engine I'm guessing to try to be more green or less polluting or something along those lines.

Anyway, about a week later I got the email notifying me that it had arrived and was ready for pickup. It comes on it's own wooden pallet with a box nailed around it. You may recall that when we picked it up the box was basically just sitting on top and when we got it home we discovered there were no instructions.

I did manage to find the instructions on line and printed them out (all 48 pages!). While going through the instructions I found there was supposed to be a hardware pack included along with the missing instruction book and a jar of engine oil. We decided to bring it back. We would return this one and try one more time.

Just as a funny side note when I brought it back to the store and was going through the process of refunding my Sears card before charging it again, the register gave about 6 choices for "reason for return". Oddly enough "missing parts/pieces" was not included in that list. The salesman (I won't be rude, I won't be rude, I won't be rude) couldn't figure out which button to push and he asked my opinion. After looking at the choices I told him to put down #6: "won't start". After all, I told him, it would be hard to get going without any engine oil.

Finally we got the return taken care of and ordered a replacement. It arrived from a neighboring town within a couple of days. This time the box was in good condition, the manual and oil was included, along with some miscellaneous hardware.

Later my husband went to assemble the handle bars and put the thing together. Guess what? Some of the other bolts were loose, some others were missing. Fortunately he was able to tighten what needed tightening and from our stash of nuts and bolts found what he needed in order to get the thing together.

This is what the garden looked like a week ago:

This is what it looks like now:

It's still a little early to plant a lot of things and I still want to add some compost and till that in too. But the good news is now the rototiller works and it works great! It would have taken the little tiller about an hour to do this little plot, but the big one only took about 10 minutes!

I'm dreaming of heirloom tomatoes!

The Saga Of The Infected Tooth:

About a year ago I started having problems with one of my upper molars (#14 in tooth speak). I ended up having a root canal and getting a crown. A few months later it was apparent that there was another infection and we decided to retreat. The retreat didn't work. The infection returned.

My choices were: retreat again; get a partial denture; get a bridge; pull the tooth and do nothing; get an implant. After listening to how each is done and talking to my dental assistant daughter I decided to get the implant. My first appointment today at 1:15 is for a consultation (even though I have already decided that's what I'm going to do it is required. This is with the surgeon dentist, not my regular dentist). I hope we can get this started soon. I just want to get it over with! The bad news is our insurance doesn't cover implants so we'll have to pay for this ourselves. I guess I'll have to wait a little longer for my laptop!

The Saga Of The Young Parents:

My daughter and her boyfriend have split up again. He is living out of town with some of his relatives. They get along okay, fortunately. So now I'm babysitting one week and not the other while the baby goes for one week here and one week there.

This is such a good example for an argument against premarital sex and teen pregnancy!

The Saga Of The Bad Back:

My husband is back to work. His physical therapy is done and he is mostly better. However after talking to a few attorneys and other people he knows who have had similar problems the news is not too good. They are all saying the likelihood that he'll have to have back surgery down the line is not just possible but very probable.

So we have retained two attorneys, one for Workers Comp, and one for Personal Injury. Eventually we'll get this all sorted out, but at least for now he's back to work.

It seems I had another saga to report but now I've forgotten. Old Timer's must be kicking in. Anyway, that's almost enough news for the whole week!

PS: The next lamb is due this weekend!