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3 different people (two of them relatives) have given me grief (lovingly, I hope) about my lack of blogging, here’s a new entry.
Did that come across snarky? I think it might. It could have something to do with the headache that’s flirting around the perimeter of my awareness… popping up periodically in my ears to make me hear great yawning throbs of nothingness.
Sigh.
Last night wasn’t a good night.
But the day was good. It started off rather early with me taking Jim to school and then dashing up the mountain to drop off the boys’ postplacement pics. That was a good outing… so nice to see June and Esther and to meet…. ummm… the new girl (whose name I’ve obviously misplaced… blame it on the headache). And then dashing back down the mountain so that M could finally go to sleep. Then feeding, dressing and preparing the kids for an outing/adventure that has been long overdue for them.
We had an interesting game of “is that Poppy” as we waited for his class to finish. Xander was determined that Poppy had had a makeover in class and was now a petite long-haired brunette in heels. That garnered barrels of laughs from Sophie and Beckett. Me too. So funny.
But eventually the correct Poppy joined us and we headed off immediately for Mellow Mushroom. Of course it was dead as it was between lunch and dinner, but it was pleasant. The kids thought they were big stuff indeed when the hostess seated us at one of the big tall tables. Anyway… all was well until I happened to glance into the kitchen where I saw one of the cooks pulling out a bag of pre-shredded cheese. My alarm bells clanged… but I decided to ignore it… since I couldn’t remember if they’d always used pre-shredded cheese or not… and then I forgot about it. When the pizza came out it was way more gooey than I remembered it being so I made a mental note that the cheese must be different, but it was good and other than Sophie uncharacteristically not finishing her food… all was well. At one point Sophie needed to go to visit the “flush-rooms” and as we passed by a guy at the bar (Harley shirt, I think a braided pony tail, definitely Harley biker vibe going on) Sophie reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around she very sweetly smiled at him and said “Bon Soir!” and then continued on her merry way. I overheard the man telling his date that he “reckoned she was French” which amused me more because Sophie had copped the most Southern accent I’ve ever heard so that her Bon soir sounded much more like “Bone-Sware” than anything remotely French. While in the bathroom we worked on pronunciation to the amusement of the nice older lady that was waiting for us to finish.
Anyway. From there we headed over to Earthfare for a bit of pre-Holiday shopping. It was a fairly nice shopping outing minus a few odd people that set off my Bad-Vibe-O-Meter. And then it was off to Petsmart for dog food and then thankfully we headed for home.
Somewhere near West Greenville I realized that the cheese was something I should’ve really investigated as Sophie was a weepy, over-emotional mess and Xander had gone guano-loco.
Note to self: Mellow Mushroom is no longer a good choice for Sophie.
Once we were home Sophie flung herself into bed and within minutes Xander found an opportunity to smack Beckett with the sharp edge of a wooden ruler and found himself in his bed as well.
After much cajoling I finally got Sophie to at least quit crying go back downstairs where she did find happy (happiness thy name is sausage) but Xander… that was a different story altogether.
He screamed.
He yelled.
He called me stupid.
He kicked the wall.
He threw toys.
He threw toys down the stairs.
He yelled at Beckett.
He yelled at me.
He yelled at Jim.
It. Was. Not. Pretty.
And it went on for hours.
I tried talking, I tried taking away toys, taking away privileges.
Nothing helped at all. Finally we just all went to bed and he quieted down and finally fell asleep.
I did not sleep well. Sophie was still clingy and demanded to sleep with me, Beckett woke up sometime in the early morning and wanted to sleep with Poppy so I ended up pushed out of bed. I ended up in Sophie’s bed and sometime afterwards Beckett migrated to join me… which wasn’t great because Sophie’s bed is a single.
Sigh.
But this morning everybody is up and happy. Xander brought up the whole fiasco last night and apologized. He said he felt like his head was spinning out of control and that he was so sorry for all he had said and done. I asked if he slept well and he said that he had slept just fine, and didn’t even have dreams. His behavior this morning has been stellar and he’s back to his sweet self.
So was it the cheese? I don’t know and I’m not willing to test it out again! And I can tell you that I have no desire to go out for pizza anytime soon!
Wednesday we trucked down to Alpharetta GA to pick up another new horse… this time a Percheron that we have named Lady Annaliese, or Lady for short.
She’s a big mare. Big and very HEAVY! But more on that later…
Here are her stats:
She’s approximately 11 years old
She is a dappled grey with a wide blaze very different in her coloring than Alise or Fantine… I’m not sure that she’ll fade to white as they have.
She’s about 16.2hh (I haven’t measured her, but this is what her previous owner told me).
She weighs about 2000lbs maybe a bit more.
On the negative side she has poor ground manners and is also a bit overweight. Ok… I shouldn’t say she has poor ground manners as she doesn’t bully or drag people along after her. She actually has a pretty “soft” head (meaning she doesn’t pull against the lead line or halter) but she doesn’t stand still very well.
On the plus side she is already rideable so while she’s definitely going to need some fine tuning she at least won’t be starting from the ground up.
Unfortunately her previous owner sprayed her with a particularly foul fly spray (I do not know the brand) that smelled like cheap cologne and immediately made me break out in great red patches everywhere the horse touched me. So yesterday M and I decided that there was no way around it… Lady was going to have to have a bath! So we brought her out and for the most part she did ok. Until we got to her mane. At some point in the not so far off past (I hope) the previous owner had dressed Lady up like a unicorn and had dyed her mane and tail pink. There was still remnants of the pink in her mane and in the hair under her mane. It seemed to be very irritated as Lady played up considerably during that part of the washing (seriously, it’s totally wrong to dye a horse’s mane/tail/coat… I know it seemed cute, but nonetheless, to me, it’s wrong).
By the time M (who was washing… I was holding) got to her back legs, Lady was pretty tired of the whole thing. So when Martha startled her it was really no surprise that she swung around a bit disconcerted to see someone walking up the driveway. Unfortunately when she swung around she stepped and twisted on M’s foot, knocking her down in the process. M’s sporting 2 possibly broken and badly skinned toes (yes she was wearing boots). So we finished up the bath and tied Lady out on a long rope to graze while she dried out.
And that’s when we discovered that Lady doesn’t tie out on a long rope well. She managed to wrap the rope around her hocks, ultimately cow-tying herself. By the time I got to her head she was sitting on her bottom with her head pulled to her flank. So I unhooked her halter and still she didn’t seem to be able to stand up so I gave her halter a tug and hopped out of the way. Unfortunately I didn’t hop quickly enough as her front hoof came slamming down on top of my foot as she stood up, knocking me down so that I was laying underneath her belly! By the way she has a GREAT “whoa” command! The whole time I was falling I was saying “whoa… whoa… whoa” over and over so when I stood up I just grabbed her halter and we walked off like nothing.
And initially I thought it was just nothing. Until I stopped moving long enough to actually get feeling back in my foot. Jim finally appeared and took Lady from me and I was able to take my boot off to assess the damage. She had stepped on the right middle part of my foot (she didn’t hit my toes at all) and it was swollen to tennis ball size. So I hobbled into the house and immediately put my foot up only to be informed that I was going to the ER to have it X-rayed so I hobbled off to the bathroom and peeled out of my very wet, very dirty, very horsey clothes and tried to look like I hadn’t been rolling in the dirt with a horse and off we went.
We were pretty much in and out in less than an hour and luckily nothing is broken. The doc told me to stay off of it for 24 hours which is laughable. Even the family thought so as they all went off to work leaving me to feed and maintain the kids… so yeah… no biggie.
So anyway, this morning I have a puffy purple foot and a strong desire to go out a mess with the horses, but I’m going to be good and stay inside and let my poor foot have until this afternoon to get better 
But back to Lady… I have no ill-will towards the mare. If anything it was my own fault for putting her into a situation where she could get tangled and I simply got what I deserved. I’m hoping to be up to riding by tomorrow (or this afternoon if I push it) and will update more on Lady’s performance at that time.
Jim and I had to run to G’ville to drop off something at Tech and as we were driving by the Walgreens at Augusta I noticed the temperature flash up on the sign… 111 degrees. While I had definitely thought it was hot, I thought 111 was a bit excessive and figured that sign was fritzy. So I hit the ext.temp button in the car (I think that button sat there unused for the first year that I drove Landy before I realized what it was) and 109 popped up on the screen. Hmmmm. Guess the sign wasn’t really all that much off after all.
So yeah, it’s been hot here and fairly humid… as in denim has been banned from farm wear because of discomfort and inability to get them off once you’re back inside! The sheep refuse to graze during the day as they’d rather doze under the shady trees and the cows have stayed either in the barn or under the trees as well. The horses are willing to brave the rays to graze, but even they have to hang out in the shade during the hottest part of the day. Unfortunately we lost the smallest of the pigs. I feel fairly certain that heat played a part as the bigger pigs were very nearly overheated that day as well… we’ve had to add a much bigger waterer and make more frequent trips out to re-wet their mud pit every day. The day that the pig died was the day we were gone much of the day picking up the headgate and no one was here doing our regular observations and checks… yet another reason why I prefer to just stay home.
Speaking of the headgate… I’m still in shock that I found such a good deal on it! A brand new headgate similar to the one we just bought sales for nearly $800 at the farm store. I found an unused one on craigslist for $150!! Apparently the guy who was selling it had bought it 10 years ago when he was first getting into cows. Then the cattle market tanked so he got rid of the cows and never even set up the head gate… so it sat in his barn unused and most likely forgotten. Now he is moving and decided to clean out the barn so posted it on craigslist just to “get rid of it” and as luck would have it I was the first (of MANY!) callers. I think he regretted that he didn’t ask more for it… but he was happy to honor our verbal agreement even when he got offers for 2x what he listed. Now I just need to figure out how to set it up!
And that needs to be soon because I firmly believe that Mary had a fling with the neighbor’s bull… either that or she’s packing on the pounds and had an udder augmentation.
M’s palpated cows before but Mary’s a bit… lively… and M’s not confident that Mary would stand still for the procedure.
Anyway.
I’ve been making cheese again… just mozzarella this time. We’re all out and I really should be making it every day… but I can’t get my cheese making mojo going…
Sophie gets her casts off on Tuesday! Hooray!! The poor girl has been so depressed 
and on top of that she’s got a sore throat, a horrible cough AND ear infections. Unfortunately the cough and sore throat must’ve been catchy because now Xander is coming down with a horrible cough and has complained of his throat all morning.
Sigh.
Summer colds are totally wrong.
Luckily Beckett has remained healthy!! However I’m betting he’ll get sick just as the other two get better…. prolongs the fun agony.
Anyway… continuing on the farm front. We’ve started processing some of the chickens. We placed an order with Cornerstone Farm in NY for supplies (knives, tools, a plucker and a scalder) and are still waiting on the plucker and scalder. We’ve had a lot of hiccups with this order, but we’ve all been pleased with the items we’ve received so far. We’re all anxious about the plucker and scalder though. So far we’ve done 6 of the roosters. That leaves about 74 more to be done. Yeah… 74. So we would reallylike to have that scalder and plucker really soon. Like today would be nice. Seriously. And I still need to clean out the freezer… which would probably be a good thing to do today (note to self).
Anyway. So there’s lots going on here at the farm. My apologies to my friends that have called or emailed only to get no response. August is a tough month with very little reprieve in sight as the garden is starting to come in and there will hopefully be a lot of canning and “putting up” going on soon, as well as doing all the chickens and getting them in the freezer and making chicken stock (with feet!!) to put away as well. Not to mention getting things winterized.
So that’s it for now… Look for a chicken post soon!
Since I don’t post all that often anymore (why is that anyway?) I thought I would force myself to do an entry while taking a bit of a break from cleaning up. Yesterday I spent the bulk of the day making a birthday cake for one of Jim’s co-workers and in my typical style I managed to dirty nearly every surface in the kitchen. This morning I was determined I would work until I could find the bottom of the sink (and that’s saying something if you’ve seen our sink) and I’m now waiting on the dishwasher to do it’s thing before starting in again. At least my technicolored fingers are fading. Unfortunately the kids are still alittle hyped from the icing frenzy or it could’ve been the strawberry muffin they had with breakfast.
So anyway… M’s started pulling some of the potatoes. We’ve enjoyed all kinds of new potato dishes, my favorite being new potatoes boiled and then finished in heavy cream with chives. I think partly this is my favorite because everything in it was produced on the farm (potatoes, cream, chives and butter… all made right here!). Probably not something you could eat everyday, but definitely yummy!
M has finished up planting all the tomatoes and peppers and I believe that she’s made a second planting of greenbeans (the first didn’t do so well). She’s made all sorts of little lettuce boxes on the porch and I am very excited about having our first homemade salad! She also made boxes for carrots and radishes and for the first time that I remember we actually have little carrots coming up! The radishes have made glorious tops but no radish… not sure what that’s all about, but the greens taste good.
Let’s see what else is new?
We put up another clothes line. It’s much higher than the other one, although right next to it. Now I can hang out King sized sheets and they have no threat of touching the ground, which is a good thing. I love our clotheslines, we got them from Lehmans and it’s just too cool to walk out on the porch, roll out the laundry and not have to drag the clothes basket along with me. Yeah… lazy… I know.
Jim possibly destroyed his phone this morning. Maisie side stepped and kicked the bucket (not figuratively… she’s still alive) which caused a great tidal wave of milk to slosh over the side which somehow (and I’m a little sketchy on the details) his phone was completely drenched. I purposefully saved by old BB Curve just in case something like this happened… but here’s hoping that his phone is actually ok, otherwise he’ll be carrying around a pink phone and he’ll lose all kinds of man-points for that. Just kidding of course… if his phone is totally dead then I’ll give him my Storm and I’ll take back the old Curve. But I’m still hoping his phone is ok.
The pigs are growing nicely. They are soon going to outgrow the pen they’re currently in and will need to move to the “permanant” pig pen below the sheep paddocks. Only thing is, that hasn’t been fenced in yet. Good thing Jim is finished with school for a little while and can work on it otherwise I think the pigs are going to succeed in digging up that big dogwood tree in their current paddock!!
The pigs are so funny! I enjoy watching them and their pure joy whether it’s eating or wallowing in the mud… they are thrilled with themselves! They, unlike most everybody else, can tell the difference between my voice and M’s. I call them up with a good ole “pig, pig, pig, pig!” ala Farmer Hoggett’s wife (from the movie Babe) and if M does it they just sort of cock an ear and roll their eyes but if I call them they come running! Smart wee piggies.
I think I already mentioned that we put the new chicks out in the big poultry paddock. They don’t have that much longer before the meat birds are ready to be… harvested? what is the right word? processed? Whatever… I’m looking forward to it as the price for free-range chicken has gotten appreciably higher (most recently we payed roughly $6/lb for breasts). The naked necks will take a little longer to grow off, but the others should reach prime size by the end of next month I think. Again, it’s a good thing that Jim’s going to be off for a bit as we’re going to be mighty busy!
And in completely unrelated to the farm news: Jim and I will be taking our first ever just-the-two-of-us vacation. The only other vacation we’ve had was 9.5 years ago… when we got married. This vacation (and I use that term lightly) is only for one night and we still have to do farm chores (ie milk) so it’s not like an escape-it-all kind of affair. The hospital periodically has silent auctions to raise money for Rape Crisis services. This year one of the items was a night at La Bastide, including dinner and breakfast. Jim won that one and also the weekend loan of a X6 BMW. The X6 is made right here in the Upstate and I think Jim is just as thrilled about getting to pick it up at the factory as he is about getting to drive it for the weekend. Luckily too, La Bastide is relatively local as it’s on the TR side of the Cliffs. Also the chef there is big on sustainable cuisine! Anyway… I’m excited… even if it’s only for one night.
And the whole dressing up for dinner thing led me to realize that I have no shoes to go with the dress Jim bought me so I found myself at Belks since they were having a shoe sale. But unfortunately I had no Jim with me for a second opinion so I had to resort to this:
yes, a pic of the contending shoes…
complete with the little footie sock that the shoe-woman all but attacked me with. She’s a serious footie-pusher, and she almost got mad at me for the pics, but she let it slide… this time. Not too many weird looks… but there were a few. Hey… I don’t like to shop alone! The dress Jim bought for me is a black and white number. So what do y’all think… black shoes (which are comfortable-ish) or candy-apple red ones? which I will have to practice walking in as they are the highest heels I’ve ever worn… seriously I think I am well over 6ft tall in these jewels but they are soooo pretty! By the way, M, I bought the red ones, they were seriously on sale (like under $30). The black ones ended up being under $20 once all the discounts and coupons were added up. So I have options. Jim likes the red ones, probably because I have to hang on to him to walk in them! Xander, y’all might recall, has a thing about women and their shoes. My fellow KG APs will remember the fine shoes that most of the women sported over in Bishkek (I should’ve bought a pair of the pointy toed shoes… just so Xander would be happy!). Anyway, Xander has been most upset that I seem to have an “ugly” shoe collection (I sport Danskos as a general rule, although I’ll occasionally wear a pair of Keens just to mix it up… LOL). He has taken to pointing out women with appropriate shoes (and clothes) when we are out in town… going so far as to physically point me in the right direction when he’s spotted a particularly lovely lady. So you can all imagine his joy when he spotted me showing off my new heels to M. He was like “FINALLY!!!” everytime he sees them he grins and gives me a thumbs up. He likes the red ones too. I modelled the whole outfit for him and he was most impressed, telling me I was quite “prilly” but would be even “prillier” if I did my hair and put on my face.
Seriously.
So anyway… the dishwasher is done and I must return to the grind… especially since I now have 3 children telling me that they are starving and are desperately in need of lunch. Tacos anyone?
To the people who have been stealing our horse feed… please stop. I appreciate that the economy isn’t good right now and that feed prices are continuing to climb upward but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you are a thief.
For the first time in the 30+ years that I have lived here we are going to have to lock down our feed room because the thieving is that out of hand. Just this week you’ve taken over 40lbs of feed.
We do not use a commercially available feed. It’s not like running a couple miles into town to pick up a new bag. In an attempt to support our local SC economy we use locally milled feed, so we have to CALL in an order, WAIT for it to be milled and then DRIVE 45 mins to go pick it up. So not only are you stealing our feed, you’re stealing our time.
And furthermore… if you are who I’m most definitely sure you are… your horses are nice young light horses requiring minimal feeding on your lush green pasture, especially since you use them for absolutely nothing. My horses are older DRAFT horses that require a great deal more feed and because of their age and condition screwing with their feed ratios isn’t a good idea. When I take on a horse I take it for the long haul, not just for the duration of it’s usability… so I really don’t appreciate your stealing the food right out of their mouthes.
And further-furthermore… I am not particularly happy that you feel that it’s “OK” to steal our feed so that you can continue your self-destructive lifestyle. If you can’t get your drug money and your feed money to run out evenly then either kick the drugs or get rid of the horses. Simple.
So, just so we’re clear… DO NOT STEAL OUR FEED… it’s wrong, illegal and in your case stupid.
Me- Beckett you have to go potty AGAIN?!?! You’ve been what 10 times today?
B- I need to go PEE-AH!!!
Me- OK, OK, go! Bring me your pants when you’re done.
B- OKkkkkkeeeee (running to bathroom).
enter Dandy, who follows Beckett to the bathroom.
B- I’m going poop.
D- Hey Beckett!! (said petulantly), you can poop more!
B- I done.
D- No Beckett! This is how it’s done. First you sit on the potty (sits on potty) and then you poop (poops).
Sounds of toilet paper…
D- See look, 1…2…3…. you poop all at one time.
Beckett- Ohhhhhhh
- the boys dentist appointment went well, although Beckett screamed like a banshee for the duration! No cavities! Yeah!
- continuing on the farm front: We’ve made the decision to raise Desmond as a beef. We took care of his “bull-ness” earlier this week and all seems well on that front. Honestly, he doesn’t seem to even notice.
-I’m growing tired of all the people who think that we will not actually take the pigs and Des to the processor. The pigs were brought here with one purpose in mind. Desmond had the possibility of being our herd-bull, but his size ruled that out. Our desire is to breed for ease of calving and his birth wasn’t exactly easy.
-Sophie has taken over Des’ bottle feedings as well as feeding Zenzi, although Xander “helps” to some degree. Sophie really likes feeding Des because it’s over quickly, but she doesn’t like to feed Zenzi because it takes so long. Seriously. The other morning Sophie was sitting on the edge of a bucket, legs crossed, arms crossed with her head in her hand while feeding the lamb with an extremely bored expression on her face… I wish I had the camera… it was a classic M pose.
-Jim is being very patient about me blogging instead of doing morning chores… even if I was playing QWERTY just moments ago because I was suffering from a continuing bout of writer’s block.
-Just to pat myself on the back: I played the word “sermonizingly” which caused the person I was playing to leave the room. That so amuses me. Of course I just had my butt kicked by the last guy I played… but it was actually a really good game.
-We are averaging about 5.5 gallons or about 44lbs of milk a day, which is somewhere between AWESOME and OVERWHELMING! I need to make more butter and cheese, which is probably on the docket for today. The pigs shall be happy regardless
-Speaking of butter. We finally broke down and bought an electric churn. It’s lovely. It has a really quiet motor and best of all can do 2 gals of cream at a time! WooHoo!!
-We also went ahead and upgraded our canners. We’ve had the same pressure canner for ages so we decided it was high time for a new one. We now have an incredibly cool looking All-American Canner 930. Yes it is wickedly expensive, but since so much of our pantry is stocked by home canned goods then I think it’s perfectly ok… plus the thing should last forever. We also went whole-hog and got a Weck water-bath canner(no photo on that link but have a look-see at those beautiful jars) as well (with faucet), simply because it can be used for cheesemaking as well as canning. We did break down and buy a couple different jars… how can you resist? They’re just too lovely. Even Angry Chickenmentioned them on her blog a couple times FYI: Weck doesn’t have online ordering, but their phone people are so incredibly nice that it’s sort of fun going old-school with a call-in order.
-Feed situation update: We are now mixing the feed half and half with no problems whatsoever. Seriously, I totally don’t understand why the feed doesn’t bother them as long as it’s mixed with the old. We’re going to keep weaning out the old feed to see what is the lowest percentage of mix they will tolerate. Even at the current rate it makes our feed bill much nicer.
-just read the above paragraph and realized it’s a grammatical nightmare. Meh… I’m leaving it.
-And because I really need to jump on the whole dairy aspect of my day I’m going to stop here. I seriously hope to have something more interesting than a “bullet-post” next time!
-Maggie had her baby. I had the distinct feeling that she was holding out, but I wouldn’t have thought she’d lamb a whole month after everybody else. By my rough calculations, she was bred right before I took Nick out of the ewe paddock! Anyway, she had a lovely black ewe lamb that we’ve named Pauley, after the actress who plays Abby on NCIS.
-It always takes me a few days to get used to seeing the sheep with their shorn wool. Harriett, Molly and Storm are nearly unrecognizable and Lyle just looks like somebody else!
-Due to thinking that my back was “all better” I have managed to slightly hurt it again so that I don’t sleep so well at night. I sleep great for about 4 hours and then I’m all tossy-turny which is no fun. I need to just go ahead and get up… but no, I keep thinking I’ll go back to sleep. Sigh.
-The pigs are getting big and have started making demands. If I feed them, but don’t bring any milk/whey they snort and huff and puff (oddly enough) at me until I do. They prefer to have their feed and the milk mixed but I’m still offering them the dry feed in a separate feeder which they are eating, but there’s a definite preference for having milk with it. Actually every time they see me they think it means there should be food in their “slop bowl”. By far the funniest thing they do, that I didn’t know they would do, is blowing bubbles. Every time I water them, or give them milk they’ll stick their snouts clear to the bottom of the pan and blow bubbles. It’s hilarious!
-Anybody with livestock knows that the price of feed has gone through the roof! By luck we were told about a local mill in Campobella that makes their own feed with the help of a nutritionist so that it’s actually a complete feed (minerals etc added) without the preservatives and chemicals that are added to the national brands to help prolong shelflife. Our animals are absolutely loving the new feed! Our only problem is that this mill doesn’t make horse feed, although they assure me they will in the future and I hope it’s soon!
-The situation with the horses and the feed has gotten worse. Last night Alise, Fantine and Maddy were effected, so we’ve decided step back and try to figure out what’s going on. We picked up horse feed from a mill down the road from the above mill and while it looks goods and the horses seem to like it, it’s caused us quite a few problems. When we were mixing this feed with our old feed there was no problem at all, the horses ate it without so much as a cough… but when we went straight over to the new feed we’ve had at least one horse at every feeding seemingly choking on her feed. I really think it’s more like an esophageal spasm as normally when they choke I can feel a lump where the feed has stuck. This time there’s not a lump and their whole neck spasms. It’s weird and I don’t like it. We’re going to try mixing the two feeds again and see if that helps. I’m really not happy that this new feed isn’t working out.
- On the plus side, Fantine has been letting me touch her without having feed or treats to distract her. At first she’d only allow me to approach her from her left side and then she progressed to allowing me to touch her right side. I’m working on getting her to allow me to touch her with two hands. During the worst of her “choking” yesterday she did allow me to touch her neck with both hands, but I think that’s because she was so focused on the problem that she didn’t notice. The only bad thing is that once she’s over the spasms it’s like she totally forgets the progress we made. It’s all baby steps. It took her 3 years to relearn basic horse behavior, so I’m not surprised if this takes a long time too. For more information on PMU horses (which Fantine is one) click here.
-The boys have a dentist appointment today that I totally forgot about so that’s it for this post! Gotta go get dressed in a hurry!!!
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Waiting, originally uploaded by Tapsalteerie Farm.
This is my favorite pic from shearing day. Molly (or was it Storm?) was totally relaxed and just sat there with Jim waiting her turn. I love the hoof and leg up on his arm…
Lyle gets a shave, originally uploaded by Tapsalteerie Farm.
At loooonnnngggg last we finally had worked out a time for the shearer to come this past Saturday. All the sheep (Lyle pictured above) were greatly appreciative, even if there was a great deal of baahing and general confusion among the lambs who were unable to figure out which Mama was which without all their wool.
Unfortunately the bulk of our wool is pretty much trash this year. Too much felting in the tips for the most part. We do have about 8 fleeces that we’ll be keeping (the Cotswolds and the lambs) and I kept Lyle’s because I want to play with dyeing, and his wool, while exceptionally long, isn’t particularly matted.
It was a very long, very tiring day! Jim had worked the night before and stayed up until 3pm helping out. Unfortunately I was unable to find a sympathetic supervisor at his work, so he did have to go in as usual.
For the record, it’s exceedingly difficult to plan for a shearer to come. The weather has to be nearly perfect and several major and minor stars have to align… we’ve never had more than a day’s notice before shearing and we’re too afraid to reschedule for fear it’ll take months to do! This shearer didn’t even call to tell us he was on his way. We called to see if the conditions were ok and found out he was about 45 mins away!! EEK! The sheep weren’t up and nothing was really ready, so we busted our tails to get everything in order.
By far the funniest moment was when the shearer pulled up. Jonathon (the shearer) drives a red pickup truck. He has shocking white hair and a very long white beard. The boys were out playing when he pulled up and all of a sudden I saw the two of them get that elated gleam in their eye.
So my two boys, who most of the time are quite shy around new people, came running up to Jonathon’s open window and immediately started into explaining why they wanted new bicycles (their old ones are broken) with their hands clasped together and their faces angelic in their request/begging.
I immediately understood what had happened and no matter how much I’ve tried to dissuade them from the idea, the boys are convinced that Santa shears sheep in the “off season”.
Interestingly, they were exceedingly good for the entire shearing.
Anyway. The sheep were less than cooperative. M lost both her shoes and did a Hollywood stunt-person style fall/roll at one point. Actually I think she lost her shoes more than once… I lost mine once, but recovered quickly!
Jim was blessed among men in that he was able to catch Keegan not once, not twice, but three times… a feat that has never been matched. This is impressive because I’m fairly certain that it’s been 3 years since he’s been shorn… he’s that wily and simply impossible to catch.
Anyway. So now I have a paddock full of naked sheep. They look like they feel better, although a couple of the lighter colored ones did appear to get a tad bit sunburned that first day… but it’s all getting better. I’m amazed at how different some of the sheepies look! Harriet is barely recognizable and a couple of the musket/moorit ewes are no longer fawny brown but more of a creamy white… which is weird. I can’t wait to see the wool grow in. I’m seriously contemplating jackets for the sheep to keep their fleeces cleaner. We’ve had a horrible time with VM this year and it’s just annoying to deal with. Besides I think a couple of our black sheep would have truly incredible fleeces if they didn’t get so much sun-bleaching.
Anyway (again). Our friend Melinda was able to bring her four over and they had a shear too… their wool turned out lovely (I can brag, they used to be our sheep before Melinda took them to start her flock).
Julie and Kaedence came by as well, so it was a regular social day on top of a work day too! By the time it was over we were nearly ready to start evening chores and because of Jim’s work snafu I ended up milking solo (my first time!) which turned out great, but Maisie did try to act up a little but we did ok.
I was so exhausted that I barely remember my head hitting the pillow and I think I’m still getting over it all. The almost sun-burn isn’t helping either!
Be sure to click on the flickr link in the side column to view the pics. For some reason I’m not able to post pics to my blog anymore, so just click over there to see shots of a few of the fleeces and some of the shorn sheep!
