The Magnetic Attraction of Hay

This is the time of year when my sheep are mostly eating hay, but I let them have access to our big pasture anyway. There's not much to eat out there right now, but they seem to enjoy having a choice, and I enjoy watching them "commute" from the hay feeders to the pasture and back several times a day.

Sheep, of course, are always hungry. And when they're hungry, they're pushy. So it's always a bit of a challenge trying to fill the hay feeders when there are 50 hungry sheep crowded around trying to eat everything in sight.

So imagine my delight when, yesterday at feeding time, I went out to fill the hay feeders and discovered there was not a single sheep in sight. Every sheep was at the other end of the farm, out in the big pasture.

"Wow," I thought. "Feeding time's going to be quick and easy today. I'll have these feeders filled before the sheep even know I'm here." Since the hay feeders are currently located only a few yards from the hay storage, I thought that was a reasonable assumption.

Quietly, quietly, so as not to attract any attention, I wheeled my garden cart down to the hay barn. Pushed open the sliding door. Turned around. And there at the top of the driveway was the entire flock of sheep, coming at a gallop!

I don't know how they could possibly have known I was there, but I didn't even manage to get a single bale loaded into the cart before they were swarming everywhere, "helping" with the hay distribution.

A Step in the Right Direction

Here's a bit of good news: Yesterday we got a new load of hay and were pleasantly surprised to find that for the first time in recent memory, the price had actually gone DOWN a little bit! Of course, the price it had gone down to was $7/bale, which is still very, very high. But at least it's a step in the right direction.

The sheep informed me that this new batch of hay (a grass/alfalfa mix) is positively the most heavenly thing they have ever eaten. When I went out on one of my several daily "Anyone having lambs yet?" visits, to check on them, they could not even be bothered to look up at me, they were so busy eating this delicious new hay.

If you've ever seen 27 pregnant ewes racing to swallow bites of hay as big as their heads, with the most supremely blissful expressions on their faces, you know it's a sight to make you smile!

Coming Down With Something

All yesterday I wasn't feeling well. I rested all day, took some vitamins, and got a good night's sleep. This morning I felt a lot better, so I thought I'd shaken it off. But this evening I started feeling ill again.

I'm not sure what I have, or where I might have caught it, since I haven't been anywhere to be exposed to any germs. I'm unreasonably tired, and a little woozy. The gland in the right side of my throat is sore, and it's going into my ear now as well. My skin is starting to feel that hypersensitive feeling you get right before you get a fever, but I'm not feverish.

Ugh! As if I don't have enough to do, without being sick too. I try to always be careful to rest and recover as soon as I start showing symptoms, because if I don't, I'm very prone to having every cold or flu turn into a 3-week session of bronchitis. Let's hope that doesn't happen!

We got a small load of hay yesterday. Prices have gone up again, to $7.50 per small square bale. Our supplier says it'll go up to $8 soon, and may go up to $10 before this year's first cutting comes in.

On the bright side, I got birthday cards from family today, with money inside. Every little bit helps, so I'm very grateful.

There have also been a few new horse inquiries. So I hope a few of those turn into sales soon.

Ice Storm

On Friday (Feb. 1), we had an ice storm. In our current, impoverished circumstances, that's one of the things I dread hearing outside, because we don't have proper shelter for all the horses.

The young horses in the back pasture have a run in bay to the barn that they can go into, to get out of the rain.

The mares in the front pasture used to have a big run-in shed---one of those large, curved tarp sheds on a metal framework. But the destructive power of a bunch of large horses, plus the ferocious winds we get on our hilltop ripped the thing to tatters in the course of a year.

This summer, when it became a hazard, we tore it down, planning to build a real wood run-in shed before winter. We paid our neighbor come with his backhoe and level out the spot where we were going to put it.

Then the drought hit, hay prices went up, and horse sales plummeted. The money we had planned to use to build the shelter had to go instead to just barely manage to feed the horses. So now, whenever it's cold and rainy, I run out and open the gate to release the mares into the big pasture, so they can go find shelter among the thick cedar trees.

If the weather is just cold, or just wet, the big horses aren't bothered by it. But on Friday it was pouring rain and about 34 degrees (F). They are big, hefty girls, so they were not chilled or shivering, but they certainly weren't very happy with the situation.

We fed them early and extra, so their bellies were full to help them produce body heat, then they ran around a bit to get warm, and then they went and stood under the cedar thicket.

My one comfort was that I had seen that the weather was supposed to be getting warmer and warmer, so I knew they wouldn't be cold for much longer. Now today, it's nearly 70 degrees!

I'm looking forward to getting our herd down to the 5 fillies we plan to keep, because then they can all easily share the run-in bay that is attached to our barn, and I won't have to worry about the weather so much. Maybe someday we'll be able to afford to put up that shelter in the front pasture too.

At the moment, I just have to concentrate on selling the last few horses we have for sale. We're feeling the financial pinch again. I really need to earn some extra money in the next couple of weeks to buy more hay, since Ken's paycheck is stretched to the limit already.

Time to start listing a few more things on EBay, and to finally get around to advertising my fleeces for sale, and anything else I can think of to keep us going until the last few horses sell.

If I can just keep us going until summer, our sheep sales should generate enough money to buy our winter's hay and get us through another year.

Of course, the other thing I dread about the wind and rain and ice storms that come through here is that the house's roof leaks in my upstairs office. The winds are so fierce, they've torn off a lot of the shingles (which, of course, were installed as cheaply as possible by the house's former owners).

We had someone come out and price how much it would cost to redo the roof with new, high-quality architectural shingles, and were given a quote of $27,000! That is so ridiculously beyond any price we can even remotely foresee being able to afford, we had to just laugh, because otherwise we might cry!

I know there are other options for fixing the roof that are less expensive, and we will have to look into them when we can. But at the moment, we're concentrating on trying to raise enough to just pay the electric bill and buy hay to feed the horses, so the roof will have to wait.

Two Down, One to Go

Boo and Shane finally left today. They were supposed to leave a few days ago, but the shipper got delayed, so today was the big day. Boo did not want to load up into that trailer at all, and when a horse weighs 1,600 lbs. and doesn't want to go somewhere, it can be a trick to make her do it.

Given the choice, I would have given her more time. I would have sat on the end of the trailer and let her relax about it, but the shipper took charge of her and tried to load her himself without even giving me the chance to ask her.

He was okay with her---not mean or abusive or anything at all like that---but he had more of the "traditional" handling methods rather than the natural horsemanship ones. He tried to rush her a little, and she got flustered and anxious, which led to her getting resistive and defiant.

We had such a hard time loading her that we finally tried loading Shane instead. He'd never been on a trailer before, so we had no idea how that would go. He didn't really want to go on, but with enough encouragement he finally did.

By that time, Boo had had a chance to calm down a bit, and with her buddy Shane already on the trailer, she was a little more willing to consider getting in herself. It took a bit more effort, but finally she loaded up.

So now they're gone on their way to their new home in Florida, where they will be loved and spoiled by their new family. I think they will love the attention!

Senter is leaving tomorrow to go to the trainer's. I'm pretty excited about this opportunity for him. He's going to learn so much! He's been really bored here and not being used to his full potential at all, so he's going to really thrive in a more active environment.

When the shipper saw Senter trotting around in his paddock, he was completely wowed. He kept commenting on what an impressive animal he was, and asking questions about him. That's pretty much everyone's first reaction to seeing Senter. Now, with the chance to get a better education, he's going to be even more stunning. I'm so happy for him!

Libby is still not feeling completely well today, but she didn't have a fever and she ran around some playing with the other fillies, so I think she's on the mend.

We had just gotten a large shipment of the alfalfa hay in yesterday, but we had to call our hay supplier and get another shipment of the grass hay too, so that we could take all the babies completely off the alfalfa for now, until Libby is feeling better. Eventually, we'll introduce a little alfalfa back into their mix, but probably will try to keep feeding some grass hay too, to prevent this from happening again.

We thought we were getting a good deal with the alfalfa hay. All of the hay is $7.00 or more per bale now, and prices are still going up, up, up! When our hay guy said the alfalfa, which is richer and more nutritious, was the same price as the grass hay, we thought we were lucky to get it. We thought if we introduced it gradually enough, the horses would be able to make the switch with no problem. But according to our vet, it may just plain be too rich for the baby horses, regardless of how slowly we introduce it.

So, after yesterday's $400 vet bill, it doesn't look like much of a bargain after all.

Sick Day

I woke up today with a splitting headache. All morning, it didn't go away. I was feeling kind of stuffy, so I thought it might be a sinus headache, which is something I almost never get. Hoping to clear it up, I took one of my husband's decongestants.

All midday, the headache didn't go away. I took ibuprofen, without any noticeable effect. Finally, even though I had a lot of things I really should have been doing, I went to lie down for a while, hoping a little nap would help.

I dozed for about an hour, and felt somewhat better when I got up. For some reason, I decided to cook dinner early, so Ken and I could eat before we did evening chores. It's a good thing I did, because it turned out I didn't get back in the house for the evening until almost 9:00 o'clock.

When we went out to do chores, we noticed one of the fillies, Libby, was lying down and was extremely filthy. It was a little unusual, but didn't strike me as extremely odd, since the baby horses lie down all over the field to nap all day, every day.

But after we'd finished chores, I was walking back through the paddock and saw that Libby was collapsed on the ground beside the hay feeder.

A chill went through me. Colic!

Colic in horses is a very serious and sometimes life-threatening thing. Because horses can't burp or vomit, any digestive disturbance has to make it all the way through the horse. Anything that causes a lot of gas or anything that causes any kind of blockage, causes a lot of pain. A horse that is in a lot of pain will sometime roll on the ground, which can sometimes cause its intestines to twist, which leads to more problems and pain and sometimes death.

So any horse person who sees one of her horses with any symptoms of colic knows that fast treatment is imperative.

I went and forced Libby to her feet, and though she was reluctant to even move, I dragged her out into the yard so I could walk her and prevent her from rolling. She had laid down in a puddle, so she was wet, chilled, and shivering, so I got a blanket and draped it over her.

I took her temperature, which was normal, and listened to her belly for gut sounds. There were almost none. Not a good sign. Horses' guts should always be gurgling, an indication that things are moving along inside as they should be.

I got some warm molasses water and tried to get her to drink, but she refused. I gave her a dose of Banamine to ease the pain, and had Ken call the vet.

We walked her around the back yard for over an hour, waiting for the vet to arrive. Eventually, the Banamine kicked in, and she started feeling a little better. Shortly after that, her belly started gurgling a lot. A little later: a giant, liquid burst of diarrhea!

Okay. Well, at least that meant she wasn't impacted. After dealing with Scylla's impaction colic two years ago, which led to a trip to the horse hospital and several thousand dollars worth of vet bills, I had been fearing the worst again.

But by the time the vet arrived, there wasn't a lot left for him to do. He took blood samples to test that it wasn't some kind of infection, but we agreed that it seemed more like Libby was simply having a hard time adjusting to our new hay, which was supposed to be a grass/alfalfa blend, but turned out to be almost entirely alfalfa.

We transitioned the horses over to the new stuff over the course of a week, and we thought they'd all adjusted just fine. But apparently Libby had a bit harder time with the change.

She's resting now in the run-in bay, with clean dry bedding on the floor for her to sleep on, and a hay bag full of grass hay to sooth her upset tummy. With any luck, she'll be on the mend and feeling better by tomorrow.

But me... after a day like today, what I need is a drink!

A Load Off My Mind (And Out of My Closet)

Back around the end of October, I decided that I would sell my large personal stash of spinning fibers that I'd collected over the years, since I needed the money and I never have time to do any spinning anyway.

A few people bought individual items from the stash, but recently a lovely woman who runs a shop at a Renaissance Faire bought the entire remaining stash for $500. Tonight I just finished packing up these two gigantic boxes, crammed full of just about every kind of spinning fiber there is. Tomorrow, we'll ship them off to Washington state, and in the summer, she'll sell them in her shop. I like to think of all my fibers and fleeces going to a Ren Faire---surely someone will have fun with them!

The money, of course, like all our other money, is already spent buying hay for the horses. But it arrived on a week when we didn't have any other money to buy hay for the horses, so the timing was perfect.

Now, I'm reveling in the enormous amount of empty space I now have in the closet and under the bed in the guest room where I've been keeping all this fiber. With that gone, I may be able to reorganize the room to hold my loom and spinning wheel, plus all the fleeces from my own sheep that are waiting to sell, which will then clear out a lot of free space in our library where the fleeces have been stored. Maybe in time, we'll be well organized all over the house!

Now I'm on to my next big project, which is designing a website for a fellow Icelandic breeder. That's work I enjoy, so it should be fun.

Little by Little

It was a dreary, sleety day today. Despite having his nice shelter to stand under, Senter was shivering when I went out to check on him, so I went back inside and got his "coat" (horse blanket) to put on him. He used to get all spooky about it when I tried to put it on him, but now I think he understands that it keeps him warm, because he didn't budge at all when I put it on him today.

We spent a quiet holiday here at home. Ken went to our neighbor's Xmas dinner party, which she always invites us to, but I wasn't feeling well, so I stayed home. I've just been so tired lately, it was good to spend a day mostly just resting.

Even though unwarranted exhaustion was my only symptom, I think that it really may have been some kind of sickness, like a mild flu or something, because although today I felt better, tonight Ken was experiencing exactly the same thing, and went to bed early.

I have a bunch of loose ends to tie up, business-wise, so I worked on some of those today. I did a manuscript critique for a former client whom I worked with before when I used to do freelance editing. I packaged up and sent one box of fleeces that someone bought, and started organizing a few others. I'll finish packing those tomorrow. The fleeces are selling very well, considering I haven't even advertised them yet.

The payment check for my mare Bonnie did arrive at last, and tomorrow I'll be able to deposit the next payment check for my mare Boudicca who is being paid off on a monthly basis. So, for the moment at least, we have money to buy hay and pay some bills. It's going to vanish fast, though, so I have to still keep working on selling more of the horses.

Surprisingly, I have gotten a few inquiries lately. I thought everyone would be too busy with Xmas to be horse shopping, but apparently a few people were still looking. Plus I have a few previous people who inquired that I haven't heard back from during the holidays, so I need to contact them again soon to see if they've made any kind of decision.

Little by little, I'm getting things done.

A Swarm of Complications

I'm learning that sometimes it's not the really big problems that bring you down. Sometimes its the multitudes of insignificant complications and disappointments that swarm around you like biting insects that end up being the things that break through your composure and sap your fortitude.

The past couple of days, that swarm has been hard at work here.

My computer still isn't fixed, so I'm still using Ken's computer, while Ken is stuck doing his work sitting on the living room couch with his laptop.

Now our truck has broken down again too---the same problem it's had a dozen or more times before: it's fine one day, and then the next day you go to start it and nothing happens. Sometimes it cures itself the following day without our doing anything to it. Sometimes Ken fixes it by jiggling some of the fuses. Sometimes we tow it to the repair shop, only to have it start up fine for the mechanic. Sometimes the mechanic replaces something that seems to solve the problem, only to have the problem reappear the next day or the next month. Most recently, we replaced the ignition, which seemed to solve the whole problem, until yesterday, when the issue reappeared just as it always has.

So now, without any immediate funds to fix the truck (not that anything ever seems to fix it permanently), we can't continue our project of mucking out all the horse paddocks. So, when potential horse buyers come to look at horses, the place literally looks like crap. Plus, we have to move each day's supply of hay up the hill in several wheelbarrow loads instead of one truckload. And we no longer have the option of going to pick up a couple of days' worth of hay ourselves if our hay supplier can't deliver on time. In other words, many of our farm tasks are crippled.

Although we got the vet out here in plenty of time to do the Coggin's tests on the various sales horses, one of the vials of blood broke in transit to the lab, so now the vet has to come back out again on Friday and take the blood again. We don't have to pay for this second trip, but it still delays the paperwork for that particular horse. Lucky for us, it's one of the horses that isn't leaving until next month, or we'd be in trouble!

Ken got paid yesterday, including his Xmas bonus, which was a relief. I had been getting stir crazy here, since I had not even left the farm for the past month. So we decided to drive into Charlottesville and do a bit of minor shopping. We have no money for real Xmas shopping this year, but we thought we'd get a few things we needed at the pet supplies store and it would at least give me the chance to get out for a few hours.

Because we were mainly going to the pet supply store, we thought it would be fun to take our Pomeranian Leeloo with us. And it would have been fun, except that on the way there in the car, she got carsick all over me!

After driving to three stores and still not finding the item I was looking for, we gave up, picked up dinner at the Burger King drive through and headed home.

When we got back, we found that our electricity had been shut off. Ken knew it was overdue, but his paycheck had arrived and he knew we had money to pay it now. Unfortunately, he didn't think to call the electric company to pay it before we left for the afternoon. So when we got home, Ken phoned in our payment---plus a hefty fine---and we had to sit around by candlelight waiting for the guy to come reconnect the power. Kind of put a damper on my "big" afternoon on the town!

While we were waiting for the guy to come turn the power back on, we moved my big, room-divider sized candle stand downstairs next to the couch. Because it holds 39 candles inside individual glass cups, it produces quite a lot of light, so we could see while we waited.

But this morning, our Pomeranian Leeloo and one of our cats, Echo, got scuffling in the living room and upset a couple of our other cats, who crashed into the candle stand and knocked it over, breaking two of the glass cups and scattering shards all over the floor.

Another cat peed on Senter's horse blanket that was lying in the laundry room, waiting to be washed. This is only about ten feet from the cat door through which the cat could have gone, to pee outside, but apparently that would have been too much trouble.

Then, what was supposed to be good news today turned out to be another series of complications. The payment check arrived from the person who is buying our mare Bonnie. Only the person made the check out to our farm name instead of my name. Since our bank account is in Ken's name and mine, we can't deposit a check made out to the farm.

At first we thought we would just go to the bank and change our bank account to include the farm name too, so if this kind of thing happens again in the future, it won't be a problem. But it turns out we can't add the farm name to a personal account, so we would have to open a business account, and we can't open an account in the business's name unless we go to the county office to fill out a "doing business as" form.

So we went to the county office. They gave us a form, but said that we had to fill it out online. So we went back home to fill it out. I don't know what happened to the "doing business as" form since last time I filled it out, but what I remember as being a very simple, one page form that took only a couple minutes to fill out, today was this endless, convoluted array of contradictory web pages that asked for the same information over and over in slightly different ways until I had no idea whether I was even answering any of the questions correctly.

Finally, some of the definitions on the questionnaire were so vague and confusing that Ken called the "help" number for clarification. Of course, there was no one there. He left a message, but no one ever called us back.

By this time the day was pretty much over, so we just gave up on the whole stupid process, and I emailed Bonnie's buyer to ask her to send another check, this time made out correctly. So it'll probably be another week before we can get this much needed money.

Oh... and here's another irritating complication: What the heck happened to my blog header? For months it has been perfect, showing the full photo of my horses in the field, with the pale sky over their backs being the backdrop for the blog title. But suddenly a few days ago, with no editing from me, the whole header is a different size, the photo no longer fits, and the blog title is illegibly squished down onto the horses' backs.

I suppose I'll have to figure out how to fix it eventually, but sheesh, it took me long enough to get it right in the first place. What's the point if Blogger is just going to randomly rearrange stuff without my permission?

All these stupid problems are not so overwhelming individually, but when they all just keep piling up like this, it saps my drive and energy. I get so frustrated and tired. I'm just trying to do a simple, decent job. I'm not asking for the world. But some days it just seems like it's impossible for anything to go right.

Springtime in December

We've been having warm, damp weather in the mid-70s this week, very balmy and pleasant. Outside, some of the birds have been singing their spring songs, and some of the ewes, when I let them out to graze in the yard, started bouncing around like April lambs, stampeding up and down the driveway, hopping straight up in the air like Mexican Jumping Beans, and clashing their horns together in big, dramatic, mock-battles.

It's fun to see them so happy and frisky, enjoying the weather. By the time the weather gets this warm again, they'll be heavy with lambs, and won't feel much like bouncing, so it's nice they get the chance to play while they can.

I again spent most of the day at the computer, doing horse, sheep, and fleece related emails, and putting the finishing touches on my Sheep Inventory paperwork I need to have prepared for our Scrapie Inspection tomorrow.

I had most of the Inventory done two months ago, but then we sold another sheep and this year's lambs registrations numbers are in now, so I updated that info and then checked the whole thing over for errors or omissions. It feels good to have it all organized---and I'm really relieved that Ken saved all my files when my computer died, so I didn't have to redo the whole 14-page Sheep Inventory list from scratch!

A couple of fleece buyers who have been thinking about fairly large orders contacted me today to finalize their orders. If their checks arrive soon, we might have enough money to buy the next batch of hay, and possibly pay the electric bill.

With luck, it will be just enough to tide us over until I can finalize a few of the horse sales that are pending!

I also found out today that a friend of mine has had a wonderful new opportunity come up in her life that means she will be dispersing her flock of Icelandic sheep. She has given me first dibs on purchasing a group of her best ewes next summer, which I'm very excited about.

Not only will it give me a chance to expand my flock (which I've been wanting to do as soon as we have sufficiently reduced our horse numbers) and add several excellent unrelated bloodlines to my flock, but these sheep are also pre-selected for good heat and parasite resistance, which is one of my top breeding priorities here. So, now I have until next summer to save my money to buy those six ewes.

She's also offered me her trained Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog. We're seriously thinking about it. There are coyotes, foxes, and occasionally bears in our area, so a guardian dog really would be a good idea. But I know that they are not like other kinds of dogs, so I'm doing more research before I say yes, to make sure I'm prepared to do it right, if I take him.

If we get him, we'll probably try to find a good home for our other two large dogs, Ruby and Jesse, which is something we've been thinking about anyway. They are great dogs, but now that we live on a farm, they get very little attention and serve no useful purpose. I really think they'd be better off with someone who would play with them and enjoy them more.

But all that can be decided later. Now I just have to print out my Sheep Inventory and get ready for bed!

A Few Steps Forward

After so many depressing posts in a row, I finally have three good things to announce today:

1. After that sheep shelter ripped itself to shreds in the wind yesterday, Ken went out today and built the Sheep Mahal---a big, sturdy shelter that (we hope) will withstand the rest of our winter winds. Just in time, too, since we're supposed to get our first snow of the year tomorrow. Poor sheepies---I feel bad for them being sheared a whole month later than usual. Usually by this time of year they would have a nice little coat of warm wool started already. But this year they're still nearly bare. BRRRRR!

2. Sheep breeding season is progressing. So far, the sheep that I know for sure got bred (because I saw it happen) are Trouble, Paris, Poppy, Tansy, and Salem. Lots of lambs in the making. I can't wait for spring!

3. Now that my horse website is updated, and I spent the past two days adding or renewing my online horse-for-sale ads, FINALLY the inquiries are starting to come in again. Just today alone, I got inquiries from 5 new people. Obviously, inquiries are not the same as buyers (Heck, based on the last person, even "Yes I want to buy her, I'm putting the check in the mail today" people are not necessarily buyers!). Still, it does give me reason to hope!

Keep your fingers crossed for me, that some of these horses will find great homes, I'll earn enough money to buy hay for the rest of them, and we'll all live happily ever after!

Discouraged

I'm feeling really discouraged lately. I keep experiencing so many pointless little glitches to everything I attempt that lately it seems like I can't successfully accomplish even one simple task during the day.

One of the people who supposedly was sending me a deposit on a horse two weeks ago seems to have vanished off the face of the earth, with no check ever delivered. Money issues are scarily bad. We're out of hay. We were supposed to get a new load delivered today, but the people never showed up, so the broodmares had to go hungry. The hay people have said the load will be here first thing in the morning.

Ken figured out what was wrong with my computer, fixed it, and set back up in my office. I went to start work this morning, and voila---no network connection, which means no internet, which means, once again, I can't do my work from my own computer and have to wait to use Ken's. Ken looked at it briefly and couldn't find what was wrong, but he had his own work stuff to deal with today and didn't have time to figure out my problem.

So, I figured I'd do one simple thing: send out a horse sales list to someone who said they might know someone who'd be interested in one of my horses. I spent an hour looking for the sales list among the files Ken had transferred from my problem computer to his computer, only to discover it wasn't there. I found it on my computer, but---whoops, no network connection, so I can't get it to his computer to update it. Just one simple task, and it took half the afternoon just to figure out that I'm going to have to recreate the thing from scratch.

We haven't been able to finish shearing the last few sheep, because it's been raining. I have quite a few people who have specifically said they want to buy various sheep products (fleeces, skulls, horns), but even though the sales seemed definite, everyone seems to have vanished without actually taking the final step to send us money.

I'm so tired of worrying about money. My sister Donna is helping as much as she can, bless her! But her situation is as tough as ours, so I hate to put any strain on her.

We need to get rid of most of the horses. I've known that for months now, but with the market as it is, it's easier said than done. I think Donna may take a couple that I can't bear to sell to strangers, and she's going to try to help me place some of the others.

But if we don't make some progress in that direction soon, it's going to be a choice between paying the mortgage and buying hay. I don't want to have to make that choice.

I just want to put this whole horse fiasco behind us and concentrate on the farm as a whole again. I'm looking forward to our spring lambs. If we can manage it, in the spring, we want to get chickens. They wouldn't be to raise for a profit, just to provide eggs and meat for us.

I'm so tired of needing money to be the desperate, central focus of my thoughts every day and night. Money has never been my raison d'etre. I would rather do work I love for little pay than be rich at a job that doesn't capture my heart. But this farm means a lot to me, and I'll fight to keep it if I have to.

It just gets so discouraging when all the stupid little meaningless obstacles keep piling up on top of the large, genuine problems. It all gets to be too much sometimes. Hence my whiny posts to this blog!

Still... I try to think of at least one positive thing to talk about in each post. Today that is the fact that the sheep are mating. I think lambing time will be short this spring. For the longest time, none of my ewes were in heat, and now they're all coming into heat at once. Which means that the lambs will probably all start popping out at once in April. There's nothing better than waiting for lambs!

Desperate Again

I was wrong. We don't have enough money to buy a new computer. In fact, we don't even have enough to buy hay. Our hay guy has been letting us get some on credit, but he's reached the limit of what he's willing to extend us. Not that I blame him---he's been very patient with us so far, paying as much as we can, even when it's not enough.

So yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we've been rationing hay. I let the broodmares back out into the pasture, such as it is, so that I could save what hay we had left for the young horses and the sheep, and Senter, who are in pens where they can't graze, even on the sparse November grass.

Fortunately, Ken had just bought a load of grain, so everyone can get a little extra grain to make up for the smaller hay ration.

Ken's paycheck just came in, and I'm expecting several checks in the mail: payments for the two horses I'm selling on "layaway" and payments for fleeces, sheep's horns, and skulls that I've sold. Ken is due for his annual raise and, perhaps, a Christmas bonus sometime in the next few weeks.

So we'll be able to buy hay again soon... good thing, because all that's left in the barn is the loose leftover scraps, which we'll rake up and fork into the truck tomorrow at feeding time.

The trouble is, even though we can scrape together enough to buy hay again right now, we also need to scrape together enough to pay $1,000 in property tax, plus the electric bill and heating bill and phone bill and mortgages...

When I look at the horses in the field, I know that I made good choices in selecting them. They are really nice quality, and I know they'll all produce gorgeous foals with Senter. But then I look at our bills and our budget and our empty hay barn, and I wish I'd never started this horse enterprise.

I'm so tired of knowing that it's all my fault that poor Ken is under such stress, trying to juggle all our bills. He works so hard, he deserves to be able to enjoy the benefits of his labor without having to flush all his money down my horses mouths. I want so much for the horses somehow to pay him back, but unless the horse market turns around drastically and I can get decent prices again, I don't know how that's ever going to happen.

It didn't seem like I was risking so much. All I needed was modest sales and steady hay prices for the horses to break even this year, and then my investment would start to pay off next year. But now we're just scrambling to sell as many as we can to cut that horrible hay bill down to a manageable level.

So anyway, we have no money for a new computer for me. We did scrape together enough to buy the one piece of software I absolutely require, and installed it on Ken's computer, so I can mostly keep working there when Ken's not using it. So I'll still be able to work on the websites people have hired me to do for them, as well as my own websites which need updating.

Mostly, this whole ordeal of worry and scraping leaves me feeling tired and sad all the time. Ken wavers between optimism and panic, but really the only thing holding me together is sheer stubbornness that these things HAVE to be done, so somehow we'll find a way to do them. But it drains me. I go to bed at 8:00 some nights because I'm just so tired, only to wake up again at 4:00 a.m. to start worrying all over again.

Some friends of ours have invited us over to their Thanksgiving dinner, which is really nice of them, since we can't afford to do one of our own this year. Thinking about going to their house made me realize how infrequently I get off the farm. Ken drives into town frequently, sometimes to do errands, sometimes to go to poker night with his friends. But I never go anywhere. I feel guilty spending the money for gas to drive to town, when we can't pay for hay, so I just stay here on the farm for weeks at a time.

We don't get TV here (although we do have videos we can watch on DVD), and I don't listen to the radio or subscribe to a newspaper or any magazines. So, other than the internet, I'm completely isolated. The animals are my life. And I'm not even able to do right by them.

I'm too tired even to write this post properly, so I'm sure it sounds very rambling and whiny. For that I apologize. Sometimes when I write here I try to make things sound happy and interesting, even when that's not how I feel. But this time I'm too sad to even do that.

Things will get better. Or they won't. Either way, there's no choice but to keep plugging along, doing our best.

A Farmer's Prerogative

Sorry, but I'm going to have to invoke one of the unwritten prerogatives to which all farmers are officially entitled:

I'm going to grumble about the weather.

I know, I know, three days of rain is exactly what we've all been yearning for around here as our fields shriveled to a crisp and our topsoil turned to talcum powder and blew away on every breeze.

Three days of rain is exactly what the land needed. That doesn't make it any less of a pain in the butt to deal with. In other words, I'm really, REALLY glad it's here, but I'm exercising my right to whine about it anyway.

As I write this, rain is still falling. Water is standing in pools all over the yard. Paddocks are turning to soup. All the animals are wet and dejected. The sheep's feed dishes have been brimming full of rain each of the past two days, which means that at least 8 inches of rain has fallen in that amount of time.

The horses are muddy. The sheep are bedraggled. The cats keep going outside, getting drenched and filthy, and then coming back in, dragging wet leaves and grass behind them, leaving muddy pawprints everywhere, and expecting to be allowed to sit on my lap until they are warm and dry again. At which point, they go back outside and begin the cycle again.

I wish this could have fallen a month ago, when there still would have been some hay crops to save.

I'm glad it's here. I really am. If only it didn't have to be so darned WET!

The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!

Yes, that's right: We are getting RAIN here. It's been so long, we've almost forgotten what it looks like. It's a lovely, gentle, intermittent rain that is supposed to continue for another 2 or 3 days.

It's far too late to help with the hay situation this year, of course, but at least there's some hope that all the pastures, hayfields, and lawns around here will actually come back to life next year. And at least we're not at such a risk for fire now that everything is a little damp.

Reading about all those wildfires in California right now is pretty scary. Before, when I was just a regular person, I would have thought, "If such a thing happened here, I would just pack up a few necessities and evacuate." But now that I have a farm with all this livestock... what would I do? There's nothing I could do, really, other than lose everything I've worked for.

So I'm grateful for the rain, and my heart goes out to the people in California whose homes have been destroyed by the fires.

I had to drive into town yesterday to get horse grain and to get shipping materials to ship my Ebay sales. While at the feed store, I had a disturbing conversation with the guy we buy our grain from. Apparently, hay is in such short supply, some of his other customers are reporting paying $9 to $10 per small square bale for hay that isn't even very good quality.

This is pretty terrifying news. When we started this farming venture a couple of years ago, we were getting hay for $4 a bale. That's what we budgeted for, in our long-term plans. Now we're paying about $6.75 a bale. Our livestock eat about 14 bales a day. If we end up having to pay $10 a bale, there is no way we will be able to feed our animals.

We still do have several people interested in horse purchases, though, so at least we may be making progress towards at least reducing our herd a bit.

The sad part is, the horse market is so bad, I've been reduced to selling foals for less than it cost to feed their mothers while they were pregnant with them, and bred mares for the price of the foals they carry.

My hope is that if I can hold on long enough, and keep my very best breeding stock, I'll be able to regain some of the lost ground in future years once the horse market recovers (assuming it ever does).

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Today's improvements

Today our neighbor Bob finished scraping out the front pasture, the sheep paddock, and Senter's paddock with his tractor for us. Tomorrow, he's going to scrape out the ram paddock.

This leaves much, much less mucking out I'll have to do by hand, and makes the place look much better.

Then I helped Ken install the new feed rack we bought for Senter. He's been wasting too much of his hay by turning over his big plastic trough, spilling his hay, then treading it into the ground. The new feed rack doesn't hold nearly as much hay, but if it keeps him from wasting so much it will be worth the trouble of having to fill it for him much more often.

We also discussed possible plans for building new shelters for Senter and for the sheep. All the plans we've talked about before this have ended up being either too elaborate and therefore more expensive than we can afford right now, or else too flimsy to be safe against the wear and tear a horse would put on it. But we may have an idea that is simple yet sturdy enough that won't cost too much. We'll see how that turns out.

Oh, My Aching Back

My day started out with unloading 1,000 lbs. of sheep grain (with Ken's help) into the barn, then loading another 1,000 lbs. of hay into the truck and unloading it again to distribute it to the animals. Then I distributed about 75 lbs. of grain to the various critters, and filled about 500 gallons worth of water troughs.

I also had to drive to the slaughter house and pick up the hides from the sheep we sent yesterday. The first time I ever did this, I (foolishly) assumed that I would be getting back nicely skinned and relatively clean hides, ready for salting, much like the deer hides I used to help my dad with during hunting seasons back when I was a kid.

What I get back from the butcher is something quite different: a heavy, bloody garbage bag, with all four hides lumped inside. Because I salvage the horns and skulls to sell to people who want them for craft projects, I tell the butcher to give me the heads back. They're in the bag too, still attached to the hides. When I open the bag, the stench of dead meat is overpowering.

Originally, the first time we sent lambs to slaughter, I felt a little guilty for not having to face the animals' deaths directly---after all, I order their deaths, but my part consists of delivering them to the slaughter house and picking up neat white packages several days later. I felt a little bit like I was getting off easy, because I didn't have to participate more directly.

But now that I know what it's like to deal with the hides, I know that I do face their deaths directly. I reach my hands into the bloody bag and haul out a hide. I cut the head from the rest of the hide, then turn the pelt upside down and bit by bit cut off the leftover bits of fat and meat still attached to the skin. When the first one is done, I hand it to Ken to carry into the shed to be salted, and I start on the next one.

It's a disgusting, smelly job. By the time all four hides are salted, the scent of dead flesh has soaked into my hands. It'll take many washings to remove it completely.

On the bright side, at least the pelts, heads, and horns won't go to waste. I even have a new idea in the works for an interesting use of the sheep bones.

And of course, the ones I don't use, our dogs will eat. They're eating a big pile of beef bones right now. The butcher had a huge box of them he was about to dispose of, and he offered them to me for our big dogs. Even Leeloo got a little one.

After that, I did some cleanup around the house, and packed up some of my recent Ebay sales---although unfortunately, I missed getting them to the post office before closing by just a few minutes.

Now, my back is aching from all the lifting this morning. It doesn't bother me until after I sit down for a while. It'll be fine by morning, but now I'm going to go to bed early and get a good night's sleep.

I tried to go to bed early last night, but for some reason the horses were all going crazy in their pastures, galloping around like wild things, neighing at the top of their voices, setting the dogs to barking.

I got up out of bed to go check on them, and they all seemed fine. I think it must have been a bunch of deer crossing the field that spooked them, and since the weather has finally gotten seasonably cool, they were just having a good time exaggerating their fear to give themselves an excuse to run.

Oh... and here's a neat thing: my stallion Senter has developed a helpful new habit. First, a little explanation: Senter gets his hay and grain in a big plastic trough. When he runs out of hay, he tips the trough over, so he can eat any wisps that have fallen behind it. Every day, the trough ends up knocked over.

This is annoying because when his trough is upright, I can drop Senter's feed directly out the back window of the feed room into the trough. But when it's tipped over, I have to walk all the way around the barn, through three paddocks to set it upright again, then walk all the way back and toss the food in.

Well, for the past week, Senter has been knocking his trough over as usual. But when he hears me in the feed room getting ready to feed him, he knocks it back upright and (most days) shoves it back into place under the window!

He's done it almost every day this week. Every time it happens, I'm just floored. That's pretty advanced reasoning skills for a horse to figure that out all on his own, and then care enough to do it.

Now if I could just teach him to muck out his own paddock, I'd be all set!

A Shift in Power

After giving them last night to adjust to each other over the fence, today I opened the gate to let the yearling horses (Torchsong and Shane) in with the weanling fillies.

I'm putting them together because the yearlings are getting a bit thinner than I want them to be. Partially because at their age they need to put a lot of energy into growing, and partially because at their age, they were at the very bottom of the herd pecking order, which means the older, bigger horses would take more than their share of the food.

So by moving the yearlings in with the weanlings, I am able to give them more feed and make sure that no one drives them away from it.

Both yearlings---most especially Torchsong---have been too mild mannered for their own good amongst the adult mares. But today, finding themselves suddenly the oldest and biggest members of their new little herd, they were quick to assert themselves.

There were fierce looks, bared teeth, ears laid back, even some charging and kicking... all with a great, dramatic flurry of dust in the dry paddock. When the scuffling was over, Torchsong and Shane were happily in possession of the hay feeder, and the weanlings were standing bewildered at the other end of the paddock.

I moved a second hay feeder in, and soon everybody was eating happily.

The new hay we just got from our hay guy was super expensive---because of the drought, prices have gone up yet again. But at least this new hay is better quality, so we may be able to feed less with more nutrition and less waste. With luck, it will even out to be about the same as what we were paying before.

Everything is so painfully dry here. The soil has turned completely to dust, and what little grass there is has turned crunchy under foot. It was 90 degrees here today---scarcely normal for October!---and no rain in sight. The poor sheep were just miserable all day. They can't wait for real fall weather to finally arrive.

It was so hot that when I was filling the water trough, Libby and the other weanling fillies came up and wanted to be sprayed with the hose. Libby loves that! She turns herself around and around to make sure you get the spray all over her.

Then, once they were all clean and wet, they immediately went and dried off by rolling in the dirt, leaving themselves completely coated with grit, like chicken cutlets breaded for frying. It was pretty funny!

Thanks to my recent Ebay sales, we were finally able to pay our neighbor Bob for the last of the alfalfa he gave us on credit two months ago. That's a relief, since I know the drought is really hurting his farm's finances too. I felt really bad about making him wait for his money!

Sheep Treats and (At Last!) a Horse Sale

Now is the time of year when the sheep all get fed extra, to boost their vitality before breeding season.

Since the sheep didn't get their fair share of the pasture this year (due to the horses needing almost all of it), they are a little thinner than I would like them to be right now. So lately I've been giving them treats.

Whenever I go outside, I'll go bend down a leafy branch or two and the sheep will rush to devour the leaves in a mad feeding frenzy reminiscent of a pack of woolly piranhas. The maple tree in the back yard is their favorite, but they'll eat most anything leafy. Moriah, in particular, is fond of honeysuckle fronds.

They all go nuts for the big, bean-like seed pods from the row of locust trees by the driveway, but those are not quite ripe enough to start dropping off the trees yet.

Today, when we went to the feed store to get more sheep feed, we also picked up a couple of protein blocks, one for the ram paddock and one for the ewe paddock. No need to wonder if the sheep are going to like them: they were crowding around, nibbling on the edges of the block before I could even finish getting the wrapper off. I guess the blocks must smell really good!

Later today while I was doing the evening chores, Ken came out to tell me I had a phone call. It was a woman calling about our yearling colt Shane. Since he's priced fairly low, he does tend to get a few inquiries every now and then, but usually nobody really serious.

To my amazement, this woman went from asking a few basic questions straight to asking if she could send a deposit. She said she'd seen Shane's photo months ago in his for sale ad, and hadn't been able to stop thinking about him.

So, assuming all else goes as planned, it looks like we've FINALLY made a horse sale. I want Shane to do well in his new home, so I'll spend time working with him over the next couple of weeks, refreshing all the ground work he's already been taught, and exposing him to some new experiences, so that he'll be better prepared to deal with the big shock of leaving his birthplace for the first time and going away to a new home.

Of course, his sale price is so low that the money is not going to do more than pay for about 2 weeks worth of hay for the rest of the herd, but hey, at this point 2 weeks of hay is better than no hay at all!

Sheep Secretary

I spent today being a sheep secretary.

I never would have guessed that being a farmer would involve so much paperwork.

For one thing, now that I've sold just about all the sheep I'm planning to sell for the year, it's time to send in their registrations and ownership transfers.

Plus, it's just about time for our annual Scrapie program inspection, so I have to get all my records and paperwork in order for that too. We've completed two years in the program so far. In another three years we'll be able to be certified as an official "scrapie free" flock.

I don't mind the paperwork so much, it just takes a while to get my records organized. I have to have all the details at my fingertips for all the sheep that have come or gone from my flock since last year.

Details like: name, description, tattoo numbers, ear tag numbers, registration numbers, sire, dam, birth date, name and contact info for each person we bought a sheep from or sold a sheep to, date we acquired the sheep, date we sold the sheep, or if it died, the date and cause of death.

For my own records, I also track things like birth weight, birth number (single, twin, triplet), assisted or unassisted birth, purchase price, sale price, shipping details, etc.

In truth, all this information is good to have anyhow, and having this inspection come up once a year forces me to set aside the time to make sure the records are organized---which is convenient at other times of year when I need to know a piece of information. All I need to do is pull out the printout of my inspection data, and most everything I need to know is already right there.

I'm almost done now, and my info chart is about 14 pages long. I just have a few stray details to look up, and then I'll be done.


An unrelated bit of good news: My Ebay sales have done well enough that not only was I able to save up enough money to pay for the two new rams I'm getting this week, we were also finally able to pay most of what we owe our neighbor Bob for the alfalfa he gave us on credit last month.

We still have some outstanding bills to pay off, though---and of course an unending need for hay---so I'll be putting some more things up on Ebay before long. I really hope some of our horse sales come through soon. I hate having to make people wait for the money we owe them!