Lipizzaner Ram?

Have you ever seen the famous Lipizzaner Stallions perform?

I think my ram Preston has been secretly studying their Airs Above the Ground. He was practicing his Courbette today, trying to reach some tasty maple leaves.

Click here to see how talented he is.

Good Thing I'm Getting a Livestock Guardian Dog

After a night of unbridled gluttony, grazing on the lawn, the rams take a break to relax and digest this morning.

Nicholai:
Taj:
Preston & Freyr:

As you can see, it's hard to relax. The rams lead a life of constant peril, and always have to be on the lookout for dangerous predators like mountain lions:

And wolves:

Sheep Apnea

I've determined that I'm suffering from Sheep Apnea.

That's all the halts, hitches, and gasps in a pregnant ewe's breathing that repeatedly wake the shepherd up throughout the night, making her think the ewe is going into labor, and leaving her groggy and lambless in the morning!

Here's my latest attempt at reverse psychology:

After I have breakfast, I'm going to shower, put on clean clothes, and spend the day organizing all of the farm's income tax documents for the year.

I won't possibly have time to deal with any lambs being born today!

If that doesn't bring 'em on, then I give up and acknowledge that Phoebe has decided to wait for Lamb-a-Palooza. That's what I'm calling the 9th of April or thereabouts, when I have about 20% of my flock supposedly due to lamb all on the same day.

Maybe Phoebe's waiting because she wants to join the Lamb-a-Palooza festivities with all her flock mates.

Fun With Buckets

One of my sheep, a young black ewe named Simone, had some health problems in the Fall that left her very thin. She has been gradually climbing back to health, but it's taking her a long time to regain all the weight she lost, so I have taken to sneaking her extra food when the other sheep aren't looking.

As a consequence, Simone has become fixated on me, and convinced that I serve no other purpose than to be her feed dispenser. When I'm in the yard, she follows me everywhere, so close on my heels that she often steps on the back of my shoes. When I'm inside the house, she wanders around mournfully outside, searching all the nooks and corners of the yard, hoping to find some hidden stash of food I may have left for her. Sometimes she comes up onto the back porch, stares into the kitchen through the glass door, and bleats for me to come out.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to the sound of the wind roaring across our hill. I also heard the distinctive, hollow, bump-bump-bump sound of one of our plastic buckets being blown across the back yard.

Raising myself up from my bed, I looked out the window in time to see the bright yellow bucket go tumbling at high speed down the driveway. Startled by this unexpected apparition, several of the other sheep scattered in panic.

Then I had to laugh because, running along behind the flying bucket as fast as she could go, was Simone---completely convinced that the bucket must be full of food for her!

This afternoon, the sheep had another bucket adventure.

A few days ago, when my filly Libby got sick with colic, I made up a bucket of warm molasses water to try to encourage her to drink. She didn't want it at the time, and eventually recovered without drinking any of it.

Rather than dumping it out, I left it in the back yard for the sheep to find. For a few days, the water remained frozen but lately, with milder temperatures, I've noticed the level of the molasses water dropping each day as more and more of the sheep discovered the tasty treat.

Today, the bucket was empty except for a sweet film of molasses in the bottom. I looked out the back door to see a mob of sheep descend upon the bucket, fighting to see who would be the lucky one who would get to lick up the last of the "candy."

Through size and sheer determination, after a lot of scuffling, that honor fell to my senior ewe, Moriah (who, coincidentally, happens to be Simone's mother). Victorious, she shoved her face into the bucket, forcing her nose to the sweet stuff at the bottom, even though her wide horns would barely wedge into the bucket.

Unfortunately for her, they wedged a little too well! Suddenly, she lifted her head up, with the heavy-duty 5-gallon bucket still attached to her face. Blinded, she started careening around the yard, crashing into all the other sheep that were crowded around. Finally the bucket shifted so that it was dangling from one of her horns by the handle. A moment later, she managed to flip it off onto the ground.

So much for the dignity of the flock's matriarch!

What Heating Vents Are For

In case you were wondering, heating vents are not for heating your house.

This is what they're really for:


All of our heating vents in the downstairs of our house are at floor level.

We have eight cats with very warm bellies. :-)

Don't Say I Didn't Warn You

Whatever you do, don't play this game:

The Impossible Quiz

It will have you laughing, groaning, and tearing out your hair in frustration. You will waste hours (days!) of your life trying to get to the next answer, and the next, and the next. Inane jokes will start to make sense. You'll develop a fondness for dancing elephants and a fear of ticking time bombs!

You will become addicted and your life will not feel complete until you finally manage to complete the last question. (I haven't gotten that far yet, by the way!)

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Big Horse, Little Tiny Stall!

In honor of the fact that Boo and Shane are leaving tomorrow for their new home in Florida, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share a photo of Boo that was taken almost exactly a year ago.

I woke up that morning to the sound of a horse pawing on a wooden stall floor. Which would be less weird if all my horses were not 100% pasture kept.

When I went outside to investigate, this is what I saw:

Boo had pulled the door off our hay feeder and was settling in to have a nice comfy day of it. All the other horses were sulking because there was a HORSE in their breakfast!

Silly me, in my plans for my future someday-barn, I was imagining that with the size of my horses, I'd need 14 x 14 stalls, or 12 x 16 stalls.

Imagine my relief to learn that 6 x 10 will be plenty big enough!

Donald Trump and the Mechanical Lamb

Once upon a time, back in the summer of 2004, Ken and I bought Ingleside Farm. It was a beautiful old pre-Civil War house, but it was very run down.


Even though the inside of the house was filthy and in poor repair, we had big hopes of fixing it up and decorating it in the grand manner that it deserved. Both of us being avid readers, we were excited to see that just off the living room was a large, spacious room that could serve as our library. We imagined fixing it up in the classic Masterpiece Theater style of decorating, with floor to ceiling bookcases and a big fireplace at one end.

Once day, while browsing in a used-furniture shop in Charlottesville, I fell in love with a dark red leather couch that I knew would be just perfect for our future library. It was exactly the right size, exactly the right style, and even exactly the right color to go with the thick oriental rug we already had.

Even though the library wasn't fixed up yet---at the time, we hadn't even moved into the house yet---we splurged and bought the couch. When the shopkeeper saw what piece of furniture we had selected, she said, "Oh, if you're buying that one, I have to tell you where it came from."

"Really? Where?"

She smiled. "That couch used to be in the penthouse of Trump Towers in New York!"

I would have loved this couch no matter where it was from, but we thought it was hilarious that we were getting a famous person's couch.

I'm sure the couch thought it had gone to some kind of Furniture Hell, being demoted from its former palatial home to our bare, empty not-yet-a-library in our run-down, dilapidated house. There is a tiny smear of white paint on the leather of the couch back, which I'm guessing is the reason for the poor couch's dismissal.


We had a great time telling our friends and family that we had Donald Trump's couch in our library. They thought it was funny too.

My sister Donna sometimes sends me funny presents, little things to make me laugh. One Christmas, she sent me a fully jointed, talking Donald Trump doll to sit on my Trump couch. Perhaps the couch would feel more at home then!

He says things like:

"I have no choice but to tell you, you're fired!"

"Stay focused!"

"Remember, the buck starts here!"

Today, several years later, Donna just sent me another bunch of presents. Among them---because we are shepherds, and we are waiting for spring lambing time---was a mechanical toy lamb. When you pet its back, it wags its tail, bobs its head, wiggles up and down and bleats.

Clearly, this lamb needed to be put under the supervision of our talking Trump doll. What luck! The doll is fully jointed and the lamb is just the right size that The Donald can ride it!



So now they can sit on the Trump couch and carry on conversations with each other:

"Think big and live large."

"BAAAAA!"

"Do you really think you're a good leader? I don't."

"Maaaah, maaah, maaah!"

"Never give up under any circumstances. Never give up."

"Baaah?"

"Always enjoy what you're doing."

"Baaah."

"Go with your gut instinct."

"Baaa, baaa!"

"Always maintain your momentum."

"BAAAA!"


Clearly, it really doesn't take a lot to keep me entertained! :-)

Love is in the Air

Although I don't think any actual breeding has taken place yet, sheep breeding season seems to be progressing.

Nicholai has been making his "sex face."
(actually, he's just testing the ewe's scent to see if she's in heat)

Taj is starting to get the idea, too

In case you were wondering, Taj and Paisley demonstrate what sheep do on a date:

A little small talk

A little smooching

And then they go eat poison ivy vines together!

Going Gray

Ever since we bought this farm, my hair has been going gray at a much faster rate than before.

You think it's related?

Do you think that chronic worry, stress, and exhaustion really does make your hair go gray? Or is it just that I'm over 40 and would be going gray by now regardless of what I was doing for a living?

I discovered my first gray hair on my 17th birthday. By the time I was in my 30s, I still had less than a dozen. But now... they're everywhere! Not quite enough yet to change the visible color of my hair, but it's getting there.

My feelings about it have been interesting to observe. On the one hand, a woman's hair is a symbol of her youth---and when I was younger, my thick, curly, waist-length hair was always my one vanity. So naturally, I feel a pang at seeing the symbol of my youth morphing into a symbol of my age.

On the other hand, I've always admired those confident, all-natural women who let their hair go gray without fussing about it or covering it up with dye. These women are always so beautiful... in their confidence and simplicity, they usually end up looking younger than the women who fight the aging process with dyes and makeup and face lifts.

What's so bad about getting older, anyway? As the saying goes, it's better than the alternative!

The difficulty is that it's a transition, and transitions are hard. When we first admit that we're passing into a new era of our lives, we're not sure what our new role will be. What will people expect of us now? What should we expect of ourselves?

For me, it feels psychologically and spiritually healthier to keep the gray hair, so that it's there as a reminder of the stage of my life's journey that I have now reached.

Middle Age... If I tilt my head and squint just so, I can almost envision it as a magical Tolkien-esque land, filled with hobbits and elves. Oh. Wait. No, that's Middle EARTH. Darn!

Well, it'll be an adventure, just the same. Day-by-day, I'm building the person I'm going to be when I'm old. What will THAT be like? By the time my hair is fully gray, who will I be?

I won't know until I get there.

The Pet-Lovers Diet

It seems like everyone nowadays is worried about their weight. And capitalizing on that, everyone else is making a fortune selling diet plans and books specialized according to everything from your body shape to blood type to astrological sign.

I figured hey, I could stand to lose some weight---AND earn some money---why not come up with a diet plan for people like me?

So here's why my diet plan is the best plan ever:

You don't need to change what you eat. You don't need to change how you exercise. It's all about portion control---and you don't even need your own willpower to take care of that.

You just need to enlist the help of my highly trained four-legged diet consultants, available to you for a reasonable monthly fee. For best results, you need approximately one cat or dog per 10 lbs. you need to lose. If more than one family member needs to lose weight, they need to hire their own additional diet consultants.

Here's how it goes:

You sit down in front of the TV with a big, heaping plate of fried chicken or lasagna or prime rib, or whatever other high-fat, caloric nightmare is responsible for inflating your waistline. You turn on the TV. You pick up your fork.

But before you can take your first, delicious, calorie-laden bite, your four-legged coaches appear as if by magic to remind you about the importance of portion control.

A fluffy red Pomeranian hops up beside you, puts her paws on your leg, and tilts her head in an adorable, heart-melting pose. You can't help yourself. You give her a bite of your food. SNARF! It vanishes, never to add a single point to your BMI.

You pick up your fork again. A large, gray Maine Coon cat appears on the arm of the couch, purring loudly. As you lift your food toward your mouth, he reaches out one large, fuzzy paw and pats you gently on the shoulder.

You can't disappoint a creature full of such pleased self-confidence, so you hand over another bite of your food. As positive reinforcement for your good behavior, the purring in your ear increases by a few decibels.

Determined to finally taste some of your own dinner, you pick up that fork one more time. Just as the food is about to enter your open mouth, a brown tabby cat perched on the couch back bats at your hand. With five razor-sharp claws.

While you're examining your hand to determine whether you need stitches, your team of four-legged coaches spring into action to ensure your continued dedication to portion control.

The tabby cat leaps down beside you and parades back and forth, dragging his generously furred, plume-like tail across your plate. You push him away just as the gray cat sneezes in your direction. You can feel the spray on your hand---who knows where else it's landed?

Fed up (and yet underfed!), you chase the cats out of the room, only to return and discover the Pomeranian energetically licking your plate. Sure, they say a dog's saliva is actually cleaner than a human's, but her breath smells suspiciously like horse manure.

See how easy it is to lose (er---I mean, "control") your appetite, when you have the right team of highly trained diet coaches? It doesn't take any willpower at all.

Before long, you'll be abandoning the high-cholesterol evils of fried chicken and filling your plate with waistline-friendly broccoli, celery, and lettuce, just to be able to eat something that is not immediately confiscated by your pests (umm, I mean, "consultants").

Of course, there is a catch.

Scientific study (by which I mean, several months of testing by Ken and myself) has proven that---like most of the other diet gurus' plans---the Pet Lover's Diet doesn't really work in the long run.

Sad to say, but the inborn human desire for greasy, unhealthy foods outweighs (pun intended) the ingenuity of the cleverest diet guru. Pet Lovers find it easy to stick to this diet, but gradually compensate for the calories confiscated by the "coaches" by simply over-inflating the serving sizes at the beginning of the meal and learning to joke about the health benefits of a little extra "fiber" added to each meal in the form of cat hair.

Then again, the fact that their plans don't actually work never stopped any of the other diet gurus from making a fortune. All it would take would be for my plan to become trendy, and I could be rich and famous. Face it, if you're going to be overweight either way, at least my plan is more fun than theirs!

Now I just have to come up with a diet plan for overweight, overfed PETS!

Keeping My Fingers Crossed

As of today, I have potential buyers interested in FOUR of the remaining seven horses I have left to sell. Of course, interested doesn't mean definite, so I'm not counting my chicks (or in this case, my checks) until they hatch. But still, it does give a person reason to hope.

While Ken and I were filling the broodmares' big hay feeder tonight, we made up a song.

The mares sing:

We are so hungry!
We are so hungry!
We wish you'd give us
Some grain as well.

Then we sing:

We have no money!
We have no money!
We wish that some of
You mares would sell!

Yes, okay. I'm way too easily amused, I admit it. :-)

I spent the morning answering email and dealing with EBay stuff, answering questions from buyers and such.

Then I had to rearrange all the animals in the paddocks so that Bob could finally come with his tractor and scrape out the last paddock for us. Then I had to put all the animals back into their original paddock.

This afternoon, I gave Libby a bath and took some video of her for the person who might be interested in buying her. If you want to see it, here it is.

Reasons For Bad Housekeeping

After the farrier left today, I spent some time catching up on some long-neglected housework. This got me thinking about how some people always have spotless houses, while the rest of us seem to accumulate more than our share of clutter and filth.

While washing the kitchen counters and sweeping up dust bunnies the size of subcompact cars off my floor, I got to wondering why that is. Before long, I came up with a set of theories.

1. People who have jobs that leave them exhausted at the end of the day do less housework than other people because when you've spent the day lugging hay bales, cleaning hooves, mucking paddocks, and wrestling unruly horses, all you want to do when you're finished is collapse on the couch and eat cold pizza straight from the box.

2. People who have jobs that expose them to dirty or gross conditions on a regular basis do less housework than other people because they've acquired a higher tolerance to filth. Face it, after you've had your hand inside a sheep to reposition a lamb so it can be born, a little spilled jam on the counter just doesn't have the same "ick" factor it once did.

3. People who don't get a lot of visitors do less housework because, frankly, who's going to know? So, if you're ever planning to come visit me, call first, okay? Trust me, you don't want to see what the place would look like otherwise! :-)

4. People with open-minded, or off-beat personalities do less housework because they're used to not caring as much what other people think of them. That's right. I'm not a slob, I'm a rugged individualist!

5. People with 8 cats, 3 dogs, 15 horses, a flock of sheep, and a husband do less housework because with the amount of grime that gets tracked in on a daily basis, it's a hopeless task. You may as well surrender!

Having conclusively proven to myself that it's a miracle I ever do any housework at all, I decided to postpone scrubbing the toilet, and go collapse on the couch.

Now where's that cold pizza?