Sheep Mobile On the Road Again

I'll be on the road all weekend, driving to Tennessee and back to pick up Trouble, the Runaway Lamb. When I get back, I'll post her photo, so you can finally see the sheep who's been causing all this commotion.

Life's Little Lottery

I just found out today that one of the four winning tickets from last week's $330 million Mega Millions lottery was sold at the little tiny corner store, just half a mile from our farm.

Apparently, no one knows yet who the winner is. But the fact that someone in our little county---with a population of 16,000 spread over 581 square miles and a per capita personal income of less than $14,000---is now $82.5 million richer is pretty amazing.

You have to understand, this is a county so rural that the big front page news from the most recent issue of the local weekly paper, the Buckingham Beacon, was that the Board of Supervisors has approved the plans to allow the area's first McDonald's restaurant to be built in the little town of Dillwyn.

We don't have a lot of rich people here. The largest employer in the area is the county jail. According to the 1999 statistics listed on the official county website, there were only 9 families in the county that had an annual income of $200,000 or more. A full 16% of the population lived below the poverty level, and that figure rose to 27.7% in families with children under 5 years old.

I'm not saying it's a bad place to live. Quite the opposite---I love it here. We moved here BECAUSE it was so rural, and we hope it stays that way.

But, in our current desperate-for-money-just-to-pay-our-bills situation, I can't help taking a moment to pause and think: "So close, and yet so far: $82.5 million. If only it had been me."

It's a pleasant daydream, thinking about what I could do with all that money. We'd pay off all our bills, of course, and give some to family, then fix up the farm to the true splendor it deserves. Make all the repairs and renovations that the house so desperately needs, reseed the pastures, build a proper barn. Hire a landscaping team to beautify the yard. Fix up the old historic county store and post office on our property, maybe turn it into a little gallery or community theater. And then, with all the rest... Buy land!

I dream of buying up as much beautiful countryside as possible to protect it from developers and preserve it as small farms and wildlife habitats. I once asked Ken, "If we won enough money in the lottery to buy the entire county, would that make you a Count?"

It's not so much that I want to DO anything with the land, I just want to keep anyone from turning it all into strip malls and housing developments.

Since I almost never buy lottery tickets---and none of my other pursuits seem likely to turn me into a millionaire---this dream most likely will never become a reality. But who knows, maybe the new winner will do something great for the county too. Whoever the winner is, I hope the money will be a tremendous blessing for him.

As for me, I like to joke that this local lottery win is just a sign of the Universe starting to swing a tide of prosperity in my general direction. So the lottery was a near miss... No big deal. It takes a while for the Universe to perfect its aim. I can wait. After all, Fate can't exactly help me win the lottery if I don't buy a ticket, can it?

But there'll be other forms of prosperity and abundance coming my way soon. Maybe they won't have quite so many digits after the dollar sign, but they will be wondrous and fulfilling in their own varied and surprising ways.

I look forward to seeing what the Universe can come up with.

Yo-Ho-Ho and a... Bucket of Skulls?

When you dream about someday owning a farm, you picture yourself picking fresh tomatoes from your garden, collecting eggs from your own chickens, maybe helping a curly, wet lamb stand up for the first time.

You don't picture yourself trudging up the hill on a hot September morning, lugging a bunch of skulls in a bucket like some bizarre and gruesome lunch box!

Even more odd, my task was complicated by the fact that I had to go through something akin to a pirate's treasure hunt to find my grisly plunder: Follow the line of trees down the hill, go so many paces past the path, and enter the woods at this particular gap in the wall of cedars.

That's where we keep the cage full of heads.

Yes, that's right. We keep a cage full of ram's heads hidden in the woods near the edge of our pasture. Gross, huh? Let me explain.

Each year, a few of our rams get sent to slaughter. The meat goes in our freezer in neat white packages. The hides and heads come back to us in a bloody cardboard box. The hides I salt for future tanning. The heads get stashed someplace far away (and down wind!) from the house until the insects eat all the flesh off the skulls.

We picked a spot down in the woods, near the edge of the pasture, as being far enough away but still easily accessible. We didn't want foxes, skunks, and raccoons to drag the heads off and destroy them, so we bought one of those rectangular wire rabbit cages to keep them in. That keeps the larger scavengers at bay while still allowing free access to the insects.

Once the bugs have cleaned the skulls, the outer horn material will slide right off the inner bone core. I clean the horns and sell them on my sheep web site. They can be used for a lot of different craft projects, including handles and buttons. The skulls, once cleaned up, make interesting rustic decorations.

I'd gotten an email from someone interested in buying some horns, so today was the day to go gather up my harvest of heads and take photos to show the potential buyer.

It's one more small bit of income for the farm, and one more way of honoring the gifts of the sheep that go to slaughter, by making use of as much of their body as possible.

In that way, even the rams that did not grow up to be exceptional enough to use as breeding animals can still make their contribution towards supporting the rest of the flock.

On a Roll?

I'm almost afraid to say too much, for fear of jinxing myself, but I'm beginning to have a little bit of hope that our luck may be changing.

After reading this blog, a fellow Icelandic sheep breeder---from whom I bought several sheep last year, including Paris, the gorgeous sheep in this photo---offered me the job of redesigning her web site for her.

I'm really pleased about getting the opportunity to bring in some more money doing something I enjoy doing, especially for such nice people. Designing websites for farms and other small businesses is something I have long thought of doing, but this will be my first paying job at it.

I have a lot of years of professional writing and editing experience, plus I get lots of compliments on my own websites, InglesideSportHorses.com, InglesideIcelandics.com, and KeepingTheFarm.com, so I think that I'll be able to do some good work. I know a lot of small farms don't have the time or inclination to want to build their own sites, so this is something I can help with.

On top of that, I got to meet a very nice couple today who came to look at our horses for sale. They stayed for a couple of hours. The young woman was very experienced and competent, so I would have no worries about what kind of care and handling a horse would get if I sold it to her.

She visited all the horses, and especially looked at Bonnie, Boo, and Penny. She said she liked all of them but price was a factor. I told her we're open to offers, so she and her husband are going to discuss it and get back to me.

It seemed pretty certain that she would make an offer on one or more of the horses. Whether it will be an offer we can accept remains to be seen---we can certainly be flexible to some degree, but we're not GIVING the horses away after I've invested this much into them---but I have hopes that we can work out some kind of deal.

The fun part of the visit was letting her take our stallion Senter out into the round pen to try out his gaits. He's such a pretty boy, and a gorgeous mover. It's always fun to play with him.

Next time I need to think ahead and take some video of him moving, to share on the blog.

After things quiet down around here (if that ever happens!) this fall, I need to continue with his saddle breaking too. Guess that will be video for the blog as well.

A Trickle of Good News

Four bits of good news today:

1. One of my Franklin Mint dolls (See My Secret "Girlie" Side) sold on Ebay for $275 in just 2 days.

2. Trouble, the Runaway Lamb (See Can't Catch a Break... Or a Sheep!, Looking for Trouble, and Trouble Ahead) has been captured. Either Ken or I will have to drive back to Tennessee this weekend to pick her up.

3. A potential buyer is coming here tomorrow to look at Bonnie and the other horses.

4. We got our first donation through the "Donate" button I put on the blog homepage. It was from an old friend whom I haven't seen in a long time. Thanks Ginny! She is a very talented artist who makes gorgeous paintings. You can see them here.

Trouble Ahead?

You're never going to believe this.

Remember the saga of Trouble, The Runaway Sheep? (See Can't Catch a Break... Or a Sheep! and Looking for Trouble if you missed it the first time around.)

Well, I just got a phone call today from Trouble's original breeder, Cathy, in Michigan. It seems that the runaway lamb has avoided the Tennessee coyotes for the past two weeks and has made friends with a very nice gentleman who has been feeding her grain every day, a few miles away from where she escaped from me.

She's gotten tame enough that she will eat out of his hand, which allowed him to read the information off her ear tag. Somehow, from the codes and digits on the tag, he managed to figure out who her original breeder was, and made a phone call to Cathy, who then contacted me.

Trouble has not been near any other livestock, so fortunately, my earlier concerns about the Scrapie program are not going to be a problem. But it does mean that an unofficial Sheep Recovery Team now has to spring into action.

Vern, the nice man in Tennessee, will have to catch Trouble, which he says he can do with no problem. But he has no place to keep her once he catches her, so my friend Nyxana will find a way to transport the lamb to her house, and find some way to keep her contained for a couple of days.

Once Trouble is captured, I'll have to put all my other projects aside and drive the 9 hours to Tennessee AGAIN, stay the night with Nyxana, and the next morning pack up my wayward lamb and bring her home.

One thing is for sure, she sure is living up to her name!

Cause and Effect

The sound came again: a deep, hoarse, wavering bellow, something like you'd expect to hear from a dying walrus.

I had just gotten up and was groggily checking my email. Because the house windows were closed, the sound was muffled and faint, so it took a few moments for my brain to register what it was.

Maggie.

One of our broodmares, Maggie has a voice that evokes images of elderly elephants and wounded sea-beasts. But why would she be bellowing repeatedly first thing in the morning?

~~~~~

This is a story about cause and effect, how the littlest things can have the most unexpected consequences. You never know what little thing you do---for good or ill--will have a profound effect on someone you've never met, or what insignificant event will change your life forever.

Here's what got me thinking about that:

When I opened the window to listen more clearly to Maggie's whinnies, my hand knocked against a glass ornament that was hanging there. It fell from its hook, tumbled out the window, and shattered on the ground below.

Well, shoot! The decoration wasn't valuable, but I'd liked the cheerful spark of color it had added to my office. A minor disappointment, but nothing to get upset about.

Still wondering about the commotion outside, I put on some shoes and went out to check on Maggie. She was standing alone at the hay feeder, hollering. All the other mares were out of sight, probably swishing flies down among the cedars at the bottom of the big pasture.

When Maggie saw me, she gave one more bellow, and cantered off to find the other horses. Nothing was wrong with her. All I could think of was that she'd fallen asleep near the feeder while all the other horses were still eating, and had been distressed to find that she'd woken up alone.

It was an insignificant event. But it made me stop and think what a quirky little chain of effects it had been. Who would have guessed that a sleeping horse in the pasture could manage to break an ornament upstairs in the house?

The minutiae of the causes and effects that shape our lives fascinate me. You never know at the time what insignificant detail of your day will end up changing the course of your life, even decades later.

For example, if it hadn't been for one photocopied flier on a bulletin board in Portland, Maine, sometime around 1987, I would never have met my husband in Boston in 1993. Here's how it happened:

1. 1987: A flier on a bulletin board announces the formation of a new writer's group. On a whim, I decide to join. Through this group, I meet a man named David who I eventually date for several years.

2. During that time, David and I take a road trip down the east coast to visit some friends of his. The friends take us to a local festival, where I discover the SCA for the first time. I love the idea of a medieval recreation club, so when I get back home, I join the local chapter.

3. 1992: David and I have broken up. At an SCA event, I meet Derek. We begin dating, and eventually I move to Boston to be with him.

4. 1993: Derek and I are not getting along. One particular night towards the end of our relationship, we have an argument. Needing to get out of the house, I go alone to the local SCA dance practice, which I have never been to before.

That night, I met Ken, the man who two years later became my husband. We've been married for twelve years, and still going strong---all because of a flier, a road trip, and an argument. If that flier hadn't been on that bulletin board that day, I can't even imagine how different my life would be right now.

An example of obscure cause and effect came up on the farm recently, too.

Somewhere in California not too long ago, a boss stiffed an employee for a month's pay. I don't know the details. All I know is that the employee is the person I talked about in This is a Test, who wants to buy my mare Bonnie. "Oh I want her, " she told me in a recent email. "I think about her all the time." But now, because of her boss's action, she doesn't have the money right now.

If I had sold Bonnie to this woman a month ago when she first inquired, I would have had the money to buy hay for my herd and pay our neighbor Bob for the alfalfa he gave us on credit. And with that money, Bob would probably have been able to do a few things in the past month that he has not been able to do without it. All the while, somewhere in California, that boss has no idea that his behavior is affecting the lives of farmers in Virginia.

So much of the time, we live our lives feeling alienated in our own little world, never realizing the far-reaching ripples our actions can cause.

I try to be a good person. I'm not an angel, by any means, and I've certainly had occasions when I've been impatient or thoughtless or unkind. But for the most part, I try to treat people---and animals---at least as well as I hope to be treated myself.

Even if I can't always see the effect of my choices, whenever I think about the tiny details that can change a life, I know that it's worth it to make a little extra effort to put some kindness and helpfulness out into the world.

~~~~~

So who would have thought that a sleepy horse in the pasture could break an ornament upstairs in the house and inspire a philosophical blog entry that would be read in [fill in the name of YOUR town here]?

Where will the ripple of cause and effect go next? If even one person who reads this is inspired to go out of his or her way to take a kind action towards another human being, there's no telling how far the results will reach.

My Secret "Girlie" Side

I've never been much of a girlie-girl. I loathe pantyhose and high heels. I almost never wear makeup or jewelry. I have no interest in designer shoes or handbags. Heck, some days on the farm, I don't even brush my hair!

But for all my daily concerns with dirty, non-girlie things like loading hay, training horses, and picking maggots out of wounded sheep, I have to confess (with a certain amount of embarrassment) to one exceptionally girlie hobby.

I collect porcelain dolls.

Not just any porcelain dolls. Just the most exquisite---and usually quite pricey---dolls made by Franklin Mint. Preferably the Gibson Girl dolls or some of the historical or storybook themed ones. I have an entire wall of my office with shelves on it to display them, about two dozen in all, plus another half dozen or so other dolls that I started with before I graduated to Franklin Mint.

For several years now, these dolls have been my secret addiction. Whenever friends come to visit, I'm embarrassed to show them my office, because this wall of dainty, elegantly dressed porcelain ladies doesn't fit with my idea of who I am.

I like to blame them on the fact that I'm no longer in the SCA. My husband and I did medieval historical recreation for many years---in fact, that's how we met. But after moving several times and getting busy with other aspects of our lives, we eventually stopped participating.

For all those years, I had the creative outlet of designing, making, accessorizing, and wearing my own medieval-style costumes. But after we quit, I got tired of seeing them hanging unused in my closet, so I gave them all away to a friend: Thirteen years worth of green, crimson, purple, royal blue, and ivory colored gowns, embroidered, beaded, jewel-bedecked. Once they were gone, my closet was spacious, practical---and dull.

Right around then, the doll collecting began. I guess they were a smaller-version, eye-candy substitute for the costumes I'd given away. Having spent many tedious hours making my own costumes in past years, I could really appreciate the dolls' intricate level if minuscule detail.

I love them, and I hate the fact that I love them. I can't wrap my brain around the idea that I have such a girlie hobby.

But soon, that inner conflict will be resolved. I'm selling them all on EBay to try to keep this farm running a little longer while we wait for some horses to sell.

When I started putting the listings up today, I soon learned something: It's really time consuming to make a good EBay listing!

After you decide which item you want to list first, you have to find a good place with a nice background and take lots of close-up, well-lit photographs of the item. Then you have to download the photos to your computer, select the ones you want to use, crop them if necessary, and save them in the proper format. Then you have to fill out the EBay forms, upload the photos, and write a detailed, sincere-yet-enthusiastic description of the item.

I have LOTS of things I'm planning to sell, but I only managed to get five listings made today. Three of the Franklin Mint dolls, my gorgeous leather motorcycle jacket, and Ken's 1992 Nissan Sentra GXE.

There will be lots more listings to come in the next days and weeks. Everything I sell will go towards helping us keep this farm going, so please check my auctions every now and then to see if we have anything you "need." Tell your friends, too!

If you want a preview of some of the things that will be coming up for sale soon (and some things we're offering for sale directly, not on EBay), visit our Online Yard Sale. The list is not complete, and it doesn't have a lot of detail right now, but if you see anything you're interested in, contact me, and I'll be happy to take photos and send you a more thorough description of the item.

We are almost entirely out of hay now, and almost entirely out of money.

On the bright side, our mare Bonnie has suddenly become very popular. I have two buyers who are interested in her already, and today I got calls from two more people asking about her!

All the potential buyers seemed knowledgeable and pleasant, like they would probably provide Bonnie a good home. So keep your fingers crossed for us that one of them will decide that she's the one for them. That money would do WONDERS for our cash flow right about now!

Baby Steps

I thought I was going to work on halter breaking Penny today. Ken had time to come out and help me, so I put on my training gloves (to prevent rope burn), gathered my long lead rope, and we headed out to the weaning paddock.

The fillies, who happily stand still to let me scratch their withers and fondle their faces, who let me pick up any of their feet without needing to be restrained, took one look at me carrying my soft pink rope, and started careening around the paddock like I had crashed into their space blowing a trumpet and juggling flaming chainsaws.

Okay. Time for a new plan. Clearly some desensitizing training is in order before anyone is ready for more training to lead. These are baby horses with baby brains. So, the training has to take place in baby steps.

Some parts of horse training can be really, really boring. Like Ken and me standing around in the paddock for an hour wiggling and flapping ropes in the air somewhere in the general vicinity of the fillies, until the fillies realized the ropes wouldn't hurt them.

The key is, just keep gently and calmly doing what you're doing until the horses get tired of snorting and leaping around, and decide that it's just not worth the effort to be freaked out anymore. The moment their inherent laziness outweighs their instinctual fear, you're in!

At that point we let them sniff and nibble the rope, rub it on their necks, shoulders, backs, rumps. Eventually we drape it over their heads and ears, rub it against their bellies, flop it around their legs. When they stand still for that without flinching, we feed them and let them alone as a reward.

We did two sessions today. Penny was the worst. She's still not entirely resigned to being weaned, so her nerves are still a little on edge. She's still expecting something bad to happen to her whenever something new occurs. So she ran around a lot and wouldn't stop until she was actually tired enough to want to rest. Only then did she settle down enough to let us rub her with the ropes.

On the bright side, we got to see that she has no trouble jumping over the water trough---longways!---so clearly that powerhouse build she has is going to translate into some athletic ability as she grows up.

Glory was the next worst. With her, I get the feeling that she isn't actually scared. She just refuses to take my word for anything. She is smart, willful, and suspicious of any new idea I present to her. She wants to be persuaded that something is a good idea before she will accept it. Ahh, the dubious joys of a super-intelligent horse.

Libby, as usual, was just a joy. In the beginning, she only ran a little because the other two were running. Pretty soon, she was standing there, enjoying having the rope rubbed all over her, and pushing herself in front of us for MORE rope rubbing whenever we turned our attention to the other fillies.

I just can't believe how agreeable she is. She's so eager to learn and eager to please. I envy whoever ends up buying her!

By the end, they were all doing well, although I suspect that by tomorrow Penny and Glory will both need another session or two to remind them that being calm is the answer we're looking for.

But, like I said, baby steps. If I let them learn at their own pace, they'll build confidence and trust, which will make future lessons easier. I've got time.

Assuming of course we don't go broke in the next week, which is certainly a possibility. We only have about 2 days worth of hay left, and pretty much no money to buy more. Our hay supplier wants to start a flock of Icelandic sheep, so we've been working on a deal to trade sheep for hay for a month and a half now, but he keeps putting off finalizing his decision.

We really need that deal to go through, and we really need to sell some of these horses. I know the market is really bad right now, but everyone says what fantastic, gorgeous, enviable horses mine are. I can't believe I haven't been able to sell even ONE of them in the past 11 months.

Oh well. I do what I can. I guess I have to be satisfied with baby steps for me, too, getting this farm rolling.

I've set tomorrow aside to post a bunch of stuff on EBay. I hope that will bring in enough cash to buy hay very, very soon!

Summer's End

Summer's End

Parched leaves sway and lift.
Mockingbird’s sweet, liquid song:
Long-awaited rain.

By Nancy Chase

As cleanly as tearing off a calendar page, summer ended today. As soon as I stepped outside this morning, I felt it. The texture of the air against my skin was different, the flavor of it in my nostrils.

The humidity was gone. The sky---a crisp, pleasant blue---seemed farther away than it had yesterday, as if summer had lifted the lid off the pressure cooker that has enclosed us for the past 4 months.

It was a perfect day for working outside, which was good. After rearranging a few portable fence panels to make a catch pen, Ken and I gathered up the sheep and administered their worming medicine and vitamin drench, a task that neither the sheep nor the humans particularly enjoy.

We usually do this about once a month throughout the summer. Since one month from today will be October, this may be the last time we have to do this chore until next spring. Hurray!

Another end-of summer event happened today as well: the separating of the rams from the ewes. Icelandic sheep are seasonal breeders, and will not breed until late October. So the rams get to go out in the pasture with the ewes all summer.

Then, in early September, we separate the rams into their own paddock away from the ewes. From now until breeding season, the ewes will get extra feed to bring them into optimum condition for breeding. On the same diet, the rams would just get fat---after all, they've done no work all summer to put any strain on their bodies, unlike the ewes who have been nursing babies all this time.

The other reason we separate the sheep at this time of year is because of something known as the "ram effect." If the ewes are separated from the rams for a significant amount of time, and then placed back with them at the start of breeding season, it supposedly triggers the ewes' hormones and encourages them to all come into heat and breed right away.

The advantage of this is that the lambs are born earlier and lambing season is not spread out over as many weeks (which makes it a lot easier on the shepherd). Personally, I haven't noticed a lot of "ram effect" happening in my own flock, but who knows? It doesn't hurt to try.

The day the rams get separated also marks the time when I need to start planning the sheep's breeding groups for the winter. Which ewes will I breed to which rams for the best combination of traits? Which combinations will give me the best meat conformation without sacrificing fleece quality? The most salable colors without sacrificing heat and parasite resistance?

Choosing the breeding groups is a complicated, detail-oriented process that involves long lists of records and bloodlines and several rounds of charts showing possible choices and likely results. But it is a joyful task because it turns my mind to the lambs-to-be that will be created based on my decisions.

We are blessed to own our senior ram, Nicholai, who has fantastic heat and parasite resistance, and passes it on to his offspring. He has not needed any worming for two years now, which for this climate is extremely good.

A magnificent fellow with huge curling horns and a gentlemanly temperament, he is the last son of the ewe Solee, who was in the very first group of Icelandic sheep ever to be imported to the United States.

Our finances are really scraping bottom again. Or perhaps I should say, "still." Ken's brother generously paid our overdue electric bill to help us out. My sister Donna---who runs her own small farm in northern Maine and really doesn't have any money to spare---sent some money too. I had intended to put that in my stash that I'm saving to finish paying for the two new ram lambs I'm purchasing this fall, but it ended up having to go to make the car payment instead.

We have just a couple days' worth of hay left, and we've been putting off buying groceries as long as we can. Even the cats, who have been raised on Iams brand cat food their entire lives, have now been switched to Friskies to save money.

So it was particularly welcome news today when a very nice couple who'd put a deposit on one of our ram lambs earlier this year came to pick him up today, and paid the remainder of his sale price. That money will help us buy groceries this week!

I've been very grateful that our lambs have sold so well this year, and that Icelandics command such high prices compared to many other breeds of sheep. My lambs generally sell for about $500-$600 each. Of course, some of the breeding stock I bring in from other states costs me in the $800-$1,000 range, so I'm not even charging top prices for my lambs.

I only have a few lambs left for sale now, and a few potential buyers still thinking about buying. If only the horses would sell this easily, I'd be all set!