April Showers

It's been raining and raining and raining here off and on all week. The horse paddock is a treacherous swamp of slippery clay. The sheep paddock has become a running river bottom. The back pasture, where the ewes with lambs are, has standing water all over, even though it is on a fairly steep slope.

Hundreds of earthworms migrate, red and wriggly, across the top of the mud, or lie, pale and drowned, in the bottoms of rain-filled feed troughs.

I do the chores carrying an umbrella, wearing sweat pants hiked up to my knees to prevent the bottoms from getting soaked, my feet bare and muddy inside my green rubber clogs.

It's peaceful sleeping in the barn during the rainstorms. Something about it makes the sheep get quiet and contemplative. They lie, chewing rhythmically, enjoying the cool, damp air. Madrigal, my tortoiseshell barn cat goes prowling out in the rain, then comes in to snuggle inside my sleeping bag with me to dry off.

I wake regularly every couple of hours all night, every night, for about 3 weeks now, checking to see if any of the ewes are in labor. My mind has started to lose the distinction between night and day in that way. I feel that I could nap at any time of the day or night, and equally, I could be awake and alert anytime also.

I do worry about the lambs in the rain, although fortunately the temperatures have been mild and pleasant. But for a lamb---especially a very young one---who gets separated from the warmth and nourishment of his mother during a rainy windy night, the borderline between healthy and hypothermia is pretty narrow.

So throughout the night and day I keep my ears open for the sounds of lambs crying in distress. If it persists for long enough, I get up and go find the lost baby and return him to his mother. Fortunately, all the older lambs are quite sturdy and stout by now and I don't worry about them. It's just the little ones who still have so little body mass with which to retain their heat.

Each morning, I make the rounds of the wet pasture, making sure each ewe has the right number of babies with her, and that all the babies look lively and well. So far so good. I guess a Virginia spring rainfall is nothing compared to whatever harsh weather these sheep evolved with for 1,100 years in Iceland.

If the old adage is correct, we should have a bloom-filled May, because April certainly has provided more than its share of showers. And even with the extra inconvenience, mess, and worry brought by so much wet weather, I think about the devastating effects of last year's drought, and I don't complain a bit.

Lamb-A-Rama

My sister Donna informed me that now Lamb-A-Palooza is over, I need to have Lamb-A-Rama, which is when I show off all the new lambs that arrived during Lamb-A-Palooza.

So, without further ado, here are some photos.

The lambs and moms are learning how to manage grazing in the field without losing each other. For some, this is an easy task. For others, it takes several days of trial and error.

Here's Phoebe with her twins, Ursus and Ursula.
Phoebe is a very caring mother, but she can't count. Sometimes she has one white lamb following her.
Sometimes she has as many as five! As long as she has at least one at her side, and as long as all the lambs following her are white, she figures that's close enough. After all, with this many white lambs running around, who can keep track?
Here's Peri, with her white twins, Ulric and Ulrica. I was worried that Peri would have a hard time being a mom this year, because one of her ankles was destroyed by a rattlesnake bite last summer, so she has to hop on 3 legs. But so far, she's doing fine.

Ulrica stays close to her mom.

But Ulric is apt to wander off and get lost. He usually ends up being the 3rd lamb following Phoebe instead.

Here's Moriah, very proud and protective of her surprise spotted ewe lamb, Ulani:

Pandora's white ewe lamb, Utopia, looks like she may end up being as large and well-built as her mom.
Halsa's black mouflon spotted ewe lamb, Udara, has so much white covering her mouflon markings that it was tricky deciphering her genetics to figure out what her real color was.

Poppy's babies are Ulyssia:

And Ulysses:
Una continues to be as cute and stout as can be.
Dainty little Unity frisks around:
One of our cats, Oliver Sudden, stops by for a drink:


Tonight is the first night I'm leaving the pasture gate open so the ewes and lambs can stay out there after dark if they want to. The temperature was in the mid-80s (F) today, so the hot sunny pasture wasn't as enjoyable to them during the daylight hours.

My rams are a bit thinner than I'd like them to be, since all the ewes have been getting the majority of the attention lately. So to give them a treat, I opened the ram pen gate and let them out onto the lawn to graze on the new grass. They are pretty happy about that!

The lilacs and cherry trees are in full bloom here, so the air is filled with sweet perfume. And at sunset, the sky put on one of its fiery displays that we are so privileged to enjoy:

Signs of Spring

It has been a late spring, with record amounts of snow in many parts of the country. My sister's farm in Maine is still buried in snow, and lots of other friends who live in Northern states are still coping with the white stuff too.

So I thought I'd take a few minutes this afternoon to celebrate and share all the spring wonderfulness here on my farm.

Take a deep breath, and say, "AHHHHH, Spring!"




And, of course, the best part of spring, new lambs!

This is Umber, who was born this morning. See all his fancy flashing spots on his face?

Turning Over A New Leaf

On Monday, it was snowing with a low in the 20s. On Friday, it was 80 F. Today it got up into the 50s, but felt much colder.

Despite (or maybe because of?) all that confusion, today for the very first time this spring, all the trees in my yard decided to put out their very first, tiny little leaf buds. They're still so small, not even as big as my littlest fingernail, but they've arrived.

No matter what the temperatures do now, spring is truly here!

First Flowers

Yesterday when I stepped outside to do chores, it smelled like spring for the first time. Our neighbors have daffodils blooming by the roadside. We'd probably have daffodils too, except we let the sheep roam the yard all winter, which means all flowers get eaten before they can grow.

However, this afternoon when I went to the mailbox to get the mail, I noticed a clump of Siberian Squill blooming there. So, it's official, we have flowers blooming here!

I sold some of the sheep hides from my website today, and am still waiting for two of the horse sales to finalize. It looks like one more horse may be sold soon too---Libby currently has 3 people interested in her, and one of them just contacted me about scheduling a pre-purchase exam, so it seems like a few of these sales ought to be finalized soon.

It's looking a little late for selling Maggie before she foals, though, since she's due in about 3-4 weeks. That's really too late for me to feel comfortable shipping her very far. So unless I find a local buyer within the next couple of weeks, we'll be having a foal here in early April. That's not such a bad thing, since Maggie is an experienced broodmare and a great mother. But I did hope to finalize most of the horse sales before lambing time started. Looks like it's going to be no such luck.

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!

Those Who Went Before

If you live in an old house, people invariably ask you if it's haunted.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in ghosts, but I love ghost stories. I'm open to the existence of things we can't explain, but so far I've never witnessed anything that made me suspect that Ingleside is haunted.

Even so, Halloween is a time to remember the dead. In that spirit, I'd like to introduce you to Those Who Went Before: the residents of Ingleside's very own family cemetery.

When we purchased Ingleside, the cemetery was so densely overgrown with thorn bushes, vines, and poison ivy, we would never even have known it was there if the realtor hadn't told us. You could not even SEE into it, much less enter.

About a year and a half ago, our friends Randy and Nyxana spent a strenuous and rather hazardous day with us, clearing out as much of thorny, toxic growth as we could. We were not able to get rid of it all, but we opened it up enough that since that time our sheep and horses have cleared out most of the rest.

(Yeah, I know... I felt a little bad about letting animals roam over the graves, but the cemetery IS located in our back pasture. Besides, I figure a few animals wandering through is better than being completely covered in poison ivy.)

If time and finances ever allow, I'd eventually like to tear down the old, broken fence and erect a new fence around the cemetery to keep the animals out, and restore the area inside to a more pleasant, garden-like setting. They're not my relatives, but they were our "ancestors" as far as owning the farm. So I'd like their graves to have a little more dignity than they've been allowed over the past few decades.


Front row, right to left:

Charles D. Agee
1861 - 1940

Charles Davis Agee purchased Ingleside from Parke Poindexter Perkins Bentley for the sum of $800. The purchase date is unknown, but my guess is that it was probably between 1887 (when Parke's father Thomas Fearn Perkins, who originally owned Ingleside, died and presumably left the farm to her) and 1894 (which is the date of the first "Agee" burial in the cemetery).

You can read more about Charles Agee and Ingleside's history here.


Hattie V. Agee
1872 - 1956

Hattie Virginia Garrett Agee (known as "Virgie") was Charles Agee's wife.

You can read more about their life at Ingleside here.

Alma E. Agee
(birth date illegible due to broken stone) 1895
June 19, 1944
Her memory is blessed.

Across the top of the stone, it says:
Adjutant

Alma was the daughter of Charles and Hattie ("Virgie"). I presume the "Adjutant" refers to her rank during her extensive work with the Salvation Army.

You can read more about her life at Ingleside here.


Mary L. Agee
1903 - 1966

Mary was another daughter of Charles and "Virgie."

Middle row, right to left:

James F. Garrett
1846 - 1895

James Garrett was Virgie's father.

James D. Agee
Nov 15, 1893
June 18, 1894

above name, it says:
Gone to be an angel

I haven't found any record of who this infant was, but given the name and dates, I'm guessing he was the son of Charles and Virgie.

Minnie E. Agee
July 31, 1901
Sept 10, 1901

Above name it says something that is illegible due to the broken stone.
It starts with "As" and ends with "Jesus"

Again, I don't have any records of her, but considering the dates, I'm guessing she was another daughter of Charles and Virgie.

Judith A. Garrett
1847 - 1935

Judith A. Davidson Garrett was James Garrett's wife and Virgie's mother.

Far back, right corner:

Sarah J. Lewis
1838 - 1924

Sarah Jane Davidson Lewis was Judith Garrett's sister, and Virgie's aunt.

Far back, left corner:

Agnes R. Garrett
1898 - 1904
Nettie B. Garrett
1902 - 1904

I don't know who these little girls belong to, or what sickness or tragedy took them at the same time at so young an age. Presumably, they must be cousins to the Agee family, related through James Garrett.

If you enjoyed the historical accounts of some of the residents listed above, here are a few more accounts about the lives of family members who are NOT buried in our cemetery:

• Willie Agee (Charles and Virgie's son)
• Roy Jones (husband of Ruth Agee, another of Charle's and Virgie's daughters)
• Arthur Garrett (Virgie's brother)

If anyone who reads this has any additional information about any of Ingleside's former residents, I would love to hear more about them!

First Frost

Summer is really, truly over now.

Yesterday, Ken turned on the heat in the house for the first time this fall. Last night, I put the electric mattress-pad on the bed. That has to be one of my favorite all-time inventions. There's nothing like a toasty warm bed to lull me to sleep better than anything else.

We had our first frost last night, so it was pretty chilly out. When the nights are cold, the first thing the horses do in the morning is pick a patch of sun and lie down to take a nap and absorb all the warm rays.

As you can see by the photo, I guess Shane and Libby decided it would be even warmer if they snuggled up together!

My cat Sterling has been rather persistently bringing me "gifts" lately. Two mice in the space of half an hour yesterday. This morning, before dawn, he brought in a live bird and released it to flap around my office. I had to toss him out of the room and then open all the windows and chase the bird around for 20 minutes before it finally went out.

I do have some good news today: Libby has found a buyer! She's not going to leave right away, as the person is going to pay for her over the next three months, but it's great to know that she'll be going to a good home with someone who appreciates her excellent potential.

I'm not sure what's going on with the other potential buyers at the moment. I've been having a lot of problems with some of my email not getting through lately, so I'm never sure if someone (1) never got my original message, (2) replied and I didn't receive their message, or (3) dropped of the face of the planet.

I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Sleeping With Cats

Fall is truly here now. Days are pleasantly mild, some nights are getting downright chilly. My basic daily attire has switched from tank tops and shorts to sweat jackets and "where the heck did I pack my jeans away last May anyway?"

And the cats have started wanting to sleep on the bed again. I can judge how cold it is outside by how many of our eight cats try to sleep with me at once.

Last night, there were only two, and they only stayed part of the night before heading off to prowl outside again. Later in the winter, when it's truly cold outside, there'll be mornings when I wake up with five of them piled all around me.

They all have different personalities on the bed. My oldest cat, Eoghan, prefers to sleep on the upper corner of the bed, next to my pillow. Sterling likes to pounce on any toes that wiggle under the blankets. Echo, if you let her, would literally drape herself across your face to sleep, that's how close she wants to be.

The funniest cat of all is Aspen, our long haired calico. She is very dainty and polite, but she really, REALLY likes a warm place to sleep. On cold nights, she'll climb up on the bed and walk around, trying to get me to open up the covers so she can crawl under the blankets with me. If I happen to be asleep and don't get her hint immediately, she climbs up by my head, grabs a mouthful of my hair in her teeth, and pulls on it---hard!---until I wake up and let her in where she wants to be.

Many years ago when we lived in Illinois, we had another cat, an orange Maine Coon named Aesun, who was a wonderful pet, but kind of high strung. He liked to lie on the bed with us, but he would never relax enough to actually sleep there.

Except one night, he must have accidentally dozed off at the foot of the bed, because sometime in the middle of the night, I twitched my foot a little bit and it bumped into Aesun. Startled awake, and clearly thinking he was under attack, he fled the rooms so fast, I think his paws barely touched the floor.

Ken and I woke to hear him crash into a bedpost, hit the bedroom door, and ricochet---twice---off the walls of the hallway before coming to a halt in the living room. A single thought filled both of our surprised, drowsy minds:

"Oh no. The cat's exploded!"

Like Lambs to the Slaughter

Now is the time of year when I have to step down from my role as Nurturing Farm Mom, and become the steely and implacable Grim Reaper.

It's the time of year when we send the lambs to slaughter---and I have to be the one who chooses who lives and who dies.

I feel very fortunate that our breeding stock lambs tend to sell very well, because all of our best lambs are usually gone by October anyway. I hate to have to send a really high-quality ram to slaughter just because we had more rams than we needed!

Today we sent three ram lambs: one that was a runt, one that just wasn't built wide enough to meet my criteria for a breeding ram, and one that actually had an excellent build. I was reluctant to send him, but we just didn't need another ram.

I also sent a yearling ewe, Sally. She was the only living offspring of my favorite ewe, Portia, that died last year after she got her horns caught in our hammock ropes and hanged herself overnight.

Portia had horrible heat and parasite susceptibility, so losing her was probably a good thing for my flock genetics. Sally, though more resistant than her mother, still ended up having a very hard time with heat and parasites this summer, so I made the decision to cull that line completely.

We do have one more "extra" ram lamb that may end up going to the butcher eventually, but for now we don't have any more room in our freezer, so he gets to stick around for a while longer.

The one bright side to all these death decisions is that as soon as slaughter season is done, breeding season begins, and I can turn my attention toward the new life we'll be creating for next spring.

A Time of Mourning

For the past two days, I've been restless, anxious, melancholy, and I didn't know why. I pace around the house as if looking for something, but I can't remember what. I fidget. I sigh. I feel on the brink of tears for no apparent reason.

It's a strange sensation. I feel like someone whose heart was broken by the recent death or loss or betrayal of a loved one, only I can't remember who. I want to mourn, but I don't know why.

For two days, I've pondered why I'm feeling so "off."

Is it because I'm still upset about the snobbish horse lady I wrote about yesterday? Is it because I'm lonely with Ken being away? Is it because my little bottle lamb Tiramisu died yesterday? Is it because it's "that time of the month"?

Then it hit me.

It's my annual Fall depression swooping in, right on schedule. I don't know why it always comes as a surprise to me, but every year it always feels like the first time. I guess that's just how heartbreaks work.

I'm not sure exactly how to explain it. I'm just one of those people who is deeply connected to the cycles of the earth and the seasons. Every spring, I fall madly in love---with the earth, with the season, with Life itself. The strengthening sun, the warm nights, the smell of honeysuckle and plum blossoms set me reeling in an ecstasy of seasonal bliss.

In the summer, I confess, I take my love for granted. The land and I do our mutual work like a comfortable married couple, sometimes cooperating, sometimes squabbling---Where is the rain I need? Why must it be so hot today?---but essentially moving in harmony.

Then, every year at about this time, a subtle dread creeps through me, filling me with this inexplicable sense of loss and longing. Even though the cooler temperatures are a relief after the scorching summer heat, the air no longer feels like a caress. My loved one---the warm, green season---slips away.

Come spring, there will be another green season, and I will fall in love all over again. But THIS beautiful season is gone forever. It will never come again, and there will never be another one exactly like it.

That is why I mourn.