New Guinea Hog

I haven't been posting much here lately, because not much has be going on except the heat.   Hot, Hotter, HOTTEST!  Temperatures this weekend are supposed to be 106, with a heat index of 122!  No rain in sight, and the pastures are withered to dust. 

With weather this brutal, there's not much we can do but hunker down and try to wait it out.  It doesn't make for very interesting blog posts!

However, I do have a bit of news today.  Because we've gotten such a lot of inquiries from people interested in buying Guinea hog piglets, we decided to invest in a second boar now instead of waiting until next year.  This way, we can breed each of our sows to a different boar, and be able to offer buyers unrelated pairs (or groups) of piglets for sale.

Our sow Cerridwen is already pregnant by Magick.  Our younger sow Circe has just turned old enough to breed, and today we just brought home a new 5-month old boar to be her boyfriend.  His name is Jack.  He's still young and quite a bit smaller than her, so it may be another month or two before they successfully mate.  But at least Circe has company now.

I think she's feeling smug about finally not being the youngest, smallest pig on the farm.  She ignored her new beau for quite a while, then launched into the "Let's just get one thing straight right up front" and "While you're living in MY pen, you're going to live by MY rules" routines.  She chased him around a bit, not in a vicious way, just letting him know who's boss.  He's smart enough to keep out of her way, but he's not actually scared of her.

Young Jack also met Cerridwen and Magick through the fence.  Magick is so mellow (and Jack is so much smaller) that he didn't even really bother to posture and get all masculine and territorial toward the newcomer.  Which is nice.  That means that I don't have to worry about them sharing a fenceline for now.

Snow Sheep

It started snowing here last night at about 4:00 pm. Twenty-one hours later, and it's still coming down. The snow is about knee deep now, with is a huge amount for Virginia.

One of our sheep shelters collapsed from the snow, but fortunately, it was the one in the paddock the sheep aren't in right now, so we can wait to fix it at a more convenient time.

Since it doesn't snow here very often, I rarely get the opportunity to take pictures of my sheep in the snow. So, even though it was still dark and snowy out, I took some today.

Small, medium, or large? Wotan, Ukraine, and Nicholai follow me through the snow.


Ken helps carry hay through the snow to the ram paddock.


Nicholai, always photogenic.


Nothing bothers Ultra.


Pretty Tsarina.


Where do Icelandic sheep come from? They hatch from snow drifts, of course!


Snowy flock.

Lightning and Lightning Bugs

Back on June 16th, I took a video of a lightning storm playing over our big pasture. If you look closely, you can see lightning bugs rising up out of the grass at the same time. It was beautiful.

Here are a couple of still clips from the video:

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.

Ingleside Farm Maternity Ward

Two days of cold, constant rain have turned the paddocks into soupy, slippery muck.

Although I don't know her due date, my big white ewe Phoebe is starting to look kind of close to lambing, and I didn't want to take a chance on having her decide to lamb out in a sloshy, cold mud puddle somewhere, so I decided it was time that the Ingleside Farm Maternity Ward was open for business.

It's not fancy, but on a gray, drizzly day, it's kind of snug and pleasant, with the sound of the rain pattering on the roof overhead.

All I had to do was open the barn door, and half the flock poured inside. I just shoved the two I wanted into the pens, and then pushed everybody else back outside. I put two ewes inside because they are more relaxed if they have a companion. The ones I put inside are Phoebe and Mona, because they are the two who are looking closest to lambing.

I don't know if they will really lamb very soon. It could still be a week off, for all I know. But for now they seem happy to have dry, clean, private beds and no competition for their supper, so they're happy to play along.

Here's Phoebe in her pen, with my bed, chair, and my snuggly barn cat, Madrigal, in the foreground:


There are three lambing pens. The middle one is a bit bigger, so I can fit two or three ewes in there to wait, if several are due soon and I'm not sure who will go first. Thanks to my creative configuration of work lights and extension cords, the whole area is well lit, even though the barn itself doesn't have electricity.


Here's Mona in the third pen. Because the pens are so open and airy, with mesh walls, I can see into all three pens from my bed, without having to get up and check on the ewes separately.


And here's the waiting area, where I'll be spending a lot of my nights very soon. The bed is actually very comfortable. It's made from 4 hay bales laid side-by-side. Then an old wool blanket to cover up the prickly hay. Then a camping mattress, two sleeping bags, and an old satin comforter (the satin is good because it repels dirt and hay chaff and can be shaken out easily). I'll bring pillows, books, and snacks with me when I come out to actually sleep here.

Maddy the cat spends most of her time here now. She loves the barn bed! She can get in and out of this room even when the doors are shut, by climbing up the wall and squeezing in the gap next to the ceiling that leads to the 2nd story of the barn. It's surprising to be sitting there, quietly listening to the sheep chewing their hay, only to have a cat suddenly drop from the ceiling!

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!

Web Work

I've been neglecting the blog for the past few days because I've been very busy doing web site design work.

First, I'm doing a very extensive site for lovely Bloomin Acres Farm in Arkansas. It has many pages and is taking a lot of planning and organizing to get it all set up. It's not done yet, but when it is, I'll post a link.

Second, I just updated my sheep website in preparation for spring lambing time. I'm getting lots of inquiries for lamb sales already, and some folks came this past weekend to look at the flock and buy my ENTIRE selection of bargain, salvage, and sale fleeces. Now all I have left for sale are 12 premium fleeces. And I haven't even advertised, that's how well these fleeces sell!

And third, I just redesigned my sister's farm site and gave it its first update in several years. Horses, ponies, Maine Coon cats, chickens, goats, gorgeous mountain scenery... Lots of pretty photos on this one. Everyone should check it out!

I still have my horse website to update too, and horse for sale ads to update. I'm getting a little tired of staring at the computer all day every day---I can't wait for lambing season!

Not much else has been going on, on the farm. We had another big windstorm this weekend, and it completely shattered our sturdiest sheep shelter that Ken built. Fortunately no sheep were hurt when the wreckage flipped over and crashed to the other side of the paddock! But this is all the more reason why we need to build real, solid sheep shelters before next winter. I'm getting tired of all these ugly tarp shelters that can't handle our extreme wind!

Leaderless

A light, freezing rain has been falling all day.

Although I opened all the pasture gates so the horses could choose to go take shelter down in the cedar thicket or come around to the barn and go inside the run-in bay, instead they are standing outside: cold, wet, and miserable.

Without their boss-mare Char here to lead them to shelter, the rest of the horses apparently can't get organized enough to figure out what to do. Maggie, the oldest, knows that something should be done, but waits for someone else to decide what that something is.

Callisto tries to lead the babies to the cedar thicket, but they all get distracted halfway there, and stand around dripping in the pasture instead.

Finally, about 2 minutes before we went out to give them an early feeding, Maggie figured out that she could lead Callista around to the paddock where the run-in bay is. Unfortunately, from that paddock, she could SEE that we were putting hay in the hay feeder, but she didn't remember how to go back around the other way to actually GET to the feeder.

The babies all came galloping when I whistled, but Maggie and Callista had to be led around the back way until they remembered how to go around to where the feeder was.

Once the hay feeder is empty, we'll see if any of them remember how to come back around to shelter again!

Fire and Wind

The wind roared through here all day yesterday. It shook the house, shredded a couple of the sheep shelters, blew everything that wasn't nailed down across the yard. It was like being at the bottom of a floodwater river---only with air instead of water: just that constant feeling of fierce current pulling at you.

Due to the low humidity, warm temperatures, and ferocious winds, the weather report had warned of a high risk of fires. As it turned out, they were right! There were several fires in the area, including one large one on the hillside that I can see from my office window.

Smoke poured out of it in huge billows all afternoon and evening, but it seems to have quieted down by this morning. I don't envy the firefighters who had to do battle with it in those fierce winds!

The gossip down at the local corner store is that it may have happened from the wind blowing down some power lines and starting the fire that way, but we don't know for sure.

Anticlimatic

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but that really wasn't much of a storm last night.

After all the extravagant claims on the weather web sites, all we ended up getting was a short period of gusty wind, and a quick downpour. The sheep shelters are all still in one piece this morning, and now the sun is out in a clear blue sky.

Much better than the damaging wind, rain, hail, and thunderstorms they were predicting!

I'm reminded of the years when Ken and I lived in Illinois, when we would make fun of the TV weather casters because they were always trying to make their weather reports sound more urgent than they really were.

My favorite was a day one November when the manic-sounding weather man was raving about how today was going to be the "COLDEST DAY IN SIX MONTHS!!!!"

Ummm.... yeah. A day in November is going to be the coldest day since May? Shocking!

Storm Is Coming

Well, apparently I was so sad about Char leaving that I got the date wrong. No, not the date that David is arriving---I actually lost track of what day of the week it was yesterday. My only excuse is that my insomnia is back, so I am somewhat sleep deprived. Either that, or I'm simply becoming a flaky airhead in my old (middle?) age. :-)

So anyway, I have another day before Char and Scylla leave, maybe more than one, if the weather delays David on the road. There's a storm coming this way that is supposed to give us damaging wind, heavy rain, and thunder tonight. Our temperatures are unseasonably warm here (mid 70s!), but further west and north, the storm has been dropping snow and ice.

Ken and I fed the horses early, to get it done before the storm hits. Then we spend some time reinforcing some of the sheep's tarp shelters so they (hopefully) don't tear themselves to shreds in the wind. The big, wooden-framed tarp shelter Ken built for the ewe pen was catching the wind and trying to lift itself up and flip over, even though it's firmly attached to the fence, so we actually roped the uphill edge of it down with extra pieces of baling twine tied to cinder blocks and to the fence.

Things you can never have too much of on a farm: baling twine, duct tape, tarps, cinder blocks, hoses, buckets, and fence panels.

And, of course, a good supply of quality hay!

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.

Windy Morning, Fillies at Play

It rained all night, and now this morning the wind is roaring across our hill: a perfect recipe for feisty horses.

When I got up, I decided to let all the horses, both mares and fillies, out into the big pasture to play while I tried to capture some pretty photos in the morning light.

Here are a few:

The Woodpecker Hunt

Today my cats Henry and Aspen decided that they would try to catch a woodpecker. Mighty hunters that they are, they thought the best way to go about this was to climb as quickly as possible up the tree the woodpecker was pecking.

Obviously, the woodpecker had nothing to worry about!


I haven't been putting many photos on the blog lately, so just for a treat, here's a sunset I photographed last week. Our spectacular sunrise and sunset views are one of the things I treasure about living here on this farm:

Bucket Brigade

It's a cold, dry day today. Everything is hard and bright and frozen solid. Temperatures are supposed to drop to 11 degrees Fahrenheit tonight.

Now, I grew up in Maine, so I know that 11 degrees is nothing to some of you northern folks. But it's just about as cold as it ever gets down here. It brings up lots of challenges, because our farm is not set up well to deal with temperatures this low.

For example, we don't even have a frost-free outdoor faucet. We just have the regular kind of faucet that sticks out of the foundation of the house. From there, I run a long, long hose across the yard and down to the animal paddocks so that I can fill the 500+ gallons of water troughs per day.

In cold weather, the faucet freezes. And if the hoses are not laid straight and completely drained of all water, they freeze too. When that happens, we have a portable propane heater that we light and tuck in the crawl space under the house to thaw the faucet. If the afternoon is going to get warm enough, I lay the hoses in the sun and hope they thaw in time for me to water the animals.

If the afternoon is not going to be warm enough to thaw the hoses outside, we have two choices: Either drag 250' of frozen, dirty hose into the house, cram it into the bathtub stall, and let it heat up in a tub of hot water until it thaws, or else fill buckets in the kitchen sink and make a gazillion trips, carrying buckets by hand.

All the animals needed the ice in their troughs broken and removed today, of course, but only the sheep and the young horses needed their troughs refilled. So we opted to do the bucket brigade.

We collected all the spare buckets we could find (we save every empty cat litter bucket we ever get, because a farm can never have too many buckets) and started filling them in the kitchen sink and in the bathtub. I didn't count how many trips we had to take, but Ken and I both worked up a good sweat doing it.

As a special treat, we used warm water, which the animals really appreciated. I feel bad for the poor sheep, who were sheared a month late this year and have very little wool regrowth yet. But Icelandic sheep are used to cold weather, and they don't really seem very bothered about it.

I like our Virginia climate. I'm glad that we don't have very many days in the year like this one. In the interests of efficiency, I always look at what the weather is predicted to be, and every day that it's warm enough for me to water the animals using the hose, I fill everybody's troughs right up to the brim, just in case the next day will be another day when I have to do the bucket brigade.

Brrrrrr!

Our house is a wind tunnel because of the cat door, which faces directly into our prevailing wind direction and funnels the cold air from the Blue Ridge Mountains straight up the long central hallway that runs through the middle of the house.

Normally on windy days, I close the cat door to keep the wind out. But apparently last time we cleaned up the stack of junk mail piled on the kitchen counter, we didn't notice that the cat door was tucked into the stack, and we threw it out with the trash. Whoops!

So now we have nothing to close the hole with, and all day today the wind was blowing straight in, chilling the whole house as if we'd left a window open. I blocked it as best I could, but tomorrow my project is to cut a piece of something (maybe the sturdy plastic lid from a cat litter bucket?) to make a new cat door. We can't be wasting heating fuel like this---the hole needs to be plugged!

I keep thinking that we'd have a lot less wind chill in the house if we closed in the back porch. But every part of the year but winter, I love the openness of the porch. It's not very deep, so closing it in might make it feel cramped. Besides, we'd miss those Blue Ridge breezes during the warmer months of the year.

I have chilly "air conditioning" problems of my own. Every pair of jeans I own, except for one, has a large hole in the right thigh where I wore through the denim stacking hay bales. I always use my right knee to help me boost the bales to the top of the stack, and the abrasive hay wears right through my pants. So now I'm stuck doing chores outside in the cold, windy weather, with holes in my jeans the size of my palm. Brrrr!

I need to shop for new jeans sometime---and also new sneakers, since I've worn mine right through until the soles are falling off---but I just hate jeans-and-sneaker shopping. It's so boring and annoying trying on pair after pair that all look pretty much the same on the shelf but fit completely differently when you try them on.

When I do go shopping, I think I'll look for some nice thermal long johns too. That will make going out to do chores a lot less uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, maybe I'll dig out some of my stash of old jeans that don't fit me anymore. I bet I can pirate some large enough pieces off the jeans that don't fit to patch the jeans that do.

Counting Our Chickens

It was a rainy day today, so instead of disassembling the big sheep shelter to move it to the main ewe paddock, as we had planned, Ken and I instead spent some time today discussing our plans for getting chickens in the spring.

The farm has good sized old chicken house, but it's very dilapidated. Plus it's old enough that I'm not sure that the old paint that's chipping off it might not be lead-based paint. So, we decided we don't really want to try to fix up the old chicken house.

It would be really nice to tear down that house and build a nice replacement one in the same spot, but that would be a pretty significant project, and building a new house might make getting the chickens more of an investment than we want to make right now.

So we've been looking at lots and lots of other chicken shelter plans: hoop houses, range shelters, straw bale shelters, you name it. We're weighing the pros and cons of a permanent chicken house in a safe, convenient place vs. a portable shelter in the pasture where the chickens get fresh ground more often but we have to take the time to move them frequently---while also preventing rampaging horses from crushing the chicken shelter to pieces just for the fun of it.

We also have to consider that we get very strong winds here quite often, so a lot of the portable shelters that are light enough to move frequently would also be prone to blowing away on our windy days.

I think for now we're leaning towards a compromise design: A sheltered, semi-permanent location, convenient to the house, which has lots of shade and about 1/3 of an acre already fenced in poultry-appropriate fencing. We'd make a permanent-type wooden floor, just as if we were going to build a wooden house, and then top it with a roof of arched cattle panels and tarps (sealed in with 1" mesh to keep predators out).

Later, if we wanted to finish building a wooden chicken house on top of it, we could take the mesh-and-tarp roof off and use the same floor. And meanwhile, the current house plan would be both easy and inexpensive to build.

Of course, it'll be several months before it's time to get the baby chicks, so we have lots of time to think and rethink the plan before we make our final choice.

In case anyone's wondering, I've had my breed of chicken picked out for years now. I'll be getting Buff Orpingtons. I like them for several reasons: They are a dual-purpose breed, good for both eggs and meat. They are known to set their own eggs, so I can raise baby chicks naturally, without messing around with incubators. They're docile, don't fly much, don't make a lot of noise, and when they do make noise their voices are deeper and more melodious---not like the shrill, ear-splitting shrieks of some of the other breeds.

We've gotten so we do like to have the big "farm-type" breakfasts with eggs pretty often, so it will be great to be able to supply all of our own eggs and have chickens for the freezer as well.

Stopping the Draft

Yesterday the wind roared across the farm all day like a river in flood---a constant, turbulent force pouring over us, straight from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Branches fell from trees, fallen leaves rushed in swarms to the southern side of all the paddocks, anything left unattended outside tended to take flight and blow away.

Unfortunately, our cat door faces directly north, where the wind comes from. The house was freezing all day, with a terrible draft, until we noticed that the wind was blowing so hard that it was blowing the flap of the cat door open, and letting a stream of cold air blow directly up the house's long central hallway.

We closed it right away, to stop the draft, and the house warmed up again, somewhat. Unfortunately, it had been so many months since the cat door had been closed, our cats had apparently forgotten what litterboxes are for.

They also were not observant enough to notice that we opened the cat door again after the wind died down.

We didn't realize that the cats were trying to be polite and hold in the call of nature until around bedtime, when Echo came upstairs into the bedroom where we were, scratched around in the corner where we used to keep a litterbox (but don't anymore), and finally peed a HUGE puddle of urine onto the floor.

I grabbed her and carried her downstairs and shoved her out the cat door, so she could see that it was open again. Then I came back up to mop up the accident. While doing so, I noticed that Oliver was slinking around the room, looking anxious and guilty, so I grabbed him too. As I carried him to the cat door as well, I could tell that his bladder was VERY full. I think I averted a second accident by mere moments.

Poor kitties, they didn't remember that we do have litterboxes, and once they saw that the cat door was shut, it didn't occur to them to check whether it might have been opened again.

Mucking Out

We've been so busy trying to keep the farm afloat lately that we haven't been able to keep up with some of the lower-level chores as well as I'd like to. For instance, we haven't mucked out the horse paddocks in way too long.

So Ken and I got started with that this afternoon. We managed to haul out 3 pickup truckloads of manure before we got exhausted and before it started raining. There's still a lot more to do, but it was good to make a start.

Of course, now that it's raining all night, all the manure is going to be waterlogged, soupy, and extra-heavy tomorrow, which will make further progress more difficult. But it's got to be done.

While we were mucking out, we spent some time talking about the statistic I read, that says that a horse produces 50 lbs. of manure per day. With our 15 horses, that means they produce 750 lbs. of manure per day, 22,500 lbs. per month, or 273,750 lbs. (137 tons) per year. No wonder my back aches tonight!

It drizzled a little bit while we were working, but it only started really raining hard a few minutes ago, so I went outside with a flashlight and umbrella to open the pasture gate for the broodmares.

Senter has his new shelter, and the baby horses have their run-in bay of the barn. But the broodmares have no shelter. We had our neighbor come prepare a spot this summer with his backhoe so we could build them a new shelter, but then the money for building the shelter itself ended up having to all go to pay for the rising hay costs due to the drought.

So now, whenever it rains or snows, I let the mares out into the big pasture so they can go take shelter in the thick trees. Of course they usually DON'T take shelter, preferring instead to roam around nibbling grass. But at least I can sleep, knowing they have the option of shelter if they want it.

Anyway, when I went out tonight it was pitch black out, and I was this scary shape in the darkness with my flashlight and umbrella. So I didn't know if the mares would come when I whistled to them to let them know I was opening the gate.

I needn't have worried!

As soon as they heard my whistle, there was a tremendous thundering of hoofbeats in the darkness as they all galloped toward the gate. It's a little scary, hearing a herd of horses you can't see galloping straight at you in the dark!

But I waved the flashlight to make sure they knew where I was, and they poured around me and raced out into the big pasture. Despite the darkness, they galloped a full circuit of the pasture before settling down to graze.

Apparently they have no intention of sheltering under the trees tonight while there are still a few green blades of grass to eat. They may be wet, but at least I know they're happy.

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!