Aberdeen

Gonzo

Snow and the lambs

The heat index at Juniper Moon Farm was 110 degrees today.

Lots of this going on today.

The sheep are so miserable. You’d think they’d spread out to stay cool but they don’t overmuch.

It’s sweet how the mamas still let their babies snuggle right up to them even though it must be like being plastered against a radiator.

Linda, on the other hand, loves this heat. Her arthritis doesn’t seem to effect her as much and she’s getting around much better.

All the goats are happy enough. Dimples has grown like a weed since the Spring Shearing.

The chickens spend most of the day trying to stay cool under the landscaping.

Ethel and her chicks, scratching for food. I have to say, having a mama hen to raise the new chicks is so much easier than ordering day-olds and doing it ourselves. Natural clearly knows what she’s doing.

We had a brief but lovely thunderstorm this afternoon that cooled things down a lot. Cini was thrilled.

I’m sure the gardens were happy too. It has been so dry out there! But still, we have at least a dozen varieties of lilies in bloom and my Magnolia tree has one great big beautiful bud. Can’t wait to watch it open.

Here’s something you may not know about me: I am a freak. No matter how excited I am about going on an adventure I always get anxious and homesick even before I leave the farm. When I went out to feed the flock tonight I was on the verge of tears. How can I possibly contemplate going away for 6 whole days?

Oh how I will miss that tiny little lamb!

How can I leave Sabine and Lucy?

And Cini! He’s the hardest working livestock guardian dog in show biz.

But he also has a hilarious side. Just look at that smile!

I will even miss the pesky Hannah.

I will especially miss my sweet Gulliver. He is really a one woman dog and he gets kind of depressed when I’m away. Seriously, Maggie has to force him to get out of bed every day when I’m gone.

I’m sure I’ll have a great time at Squam. And I’m even surer I’ll be super-excited to get back to the farm on Sunday.

It might be a holiday weekend but the sheep don’t take any time off at Juniper Moon Farm. I had been letting some chores pile up and today was the day to get them off my plate.

In the morning, Maggie and I wormed, deloused and hoof-trimmed all the boys and the goats in the west pasture. It was still pretty cool when we got started, thank God. Worming is a piece of cake but hoof-trimming is filthy work, takes forever and makes me wonder why I still have goats. (The sheep’s hooves are much harder and only need trimming a couple of times a year. Angora goats’ hooves must be done every six weeks or so. Sheep don’t need to be deloused either, but it’s not such a big deal as it only takes about 15 seconds per animal.)

Since it wasn’t blazing hot when we finished I decided to mow the lawn to get it over with. I hate mowing the lawn, not because it’s hard but because it’s boring as hell. Boring and loud. I felt very grown-up since I did it anyway.

Next, Maggie and I loaded up her truck and took a huge load of brush and recyclables to the landfill. By then it was blazing hot, so we didn’t start on worming the ewes and lambs until 6 p.m.

This was the Tiny Man’s first time getting wormed, so we took a couple of pics for his baby book.*

After each animal is wormed, they get a red stripe with a livestock marker on their nose so we can easily tell who’s been done. (Yes, it comes off. Every time I show pictures of animals that have been marked some one asks in the comments. It comes off. I promise.)

A whole pen full of wormed ewes and lambs is a beautiful sight.

Miss Ethel is still sitting on her clutch of eggs and she protects them rather fiercely! I tried to give her some grain tonight and she pecked my hand. From here on out, she’s on her own.

Now I’m making sugar syrup to feed the bees, after which I expect I will collapse in an exhausted heap. Hope you had a terrific Saturday, my friends. More tomorrow.

*No, Rush doesn’t really have a baby book. That was a joke.

Maggie and I spent the day fixing the fences in the ewes pasture. Well, mostly Maggie fixed the fences while I ran back and forth to Tractor Supply. I think we have all the supplies we need to get the job finished tomorrow before the insane heat comes back.

I spent the weekend in DC and had a lovely, much-needed break. Ate some sushi. Saw a movie. Slept late. It was just what I needed. Of course, now I feel terribly behind. I’ll try to catch up tomorrow but in the meantime, enjoy these pictures of Rushworth, a.k.a. Tiny Lamb. He is doing very well, grazing and eating grain as well as nursing from his mama. He has gained weight and is getting so tall that he actually has to duck a bit when he nurses now!

More news tomorrow.

Before I get into the farm update I want to say an enormous thank you for all the birthday cards, gifts, wishes, emails and tweets! I can honestly say that my 40th Birthday was the best one I’ve ever had, thanks to all of you. I’m regularly spoiled by all the lovely things you all send me even when it’s not my birthday and I’m pretty sure the luckiest person I know.

Well, my unplugged weekend didn’t exactly go as planned. I did (mostly) avoid the internet from Friday to Sunday, but several things went wrong with the flock and I was up to my ears in stress nevertheless. On Friday night around Midnight, Miss Liberty decided that she didn’t like the way Lucy was looking at her lamb through the fence, so she repeatedly rammed the gate until I heard the ruckus and went outside to stop her. The result was a cut on her head and a bloody nose. I got her penned up with Knightly, her lamb, and doctored up her wounds before finally getting to bed around 2 a.m.

Bloody wounds are bad news in the Spring and Summer when the flies are a problem. Flystrike is a nasty business and all cuts must be treated with an anti-fly ointment ASAP.

Liberty and Knightly are fine and she seems to have calmed down.

Saturday got off to a lovely start. My good friends Kris and Charlie brought me lunch, we walked across the street to an art show and spent some time just talking about nothing. My favorite kind of Saturday, actually. Then my aunt Ann and cousin Jack (15-year-old) came over to spend the night. We went out to dinner in C-ville and watched a movie. All good stuff.

Disaster very nearly struck in the morning when Jack found Alabama tangled up in the moveable fencing and choking to death. Luckily, Jack didn’t lose his head and we were able to cut Bama free of the fence, but he was in very bad shape. I built another pen and doctored all the deep cuts that the wire fencing left in his skin. The fence had been wrapped around his face and head and he was so swollen that he was unrecognizable. Both of his eyes were swollen shut and he was in shock.

Bama is almost fully recovered and should be out of the isolation pen tomorrow. It scared the bejesus out of me, though and we won’t be using movable fencing anymore. Alabama spent every day of his life in that fencing and still managed to get tangled up enough to nearly kill him. Erin’s goat, Sweet William, died last month after getting tangled in the same fencing. So, unfortunately, it’s going.

In better news, Dr. Grover, our lovely and amazing vet, came by the farm today to castrate all the ram lambs and buck kids, dock the lambs tails and ear tag everyone. I felt a bit guilty asking Dr. G to come, as I usually do all of this myself, but with so many lambs this year I just kept putting it off.

Each lamb and kid was given a pain killer before they were docked and castrated. Honestly, it wasn’t a big deal to the lambs at all. Maggie, our resident vegetarian, was amazed by how un-traumatic the whole thing was for the babies.

In the past, I haven’t docked my lambs tails. My flock was small enough that I’ve always been able to manage the kinds of problems that docking prevents without cutting off the tails, but the fly situation this year is already so out of control, and I decided that it would be far crueler to subject a lamb to flystike than to dock their tails. I don’t know if I will dock next year- it depends on the conditions- but I’m comfortable with my decision this year.

We chose to dock tails by banding them after doing a lot of reading and talking with Dr. Grover. Basically, a special kind of rubber band is placed around the tail under the third vertebrae. The band cuts of the blood supply to the end of the tail and, in a few weeks, the dead portion drops off. The advantages are that the procedure doesn’t cause much pain- only a little discomfort- and doesn’t create an open wound.

As you can see from the pics bellow, the lambs and kids were completely fine after the procedures and spent the afternoon jumping, playing and grazing.

The Tiny Man was looking a little bit hunchy today which worried me. Hunchy is what we call it when I lamb has his back legs pulled in a bit and just doesn’t look right. I don’t think that Rush’s mama is making enough milk to supply him anymore, probably because his tiny appetite was enough to keep her producing. We have gone back to feeding him and will probably have to bottle feed him till it’s time to wean him.

Since I brought Rushworth inside to tube feed him anyway, I decided to give him a bath. He is now the whitest lamberoo in the pasture!

In other news, MY BEES CAME TODAY! I got a phone call from the post office at 7:30 a.m. asking me to please come pick up my bees. I did pick them up but I didn’t install them in their hives today. It was rainy and, according to my cooperative extension, rain makes bees cranky.

Several people asked me how the bees were packaged so I took some pics. More tomorrow when we’ve put them in their hives.

Finally, I want to thank all of you who purchase the pattern Willie to help cover the cost of Crush’s surgery. I got an update from Pam today and I am thrilled to report that sales of Willie have thus far raised $1900, nearly two thirds of Crush’s vet bills! Isn’t that amazing?!? Y’all are amazing.

To see more pics of the lovely Crush in her cast, check out Pam’s flickr stream.

And the winner of the half share in the 2011 Juniper Moon Farm Yarn CSA is…

Congrats Kathy! Please email Maggie at Maggie AT fiberfarm DOT com to claim your prize!

I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard a tiny noise outside. I found Nan standing in the pasture with this little one under the full moon. Norris, a ram lamb,  and his mama are in the lambcam stall with Catalina and Rushworth.

Enough lambs for today, thank you.

Wickham

and

Weston

Mama is Queen Charlotte, one of the nicest ewes in our flock.

A great big beautiful ewe lamb! Here mama is Sicily and they are both doing fine.

More pics when she’s a little less covered in goo.

Three more ewes to go before lambing season is over. We’re kind of hoping they will all go in to labor this afternoon so we can start sleeping at night again.