Before the blessed event begins we need to come up with a naming convention for the kids and the lambs born on the farm this year.  Not long ago I asked ya’ll to nominate your ideas and boy did you! We had more than 90 comments, all of them with really great suggestions.

Here’s how we narrowed the field: I read through the suggestions with the staff (i.e. Patrick, Erin and Harry.) Anyone could nix an idea for any reason, no questions asked.  

Now we need your vote. Everyone gets one vote for kid names and one vote for lamb names. Feel free to mix and match. I’ll leave the voting open until Sunday and then I’ll tally the votes and announce the winners.

And the nominees are:

Names of states  Texas, Virginia, Maryland, etc. I LOVE this one and this might be the last year we can use it because it might be the last year we have 50 or less babies.

Names of Cities of the World: Paris, Lisbon, Seattle, Athens, etc. Another great suggestion.

Towns in Massachusetts for the kids and towns in New York for the lambs. Or vice versa.

Font names: LOVE THIS ONE!

Names of musical instruments: This one is probably Erin, Harry and my favorite because there are so many cool names. Piccolo, Trumpet, Timpani, etc.

Actors: Old movie actors for the lambs, current actors for the kids. (Bogart, Bacall, etc.)

Artists: Picasso, Van Gogh, Pollock, etc.

Composers: I like this one but I’m a tad concerned that I don’t know enough of them. (Margaret and Edwina, you’ll have to help out if this one wins!)

Characters from Annie: Okay, I know this one sounds goofy, but after reading Jenny’s nomination, we all loved it! Of course, we all love Jenny so that may have diminished our objectivity. But take a moment to look at all these great names:

Daddy Warbucks
Miss Hannigan
Mr. Bundles
Grace
Rooster
Lily St Regis (named after the hotel)
Annie
Punjab
Asp
Molly
Pepper
Tessie
Kate
Duffy
July
FDR
Eleanor Roosevelt
Bert Healy
Boylan Sisters 
Drake
Mrs. Pugh
Mrs. Greer
Saunders
Frick 
Frack

Crayola Crayon Colors: another great suggestion from Kate, who we also love. Kate also suggested Red Sox players, but Patrick is a Yankees fan and would rather set himself on fire.

Okay, those are your candidates. I would love to see everybody vote, even you lurkers! (I’m talking to you Dad. And Carrie. And Jordan. And Matt.) Seriously, this is democracy in action. Don’t sit on your hands and then spend the next four years hating whatever wins. 

The polls are officially…open.

Both are good-sized kids and both are eating from their mamas which is good because 11 butted and bit me repeatedly when I was trying to help her baby latch on. Both 25 and 11 are proving themselves to be good mothers, very attentive and gentle.

I got a little worried about 25 because a couple of hours after she kidded she still seemed to be laboring. She was panting, getting up and laying down as if she couldn’t get comfortable, and making a lot of noise. Now, I am not one who is quick to call the vet. I have learned that, nine times our ten, most problems will resolve themselves 15 minutes before the vet arrives and farm calls are mad expensive. BUT we had just lost Parsley. AND I have been reading the James Herriott books (All Things Bright and Beautiful currently) in which all kinds of horrible things go wrong during lambing. So I was all but positive that there was a second kid stuck inside 25 and that I needed the vet to come get it out.

Luckily, we have a great vet who trained in the UK, where farm animals are a big part of a vet’s education. Dr. Dave Tuminaro is a great sport about responding to emergencies. He was on his way up-Island when I called, but rescheduled his day to come check out the situation with 25. He didn’t find another kid inside, but he wasn’t crazy about the way 25 was acting either, so he gave her something to help her expel the afterbirth. Within a couple of hours she was fine and I was grateful for the peace of mind.

I spent a lot of time in the kidding barn yesterday, afraid to leave because of what happened to Parsley, and I was dreading what I’d find this morning when I went in to check on them. What I found was two just-born twin girls!

They are on the small side but full of energy and raring to go. We considered taking one of them away and giving her to 7, but their mama (9) wasn’t having it. And 7 seemed to be more her old self today. She’s stopped looking for her baby and her appetite was great. If we end up with a rejected baby we will consider giving it to 7 but, for now, everyone is content.

9 is taking great care of both babies, which is such a relief. It’s pretty common for a mom to only take to one twin but 9 is showing no favoritism so far. We are going back to check on them one more time tonight so that I won’t stay up worrying all night. As you can see, we jacketed them to make sure they stay warm. While we were at it we put jackets on Cilantro and Tarragon too.

Eight nannies down, two to go.

I don’t know what happened to the little fella. He seemed healthy enough when we left him at midnight and it wasn’t cold in the barn. The thing is, sometimes this just happens. It goes along with the joy of watching new life come into the world and it’s just so amazingly sad.

I have spent the day second-guessing myself, not for anything I did with the goats, but for blowing the ‘new baby’ trumpet so loudly and so soon. The last thing in the world I want to do is make you all sad. But it would feel kind of dishonest if I only shared the successes with you and kept the disappointments all to myself. Our farm is a wonderful place where magical things happen, but it isn’t Disneyworld. It would be paternalistic of me to filter the news I share with you and that doesn’t sit well with me. But I want to hear your opinions.

25 and 11 kidded today and we have two new, healthy buck kids in the family, but I’ll introduce them to you tomorrow. This post is about Parsely- a sweet, tiny angel that we were lucky to spend a little time with.

They are so happy and so healthy and growing like crazy. Even little Basil, the youngest of the group, is sprouting some good sized horns!

The six remaining bred nannies in this group should start kidding by the middle of next week. We have never had this kind of break between babies. (Basil was born more than a month ago.) I spoke with our friend Sara, owner of Buckwheat Bridge Angoras, and the person we bought these bred does from. She said it appears that the does were bred by the “clean-up buck.”

Basically, when you breed goats, you put 20 or 30 does in with one buck and allow them to go through two or three 21-day-cycles. Then, as an added insurance, you take the first buck out and put a second one in. That way is your first buck is shooting blanks you don’t have to go a whole year with an unbred doe. Sara and her husband Dan followed this procedure before we picked up the does and brought them up to the Vineyard. Once they arrived here, we put all 10 of the most-likely bred does in with our new buck, Buck Fifty, just to be triply-sure they were all bred.

So I have a fairly high degree of certainty that the six remaining does are in fact bred. And all but one of them clearly are and four of them are “bagged up” to some degree. Bagged up means that the does udder has begun to fill up. This can happen as much as three weeks before kidding.

So stand by for new babies! I will send out an email as soon they make their appearance. Unfortunately, Patrick and I have to go off-Island next weekend for Easter and Patrick’s eldest son’s 16th birthday, so we will be getting the news second hand. Mark and Melinda Defeo, our dear friends, are super qualified to keep an eye on things here. Melinda works at the Farm Institute and has just attended her second Women’s Kidding Week at The Heifer Institute.

My mom and I went to the Heifer Institute’s Women Lambing Weekend in Arkansas a few years ago. It is a good program and we met a lot of very successful, intelligent women there. The thing is, the program was really designed to introduce people to Heifer and wasn’t so great for the animals. In order to be sure that lambs were born during the weekend of the program they injected the ewes with something to force them to go into labor. It was kind of icky.

I love the idea though, and I think we will do our own version of it next spring. I’ll let you know as the idea develops. Another idea that we are going forward with right away is Weekend Shepherd Camp for people who are interested in raising sheep or who just want to take an agritourism vacation. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about making a working farm sustainable and diversification is the key. We are going to start the Shepherd Camp in April and do it all through the summer.

Speaking of reading, I want to recommend a couple of magazines that I have really been enjoying lately. The first is Hobby Farms Magazine. This publication is really an introduction to small-scale farming (what the British call “smallholding”) and we have probably outgrown most of the farming how-to info it contains, but I do like reading about what other people are doing with their livestock around the country.

The magazine I have a complete crush on right now is the UK edition of Country Living. It’s nothing like the US version- it’s actually about living in country, not just decorating your house as if you do. There is a sheep or fiber article in almost every issue and it’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. It’s also expensive, expensive, expensive. Like $7 on the newsstands. But it’s so very inspiring and oversized and just lovely.

All of the sheep and goats are heavy with wool and fiber respectively and more than ready for their shearing. I’m happy to say that the fleeces look relatively free of vegetable matter, which is amazing at this time of the year. I love shearing, not just because of all the yummy, wonderful fiber we harvest, but also because it feels like a new beginning.

We are going to be jacketing all of the sheep this year right after they are sheared. In the past we have only jacketed the cormos and this year we only managed to get jackets on Sicily and FDR. Jackets are a pain in the rear but they really cut down on the amount of vegetation in the fleece and the time it takes to pick all that stuff out. I am ordering a bunch of new jackets in a variety of sizes so they’ll be here in time for the shearing at MV Fiber Fest.

That’s all for this week. Be sure to enter the MVFF Hat give away in the previous post by leaving a comment.

Kids spend a lot of time butting heads. Actually, they don’t really butt heads, they sort of push each other around with their heads. They are sort of “play fighting”, mimicking the behavior of adults. Except that they haven’t seen the adults butting heads so it’s all instinct.

Two against one.

Basil is just a week or so younger than the others but he didn’t seem to understand the game. He thinks there is a group hug going on and wants in on it. I probably shouldn’t have a favorite but I do and it’s Basil.

Isn’t he the cutest thing? Look at that face!
There is also a fair amount of smooching going on.