Basil, sleeping peacefully…

until Chive walks up.

“Wanna play?”

“Basil, do you wanna play?”

“Wanna wake up and play with me, Basil?”

“Basil, where are you going?”

“WANNA PLAAAAAAY????!”

My friends, what a wonderful and exhausting week it has been here on the farm.

We have had the full range of Vineyard weather on the Island in the past seven or eight days- fleeting snow, torrential down pours, winds so fierce and powerful that the ferries couldn’t run, and beautiful blue-sky-days with bone-chilling tempurtures. Today was sunny and warmish, but I don’t trust it to last. I am counting the minutes till spring when I don’t have to fight the elements and the entire flock is on pasture.

The new kids are absolutely thriving- there is just no other word for it. Little Basil’s eye problem has completely cleared up, whether from the antibiotic cream I put in it or not I don’t know. He is a tiny little peewee though, so I am leaving him in the kidding pen with his mom a little longer than usual just to be sure he is bonded and strong. He has been eating from his mom without my help since Sunday and he is a very hungry little guy!

I am so happy that we are able to keep the kids in the warmth of the hoop house for awhile after they are born. We are supposed to be moving out of the hoop house at the beginning of March, so I really want the remaining six nannies to have their kids so they can also benefit from the warm surroundings. Andrew Woodruff, the owner of the veggie CSA that is lending us the barn, is a wonderful man, very generous and kind. I know he would probably let us extend our stay a bit, but I really don’t want to take advantage of the situation. We would like to be good guest so that we get invited back next year.

Not having a proper farm is wearing on me this week. In New York we were positively spoiled. We had more than 35 acres that we were reclaiming as pasture land, cutting down the trees a few at a time so the flock could strip the leaves off, then cutting them for firewood. It isn’t a perfect set-up- the land is adjacent to the Taconic Parkway (a busy highway that connects NYC to the rest of the state)- but it is ours. Being guest on the land of others is hard, because we could be asked to leave at any time and that is always in the back of my mind.

Unfortunately, it is the reality of life on Martha’s Vineyard. Real estate prices have sky rocketed here since 2000 when the first house sold for $1 million. I read an ad in the paper last week with the headline “Price Drastically Reduced” that was for a two bedroom mobile home on 1/4 of an acre and was “drastically reduced” to $249,000!

Patrick and I are lucky to own a home here. We bought it as a summer rental before we moved up full-time, and without it we probably wouldn’t have taken jobs here. It’s on the market now while we look for a place that might someday accommodate a fiber mill and Bed and Breakfast.

The animals at Felix Neck seem to be adapting to their new home. They have already made a dent in the invasive bittersweet and they will be in heaven there when green things start to come out. Last fall, I pointed to a rolling green pasture and told Patrick that, in a few months, that kind of green would seem impossible, and it does.

Our Shearing Day Fiber Festival plans are well under way. The fun will begin on Saturday, April 19th at 10 a.m. I hope you can come because it’s really a party thrown in your honor. I am so grateful to all of you and it will be nice to get to thank some of you in person.

I had two Shareholder visitors this weekend and it was so nice to get to show off the flock. Beth was here on Sunday with her beautiful baby Aubrey and they spent an hour oohing and awing over the kids. Beth started a great thread over at the ravelry group about he visit if you want to check it out.

Christine and her husband Brian spent the weekend on the Vineyard and visited both the babies and the rest of the flock on Sunday. Our insane rooster Dan Rather really didn’t like Brian much and relentlessly attacked him in the kidding barn. It was terribly embarrassing and a tiny but funny, but only because Brian was such a great sport about it. It did reenforce my decision to do something about that rooster.

Our flock will be expanding by one this weekend when Mark and Melinda bring their sheep Daisy over to Felix Neck to join the others. Daisy is an Icelandic/Navajo Churro cross that Mark rescued from being sent to auction this fall. She is a sweetheart of a sheep and has a nice fleece as well. It will be interesting to see what kind of lambs she and our Cormo lamb Lincoln produce.

Adding one sheep to an existing flock is a tricky thing. The other sheep (not so much the goats) will often bully and butt a new sheep, so I am planning to put Daisy in an adjacent pen for a couple of days with Jack and Roquefort (last year’s bottle babies and all around good guy goats) until everyone else gets used to her being around.

We actually already have a Daisy in our flock so the new Daisy will be known as Daisy2 from now on. The original Daisy was one of my original four sheep and, while she doesn’t exactly come when you call her, she deserves a little respect. She is a Babydoll Southdown, a sheep not exactly known for their fine wool, but I had no idea what I was doing when I bought four of them. I am looking into having their wool turned into quilting batts, so if there are any quilters among you let me know.

The article in the Vineyard Gazette is definitely bringing visitors to Felix Neck to check out the sheep and goats. In fact, two couple s came by to see them while I was showing Christine and Brian around, but their attention very quickly turned to the dogs. Our dogs are just such amazing creatures. They are beautiful, fun and funny, and absolutely loyal. Cini has more than once protected me from our mean, charging ram, Lincoln.

These two pictures of Cini are my absolute favorites. He is such a gentle giant. In the first pic, Cini is licking Buster’s ear. In the second he is checking out the hours-old FDR.

The picture below is one of the nannies who hasn’t kidded yet. She has the very best horns I’ve ever seen (remind you of Marlo Thomas in That Girl?) but she also has a really cool personality. We will be needing a really good name for her.

Basil made his way into the world yesterday. I didn’t write about him before because I was a little worried about him and I can’t take a picture (see previous post about my camera.) He is doing much better today, although he seems to have gotten stepped on by his mom- his eye is all swollen and teary. Rather than over-reacting and worrying my head off for the next few days I am adopting a wait-and-see on this one.
Basil is on the small side but he is an aggressive little thing and he is eating like a champ. I will go check on him one more time tonight before I go to bed, mostly because it is crazy-stupid cold here tonight, but I think he is okay. The heat lamps are on and I put a jacket on him earlier.
Chive and her mom Fran got to leave the kidding pen today. It was so great to see Chive running, jumping and generally trying out those brand-new legs of hers. She is a funny little kid. Before I let her into the main barn she kept sneaking over into Basil’s kidding pen to check him out. She and Sage chased each other around the barn for a while and it filled my heart with joy.
More soon. In the meantime, I’ve uploaded some new pics to flickr.

The doeling we named Cinnamon yesterday has undergone a name change. Patrick choose Cinnamon, and I wasn’t crazy about it but I have to let him have a turn once in a while. Well, he had a change of heart this morning and renamed her Chive. His rational was that we haven’t really exhausted herbs yet and it was too soon to move on to spice.

Both Sage and Chive are doing okay, although I don’t think either of their moms are letting them eat enough. It’s really hard to say though, because the kids nurse like crazy when I hold the moms and get them latched on but I haven’t seen them nurse on their own. I am really super determined not to end up with any bottle babies this year, so I am trying to wait this out and hope that the moms catch on pretty soon.

Sage is also having a little problem with his legs. I noticed that he was walking with his hooves turned under, basically on his ankles. I called my dear friend Sara in New York, who has a gazillion goats and has seen just about everything. The funny thing is, she hadn’t ever seen this before until last week, when they had a little buck kid born the same way. This nanny goat was bred to the same buck that bred the nanny in her case too!

Sara is a nurse and her husband Dan is a doctor, so very little phases them. They made a pair of splints out of a tupperwear lid and some tape and the problem corrected itself in a couple of days. I did the same thing with Sage and his legs seem much improved already.

We did finally get the electricity on last night and the heat lamps made the hoop house toasty warm. It’s also great to have some light in there- the flashlight thing was getting tiresome.

Working at my office today was hard because I am on no sleep but kidding only happens for a short time and we always survive it. I am really excited because we have our very first Shareholder visit this weekend.

I will post some more pictures in a bit. I just discovered there is wireless internet access at the kidding barn!

I went back to check on Sage and found him shivering cold, so I ran to the hardware store before it closed at 5:00 p.m. and bought a couple of heat lamps. But when I got back, there was no electricity coming into the hoop house. Shit.

And Miss Thyme was evicted from the kidding pen. She seems to be enjoying being with the big girls. She tried out those new legs with some joyful leaping.

Hard to believe she’s only 5 days old.
More pics soon.

I didn’t have a lot of time to stay with him but I am heading back over in a few minutes to make sure he is okay.