Can I be honest? I was kind of dreading getting back to the farm today. I missed my flock and my dogs and even my bed, but the lack of electricity and company were daunting. (Paige is in California visiting her father this week.) I not in the mood for roughing it in my own home.

But once I pulled into the driveway I felt my equilibrium was restored. The farm looked absolutely beautiful and it was so quiet and peaceful.

We have a few trees down.

Our driveway still hasn’t been plowed, so I had to park by the road.

Of course, my first stop was the barn to check on the lambs and kids. Dimples was modeling some serious hay-head.

The dogs were super-happy to see me.

We brought the little lambs into the barn during the storm. They don’t have as much body fat as the big sheep and they were looking a little miserable.

They were happy to see me too,

but only because I had a pocket full of animal crackers.

I love the chicken footprints in the snow.

The snow hasn’t stopped the hens from laying.

Alabama (right) is now officially bigger than his mama, Daisy (left).

It was so great to be home that not having electricity or running water didn’t seem like such a big deal. Which is good, because it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting power back tonight. And tomorrow? More snow!

As you may have read, Central Virginia got 30+ inches of snow this weekend. That was on top of the 12 inches we already had on the ground. Everyone at the farm is fine but we’re going on day three without power. I was lucky enough to be in DC for the weekend, although the snow was out of control there too. In fact, I couldn’t get over how shut down the city was even today.

I’m sleeping over at Kris and Charlie’s house in Arlington, VA tonight so I can get up bright and early to head back to the farm.  There’s a pretty good chance we could be without power for another three or four days. So no internet, no phone, and no water. We do have heat, thanks to the woodstove and the delivery of wood we got last week.

I think I might have a case of the Day-Three-of-the-Storm Blues. Not at all looking forward to going home to no heat but very much looking forward to getting home to my flock and my dogs. I’ll blog when I can, but I might have to drive in to C-ville to find electricity and WiFi.

Hope you are all some where warm snuggled up to someone you love.

I woke up to three inches of snow this morning. We could get as many as 12 inches, but I’m skeptical.

Paige is off this weekend so it was just me and flock.

Amazingly, our flock is still grazing on pasture, but not today. I couldn’t get the hay to them fast enough this morning.

Ernie looks like the Abominable Snowman.

We’ve been putting Sabine in the small paddock with Lucy during the day to stave off the depression Lucy was starting to suffer. The two of them play for hours and you would never know that Lucy nearly died a little over a week ago. It is so good for my spirit to see them together.

Global climate change stinks. It has been raining on the East Coast for the past month and the average temperature in New England is 10 to 20 degrees below normal. This is after a really, really, cold winter.

Obviously some jobs are more effected by the weather than others and shepherding is one of them. But whenever I start to complain, I think about roofers and housepainters who CAN’T work in this weather and I shut my trap. (Our own house has been half painted for months now.)

All this rain is also terrible for farmers who make- and depend on- hay.

These fields probably look beautiful to most people driving by…

but to farmers, these pictures are heart-breaking.

Absolutely heart-breaking.

See how the stalks are bending over? That’s because they are going to seed. Which means most of the nutritional value in the hay has already been lost. It will still be cut and baled and fed to animals in the fall, but it will take a whole lot more of it to meet the nutritional needs of the cows, horses and sheep that depend on it for the majority of their diet.

The expression “make hay while the sunshines” isn’t just a suggestion: it’s a stone-cold, iron-clad order. Hay can only be cut when it’s dry and when there is no rain the forecasts for the following week. Since we haven’t had that kind of sunshine in a month, the hay remains uncut in the fields.

The only thing worse than letting hay go to seed is trying to sneak in a cutting and getting caught by the rain. Once the hay is cut, it has to “cure” in the fields for a few days before baling. Rain on cut hay = a total loss to the farmer. I actually got a lump in my throat when I took this picture and I’m getting another as I write this.

Why is all of this so important? Besides the fact that small farms that almost always teeter on the edge of insolvency are watching one of their key cash crops rot in the fields? Because I make wool and wool is made from hay. Hay prices will almost certainly skyrocket in the fall.

What can you do? Support your local small farmer. When you pass a farm stand this weekend stop and buy some berries, lettuce or apples. Try to buy more yarn from small farms and less from international conglomerates.

Farmers will survive this rain, as they have survived all kinds of weather since time began. They are a tenacious, never-say-die lot. They don’t need your pity, they need your business.

All the babies are muddy and wet and tired of this weather.

Except for Ophelia and Odette. They are warm and dry inside with their mama.

Last September I had the good fortune to sit next to a woman named Nancy Aronie at an animal communication workshop I was attending. I say good fortune because Nancy is an absolutely fabulous woman. She’s a wonderful writer and gives a very famous workshop on the Vineyard called Writing from the Heart.  Everyone at the workshop we were attending had to go around the room and introduce themselves and Nancy laughed deeply and wept openly in the same sentence. She is brilliant, and brimming over with life, and, lucky for me, she is freezing all the time.

Every year after Christmas we give our tree to the sheep and goats for a treat. As you can see, they strip it like a school of piranas strips a wildebeest.

Apparently winter days up here (the up being from Texas from whence I came) come in two equally wretched flavors: ridiculously, absurdly cold and dry or warmish with buckets of rain falling from the sky. 

Dear Friends,
You know, I have spent my whole career as a writer. I have written radio and television spots, network news pieces and hundreds of freelance magazine and newspaper articles. But I don’t have the words to describe how spectacularly bad my day was yesterday.

I don’t want to bore you with all the nasty details so I’ll summarize:
It took me FOUR HOURS to feed and water all the animals, in the pouring rain, during which time every tiny and enormous thing that could go wrong did. By the time I got home I was completely defeated. I kept thinking “This is just too hard. I can’t do this by myself.”

When I finally got home I was so deeply cold that I got immediately into a hot bath but I was so deeply tired that I didn’t realize I still had my bra and underwear on until I had been in the tub for five minutes. I went straight from the bath to bed, hoping to be able to take a nap for a couple of hours before I had to go out for barn check, but I was so strung out I couldn’t fall asleep. I decided to check the etsy store, the blog and ravelry group to see if there was anything that needed my immediate attention. That’s when I found this, posted by Glassneedles to the ravelry group:

“Please remember the name is “Community Supported Agriculture”. This group can be very important to our investment. We might not be able to stop in to help with the chores but our dsicussions might let Susan know we haven’t forgot her.”

and this, posted by Jenibug:
“You are a hit Susieshepard and your blog is great.”

And then I read through the email I keep on my desktop in a folder called “Happy Mail” and poured over all of the kind words you’ve sent me over the last few months. Admonishments to take better care of myself. Notes telling me how proud someone was of my work. Excitement over the birth of our first kid.

I had tears running down my cheeks and I suddenly realized I have a fan club. Surely I am the only shepherd in the world with more than 140 cheerleaders, amazing, successful women (and a few men) that believe in me and think I can do this. It may sound silly, but it was a revelation to me. Needless to say, my day did a fast 180.

Thank you. I don’t say it enough. Thank you for believing in me and what I’m doing.

This morning I woke up to skies as sunny as my new attitude. I spent the whole day feeding, watering and hanging out with the animals and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Watering the animals became infinitely easier today thanks to the invention of the wheel. I had been carrying 5 five-gallon buckets of water the 1/8 from the truck to the pen since they moved to Felix Neck a couple of weeks ago when I got the brilliant (if belated) idea to use a cart. My local feed store didn’t have any in stock but they ordered one for me. In the meantime, I borrowed one from my friend Mark Defeo and it may very well have changed my life.

Isn’t is beautiful? I used it today to haul 85 gallons of water. That’s 700 pounds of water!

I spent most of the day just being with the flock. I sat down in the pasture and scratched ears, petted dogs and took pictures. It was heavenly. Here are some photos I took.

Beatrice and her kid Peppermint Patty

Sicily, one of our Cormo ewes

Jack, one of last year’s bottle babies. Jack is my favorite goat of all time. Next year he will be our breeding buck.

Fettuncini

Cosmo, one of the Babydoll Southdowns. Cosmo gave me a scare this week when I got to the field to feed and found him flipped over on his back. This can be deadly for sheep. If they are flipped over for too long and can’t right themselves they will stop breathing. Cosmo doesn’t have the best fleece but he was one of my first four sheep and he is a love bug.

Cini and Sabine

Buck Fifty looking handsome.

I also spent some time talking to people who read the article in the Vineyard Gazette and came to see the flock. Then I headed back over to the kidding barn for some time with the nannies and kids.

We should start seeing some new babies tonight or tomorrow. I will send out an email as soon as one is born. In the meantime, start thinking of at least six more herb names. I suspect we will have a couple of sets of twins but I’m trying to keep my expectations low.

Things are shaping up well for the Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Fest on April 19th. I am planning a couple of special “shareholders only” events and surprises, so I’ll need to know how many of you are planning to come when we get a little closer. Please invite your family and friends, and any knitters you run into. I really want the other fiber farms on the Island to have the opportunity to show off what they do and we need to get the word out.

There is a thread about ride sharing on the ravelry fan club group but if you aren’t a ravelry member yet and you need transportation from Boston or NYC, shoot me an email and I’ll post for you.

Have a great week and check back here occasionally for mini-updates. And please email me if you have any questions you don’t want to post here. Your emails mean the world to me.

Susie

NOTE TO MARGARET AND EDWINA: I tried to answer your email but my emails to your address keep bouncing back! Do you have a new email address? If so please send it to me.