Grand plans for this season

March has been a busy month! Tom finished painting the upstairs bedrooms and the living room. The stair rail and all the spindles were varnished and the bathroom has a new sink and countertop. I found a couple of white enamel beds at value village and made a trip to our gallery for some artwork and sheets and bedding.

Henning has cleaned the woodshed and the summer kitchen which resulted in a huge trailer load of rubbish for the pit and a trip to the dump. He's also working on the shop, the chicken coop and building a composter out of reclaimed lumber. Tom cut and hauled up some more firewood as we were getting low for the kitchen stove.

I have started seeds for our salad garden and filled out the paperwork for our summer student employees. Minimum wage has gone up again!

My brothers are buying yearling cattle to run in the pastures here this summer. We hope to buy two heifers to pasture also for beef in the fall and I am hot on the trail of weaner piglets, chicks for laying hens and meat birds, and tracking down someone to shear the flock within the next month or so. Also looking into options for using our fleeces.

I am still feeding the bamalama his daily bottles and he now spends the night in the barn although he was very mopey the first few days and I relented and brought him back inside during the day. He definitely wasn't feeling well and didn't even want his bottle until Henning gave him a run of penicillin. That seemed to help and we also dosed him with molasses and some vegetable oil as he seemed to be constipated from eating (and not digesting) grain and hay. A sheep's rumen doesn't start working until they're about a month old, so bammer was actually too little to be having anything except milk. It's hard to believe that in a few months he will be an ordinary sheep...right now, he is such an affectionate little creature who loves to lie on my lap and snooze beside the woodstove. There are definitely some lovely perks to being a shepherdess with the house duties...

spring is here!!

Just discovered that we set a new "least amount of snow" record for February and March. It's been 77 years since we had such a snow drought. And the sunshine!!! It's been a cheerful winter with very little of the difficulties that country life can bring. Although several of our sheep lambed in twenty below temperatures, all except little Clinton survived with no adverse effects. Our barn, really just an old-fashioned stable with a very low beamed ceiling and good old fashioned chinked log walls has a haymow above it filled with round bales. We covered the north side window with plastic and snow fencing so it lets in light but no drafts. The front of the barn, facing into the shelted southern side, is open with chicken wire fencing to let in sun and air and light and keep out predators. It's worked really well as a shelter and Henning has built two new feeders and three lambing pens which have all had their share of occupants. The sheep are waiting to be let in by dark as they are used to getting a snack of grain once inside. Any ewes with new lambs are already in their pens with their water bucket and hay and they get an extra ration of grain and pellets which they don't have to share in the general feeding frenzy. In the morning, Henning lets everyone outside once he's filled the hay feeder and there's a couple of hours of concentrated eating and jockeying for position and a perpetual problem of the more agile sheep leaping into the feeder. Then they all file out to this end of the barnyard for their water slurping and then amble back to lay in the sun, eat more hay, supervise the lambs and lounge about waiting for supper. It's not a bad life being a sheep here!!

Japanese visitors, jamons and other farm images

Ritsuko and her sister and brother in law and their friends came for a visit to see the lambs.

We had Ian and Anna for dinner one evening and Tomasz made a turkish dish called Kofke's which are ground lamb, pita and a tomato sauce. Delicious!!!

Tom, Henning and Tomasz and a toast to another delicious dinner.

Our jamons are aging in the refrigerator.

Sure hope they work out. Here is a jamon after a month of weighting in its salt cure.

Lambs and woodstove cookery.

Here I am organizing the food for our pot-luck open house on Feb 28. With no electric stove, all cooking, and I do mean all cooking including breakfast is done on the old Belanger cookstove. We've had lots of great meals and the only important criteria are: lots of dry stove wood and remembering to keep the stove hot enough to use the oven. It gets more difficult as the days get warmer and its sunny and the kitchen gets warm enough with the sunshine from the windows.

Poor little Clinton survived for ten days with tube feeding and lots of love and attention and penecillin but in the end, his difficult beginnings were too much and he died peacefully in his sleep. Rest in good pasture, my lambie.
We haven't had much snow this February and March but here was a tiny blizzard one afternoon. Obamalamba, Clinton's black twin brother is following me out to the barn where he has to spend his nights now. His days are usually spent lying by the stove or following me around the kitchen.

Out in the barnyard, a lively playgroup of fifteen lambs bounce around, using their mothers for an obstacle course. This is Aydie and Angie Chocolate with their blondie mom, Marilyn M.

Oz and Vanna visit

We also had a great weekend on Feb 14 with a visit from Oz and Vanna and all of Tom's girls, as well as young Dan. I cooked a roast pork dinner in the woodstove oven and by the time we ate, the kitchen was 90 degrees. Its been really pleasant to socialize here. The kitchen is so cozy with the woodstove and of course, there's the big Elmira dining table to extend so it seats up to 14 people.

Housewarming gathering

We had a very pleasant gathering on Saturday, the last day of February with a bunch of friends from Wilno and area. Weather was cold but sunny and the lambs were in their playpen in the sunroom and everyone oohed and aahhed over them. We had pulled pork and coq au vin from Ritsuko and Pete's evil and (now dead) rooster, and venison tenderloin and bigos and baked beans and sledgie and chocolate cake and pumpkin pie and rhubarb crisp. No one left hungry.

lambing 2009

It's been a week since Clinton and Obama were ignored by their mother and it has been a struggle to keep Clinton alive. Obama took to the bottle with a vengeance but Clinton is still being tube fed and has had one foot in the grave more than once. I refuse to give up and we are giving him penicillen and have needled him for white muscle and I am spiking his milk with electrolytes and maple syrup!! He alternates between being weak and unresponsive and then perks up just enough to give us hope.