Turkey Chicks Just Wanna Die!

For a bird that tastes so good at Thanksgiving, it sure is hard to keep young turkeys alive until November! Either our first year of raising turkeys was serendipitously easy or we are getting worse at livestock care, which is a rather depressing thought .

Rose is our only survivor of a hatching from last year and, as a hand-raised turkey, has the annoying habit of squawking in your face and staring down little children just her height and eye-to-eye. This year, she has been accompanied by her father, Tom, who hates me, her mother, Dutch Boy, the Narraganset, and a wild hen that flew into the coop about a month ago and has stayed for the corn and the love.

Not wanting to be out foxed by our Heritage breed turkeys, whom I suspect were feeding their eggs to the rats, Annie and I decided this year to hatch eggs in an incubator in the house. It could be that taking the eggs from the nest each morning was the turning point in Tom's relationship with us. It didn't help that the goose had become his best friend. The pair was so ferocious they actually cornered Annie in the coop one day and beat her with their wings until she had bruises on her legs!

However, we secured a total of 20 eggs and started the 27 day process of rotating them 3-4 times a day under a constant temperature and humidity control, all on the counter in my bathroom. No one figures all the eggs will hatch and it was bizarre the evening I tried to identify the tap-tap-tap coming from the bathroom. In the morning there was a fluffy, black chick trying to find its sea legs.

After that, we had more, and then the hatching stopped and we realized none of the other eggs was going to produce a live bird, or even had a bird in it at all. Two toms (one a teenager) and some inexperienced hens did not a baby make 100% of the time!

The chicks were raised in the house, but the most peculiar thing would happen from time to time. We would catch one doing poorly, its mates knocking it over, standing on its head or body, and the next time we checked it was expired. Our 12 birds quickly became our 6 birds, and then our 5 birds. We were back to not having enough to sell at Thanksgiving.

So, Annie searched Craig's List and found more, because we are lame and hate to give up in defeat. She bought the most lovey Blue Slate poults, fluffy and gray and strong at peeping. Within a couple days, one had died!

Today, the poults live in the house, in the kitchen, under the heat lamp. They are not quite to the point of being tossed out for the stink, but I can tell their time is coming. We need to fix the chicken wire fencing before we do this for a couple reasons. Primarily, to keep raccoons out, but secondarily to keep the chicks in. They will have their own little turkey hotel as they wait to grow more pin feathers for warmth and larger for Thanksgiving. It all seems a bit ironic. If they survive, they become dinner. If they die young it's only by a few months.

The goal is to have a purpose other than the dinner entree. Dutch Boy, our white Holland, figured it out last year. Be a totally different color from Tom, so the farmer can tell who is working out as the daddy, and defend the poor farmer's wife and daughter from the tom turkey attacks. It makes the humans like you. And, as I have mentioned before, once you have a name on the farm, it's unlikely you will be eaten. ...unless you are a chicken named Boston that keeps scratching up the new spring plantings. Where's my gun!

Photo: Nell with Nelvira (RIP)

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Two Lucy's Get Their Lambs!

We have two Lucy's on the farm at the moment, except one of them spells hers a little differently than anyone else I know. Loocie, my sister, came for a visit because she has never been here when lambs were being born. Lucy, from Portland, came back with her parents because March was a bad month for lambs. As in, there were none.

What made the visit extra special for the junior Lucy was the little lamb born just the day before her arrival. We weren't exactly sure that Dusty, aka #26, was pregnant this spring. It was her first spring as a mature ewe and the chance of her producing a lamb was pretty much 50-50. In March, Lucy, her mom, and I had looked at Dusty and thought she didn't really seem that round.

On a sunny May afternoon, our eagle-eyed daughter thought she saw Dusty hanging back in the hay field looking at something on the ground. By the time we made it to the field, she had a wobbly but dried off baby standing next to her. Loocie was in awe. We contemplated Lucy's reaction to the news.

A cryptic message was sent into the stratosphere via computer,"Someone had a baby and her name rhymes with Rusty!" Ah, the miracle of Internet communications. I received an email back almost immediately from Lucy's mom. Joanna said she felt like a grandmother. If she was the grandmother, what did that make me? The great grandma!

It took three of us that night to get the sheep herded in off the hay field. Our bottle-fed ewes, like Dusty, can be some of the worst as new mothers since they are not exactly sure whether they should keep their babies close or ditch them as their own mothers did to them. Loocie carried the newborn. Emery tried to keep Dusty nearby. I waved my arms at all the ewes in an attempt to convince them the grass was greener elsewhere.



I probably forgot to mention that Lucy and her family were driving to the farm just for the day on Sunday! Just to see lambs! Just to see Dusty, really! We all talked Lucy out of arriving at 8 a.m. which would have meant a 6 a.m. departure for her parents. As it was, I think they arrived around 10 a.m. Lucy had brought a friend so we showed off some baby turkey poults and then the suspense was too much. We headed to the barn.

Lucy and her friend spent most of the rest of the morning in the stall with Dusty, her baby, and a few other new mamas and lambs. Dusty's baby was named immediately by Lucy but the name escapes me. All I seem to remember was a large, heroic name. Lambs were held. Photos were taken. The earlier visit, when no lambs were yet born, became a thing of the past and discussion centered around next year's spring lambing calendar.

Lucy's mom sent along photos as soon as the family returned to Portland. My sister, Loocie, took photos also while she was here. I love to see what other people pick out as special on the farm. Of course, with Lucy, it's a lamb and the lamb's lamb that will figure in her heart and on her camera until next spring when we hope to start all over again.



Photos: top, Lucy with Dusty in spring 2009; middle, Lucy with Dusty and her baby in May 2010; bottom, Loocie with Rabbit a long time ago (May 2005?)

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones

...Click here to read the rest of this post.

The Lambing

It is common knowledge that ewes tend to lamb when it rains. As spring is a rainy time of year in Oregon, this could just be coincidence. Not so coincidental, ewes will lamb in groups. Sort of like, that looks like a good idea, I think I'll go for it too.

It is probably closer to a cycle thing. However, I must say it occurred to me, as our guest, Taffy, stood by my side, seven months pregnant, fascinated to watch one of our ewes giving birth, that I ought to suggest she keep her own legs crossed.

Her husband looked a little alarmed when I mentioned the ewe group birthing thing. Taffy was lost in her own reverie of a 45 minute delivery. How nice would that be! No assistance, no bright lights, just the warm smell of fresh straw and maybe a few curious faces peaking over the stall wall.

I'm not sure we've ever had a heavily pregnant woman on the farm during lambing season. Probably because most stay close to home. Lambs were on the agenda for this family specifically, I think, because they were pregnant. It was a chance to see new life revealed. It was a chance to do something they had never done before with their young son. It was a chance to be away from the city and close to life. Our girls didn't disappoint, and Taffy, thankfully, didn't go into labor!

The thing about baby lambs is that they are cuter than human babies and they do child-like things almost right away. We would be hard-pressed to protect ourselves as 3-day-olds, but lambs practice jumping in the air even before they are released from the barn. If you have ever tried to catch a 3-day old lamb, you need to be fast and you need to be nimble. It's why they get all their shots and tags and bands before we ever let them out with the flock.

Lamb-life is simple. There's recess, nap time,lunch, recess, nap time, lunch, pretty much in that order all day long. The younger the lamb, the more playful. Any object makes a jungle gym or play toy, especially dozing moms and mounds of dirt. Give lambs a hill and they play Lamb of the Hill. They run as a mob, choosing to follow whichever lamb leads fastest. Some stop for a milk break. Some lie down in the sun. If it's nap time in the loafing shed, lambs can be found sleeping in the hay manger and large feed buckets!

This is a great time for lambs and guests alike. This is actually a great time of year for all of us on the farm. Small, warm, silky babies; moms lowing in the barn; grass coming on in the fields; children and parents wowed by the birth process and the chance to hold a baby lamb.

Taffy and her family left for the big city with some stories to tell. Come July, when it is her time to deliver, I hope the magic she saw in the barn will flow over her, protect her, and assist her with an easy delivery - although 45 minutes might be cutting it a bit close to get to a hospital in Los Angeles!



Photos: (top) lamb lying on its mom, (bottom) lamb resting in a bucket.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

No Lambs for Lucy

Lucy and her mother first came to our farm stay a year ago in March. They hoped to see lambs and take a break from the city. We already had two lambs from February, the result of a very naughty ram lamb five months prior. During their visit, we started lambing in earnest. We also had our first problems with rejected lambs and had to begin bottle feeding two youngsters from different mothers.

The great thing about having guests stay on your farm is that they provide an extra set of everything: hands, eyes, brains, muscles. Watching for rejected lambs can sometimes be difficult at first. Is the mother just out of sorts for the moment or does she really have no intention of feeding her baby? I am getting better at spotting the problem early. Left too long, extreme measures often come into play.

We all kept an eye on #26, later to be known as Dusty. She was a beautiful lamb with long legs, but she wasn't faring well with her mother. Lucy took on the job of holding her when there was no one else to cuddle and feeding her from a baby bottle I made up with formula six times a day. There is nothing sweeter than a baby lamb and Lucy's mom got the perfect photo of the two together during their visit.

This year when Lucy and Joanna showed up at the end of March, we had not yet begun lambing. The first thing out of Lucy's mouth when she saw us was, "How is #26?" I honestly had forgotten who #26 might be and was wondering how to explain the end game of most sheep farms. Farm girl, Annie, quick to avert a meltdown, looked through our records and saw that #26 had been renamed Dusty and was now going to be one of our breeding stock. Disaster averted. We all ran to the barn to see if Dusty remembered the girl who had held her in her arms only a year ago.


During their entire stay, Joanna and especially Lucy were good sports about the lack of lambs at Leaping Lamb Farm. We explained the delay. We had put a new ram lamb in with the girls at the beginning of November and we suspected it took him a little while to get the hang of the ram-thing. Farm girl, Annie, suggested he might have been a little shy. Despite rushing out to the barn every morning, before most grown-ups had even had their first cup of coffee, there were no lambs for Lucy. We kept hoping, up to the last minute of the visit that a lamb would drop miraculously onto the straw bedding, but one never did.

Instead, Lucy channeled her lamb artistry into a knitted lamb she presented to me. The year prior she had knitted me a ewe with a bell. This time she knitted its accompanying lamb. I keep them down in the front room as a reminder of the little girl who loves lambs and creates talismans to leave behind when no real lamb is present. Several days after Lucy's departure, we had our first lambs. We sent photos, knowing there is no real replacement to holding a lamb in your arms. But, of all the kids who grow up in cities, how lucky is Lucy to have at least had the experience once in her life. May the once become many!



Photos: top, Lucy and #26 (aka Dusty) in March 2009; middle, Lucy and Dusty 2010; bottom, Lucy's knitted ewe (2009) and lamb (2010)

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Shearing in the Snow

March can be a fickle month for just about anything to do with farming. However, shearing our pregnant ewes in March is about as late as we can go whether the month is fickle or not. I usually have my friendly sheep shearer come by end of February so the girls are not yet too big, but somehow February got past me and, anyway, Vince was busy.

Vince is about my age. He has his own flock of sheep he runs on other people's grass seed fields. He calls himself a gypsy shepherd when he isn't out shearing. He lives in another valley a mountain away from me and knows more about sheep than I ever will care to. I always hope. when I put in the call, that he hasn't given up the craft just yet. I mean, I'm still raising lambs and my few woolies still need to be shorn.

March ewes are four months pregnant at a maximum on our farm. They are beginning to get a bit fat and some of them a bit ungainly. We don't want the shearing to be hard on anyone - ewes or people. Our girls, the old ones at least, are accustomed to being flipped on their backs and spun around the floor from side to side while Vince deftly removes a year's worth of wool in one go. He makes it look easy. Ewe after ewe. How hard could it be? I shake out of my trance. What was I thinking? I can still barely drop a ewe to the ground and then only the ones that have pity on me!

Today, Vince showed up with his trimmers and set up on the permanent hooks he has created for himself in one of the sheep stalls. I had cleaned the floor as best I could and put up shop lights for added visibility. The ewes had been locked in an adjacent stall all night without water or food. Vince needed them as dry as possible. I didn't need them pooping and peeing all over the cutting floor once we got going. The ewes were grumpy to start and by the end of the procedure down-right offended.

We all had our jobs. Farm girl Annie's was to grab ewes and back them up to Vince. Vince would do his thing. I would open the gate to let the naked sheep escape out to the shed, then quickly scoop up the fleece and place it in a garbage bag, marking in black what kind of sheep and what color. This is actually kind of important since we have introduced hair sheep into our flock. The fiber is much shorter and makes knitters mad if you get it mixed up with long fiber wool. Vince isn't that keen on this new trend of ours either. I guess it gums up his shears and takes him longer clip.

However, the point of this story is not about wool. Rather the absence of it. Once shorn our girls look nearly naked and it always makes me feel cold and irresponsible as an owner. Are they going to get chilled and die like I would if all my coats were ripped from me at the end of winter? Are the days getting warmer and the pregnancies creating more internal heat? What if it snows?

And then, of course, it did! The next morning the ground was covered with snow that had fallen through the night and actually stuck. My spring flowers were bent over. The sheep glared at me from their loafing shed. School was canceled, more because there hadn't been a snow day all winter, than because there was any real danger on the roads. Our farm stay guests borrowed mittens to make a snow man. Our town made the front page of the local newspaper. I wondered at the luck of shearing in the snow.

Within a day, the grass was green again and the only problem now was that I couldn't tell my sheep apart because they all had the same naked look. It would take a while to pick out Rosie and Harold and Piper and Dusty, but soon enough, the annual shearing would be a distant memory as we moved into the next phase of the year: lambing.



Photos: top, I think that is just-shorn Piper looking at the camera; bottom, a view from the kitchen towards the orchard.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

The Kiwi Experiment

This winter I found a sales outlet for my kiwis. For years we had eaten them, given them away, fed them to the chickens, fed them to the guests. Never had I thought to actually sell them for money until a really cool website came on the scene in our area allowing farmers to post their produce and buyers to shop with a credit card, all from the same site. It's the Internet meets the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), and, it's about time.

From our one ancient kiwi vine/tree/plant we can put up anywhere from two to five 5 gallon buckets of fruit, depending on the chipmunk population during blossom set. These are the fuzzy brown skinned kiwis with the green flesh. We have the requisite female (hearty) and male (spindly - I baby him) plant growing up between our house and our workshop. By summer, when the leaves have grown thick, the vine provides absolute shade. In the winter when we prune it all back, there is welcomed light.

We harvest in fall before the first frost and then wait through the winter for the fruits to ripen. Each year I am challenged to protect my kiwis from rodents, and each year I change the location of my storage. Last year I crated the fruits and put them in the workshop; the year before in the storage room. This year, I decided to bring the kiwis into the house and stack them in our coldest room along with the onions and the garlic.

I counted them, setting aside any kiwis not presentable to the public. I had 360! I checked at the store. Kiwis were selling for $.79 at the top end and 2 for $1.00 at the low end. I did the math. Possibly $180 if there were buyers. I could cover the speeding ticket I got while driving to the co-op to check some of those prices, and still have a little left over. What was T.T. whatever his name, the motorcycle cop, doing hiding behind those bushes anyway. Couldn't he tell I was a hillbilly country girl without a care in the world and certainly not paying attention to the reduced speed sign?! Boy, did that guy ruin my day.

I decided on my price. I would sell a pound of kiwis for $1.50 because I thought they lacked in flavor. There were about 5-6 kiwis in a pound. I figured out how to list them online and waited to hear from the administrator of the site what to do next. The next morning I got a call. Was I planning on dropping off the 5 pounds of kiwis ordered in the last hours before the site had closed for the week? Ummm, what orders? Oops,there had been a mistake in notifications. Could I fill the orders or were my very first clients just going to be disappointed? I sent my daughter the 25 miles into town with the kiwis and did the math. $7.50 in sales. Expenses: one hour drive time (to town and back) at $10/hour; gas (25 miles @$.50/mile). It seemed I had just lost approximately $15. Things were not looking good.

I listed my kiwis for the next week and sold 8 pounds. This time I planned the drop with an already arranged trip to town for other reasons so no real cost here. Problem was, no sooner had I found a way to sell my kiwis than the mice decided to have a field(mice)day. When I went down to the room to package my orders, I discovered they had eaten at least a third of my dreams.

You know, if it isn't one thing, it's another. I gave the damaged fruit to the chickens and set mouse traps. The next week, I had lost another third of my remaining fruit. I put what was untouched into the fridge because there was little enough left that I actually had room.

One more week of sales and I was out of product. In all, I think I netted somewhere in the range of $40. Not a great example of marketing acumen but a good lesson in rodent destruction. No, no rodents died in my traps. They had a nimble way of springing them. One trap even mysteriously disappeared.

Will I try this again next year? Maybe, but with lessons learned:
-Store the fruit in the fridge (somehow)
-Charge $3.00/lb whatever the flavor
-Don't wait until the kiwis are all the way ripe (some loss was due to over-ripeness)
-If the time and effort aren't adding up, start feeding the kiwis to: family, friends, guests, and chickens (in that order). They were probably wondering what had happened to the kiwis anyway!

Photos: (top) 360 kiwis set up in their trays with Cisco looking on, (next) kiwis on the vine, (next) tray of kiwis, (bottom) close-up of our offering.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Who Needs a Wii When You Have a Farm!

Farmville and Wii are for sissies. We have the real farm and it's killing me! I think teenagers should own farms based on their endless strength and endurance, although their addiction to texting and iPods puts them down the totem pole for concentration and forethought. I don't feel old or slow until I try catching sheep. This is where a good sheep dog would come in handy. Our old dog, Patches, tries but, just like me, she's a little old in the tooth for this type of game.

We've had a few weeks of sheep herding for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with getting rid of them in one way or another. This involves making sheep go places they don't want to go. First we sold three lambs to a farm south of us who arranged a date with the butcher. Could we handle the delivery? She would pay. We decided we might as well send a couple more lambs in the truck since they would fit and our freezer was now empty of lamb.

Catching just a few lambs out of a group is actually harder than catching the entire flock at once. The boys were more easily cornered than the girls, though not sure why. The dog tried to help but what worked best was a 16' long hog panel that Annie and I used to crowd the lambs into a corner and tie off on the fence with our trusty baling twine. Then we dove into the group and grabbed our target lambs, pushing and shoving them out the gate, dragging them across the lawn, and 1-2-3 hoisting them into the back of the small pickup truck.

We repeated this with the girls and almost gave up in frustration until one of them made a mistake. The rest followed into our trap. We selected our lambs and lifted them into the truck to join their brothers for a last joy ride. Sounds kind of awful, doesn't it? The price of eating lamb. At least they had a happy-go-lucky 10 months on the farm.

The next week a buyer came down from Washington and bought the rest of our lambs. His business model was well thought out. He buys lambs and goats every winter in Oregon and Washington and rents them out for weed control. He has contracts with airports, municipalities, and power companies, all interested in using a more environmental way to control blackberries and invasive plants. I have heard this done for vineyards and Christmas tree farms wanting to go organic too. Graze the grass, fertilize as you go...and get paid for it. Not a bad plan.

At the end of a season, the lambs and kids that are now fattened up get sent to slaughter. The older sheep and goats, if they are good grazers, and not adept at leaving the premises, get to stay around for another year. The short story? I was pleased our lambs would have a little longer on this earth and maybe some even for the length of their natural life. At least, that's what the guy said. Check out his site: www.goattrimmers.com

Getting the lambs coordinated to load in his truck, though, took some strategy, cajoling, and the old dog. If we had waited, we could have used the guy's trained herding dog, but I wanted to have the lambs ready in the barn. We yelled. We shrieked. We waved our arms (this is starting to sound like some of my other blogs). We yelled at each other. The sheep looked at us as if we had lost our minds. Then they lost theirs and scampered into the stalls.

As if this wasn't enough sheep duty for one time, we decided we had become deft(er) at herding. Why not just catch all the ewes and worm them while we smelled bad? Then we could cross sheep duties off the list for awhile. Luckily many of our girls are ruled by their stomachs and an open door into the barn is an open invitation. Selecting them out of the crowd for tube worming is the actual work-out, but Annie and I alternated back and forth until the group was finished.

The flock is now reduced and the hay is all but gone in the barn. Next job is to buy a couple tons of first and second cut from our neighbor, load it on a trailer, and pack it into our hayloft. For this, we will hire some of the teenage talent up the road. No use breaking our backs on dried grass tied up with string.



Photos: (top) guest's daughter making herding look easy (I have used this photo before in another blog but it transforms the act of chasing sheep into something so idyllic I just couldn't resist!), (bottom) this is how you drench worm a sheep.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

The Dilemma of an Aging Population

There is a big problem in the United States. The median age of farmers is well into their 50s. This means lots of wisdom, but less endurance. As serious as the problem is in our country, Leaping Lamb Farm has its own aging problems. I could speak here about the farmer and his wife, but, in point of fact, our companion animals are older than we in their life span and I foresee loss and sadness in the coming months.


Moralecia is our queen bee. She's a feisty Arabian at 27 years who still makes our geldings crazy when she flips her tail and squeals. But this winter has been hard and she has lost weight. Her hips show through her skin and her back is starting to sway. We have added senior feed and alfalfa to her diet but nothing seems to change. It doesn't help that we don't ride her much anymore. I could use the mud as an excuse, but our neighbor vet just built a covered arena. I thought being out "to pasture" was a well-deserved horse retirement, when in fact it often leads to lost muscle tone and frailty. These days Moralecia returns from a day on pasture covered from ears to tail in mud. At least she finally has a tail. I think our trainer, Sandy, thought the horse would never have a tail below her hocks. It was the last photo I ever sent to Sandy before her own quick death from cancer, and I'm sure she had to smile. For the tail, or for the life the horse was living in the country?



I have written several blogs about Chaco, the other horse we hauled here from Arizona. He was one great jumper when he was younger, but his jumper life pretty much ended when we moved. I thought the problem of jumping logs had to do with the unfamiliarity of the object. Now I realize his sight was quickly diminishing even before we left the Southwest, just never that apparent in a riding arena. Get us into a natural setting and the shadows from the trees, mingled with shades of green everywhere, make the terrain indistinct and logs for jumping unclear. Recently Chaco's moon blindness, common in Appaloosas, makes navigation anywhere unfamiliar difficult and even familiar paddocks have issues. Is the gate opened or closed? Are there sheep in the path? One small concession has been to leave the horse's chin and nose whiskers untrimmed. Better to feel his way around than walk into a wall. Not sure how long we can go on like this, but hesitant or not, his personality still seems intact. Where's dinner?!



Bezel is our grumpy old man that likes to sleep in farmer Greg's lap all evening even though I swear that cat has just finished sleeping all day. His black face and fur are flecked with gray. His coat is rough and needs a good brushing, but he hisses and growls when I pull at the mats. Our young cat, Bubba, preys on Bezel for play until Bezel screams like a little girl , never defending himself, just screaming at the outrage. His casual sleep style, 20 out of 24 hours a day, will probably prolong Bezel's life longer than most country cats. He has turned over all mouse catching to Bubba and the most effort he makes is to follow us on walks, sometimes, into the forest with his little belly swaying back and forth. I get so nervous we might lose him in the woods, I often carry him half way home.


Patches will probably not make it until spring. At 16, she has lived a good life, especially on the farm where she proved that shepherd breeds instinctively know how to push a flock of sheep. For years she saved us running long and wide, but now, because her hearing has gone she is as likely to send the sheep away as she is to push them in the right direction. She still comes on walks with me in the morning but we need to keep an eye on her off trail. She has a hard time getting over downed trees and sometimes walks off the wrong way. Her coat is matted and she is underfoot in the house. She steals the cat food when she can and empties waste baskets if we leave the house for any length of time. We have been dosing her with pain killers for her hips, but now wonder if we are prolonging a life of agony. She's been a good dog and has been a favorite of our guests and their children when she camps out on their deck for hours on end. I'm sure the hand-outs from little kids hasn't hurt.

I hate it that our animals may need us to do the right thing when the right thing is to end their life. I can't even count the pills left in the jar for Patches. We agreed that when they were gone we would not continue a life without quality. But, what's quality? A car ride? A walk in the woods? A soft dog bed? This will be a hard one but I think she is close to telling us. The best I can hope is a farm death, where the last thing she sees is her familiar bed, friendly faces, and the light being turned off.

Vet Liz, the neighbor, the cynical vet, has suggested we just dig a very large hole in the pasture if death passes over our geriatrics all at once. It's gallows humor, I know. I want to remember that our animals have been lucky in their lives. They have galloped across big fields. They have swum in creeks and walked high on mountain trails. They have had gourmet mouse meals. They have been brushed and fed and allowed to sleep places they aren't allowed. And they have all provided wonderful companionship, and loyalty, and character to our human lives. It's our responsibility to take care of them the best we know and can. That's our solemn promise - to watch out for them and do the right thing no matter how sad the end, or how wonderful the memories.

Photos: top- Moralecia grazes behind her much younger suitor, Tater; top middle- Chaco in the back pasture; bottom middle- Bezel asleep in a blanket on the couch; bottom- Patches hanging out on the cabin deck (photo taken by a guest and sent to us!)

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Middle of the Night Farm Anxiety

It's the opposite of counting sheep for sleepy time. I now count sheep in the middle of the night and wonder how I am going to cover the cost of hay because my lambs never sold this fall. A bad economy means folks eat hamburger, not steak, and certainly not lamb. I do the math in a semi-conscious state, and in the dark, when problems are most dire, I don't have a good solution. Luckily, Annie is coming up with some alternative plans of her own in the restless night.

As any insomniac will tell you, there are always other things one can worry about. Will the turkeys blow off their roost since they refuse to come under cover at night? Will the raccoons eat the turkeys for the same reason? Is there enough room for the ram lambs in the orchard loafing shed? When is it time to start pruning the trees and the vines? Will Annie get into vet school? How much longer will our old dog live or will we have to make that decision? Multiple anxieties work better in the dark, and the darker the anxiety the better.

It's not that I am an insomniac. I actually hate to be awake at night thinking about things. I prefer to dream my anxieties into other kinds of stories. Sometimes I even dream of my solutions! For instance, what if we were to buy another freezer and have our lambs processed by a USDA facility? Then I could sell by the cut for a higher price. And, if the lamb didn't sell, we would have food for years!

With Craig's List as a free source for advertising, this idea doesn't seem that nightmarish. We had recently talked about putting our freezer in the barn so our new solar panels could power it. I'm not sure if my guests would be put off looking either into the freezer for lamb to eat or out the large, open, barn window at lambs playing in the loafing shed. Maybe we don't want to go there just yet.

By the morning light, USDA processing seems a better solution than several more tons of $5 hay. $65 per lamb times 20 lambs will cost $1300. If I can then sell the meat for an average of $7 per pound, at 400 pounds, I should net $1500. Add in the cost of a new bench freezer at $400 and I am down to a profit of $1100.

On the other hand, if I decide to sit on the lambs until they gain more weight I will have to bring in hay. Three tons of hay (120 bales) at $5 each will cost $600 - money just going down their little gullets, while the months tick off until the time when they are no longer considered lamb, but mutton.

As a sheep friend cautioned me, "Why are we paying for people to eat our sheep?!" Of course, she not only decided to handle the butchering herself, she also put the price up at $11 per pound wrapped and she gets it! Could have something to do with the fact she is gorgeous, Icelandic,...and so are her sheep. But, hey, all power to her!

I've made a call to the USDA processor up near Portland and also to my friend, Cody, who will haul my lambs. I've also called a local processor to compare pricing. Works out cheaper to haul 100 miles than to have the non-USDA guy come to the farm. Makes no sense. Problem is, I can't get scheduled for another month!

I feel my anxiety amping up and imagine when I awake in the middle of the night to the snoring of the old dog and the farmer, there has to be a solution lurking in the dark, if only I can dream it.

Photo: Lambs in the loafing shed at the end of the barn

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Water Blessings

Two days before Christmas and we have water in the house and barn again! Our pioneer days are over for the moment. As proof it is never so cold here, when the temperatures plummeted into the single digits for a week, the pump house froze and no amount of warmth from the portable heater could thaw the lines to the outside. It's a funny thing having electricity and no water, but a preferable arrangement than the other way around. I could see the water that wasn't coming out of the faucets!


In the middle of the freeze, our planned vacation south arrived, as did our farm sitters from their cozy winter digs in California. We discussed the horrors of possible broken pipes when things thawed, and they decided it was more thoughtful to leave sleeping dogs lie, pipes in this case, until we returned. It was easier and less stressful to haul water from the creek for the toilets and run up to the cabin for showers and dish washing because, thankfully, that pump house had only frozen for a day before we figured out how to warm it up.

It's great having house sitters who are friends and neighbors, especially when things aren't working as they do normally. On reflection there is always something out of the ordinary on a farm, and luckily Karen and Allen are a flexible pair. Karen has bigger fears of our animals dying than the inconvenience of no water. No tragedy there.

So, when we returned home we were pleasantly surprised to discover Allen had improved our water hauling system...and, thankfully for Karen, no animals had died! Ever the creative sort, Allen realized the torrential rains that hit after our departure, combined with our leaky gutters, produced enough water to fill strategically placed 5-gallon buckets with enough water for all the animals in pastures and the toilets at the house. No more red wagon trips to the creek!

We didn't turn the water on right away. We had to steel ourselves to the possibility of multiple broken pipes spraying inside and out. The first challenge was to get the pump running. The second was to have enough people around with walkie-talkies that we could shut the thing down immediately if there was a geyser in the house.

The pump was primed. We waited for the pipes to fill and the pressure to return. It went smoothly, but the pressure was low. Nothing in the house was leaking. I circled the outside of the house and could hear water running furiously. It was coming from under the deck. How the heck do you get under there?! Not easily, but we were lucky. Farmer Greg could reach the pipe enough to cap it off. Who needed a faucet there anyway, until next summer at least?! We felt like we had survived a natural disaster since we were two days from Christmas and plumbers were scarce.

The next task was to cut down a tree off the back forty and install it in the living room. As Annie was holding our Charlie Brown example of holiday greenery in its stand and farmer-professor Greg was tightening the screws, she thought she could hear spraying water. Uh-oh. She left the professor to manage the tree on his own as she sprinted towards the watery sound coming from the glassed-in porch at the end of the room. A hard spray was shooting out of the wall.

Again we were lucky. This 'sun room' had been set up for plants, with a counter sink and floor drain. The only thing truly soaked were the area rugs left piled in a corner. Most of the water had escaped outside. We had avoided Murphy a second time! Of course, this pipe also proved to be impossible to reach and was thus unceremoniously capped.

Summer is a better time to deal with plumbing repairs. Today we found our holiday spirit, put up the house lights, decorated the tree, and wished for snow in the middle of a rain shower. We were back to too much water outside falling from the skies, but this was as it should be. "Twas the night before Christmas and all through the farm, the water was flowing, even out at the barn..."

Photo: The fireplace gets lit once a year and this was its time ...otherwise, we use the wood stove to heat the place!

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

A Do-Over Day

It would have been better if I had never gotten out of bed. The animals might not have thought so. But, if I had stayed in bed, I wouldn't have spent the entire day trying to restore water to our house or worrying about the lamb that was trying to die in our frigid barn.

They say western Oregon hasn't been this cold for so many days in a row since 1972. I say, "Why now?" Fifteen degrees is more typical for Wisconsin and, knowing that, they build with insulation around the water pipes and hose bibs. Here, I buy the Styrofoam covers and electric pipe wraps, but can only protect the stuff I can see. We use a heat lamp in our pump houses because there is no insulation.

The water ran fine yesterday morning in the house, although the hoses at the barn froze solid so it didn't make any difference for filling the trough. Then, in the afternoon, the faucets only issued air and a vast hollowness, usually accompanied by a "damn" as I realize I have left on the water somewhere and de-primed the pump. This time, there wasn't any place I had "left on" the water. This time we didn't have a clue what was wrong except I had recently emptied out the gallon containers of water, saved for just such an emergency, with the thought I would fill them fresh later. Of course, "later" hadn't happened yet.

Greg identified a spot in our orchard where the pipe was only 4" at best underground. Before leaving for work he hauled large timbers along the line and lit a small bonfire to try and send some heat into the frozen soil. Maybe this was the source of the problem. It was a valiant attempt, but ultimately did nothing for the air hissing through the line.

I spoke with friends and someone suggested I check the pipes in the pump house. The heat lamp had been overwhelmed by the unusual cold. It didn't help that at this time of year the sun never hits the pump house. Everything was frozen solid. I brought down a portable heater, turned it on, and left to go deal with the lamb in the barn.

When one thing goes south on the farm, there is something else that usually follows right on its heels. Earlier in the week, I had noticed one of our ram lambs looking sickly. I had scooped him up for a warm-up in the barn with a heat lamp and some extra food. Problem was, he just kept getting worse. Annie made him a special diet with molasses and grain. I kept pushing him back under the lamp. We brought in the other lambs as the temperatures plunged to keep him company and provide some group warmth. The lamb was becoming dehydrated and we added a saline drip to our medical routine.

With a week-long trip out of town planned for the next day, I scanned the to-do list for our neighbors who would be taking over the farm. No water in the house, but at least the cabin's well and pump house hadn't frozen over. No water to the animals - hauling from the creek was now the routine for those animals with no access. A lamb that needed a saline IV every 3-4 hours - beyond the expertise of most. It didn't seem quite fair to dump all this on friends returning from sunny California just to help!

Something needed to give. There was no change predicted in the forecast. As heartless as it sounds now, the lamb, which was steadily progressing down hill, needed to die on our watch. I made her a new bed of straw. I gave her a little water with the drench gun. I turned out the lights at the barn and headed back to the house for dinner.

At 11 p.m. I decided to go out to check on the animals. As I entered the barn, all the lambs in the pen were standing at one end away from the heat lamp and the stricken lamb. I knew, without looking, that our friends would not need to be taught how to IV a sheep. I removed the body from the stall and wondered why all our ministrations had come to naught. It does seem as thought sheep either get better on their own or decide to give up. Sometimes medicine has nothing to do with it.

At least the day was over. It was quiet in the barn. I could hear the ewes in their loafing shed chewing their cuds. The horses blinked again when I turned the lights off. As I walked back to the house, the cold crisp air was fresh and the stars twinkled in the atmosphere.

Photo: frost as thick as snow

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

The Stash

I was making banana bread the other day because the black bananas kept falling off the shelf in the freezer and landing at my feet on the floor. I have a great banana bread recipe. It's written on note paper from college. Don't know who gave it to me. The paper is stained with butter and a little the worse for wear, but still readable. Better yet, no one has ever turned down a thick hunk of this particular banana bread, especially when it is warm.

However, this was one of those days when I decided to stray from tradition and try out a new recipe I had found one that called for sour milk. Who wouldn't want to try something like this, especially if there was sour milk waiting to be used in the fridge? It was a day to experiment.

Sometimes I pull all the ingredients out at once to bake; other times I reach into the cupboard as I go. This day I started with all the wet products mixed together. I had thawed, gooey bananas, reject eggs from the chicken yard, butter melted in the microwave, vanilla from Mexico, sour half-and-half from the fridge. I mixed in the sugar until I had a creamy, brown soup.

Next, I needed to sift the flour, salt, and baking soda together. The first two ingredients were easy enough, but when I reached for the baking soda, it looked as if the last person to use the box had decided to store walnuts in it. Now, why would anyone do that? Seemed like an interesting idea, but it didn't really make sense since I usually store my walnuts in the fridge or the freezer. Walnuts in the soda box. Walnuts in the soda box. I was stumped. I started to idly pull the nuts out of the box, because what I needed at the moment was baking soda.

As I dug through the walnuts, I couldn't help but think storing nuts in the soda box was a bad idea with all the wildlife in our house. I re-framed the thought. Who would think storing nuts in a box in the cupboard was a good idea? Oh! I turned on the light to the cupboard and peered into its nether regions.

My mouse traps lay discarded on the floor, pushed into a corner. After a winter of playing death-eater, I had taken the summer off, figuring most critters would willingly look outside for fresh things to eat rather than raid the pantry for dry goods. Of course, here we were, coming into late fall. I had been canning for months, storing my goods, preparing for a time when fresh food froze and wilted in the ground. My traps had lain idle all this time.

A large, unopened bag of walnuts caught my eye on the shelf kitty-corner to where I stored the baking soda. As I pulled it out for a better view, walnuts cascaded to the ground. There was a large hole at the back of the bag. This bag was no longer new, and no longer as full as when purchased at the store! Well, at least that explained it. I was providing winter storage, a.k.a. "the stash", for our house mice, whose wily ways had apparently kept them safe from the sharp claws and quick pounce of Bubba. Or, maybe not. This stash looked a bit shabby and incomplete.

Most amusing? The soda box reads, "Help Fight Hunger". I don't think of baking soda, per se, fighting hunger, unless as the final ingredient necessary to make banana bread. But, I do think of walnuts as a product that could fight hunger all on its own. I just never thought of my role in helping to fight hunger in our resident mouse population...unless as the final ingredient in a mouse sandwich for the cat!

My College Banana Bread Recipe

Cream:

3-4 mashed bananas
3 tbl warm water
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 c sugar
1/2 c butter

Sift:
3 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Mix dry and wet ingredients
Pour into greased/floured loaf pan
Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour

Photo: Walnuts in a box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Darwin's Farm Yard

Every time an animal dies as the result of a ridiculous accident, my vet says it wins the Darwin Award. She's a bit cynical, but she does have a point. Nonetheless, when one of our animals born on this farm has an accident, it makes me sad. We lost a ewe lamb yesterday for a stupid reason. She pushed her head through a small opening in the hay feeder, turned her head sideways so her jaw locked up against one of the metal bars, and then couldn't figure out how to turn her head in such a way that she could remove it. Ultimately, she suffocated because she went down on her knees and cut off the air to her windpipe. Damn!

Darwin would have said this wasn't a sheep we wanted to keep anyway. If it hadn't been the hay feeder, she might have been swept down the creek during a winter flood or found herself tangled in blackberries as the cougar approached. "She's a cute little black lamb with some Suffolk in her," I would have said. "This breeding tends to lend itself to larger lambs we don't have to over-winter with hay before we sell them for market. I like these lambs." Darwin would have said that 'liking' has nothing to do with his theory.

In the scheme of things, Darwin might have suggested that most of the sheep breeds could win his award with little trouble. To wit:
+ Sheep have a tendency to follow a leader no matter where that leader is heading.
+ Sheep will run for water if they see a predator even though they can't swim and will drown if they go over their head.
+ Sheep, especially lambs, will run straight into fencing to escape being caught and, while this hasn't happened to us (thankfully), they can break their neck doing this.
+ Rams have been known to butt heads through a fence so hard as to kill one (not sure if Darwin figures in here for testosterone or the thickest skull).
+ Once cast to the ground for worming or hoof trimming or whatever, a sheep will just give up and not move, even when released.
+ A lamb will stay caught in blackberries, bleating away and separated from the herd, until a person gets close enough with clippers to free it and then, boom!, it pulls free on its own.
+ If a sheep lies down in a ditch, it can often get stuck on its back and will die if no shepherd comes to help right it.
+ Sheep, when trying to avoid being forced to do something or go somewhere they would rather not, will jump right into the shepherdess, forcing her to think about carrying a 2 x 4 to hit them with next time this happens. (Okay, maybe the last one is not a Darwin Award, except for the shepherdess who was in the way, but it sure makes me mad when they do that!)

I've picked on the sheep for many of these Darwin Awards when, in fact, our farm yard includes turkeys. I was sure we would lose several this fall when they decided to roost in the raccoon's mulberry tree and would not come down no matter what we threw at them. Then it rained so hard and they chose to stay out in it, instead of following the chickens under cover.

Somehow, the Darwin Award, for an animal with wrinkled flesh on its face and hair coming out of places it shouldn't, seems more justified than for a soft, woolly lamb that only months ago was playing with its siblings and bouncing around the orchard. I think that's why vet Liz sighs in her cynicism. When tragedy hits the cute ones you have to wonder, what did Darwin see at first glance, that we seem to have missed?


Photo: (top) lambs and ewes in orchard in spring; (bottom) silly free-range turkey at back door looking in

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

A Castle in Ruins

You know summer is over when the crenelations of the hay castle in the loft start to lean and the tunnels are exposed with every day of feeding. I remember the hours of fun we used to have as kids in our friend's hay loft. It smelled sweet and warm like summer grass and was a child's wonderland for games of 'hide and seek' and 'king of the castle'.

So, it was not at all strange that families staying on the farm with us this summer would have naturally gravitated to our full hay loft, also smelling sweet and warm like the summer grass we had just cut from the fields. I, honestly, had lost my appreciation for haylofts. I viewed ours as a lot of hard work to load and a place of apprehension throughout the winter as I watched the bale count dwindle each year.

Load it up; feed it out; repeat. Year in - year out. A fairly unimaginative way to look at a hay loft. Add some kids to the mix, however, and also some rainy days in the middle of the summer, and a hay loft can morph into a medieval castle. We had two families work on the piles of hay this year, in their own way. The first had little kids so dad did most of the castle building. Nothing too elaborate, nothing too creative. He was an adult after all.

The castle took on a life of its own under the diligence and hard work of two 12-year-old girls who spent hours building the fort that remains in ruins today. There were tunnels and doors and hidden rooms. There were crenellations made by standing some of the bales of hay on end. There was even a shooting platform for the basketball hoop set high up on one of the bale drops in the center of the barn. Build a castle; shoot a few hoops; build a secret passage way; shoot a few hoops.

I appreciated the extent of the building activities, until this fall. Sure the girls wanted me to see what they had done and I dutifully climbed up the bales to take a peak, but I must have missed a lot of the infrastructure. Only now as I feed four bales of hay a day and slowly dismantle the girls' works have I seen the imagination of the world they created and understand the delightful skipping of our summer artisans.

And then the adult mind appears to niggle at my own delight. There really isn't as much hay here as I had thought from a quick purview. Behind the crenellations are walkways and deeper rooms. Even some tunnels. Will we have enough hay to see us through the winter after all? Darn that hay castle for making the barn look full up.

No, I have to remind myself. That's not the way to see it. The hay castles built this summer will provide memories for these kids as adults. Maybe as they walk down a city street in July, maybe as they sit at a desk looking out the window on a rainy day. "Remember that summer we built a fine medieval castle in the hay loft at Leaping Lamb Farm, where the hay smelled sweet and warm and the rain pounded down on the metal roof? What a great time we had!"



Photos: hay loft with remaining passages and crenellations

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Check These Projects off the List!

This was the summer of our "greening". We built a large, 3-bay composter to better utilize all the animal manure produced on our farm, and we installed solar panels on the barn to power our farm operations, because, yes, even in Oregon there is enough sun to do this!

The composter was a bit of a challenge because this was actually a project scheduled for last summer. It seems it is wise to include people who build structures when discussing the best location for one of these. I decided, with the approval of the woman helping me with the grant, that the most attractive and seemingly easiest place to build the structure was directly down the hill from the horse's loafing shed. The roof lines would look clean and I could wheelbarrow the manure right over the wall. The tractor could approach from down below to turn the piles. Easy.

Then the engineer got involved! Despite our barn sitting on the top of a hill for the past 80 years, any cutting into the side of the hill was seen as catastrophic to the building's integrity. I figured the barn had sat on logs and stones for this long, why not longer? No one cared to listen to my theory. Throw enough rebar and cement an engineer's way and he will be happy. Except the structure took on the cost of a small house, so we scrapped it until I could come up with another location.

Last winter, I tried to think creatively. This time I involved my builder Alan. Did he think we could squeeze a composter on the end of the loafing shed? I would be able to drive the tractor straight into it from two different sides. There would be a squeaky 6 feet to spare between the barn and the building. I would have to hone my non-existent tractor skills. Everyone signed off on the plan. It was out of my hands. The guys did what they needed to do, with a few adaptations along the way.

Our solar panel project started construction the day we heard we had received a partial grant from a federal program. We have the perfect south facing roof off the barn to maximize sun power. Perfect roof and incline; not so sure about the construction. Did I know how deep the large posts holding up the roof went into the ground? Did I think they were set in cement? Well, that depended on a number of things.

We needed to reinforce the roof anyway since it was never built with the thought of laying solar panels 7 wide and deep. The contractor started with the supporting posts and, surprise, surprise, they were only set into the ground 8" at most! Not to worry- a three foot hole around each, married, pressure-treated 8x8s, pack all this with concrete- and everyone's happy. For my part, I will always wonder about the posts holding up the corners of the shed that were were left untouched. Note to self - don't back the tractor into either of these while working the composter!

Installation of the panels went fairly quickly once the structure was re-supported, and the intermittent fall rain stopped for a few days. Our old barn, designed before the advent of baled hay, had a door that opened straight out to the loafing shed roof where the panels were installed and also a permanent ladder with a platform used, I think, to originally service the hay hooks and the track meant for pulling loose hay from below.

I love to cross projects off our summer to-do list! Our new-looking composter will soon weather and match the barn. I'm sure a few dings from me will come with use, but much like a new car, the first one hurts the most, the rest just add character. The fancy solar meter inside the barn hums along when the sun is out, compiling figures of wattage being pushed back into the power grid. It is high tech for such an old space. For this summer we are the face of farming in the 21st century.



Photos: (top) brand new composter minus the poop; (bottom) solar panels mounted above the sheep's loafing shed

All Right Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

A Lesson in Milling

Our summers fill farmer Greg's head with projects because this is the only time he is "off" from his non-farm job. I think he originally imagined the summers as a time where he could write his book or take a break from three hard semesters in a row. He didn't count on trees falling over in the winter, blackberries growing like the prickly rose vines in Sleeping Beauty, or the list of honey-do's that stack up over time as things fall apart in the rain.

Farmer Greg's list was long this summer, but one of the more interesting and educational projects was the milling of a number of large trees that blew down last winter, taking with them other large trees. Of course it helped that neighbor Dave connected us with an old logger on the other side of the mountain who just happened to have a mobile mill. What are neighbors for in the woods if they can't help you find your local retired woodsman? The mill was set up in the new clearing down by the spring holding tank, the site of the largest windfalls and the heaviest trees to try to drag too far from where they fell.

Greg and Randy had been cutting up and moving logs into place as soon as the ground was no longer muddy. A place was cleared for the trailer to be backed in. A peeve and wire chokers were borrowed from Dave so the logs could be maneuvered more easily into position. The surprising part - the mill man, took it upon himself to teach everyone involved how to use his machine - how to check the computer screen, how to move the controls, how to cut the size intended. I ended up being the only one not to run it for no other reason than my absence doing other projects.


For four full days, the guys (and Annie for a partial day when she wasn't taking photos of the operation) loaded large, heavy logs onto the hooks of the mill and unloaded cut boards onto the trailer. There was a list of specific sizes we needed for the manure composter we were about to build next to the barn. Then there was all the rest, cut to sizes we hoped would be useful in the future: 2x6s, 2x8s, 2x10s.

The horses and sheep came down for a look, but not for long. Too much commotion, not enough grass. The days were warm but the shade in the woods saved a few souls from heat stroke, while sawdust swirled in the air and covered both men and plants alike.


How many boards do a few windfall trees make? Lots it seems. Certainly enough to build stuff and still have a garage full. Obviously we will need to build more stuff soon or the trailer will sit out in the weather from now to kingdom come and no roof to cover it as the wood cures, and cures some more.

There was one hard lesson we learned from this project. When milling wood for a specific length, say 8 feet, the logs actually need to be cut at about 8'8" because you lose length in the milling process. This meant when we needed 12 foot lengths to tie in as beams for our new composter, 11'8" just didn't make the span. The guys tried to work our wood the best they could but there are certain rules of the game. We will know for the next time.

Meantime, I have plenty of fresh cedar and fir sawdust to blanket our blueberries for the winter and even enough to scatter in the stalls from time to time. We will have to do the math and determine whether all the labor and time were worth the effort financially, especially with the falling price of lumber. But, from an aesthetic, conservation, and educational point of view I already know it was. Sometimes the value of the product is not in how much money you saved but in the knowledge that you learned and accomplished something of value.



Photos: Milling process x 4

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Lost!

I knew I lost one little lamb about a month ago because she kept trying to die on me and finally disappeared into the brush so I would give up my feeble attempts to save her. I think I realized she would eventually do this. She had not become better with any of our ministering in the barn and, if a lamb can be depressed (hard to imagine when they are so darned cute), she was the poster child for it.

Then, just this week we lost 30 sheep, plus or minus, in one fell swoop. Not lost as in "died", but lost as in "where the hell did they disappear to???" This was a dramatic turn of events and right in front of newly arrived guests. It was also enough to make me lose a very good night's sleep.

I hummed the tune of 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' as I lay my head down on the pillow.

Scottie had a lot of lambs, lot of lambs, lot of lambs
Scottie had a lot of lambs whose pastures had turned brown

And everywhere that Scottie went, Scottie went, Scottie went
Everywhere that Scottie went the lambs could not be found

They wandered way back in the woods, in the woods, in the woods
They wandered way back in the woods a distance from the farm

The night grew black and she despaired, she despaired, she despaired
The night grew black and she despaired, a cougar's done them harm...

I noticed we were missing half the herd during feeding. This is always an exciting first experience for new guests at our farm stay. We ring the bell, throw down bales of hay from the loft and divide it between mangers so that 60 odd ewes and their babies can have some dinner. There is a free standing manger in the middle of the shed requiring a cool underhand toss to land flakes of hay properly between the wire walls. Frisbee is good training, so is slow-pitch softball.

This evening I knew I was short a good many sheep. We bedded down the horses, the donkey, and the good sheep who had returned on schedule and went looking for the rest. I had several ideas of former hideouts. I am lucky this couple were in good shape as we hiked higher and higher into the hills. Boy, did they get the personalized tour from me! I took them as high as the logging road behind the property, all the while following fresh sheep poop. Or was it deer? Sometimes I find it hard to tell the difference.

We reached a "T" in the road. Would the sheep really have turned even farther away from the farm and headed up the hill? I didn't think so. They hadn't gone that way before. We headed down hill and back towards the barn with no sheep in sight either on the road or through the clear cuts. I started to think back to the afternoon when the dog had squeezed under my desk at the sound of rifle shots. Sure it was hunting season, but only bow and arrow at the moment. Had the gun shots spooked the sheep? Had a hunter mistaken one for a deer? Not the outcome I was looking for.

Once I had checked every hiding spot I knew and driven to my neighbor's house because she has such great grass in her back pasture, I started to call the other folks who live up our road, about 8 residences in all. No, no one had seen any wayward sheep that evening. Of course it was now getting to dusk and the sheep would be bedded down. Farmer Jones suggested there was nothing to do until morning, and even then we might find they returned on their own. Hmmmpff, I wasn't so sure. There were, after all, recent cougar sightings on our road, just to make things "interesting"!

It is at this point I always question my intelligence with sheep and livestock in general. If they had escaped before, why hadn't I done more to prevent a wider range? Could it be because none of our property is fenced on the forest side? Could it be because we had created a perfect storm by ripping up both hay fields in one year? Could it be that once sheep get an idea in their mind it takes a mighty deterrent to make them forget it??

The next morning I went out early to the barn, hoping my pasture roaches had come home in the middle of the night, hungry and humbled. Not a sign. About an hour later my closest neighbor knocked on the door dressed for work. She had seen our sheep down the road about two miles, scattered through a recent clear cut. Oh, great, they were probably eating some of the fresh new seedlings!

Annie hopped on the ATV and came home with all thirty sheep trotting in front of her. She talked about almost missing them because they blended so well with the backdrop. Wouldn't they have loved that - to stay free for another day?! At least I didn't qualify for the worst shepherdess in the world that day. The ewes were back and it didn't appear we had lost any.

They, on the other hand, lost their freedom from that day forward. We decided, until we seeded the barn field, we would leave all the livestock locked behind secure fencing. I figured there was grass at the edges of the fields, and we could toss down extra bales of hay to spread around for forage. The horses were caught up in the bargain, but it made things simpler this way.

Now, going through four bales of hay a day, even with the addition of five tons from my local farmer, is not a good thing for conserving winter feed and, with the cooler nights, the animals seem hungrier than ever. We have had a few rains so the grass is getting greener in the unfenced pastures, but I figure it will have to be plentiful (to their knees!) before our sheep decide to stay close to home. We are almost on gun hunting season so there are additional problems if the flock decides to break out and go wandering in the woods again. Of course, if I find out who the ring leader is, I may just have to whack her over the head with a rifle butt myself!


Photos:(top) sheep in our 'dirt' field with inviting green grass down by the creek but no fence to keep them in, (bottom) horses are grazing the edges of our 'dirt' field as best they can. Will open up pastures as soon as rains start.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.

Chasing Sheep in City Clothes

My heels were already sore from wearing nice shoes into town to match my nice outfit for a meeting. Running down the graveled dirt road in them did nothing to improve the feel or my attitude towards the four black sheep I was chasing. I had left my car turned off in the middle of the road because herding sheep as I backed up was not working that well; there was no way to turn around; and I was absent a sheep dog.

Why had we thought it such a good idea to tear up not only the hay field but most of our other grazing pasture as well this summer? Oh, yeah, the lack of good grasses and an over abundance of moss. However, now it didn't seem as if economies of scale were doing us any good. The sheep were disappearing into the woods looking for forage, and this inevitably (for the bad sheep at least) meant some of them were finding their way into the low summer creek bed, where we also lacked a fence for obvious winter flooding reasons, and hence onto Honey Grove road.

Our neighbors had taken to driving down our driveway to let us know the sheep were out. Some of them had even tried to chase the sheep back onto the property, but this was problematic, as I mentioned above, because herding with a car doesn't work that well either in reverse or driving forward. Annie and I (mostly Annie) had taken to jumping on the ATV to round up the surly lot, although I also tried the technique of ringing Pavlov's dinner bell and clapping my hands loudly. This worked best to get the horses back to the barn at a trot.

Today it was hot and dusty. The girls looked at me as if I had lost my mind when I started to back the car. A few dove off the gravel road and down the steep bank through tripping blackberries and loose rock. I got out to follow them and, as I took a step to the edge, realized I might tumble and end up in the barbed wire fence, or at least astride a woolly sheep.

It was a bit of a stand-off until I got a large stick from the side of the road. "Get out of the ditch you silly ewes!" "Move! I said, move !! Pshhh, pshhh, pshhh (I have a sound I make that actually produces movement from the sheep when they feel I mean it)." I whacked the surrounding flora for emphasis. The sheep decided to follow their sisters back up onto the road. Finally! I gave the last one a thwap with the stick anyway, just to make a point. She didn't feel a thing and I felt a hint of justice...and just a twinge of revenge.

The sheep now trotted in the direction of their escape route, down a side road and through the opening to our neighbor's property that had once been secured with a fence. It seems Joe had decided to do some work and the fence was a hindrance to his ingress and egress. Sheep just love that kind of decision-making by humans.

It was hard to follow now. The blackberries and nettles were waist high and a traipse into the overgrown field was just asking for trouble, not to mention an increasingly dark mood on my part. I heaved my stick at the fleeing sheep, hoping they were feeling badly enough to join the rest of the flock. I needed to construct some type of a physical barricade, even if this wasn't our land. I checked for branches and small downed trees to make a temporary pole fence and tried to jam what I could across the rather large opening. Good enough!

Thankfully, no cars had come bombing down the road while I was parked in the middle of it. Dirt makes it hard to control a stop and explaining why I had left my lovely new car to the vagaries of a country road, and residents known to drive a little too fast down it, just didn't add up to good sense on my part. Besides, I didn't really want to explain why our sheep were all over the neighborhood. I had already been warned about the cougar sighting twice. What kind of a shepherdess was I anyway to let my flock wander hither and yon?

Once back at the house, I took off my city clothes and my city shoes and re-dressed in jeans and Crocs. Yeah, that felt good. Tonight I would need to start graining the sheep so that coming to the bell seemed like a good thing to do. At this rate, I would also need to pull in some hay from my neighbor farmer's second cut because I wasn't going to have enough to get us through the winter.

Of course we could always cull some sheep to bring down the numbers and get rid of the laggards. I wondered if any of the escape artists today were on the list we had compiled earlier in the summer, but about which I had done nothing to date. I would have to take a better look tonight when they had their heads buried in the manger. "Come here my pretties," said the wicked witch of the West. (I hope this doesn't seem too callous, but bad sheep are a problem and they always lead others astray with them...Where have we heard that before. Hmmm.)

PS Oh, yeah, and just to be clear about the title of this blog - the sheep were not the ones wearing city clothes!

Photo: This woolly hair sheep at the front is a "cull". Her hair doesn't shed out the way it is supposed to and she produces midget lambs that she then deserts. Too bad since she has a cute face. Seems like the rest of the sheep are wondering if they are on the list too.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Scottie Jones
...Click here to read the rest of this post.