8:50 PM Friday, 16 April 2010
cool & clear

We had a lamb die the other day, on the 14th; the fence was off, which it should not have been, and it strangled itself on the fence. We got to it too late, although it had not yet gone into full rigor mortis when we got there. It was sad and we hope to avoid repeats in future, but we decided the most honorable thing to do was to make sure its life did not go to waste.

As a result, we rigged a joist in the garage and removed its head, skinned it, cleaned it carefully, butchered it and put the meat under salt to take out some of the excess blood and salted the hide and rolled it up tightly. The meat was cooked last night and was quite tasty.

Today we procured some more hay and made more tree guards; in the process of a one-man pasture-shifting, most of the sheep of the ewe pasture escaped and took some two-person rounding up. Pasture shifting is now done, however. All other animals are doing well, and the goslings are getting quite big. A surprising number of duck eggs have been laid by now, and the ducks have been going at it like nobody's business.

The geese have been quite quarrelsome, however, and multiple feather-pulling fights have had to be broken up by us. The rams also have been getting interested in the ewes; the ewes aren't interested, but it's a sign that we'll want to finish splitting them up, soon.