A recent hay delivery brought much joy to the barn kitties, who continue through life maintaining that everything on the farm is, in fact, a kitty toy. They are doing quite well.

The geese are being very broody, but unreliably so, and one goose had begun to lay numerous eggs on one end of the porch, using scraps of newspaper, plastic, and a pair of boots for a 'nest' which was neither large enough nor safe enough to suffice. The eggs are

in the refrigerator now and shall make a tasty omelet; the fact that no farmer suffered attack during this egg-gathering is indicative of just how unreliable their broodiness is.

The sheep are by and large doing well, and are quite visibly pregnant. Mitey has sores on his muzzle again, however, and seems grumpy; it seems mostly rubbed open by reaching through fencing, but we'll be keeping an eye on it.

Hercules has reintegrated with the flock already, and having gotten the numbers of Mitey's brides, the flocks are all one again, and are doing just fine. Isabelle is no longer getting out, although the ewe tagged 16 keeps getting out; we're not entirely sure how as of yet.

23 January 2011

Today we identified Mitey's brides, preparatory to commingling the flocks again. The brides are all definitely identified save for one - we thought her number was 074, but it turned out we have no 074. The closest is 174, which is S. Jenny. I suppose contrary to the song, we've lost her number.

The others were 257, which is S. Gigi, 277, which is S. Helena, 13, which is of course BM Double Nickel, and 152, which is S. Estelle.

Estelle was the shyest and apparently the 'omega sheep' in that little flock, so it took a great deal of work to get her close enough despite the competition from Mitey and the other girls. She is a very handsome sheep, albeit with much kemp in her coat, and is very visibly pregnant.

Upon reinspection, it is indeed Jenny of the 174. Hurrah for positive ovine identification!

Next we will head to the farm store for some pricing of materials and goslings.

22 January 2011

Hercules has been fetched home from the wilds of Oregon, bidding his erstwhile harem of studded ewes farewell. Tomorrow we anticipate many battles between him and Bolivar and possibly Mitey; for tonight, returning as he did in the dark of night, he seems content to munch hay and settle in.

Tomorrow Mitey's various brides must be examined - not medically but for their tag numbers so we know which ones they are. Once we know, we can let the flocks mingle as one.

We think we've found a way to keep the geese from the workshop, but we're not completely sure of its efficacy yet. The new cat tools at least have helped keep things cleaner.

The freeze ends

We have had a week of fairly solid rain now. Snow has melted a few thousand feet up, and the rivers are running strongly. Mudslides and inundations have closed roads, but owing to an intelligent geographical choice the farm is largely unaffected.

We have not had any predation losses since the last reported, although a cougar is reputedly in the area. The biggest problem, aside from keeping hay dry, has been keeping the geese out of the workshop. The simplest approach is to keep the door only slightly ajar. The cats can come and go, but the geese don't want to push their way in.

A duck is nesting near where we keep the hay, on quite a clutch of eggs, so if we can keep her happy we should be able to build up our flock once more.

We were to have brought Hercules back from his stud duties in Oregon, but there was a delay owing to the need for a blood test to be completed, so this waits on the coming week.

We are doing paperwork for taxes. The details will still have to be sorted out for the exact regulations, but the heavy lifting has all already been done. With any luck the government will repay us a fair percentage of our costs. Some of the purchases will undergo depreciation, such as orchard trees.

The weather has been prolongedly freezing, with temperatures being cold but the humidity insignificant enough to remain substantially dry. This has led to a definite snuggliness on the part of the barn cats, who take every opportunity to get close to us and indeed, to one another. The scarcity of small game and vermin has added to this, although when the little sparrows come to peck at the waterfowls' leavings, their attention is often roused from their daily naps.

The waterfowl remain unbothered by the cold, which has in fact been significant enough - combined as it's been with the lack of rain or snow - to extract ice from the ground, creating interesting and esoteric patterns of ice crystals. While this has been passing with a recent warmer spell combine with rain, we expect more of the colder weather this coming week.

The waterfowl may not be bothered by the weather, but it is contributing to their continued barrenness. A duck laid an egg - on the pond, right when the thaw had begun. As of yesterday, the egg had finally fallen out of sight as the last of the ice melted from beneath it.

Their lack of progeny is contributed to in other ways - while a drake was busily trying to court two hens at once, one of the ganders decided to join in, pouncing upon a supine duck hen. While the hen seemed unmoved by her violent possessor (ganders being heavier but actually lacking the virile and downright frightening equipment of male muscovy drakes), the result was surely infertile. Meanwhile, the one goose with a nest of her own loses interest long before the eggs are hatched; they are highly inefficient at this entire 'breeding the next generation' business.

Today it is raining and the geese and ducks are wandering about, eating no longer frozen vegetation. The cats are curled up together, all five of them, in the moon chair on the porch, while the sheep continue to exist without reason to comment upon them. Next weekend we will be fetching Hercules back from his stud duties, and we'll see some real warfare as he's reintroduced to the flock.