Thus commences the lambing

At last the lambing opens.  A visitor to the farm had the privilege of holding the first birth of the season - a ram born to Teed's Tlingit, by Silvercat Golden Delicious.  We are delighted by the white markings, a trait we wish to breed into our flock, and the fact that the lamb shows signs of health and vigour.

Here we see Tlingit anxiously leading her new lamb away, before wicked farmers can harm him.  His white blaze stands out quite clearly from a distance.  He is still a little unsteady on his pins, but with the care and attention of his devoted mother, his chances of growing into a beautiful ram are excellent.

Sadly he will truly have her devoted attention since it seems that his twin was a stillbirth.  It is hard to find these things, and yet it is a part of the whole truth.  We strongly suspect that the stillbirth was a result of the stress recently placed on our flock by the dog attack, although that is effectively impossible to prove.

As yet we have no other lambs to add to the tally, although the ewes are broad and languid.  Their languour does not extend to when farmers arrive with treats - to help them recover what condition they may, we are lavishly feeding them hay, with robust supplements of alfalfa, in both hay and pellet form, as well as both oats and barley.  Their feeding is so lavish, in fact, that they are turning up their noses at regular grass hay, but given their otherwise precarious situation we're happy to indulge them.

Cool early Spring

We still have frosty nights from time to time, but the grass is starting to grow greener.

We have yet to lose any more ewes, although we have two sheep in the makeshift clinic on our porch, and one of the rams got too wet to survive.

We have lost a couple of ducklings to owls.  We strung up lines to interfere with owl strikes, but this is obviously not a perfect solution; more so because the ducklings like to wander at night.

To help the sheep, we are supplementing their diets with additional alfalfa, oats and barley.  The idea is to keep them going as well as we can for now, and to actively fatten them during the growing season as well as we can so as to maximise our chances of strong numbers over the next year or two.

The trees are starting to show buds, and a number of the trees we first planted are now over six feet in height.  In the next few years we should see signs of our first crops.  We do have more trees on order, but after replacing a few dead trees and filling in a few blanks on our fields we shall rarely need more.

Some days are good

Some days are good, and some days are less so.

A farmer went to feed the sheep today, and looked over to the paddock where the pregnant ewes are being kept.  There was a dog; a dog from next door, in fact.

In the interests of brevity, we shall gloss over a farmer finding the dead, and the hopelessly mauled dying, and delivering euthanasia.  The heads were too many for careful removal for the USDA, so a simple axe was used against a log as chopping block.

With sunset, the count was nine corpses on the ground, out of twenty-nine ewes.  More were stumbling or prostrated from fatigue and shock - we expect aborted lambs and deaths from shock.  One particularly hard hit one lies on our porch, with hot water bottles and rich feed to try to counteract the shock.  The flock at large have received lavish quantities of alfalfa - rich in both proteins and calcium - to help them recover.

In a few days we shall know more.

Spring is here

It seems early, and yet here it is.  The first ducklings of the season are waddling across the short grass, which is showing the first signs of growth.  Mama duck had cunningly hidden her nest, so cunningly that while we could tell from her behaviour that she must be nesting (as are a couple of others) we could not be sure exactly where the nest might be.  No matter, she hatched a fine clutch of ten fuzzy ducklings, and she shows every sign of being an attentive, careful parent.

We are not the only ones to have noticed the weather. On surrounding properties tractors are firing up and work is commencing.  There is no guarantee, of course, that we shall not get more snow, and we still have frosty mornings, but in general the air is clearing and the weather warming to the point that rather than huddle for shelter, the sheep roam and sun themselves where they will.

Soon it will be time to plant seeds, and to chase new lambs around the paddocks, but for the time being the ewes continue to walk around as if smuggling watermelons beneath woolly coats. We should also obtain another bantam cock to entertain the bantam hens we have, since the first one died sadly in Winter. Since the bantams show every signs of becoming broody at the drop of a hat, this should be a good source of chicken meat. They are a very good way of converting kitchen scraps into new food.

The close of Winter

Winter is starting to draw to a close.  The days are noticeably longer, and instead of snow we get clear skies, or drizzle sifting down for hour after hour.  With any luck we may even look forward to an early start to the growing season, which would be welcome.  That will let us judge which trees are alive or dead, which pastures are in greater need of relief, and otherwise improve our position.

Our loss rate on the sheep has reduced.  Both our improved skills in caring for the weak and the improved weather have meant that we still have nearly four dozen sheep, most of which are pregnant ewes, going strong.

The timber bamboo we have planted has weathered the season beautifully, and at this rate we should have culms of ten feet or more this coming year.

Of all our creatures, the waterfowl have been the happiest throughout Winter.  Their feathers laugh off the snow, their down laughs off the cold, and they are merely annoyed by the pond freezing over.  As soon as it thawed, they were merrily washing themselves and cavorting in it.  If they would graze as well as the sheep, we might stick with geese, but they will not take down the brush the way our sheep will.

When we do have to take the head off a sheep for the USDA, we have found that the chickens, particularly the bantams, are very interested in nibbling at the corpse or the dripped blood.  These are definitely omnivores, and not in the least ashamed of the fact.

Of all the brakes on our work, the paperwork is perhaps the most confounding.  While we understand the reasons for the agricultural census, the taxation paperwork, the certification of each formula and label, the animal record keeping and sampling, it adds up.  By our reckoning, we lose a month or more of every year merely satisfying the requirements of the government, a quantity of work which surprises even the deer which pass through the farm.

Winter takes a bite

No sooner had we posted concerning how moderate the temperatures had been this season, and Winter reminded us that it has weeks yet to live.


The temperature plummeted on consecutive nights to 20F or lower - not very cold by the standards of many places, but colder than our animals like and cold enough to freeze our pipes. Hoarfrost formed on trees, and the normally green and brown evergreens turned frosty silver.

The poultry were largely unperturbed, but the sheep have been snuggling up to each other for warmth, and more of them have shown signs of trouble. Farmers, now well prepared for these problems, paused between bashing open the ice on drinking troughs to carry sheep to the porch and dry their wool and wrap them in blankets with hot water bottles.

The heads of sheep who succumbed earlier have been collected, and put in boxes for shipping to the USDA. Sometimes, to get everything to fit, a farmer first has to cut off the horns. For those who are faced with this need, a regular wood saw works fine, and if the horn is slender enough (as in the case of ewes) a ratchet pruning lopper works well too.

The USDA would appreciate it if the heads were not frozen, but this is wishful thinking on their part. Everything not living is frozen, and is likely to remain so for days, and possibly weeks. In our corner of Washington this is merely a short part of the year. In Montana, North Dakota, Idaho and Wyoming this is months at a stretch, with no prospect of a break.

There are bits of fence construction and similar work to be done, but the frozen ground is like concrete, making any such work an exercise in frustration rather than productivity. The days are short enough that not much will happen in any case, leaving us to huddle indoors and reassure the cats that the sun will return in due course.

Entering 2013

The season so far has not been particularly cold, but there has been plenty of precipitation.  Temperatures on the farm dipped as low as about 20F, but snow has not yet accumulated to more than about four inches, nor stayed more than a week.  There is still time for that to change this Winter.

Nonetheless, the combination of wet and windy conditions has meant that our weaker sheep (young and old alike), more vulnerable to privation, have had losses.  Rams and ewes in the prime of life have had no trouble surviving, and many ewes are starting to show the signs of early pregnancy.  Our losses are around 20%, alas, but we should have somewhere around 30 pregnant ewes now, so with any luck we shall more than make up for our losses when Spring arrives.

The best predictor of sheep survival is their condition by the time Autumn starts to close in, by our observations.  That will guide our feeding this coming year.

When we find sheep which are suffering, we have a treatment protocol.  To try to rescue them, we use the porch, which is fully enclosed now, as a clinic. We can keep them warm there with hot water bottles and blankets, feeding them alfalfa pellets and nutritional boosters to get them back on their feet.

The trees are all fast asleep, so assessing which are alive is a bit tricky.  We had saved quite a bit of money by purchasing seconds - relatively weak trees from the nursery, with smaller root systems - and therefore we expect that not all of them will have made it.  We have more trees on order, and will replace the failed with living trees, as well as expanding our plantings.

The ducks are showing signs of mating, and early nest formation.  This is definitely a good thing.  If they multiply the way we know they can, we will be eating duck before the year is out, and perhaps having some to sell as well.

We are a few paperwork hurdles away from our first wine sales.  The lab work is in, we know what the numbers are, and as soon as the TTB approves our labels and formulae, we shall be selling actively in the area.  The long, long wait is nearing its end.