Little Lambs in the Wood

 Two new lambs have joined the cast here at Silver Cat Farm, courtesy of the ewe we know colloquially as Harriet (due to her lightning-bolt mark on her forehead). Harriet has been large enough of late for us to think she wasn't just smuggling watermelons but might somehow have consumed an entire other full-sized sheep; with our little boy and girl twins here, we now know why.

(For the record, the darker one on the left is our little ram lamb, while the cunning lighter-haired girl to the right is our little ewe lamb.)

While the first 48 hours is always crucial, we have hope that our lambs here will make it; they are alert and fairly sprightly, having struggled to their feet with reasonable speed, and are following mama around the pasture as she crops at grass. We have given them quick check-ups and made sure there is plenty of alfalfa around for mama, if she gets around to it before all the other sheep finish it all; if not, there's still hay and mineral, water and grass. Welcome, little lambs, to spring!

Winter's last gifts

Winter did not leave us without a last blast of rain, making up much of the deficit resulting from the otherwise rather dry and calm season.  Local flooding and icy roads made travel difficult, but the farm survived and now that the sun is warming the earth, the grass is responding to the heat and moisture.

We have combined our flocks again, with the pure british soay nibbling the grass around the house while the north americans eat the first flush of a paddock kept untouched during Winter.

The poultry are determined to get an early start on nesting, and with fresh straw bale shelters defending them from the elements, the geese and ducks are promising us many clutches.  Whether or not they keep this promise remains to be seen.

We have received hides back from the tanner, and he did beautiful work for us.  Soft, perfectly tanned hides with the fleece still on them.  As it happens, he is one of very few tanners who developed processes which satisfy the EPA, and this means that he should be in business for a long time.  The value of the meat and hides means that we may be somewhat more aggressive about our breeding projects than would otherwise have been justified.

There is a lot of work to be done.  We shall be collecting and planting trees from the nursery soon, as well as repairing some fences which are showing signs of wear. 

The tail end of Winter

This season has been mild, as climatologists predicted.  The one exception was a brief arctic blast which turned the rain into ice, and then several inches of snow.  With the return of the rain, the thaw was rapid.

Winter has also been rather dry, which suits the sheep well.  As ever, the waterfowl hardly care.  We have obtained fresh straw bales with which we make nesting shelters, and already there are eggs hidden here and there.  The ducks in particular show signs of feeling broody, as do some of the bantam hens.  This bodes well for the coming breeding season.

Since we have bred so few of our ewes, we do not expect very many lambs this season, but that was by design.  Mercifully the mild weather has also meant that we only had one lamb lost - a sickly, late ewe lamb.

This coming springtime should be a time of development for us.  We shall be obtaining a powered press for our wine, to help speed the production of large quantities, and we shall also be planting more trees and taking delivery of a couple of dozen hides from the tanner.  What we shall do with them remains to be seen, but lambswool jackets sound like a good idea.

Where we stand

December has closed in, and brought a relatively mild Winter.

We had a few days of hard freezing, but always followed by a thaw so far.  The pacific oscillation is in a neutral phase (known as La Nada) which generally means mild conditions and this season that has been true for us.  We only had one lamb needing a little time under shelter, but after a week on the porch, eating good food and enjoying an infrared lamp he was ready to face the other bachelors in our ram flock again.

The USDA came and inspected our sheep, giving them a clean bill of health once more.  The vet (an epidemiological specialist) remarked that they're in good flesh.  He had never met with Soay sheep before, and was quite interested in inspecting them.

Bolivar's son, Bolero, is still in the pure british flock with his sire, dam, and a few other ewes.  Bolivar keeps his son well in line, but even so Bolero is growing handsome and strong.

We have been feeding our sheep ample hay as well as rolled barley and alfalfa pellets to keep them in good condition and it appears to be working.  They trundle along, rather than bounding like deer, which bodes well for the coming breeding season.

Those of our lambs we decided not to keep (seven, including a couple of hoggets who weren't doing well) we slaughtered.  We had a guest on the farm for the butchering - an apprentice butcher whose wife took pictures of the whole process so as to do a presentation for his butchery class.  We are given to understand that the presentation was a hit, and we all learned from each other as well.

Some of the fencing we had done by third parties a couple of years ago is not standing the test of time, so a farmer had to set out with sledge, pickaxe, chisel and digging tools to get the old, broken concrete and post out and reset the post in a fresh batch of concrete before mending the wires.

Our cats are being kept indoors, in the lap of luxury.  The chief reason for this is to temper their murderous urges, as well as keep them safe from the great owls which inhabit our trees at night.

Peter has not registered any objections to this treatment, although the others periodically stare wistfully from the window at all the beasts they could be eating.

One of our successes this year has been the choice of bantam chickens.  They were obtained with the intention of having chickens with strong brooding and mothering instincts, and that has been fruitful.  Feathery, but fruitful.  The bantam cocks have taken over and keep the maran cock under their control.  The dominant bantam cock, a little grey fellow, will even chase the maran cock around from time to time, just to reinforce his position.

Our wine making is continuing and we are purchasing machinery to automate the process.  We have a slicer which neatly bisects apples, we have motorised our crusher, and the next step will be to have a pneumatic press fabricated.  As it is, we have several score more gallons of juice fermenting from this season, and will soon be able to accelerate our production.

Winter isn't quite as dull as one might imagine.  While the plants are dormant and the animals seek shelter, there is still work to be done.  Our fruit trees are starting to show signs of forming canopies, and it will be time to prune some of the more aggressive ones soon.  We may even have some of our first cider apples this coming year, and then we shall know what manner of product we shall have.

The clouds gather for Winter

Things on the farm have gone fairly well.

We have taken another delivery of pure british Soay ewe gimmers (two lambs and a hogget) to keep Bolivar company.

On the other end of the scale, we had to take the decision to put Teed's Tlingit down.  Brokenmouthed, she could not chew hay well.  While she could eat alfalfa pellets, she was nonetheless losing condition progressively.  While she might have survived the Winter, it was very doubtful.  A swift death was definitely preferable to slow starvation.

At least she gave us a couple of beautiful lambs, and we hope that her sweet temperament and good mothering will breed true.

We have released the bantams among the full size chickens.  We feared for the bantams at first, since we suspected that the full size chickens might bully them mercilessly, but in fact the bantams more than hold their own and the copper maran cock is no longer on top of the pecking order.  The last couple of bantams on the porch are raising three little chicks, so at least the bantams make more successful parents than the full size chickens. 

The winery has been fairly successful in production.  We have two beautiful meads in barrels right now, and a very promising cyser.  We have crushed another thousand pounds and more of jonagold and granny smith apples, which now sit fermenting in two more barrels.  We shall obtain honey with which to enrich them soon.

We have submitted another copy of our label application to the federal government, since the first was rejected - not on the grounds that there was anything incorrect or incomplete, but on the grounds that it had been printed on letter size, rather than legal size paper.  This stipulation was nowhere to be found in the instructions as given.  Shackled by red tape, we have no choice but to comply.

Autumn has arrived. With it has come several rainstorms, including one with major power loss (when lightning strikes a substation, the electric company takes a deep breath and you can hear them wince) and following up with a nice flush of secondary grass growth.

The sheep appreciate the greenery, and we have moved almost all of the bantams from the porch to their permanent home behind the house. The exceptions are three: two broody hens who seem to swell larger every time we see them, and one bantam hen who had been in the company of two bantam roosters. The roosters have been captured; the hen remains on the loose.

Our full-sized maran rooster is old and no longer dominant, as has been proven by the frequent sight of him running and ducking away from one of the bantam roosters. We are considering putting him out of his unhappiness when we butcher sheep in a couple of weeks; we plan to cull the flock substantially, particularly tending to our oversupply of rams. In the meantime, we continue apace with our plans for winery equipment (one piece done, another piece about to be tested) and getting our hides tanned - that is to say, the pile of hides in our freezer from past butchered rams and the like.

Soon October will be upon us, and decisions will include whether or not to have a festive pumpkin on our porch. If only that were the largest of our tasks ahead!

 The summer has slid by almost without our noticing it; only the cats have been able to entirely take it easy and sack out, which they've been doing at every opportunity afforded to them. We poor farmers have been far more active, and a great deal of sheep-shuffling has been going on in the background, while in the foreground we've been busy with assorted winery doings: some of our formulas have been approved, label design has proceeded, and we are very near to being able to put our product in stores and on shelves.

 There was an audit done by the state on the winery, which we passed ably, while one farmer was out of town for a family reunion and hundredth birthday party of a grandfather; not even government could get in the way of that, of course! The rams are unimpressed, having no anticipation of making such old bones. They would far prefer to reach the tasty greenery of the ferns and forbs on the other side of the fence.

 It has been a dry summer, and there is now a burn ban in place. We've been taking pains to keep all our animals well-watered and at the peak of fire risk, dampening some of the piled dry straw to both minimize hazards and to aid in decomposition. The ducklings have been happy with our efforts in particular, although ducklings are too easy prey too often to the local wildlife, and our bantams have been at risk to skunks.

The winery has new equipment now as well, in the form of a designed-and-constructed-for-us fruit slicer! This piece of equipment should speed up our processing considerably, and reduce the number of blisters we get when chopping apples and pears - chopping a quarter-ton of apples by hand is no mean feat. We look forward to turning out many more barrels of wine in the not too distant future.


It has on the whole been an impressively busy year, with one farmer attending university classes simultaneous to farming and another farmer handling a lengthy commute while farming; but the work is proving immensely worthwhile and fulfilling. There's no feeling quite like seeing a line of ducklings freshly emerged from the egg being led for the first time by their mother down to the water. While not all moments are quite so idyllic, and farm life has its tragedies as well as its joys, such as having to tend to the miseries of a chick who's been bullied to within an inch of its life by roosters, the experiences are compensated by the knowledge that these too can display fundamental truths about life from which our modern existence all too often shelters us. We are better able to appreciate the conveniences when we peel them away in even modest amounts.

As the summer winds to a close, we look forward to roast duck stuffed with apples, content in the knowledge that we would have neither without ducklings and seeds.