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.

It has been a while

It has been a while since our last post, but it has not been an idle while.

The grass is growing well since we had a June in which warmth alternated with rain.  We are rotating the sheep from pasture to pasture, letting the grass recover after each cycle of rapacity.

The bantams are growing well, and we are assembling our bantam chicken tractor to give them more varied scenery, as well as freeing up our porch.

The thistles enjoy the weather as well, and so we go forth with scythe in hand to discipline them on a weekly basis, or even more frequently. It is hot work, but well worth it.

The death of the coyote which had come for our geese resulted in an explosion in our local cottontail population.  This will probably be remedied in the near future, but for now the plants rustle with lagomorphic breeding activities.

Chickencloud

In an effort to improve the natural rate of increase of our flock of chickens, we have invested in some bantam chickens.  As things turned out, we obtained a couple of dozen, but we have had the first dozen for a while now.  Since they are a fancy breed, they are quite attractive.  Here is a picture of them settling down for the evening.

Do not be alarmed by their glowing eyes. The photographer was clumsy and the lighting was poor, but the picture does illustrate the variety of feathers which they display.  They are quite good at scratching and turning over hay scraps, so we are looking forward to constructing a chicken tractor, all the better to improve our land.

Our patience has also been blessed by a positive outcome.  Our first bantam chick has put in an appearance, and the mother (the buff lady at the head of the picture) is teaching it all the finer points of chickening.

We have a tiny flock of fourteen tiny sheep, lambs who have survived the journey into this world.  Murphy's Law is alive and well for us, since only two of them are ewe lambs, but that ensures a bountiful harvest of meat in Autumn.

The ewes are patchy as they shed their wool.  Fortunately the weather is warming up, despite a few frosty nights, and they are glad to fill their bellies with fresh grass.

 The lambs delight in their usual sport of forming a flock and racing around as a group.  Some of the more excitable ewes occasionally join them, but on the whole the ewes are more interested in the grains we have taken to feeding them by way of supplementation.

After all the trials and tribulations of the last year, we hope to return some balance to our flock at last.  In the mean time, we continue to wrestle regulation so that we can finally sell the hundreds of bottles of wine we have ready and waiting.

Tiny Triumphs, Tiny Tragedies

As the lambing goes, we do our best to serve our sheepy mistresses, and they do their best to bring their lambs up and into the world.  It is always one of the most heart-warming of sights, watching a newborn lamb rise to wobbly legs, and while the mother licks and grumbles encouragement, totter to the udder for those first nourishing sips.  In our first picture, we see Caroline and her newest offspring, while below we see other new mothers.  There are no few; we already have nine lambs trotting around the pasture.  Somewhat frustratingly, given our need to rebuild our flock, only one is a ewe lamb so far.

Here, more's the pity, is a picture of a ewe lamb who, as it turns out, did not make it.  Sometimes a lamb just does not get the knack of suckling, and we have yet to discover how to educate them on the point.  Her mother is eager and willing, and there's no failure of mothering.  Just a lamb who will not join our flock, nor respond to her mother's calls again.

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.