Shearing day

This morning began at 6:00 for Mike who made homemade cinnamon rolls for the family. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone on a farm gets up at the crack of dawn, which is happening at 4:30 in Illinois this time of year. We are also not unwilling to use modern conveniences like a bread-making machine to have the dough ready to roll out at 6 a.m.

As expected, the sheep shearer arrived at 7:30. In less than two hours, we had 19 sheep sheared, and he was on his way to the next farm. Shearing day really is more than just shearing. Since we have our hands on the sheep -- not an easy task for some of the less-friendly sheep -- we take the opportunity to check their physical condition, trim hooves, deworm if necessary, and in the case of one ram, we check the horns to make sure they aren't growing into his head. On shearing day, everyone in our family of five has a job.

Mike was the person to catch the sheep, which wasn't too tough since 15 of them were in a 10 X 15 stall, where we put them last night. We didn't bother locking up Princess because she is so friendly, she's downright annoying. I think she might have been mad at us after shearing though. She certainly was not one of the more complacent sheep. We also didn't catch Snuggles last night for a similar reason -- he's so fat and lazy, he is not hard to catch. In fact, saying that we "catch" him is really giving us more credit than we deserve. Then there were the two senior rams, who have been in their own pen since last fall. So, mostly Mike's job was to grab the sheep nearest him and lead it to the shearer whenever he was ready for the next one.

As the shearer finished each sheep, Margaret and Jonathan would take them and trim their hooves. In this picture, Jonathan is holding Snuggles (an Old English Southdown, my only non-Shetland) while Margaret gives him his pedicure. I wrote the name of each sheep on a large white trash bag, then Katherine gathered up each fleece as the shearer finished, and she put the fleeces into the bags as I held them. I administered the dewormer during the sheep's pedicure. I came up with the brilliant idea of referring to the shearing day as the sheeps' spa day, hoping it might help them to have a more positive outlook on the event, but they don't seem nearly as happy as I am when I have a pedicure or get my hair cut.

The strangest part of the whole ordeal from a human perspective is that when a sheared sheep rejoins the flock, everyone else starts picking on them. When I get a haircut and a pedicure, people tell me how nice I look. Sheep, however, have an entirely different perspective. This is mostly a problem with dominant sheep. Suddenly they look much smaller, so the other sheep think they can now become dominant over this wimpy little sheep.The spotted Shetlands look so much more spotted when they've just been sheared.

Shearing day is one of my favorite days of the year. I love days when we get up early and get so much done. And I think we are teachable! So many people say they could never do what we do, but I know they aren't giving themselves enough credit. This year went smoother than any year prior to this. Mike laughed and said, "I think we can keep the sheep now." Yes, life is good when it feels like you might actually know what you are doing.

Learning to herd

We rounded up the sheep in a record-setting 20 minutes tonight, thanks to our English shepherd, Porter. If you've been reading this blog in past years, you know that it has been taking us longer and longer each year to round up the sheep for shearing. And the time has been counted in hours, rather than minutes.

All was not perfect tonight, but compared to previous years, we are all ecstatic. Porter is a little more than a year old, so he still has a lot to learn, but he helped us tremendously. I've been working with him to herd the geese. Whenever the geese get close to the road, I take Porter outside, and he herds them back to the pond. He's been getting much better at each aspect of the job. He goes after them more quickly, and he's easier to call off when we're done.

I've only had him work the sheep a couple of times, but one thing that I've noticed is that he is much harder to call off when working with the sheep. With a perfectly trained and experienced dog, the sheep would have been herded into the barn to wait for the shearer, who is coming tomorrow. That's not quite what happened. Rather than herding them into the barn, Porter herded them into a corner and wouldn't let them leave. We figured we could work with that, so everyone grabbed a sheep and carried or led them to the barn.

Later, as we were eating dinner on the deck, I commented on how smoothly it went, and how it only took about 20 minutes. Margaret said with a smile, "Yeah, after we gave up on that stupid cracker idea." Okay, yeah, that was a bad idea. My sheep love crackers, but they just know -- I don't know how they know -- but they just know when we have "evil" intentions, and they won't come near us! Still, like years past, we tried the crackers. And like years past, it didn't work any better this year. I'm so glad we had Porter to help us!

Wish I had some pictures to share, but considering how much he has been herding lately, I'm sure I'll have some pictures of him working soon. Today, he herded the goats back from the wrong side of the barn to the gate where they needed to get back to the pasture where they belonged. I can't believe I thought we'd only be using him once a year. Hardly a day goes by when he isn't herding someone for us.

Now it's time for bed. The sheep shearer is arriving at 7:30, so you'll definitely be getting pictures tomorrow.

Living with arthritis

One of the reasons I came to the realization that I can't have a desk job is because I was diagnosed with arthritis about five months ago. Yeah, I figured I shouldn't be spending hours on the computer every day, because I was in pain, but then in January, my neck locked up and I found myself at the doctor's office. I couldn't turn my head from side to side, so after a series of x-rays, a diagnosis was made that I had bony changes in my neck -- arthritis.

I resisted the idea of taking drugs, but being unable to turn my head from side to side, as well as having horrible headaches, I finally relented. For awhile I was taking seven pills a day, but after a few changes, we wound up with an anti-inflammatory (2X daily) and a muscle relaxer that I could take up to three times a day, but I tried to only do two. The physical therapist convinced me that I wasn't going to make much progress in physical therapy if I didn't take the medication to get the swelling down and to get the muscles relaxed. So, I had nine weeks of physical therapy, and finally I had some decent mobility in my neck. I was released from physical therapy with daily stretching exercises and a home traction unit. The physical therapist told me that part of my problem was ridiculously weak muscles in my upper back.

He was actually thrilled when I told him that I live on a farm and have started doing more chores. When I was in grad school, I pretty much let the girls take over all my chores, not realizing that I was causing myself to have some problems as a result. The physical therapist gave me ideas on how to gradually increase my strength using water buckets and other farm chores as "therapy."

After the semester was done, I gradually weaned myself off all the arthritis drugs, and I've been feeling so much better. I'm stiff in the morning, but once I do my stretches and use the traction unit, I'm ready to take on anything. Another thing I've noticed is that I am in a much better mood when I spend the whole day working outside with the animals or in the barn or doing something physical.

Then two days ago, Katherine and I spent the whole day in town at Margaret's new shop. I foolishly spent six hours knitting. I should have known how bad that would be for me. I was making a conscious effort to stretch my neck regularly, but that was obviously not good enough. Now, I've been in terrible pain for two days, desperately trying to not start taking the drugs again, but remembering what the physical therapist said -- maybe I should take them for a few days to get the swelling down and get the muscles relaxed again?

I've discovered so many benefits to living out here -- so many more benefits than I ever thought existed. Humans weren't made for sitting around. I think it's funny that when we lived in the suburbs, I'd drive my car to a gym to lift weights that were meaningless, bike to nowhere or walk to nowhere, staring at nothing but exercise equipment and other people going nowhere. It's more meaningful, more fun, and more interesting to carry water buckets or walk around 32 acres of wooded pasture land. And I think it's probably more beneficial to me, the animals, and the environment.
Our newest addition! Butterfly gave birth to this beautiful little girl two days ago!

Like mother, like daughter

We have really come to appreciate that cliche out here. There is a lot to genetics, and Charlotte proved it again yesterday afternoon. An older couple came by to buy a pair of wethers as pets, mostly for their grandkids to play with when they visit. As we were leaving the barn, I heard Charlotte let out a scream that translated as, "I'm in pa-a-a-a-a-a-ain!!!" It was quite different from the whiny "Don't leave me!" sound she makes.

Since she's a first freshener, I didn't rush too much, but I did go back in there as soon as the couple was gone. I took one look at her and knew she was really pushing. Head stretched out, tail curled over her back, long scream, vagina bulging, and a little string of mucous hanging out -- definitely pushing! I yelled, hoping Katherine would hear me on the baby monitor, "She's pushing! Bring the camera!" I went to the store room and grabbed a couple of clean towels. About 10 minutes later, Katherine and I were sitting with her in the stall when Charlotte plopped down on Katherine and got very serious. Charlotte spent the first month of her life sleeping in Katherine's bed and being read bedtime stories, so I think she reverted here when she was kind of scared about what was happening to her.

She gave birth to one huge buckling. As soon as we saw his size, we didn't expect any additional kids. We were worried about Charlotte's mothering instincts at first. She wasn't licking her baby, and she just kept curling her lip up. When I realized she wasn't licking him, I quit drying him. I figured I needed to give her something to clean up, and the last thing I want is a goat who gives birth thinking that I'm going to do all the work for her. She needs to know what she's supposed to do just in case I'm not there! She started licking up the fluids and blood on the towels where the baby was laying, so we got rid of the towel. Finally, she started licking him.

The funniest thing is that she wouldn't stand up. He was obviously hungry and looking for his first meal, and while laying on her side, she lifted her hind leg. "Does she think she's a cat?" I asked Katherine, "or a pig? This is not how goats nurse their babies!" But I figured that any bit of colostrum was good, regardless of how it was obtained, so we scooted the little guy over there, and as soon as his lips touched the teat, he grabbed it and started sucking.

She did eventually stand up, and they did eventually figure out the nursing thing, even though he is on the wrong end in this picture. He is a cutie, and Charlotte is adjusting to her new role as a mommy.

The best laid plans of a homesteader

My plan for Annie's birth was to photographically record a normal goat birth, then create an educational article for my goat website. Ah, plans . . . It all started out great yesterday, as it appeared Annie was progressing slowly and predictably. Her tail ligaments were gone in the morning. (Note to self: take a picture of how to check for tail ligaments next time.) And she was acting like a goat in early labor. She wasn't very interested in food. She stuck next to me like glue. She got upset when I left. But she was happy, so I knew nothing was imminent.

Here's Annie sort of thinking about this pushing thing, but not seriously, because she's quiet, and she only did it every hour or so. She wasn't screaming, so even though this is not a normal goat posture, she wasn't upset.

After spending a few hours with her at different times throughout the day, I went to the garden and picked mustard greens for dinner.

Then I decided to have some goat yogurt with homemade peach preserves swirled through it at 5:45 since I knew dinner wouldn't be ready for another hour, and I was starving.
When I went out to the barn for one final check on Annie before devoting myself to dinner preparation, it was obvious that Annie was not terribly happy anymore.
If you've ever given birth, you can relate to this picture. I always feel sorry for first fresheners. They have no idea what's going on.
As you can see from the picture below, there are two distinct bags of water sticking out. When I first noticed that, I was amused. "Look at that, Katherine! It's a double bubble." She stopped taking pictures. "Uh, Mom, it's two separate sacs. It's two kids." When that thought registered, I reached down and slipped my finger between the two bags. There were hard things -- babies -- in each sac, right there, wanting to be born now! With my fingers between the two bags, I felt the parts of each baby, trying to visualize what I was feeling. The top one was definitely two hooves and a head, which is perfect. I wasn't completely sure what I was feeling on the other one, so I decided that the one who was lined up perfectly would be first.

I held back one kid while the other one was born. I was surprised at how hard it was to hold back that second kid, and a flash of panic went through my mind -- what if they're Siamese twins! Lucky for me, the first one came out before I had time to panic too much about that possibility.

The second kid just sort of fell out before we even had the head cleaned off on the first one.
And here are the two dry, fluffy kids a couple hours later. The black and white one is a doeling, and the cream one is a buckling.
I still want to create a photographic article about normal goat birth, but I guess this just wasn't meant to be the time. I took 94 pictures yesterday, and only six of them were pictures of food. Annie and her kids were the subject of the other 88. Unfortunately, I have no pictures at all of the kids actually being born.

Charlotte's ligaments are gone today, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope that I'll get any pictures of her birth, even though she is a first freshener like Annie. Charlotte is one of Sherri's girls, and kids just fly out of them. In fact, Sherri has always had triplets or quads, and the only reason I have to be there is because she can't clean them off fast enough. Her daughter, Shirley, almost died from hypothermia, because no one was there when she was born. So, whenever Sherri is due, I am always worried about being there. What has happened every year since the Shirley incident is that Sherri goes into labor in the middle of the night when no one is around, and she does not make one single sound until the head is actually emerging, at which point I fly out of bed, pull on the clothes that were waiting for the moment, and I go running to the barn to hear a kid screaming as I head towards the stall with my armful of towels. Her daughters, Shirley and Anne, have already proven to have their mom's talent for kidding, and I expect nothing less from Charlotte.

Pudding season

When you're living on a farm or eating what's in season, you learn quickly that everything has a season. The only time we eat pudding is summer. That's when the milk supply is plentiful, and there is enough left over from making cheese, buttermilk, and yogurt, to make things like pudding and ice cream. While most Americans would probably be upset about not having their favorite foods 12 months a year, there is a certain amount of wisdom in the reality. Pudding and ice cream season is also the time of year when we are busy enough to burn off the extra calories we consume in the pudding and ice cream! Yesterday, I made the first pudding of the season -- butterscotch with nutmeg. It was delicious!

Now it's time to head back outside and check on Annie Oakley. Looks like she'll be kidding today!

Time for kids

Yes, it's time for more kids! Three days ago, Clare, our la mancha freshened with a single white, blue-eyed, elf-eared buckling. His daddy is my Nigerian buck, Valentino, which is where the blue eyes come from. Being a buck, however, this little guy is not eligible to be registered as an experimental mini-mancha because he has elf ears. La manchas have virtually no visible outer ear. In fact, most people ask, "What happened to its ears?" when they first see a la mancha. "They're born that way," I respond. To keep the breed as earless as possible, boys cannot be registered if they have elf ears, meaning they have something sticking out. I think the standard says an inch or two. This little guy definitely has something sticking out. They are so cute! But it means he's destined to be wethered. That's okay, though, because I have been wanting a larger wether to train for a cart, so that is his destiny.

We have five more goats due in the next months. I think three of them are due VERY soon because their tail ligaments are soft. One of them, Charlotte, is also getting a very nice udder! We took this picture two days ago. Charlotte is only a year old and is a perfect example of what copper deficiency can do. She was never sold because I honestly didn't think she was going to live -- for months! She was always this skinny little kid. She was much smaller than goats her age and was not growing. I only sell "healthy" goats, and even though we couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, it was obvious she was not healthy. Last fall, we discovered the copper deficiency and after giving her a copper bolus, she started to gain weight and look like a normal doe. By January, she was the same size as the other does her age, so we decided to breed her. Her udder is so beautiful and soft, I'm glad we kept her!

Busy morning

It's been a busy few hours, and I'm about to shower so I can go to the city an hour away for shopping. I need to get goat feed, some large quantities of sharp white cheddar, as well as a few other vegetables that we don't have at the moment, like onions and potatoes. Mike and I have decided to try our hand at making hard cheese again, but cheddar has to age, so we'll be buying it for several more months.

This morning, I made chevre (soft goat cheese), then I thinned the lettuces and had enough baby bronze romaine to make large salads for the three of us that are home today. I also picked radishes for our salads. Then I sorted several pounds of kidney beans, rinsed them, and started soaking them. Tomorrow I'll be using them for kidney bean spread with our green onions for lunch, as well as a dinner casserole. After lunch, I cut a basket full of fresh mint and laid it out to dry in the oven -- with a big purple post-it note that says "Do not use!" stuck to the oven control pad. I only put it in the oven so it is out of the way and won't get dusty. I'm looking forward to mint tea. I'm also thinking that I will get some apple juice today, so I can use it to make mint jelly. I'll need to cut more fresh mint for that.

After he weeded the garden, Mike butchered a rooster that will make chicken and dumplings in a couple days. The rooster has been going across the road to the newly-planted cornfield, and the farmer is mad about it. He's also mad about the geese, but we're not butchering all of them. We have to figure out a fencing system to keep them over here. We also need to keep them safe from coyotes, which come across the creek from the south -- the field is to the north -- so the fence issue will have to be addressed soon.

Coyote attacks

It was about 10:00 this morning. I was sitting at the table talking to my friend from grad school who will be moving back to Denmark next week. I was chatting and casually looking out across the pond when I saw the geese collectively rise and head to the pond with wings flapping. A brown coyote came leaping over the tall grass snapping at the adult geese. When his front feet hit the water, and he still did not have a goose, he turned and started snapping at the goslings who were still on dry land. From the moment I saw him, I started screaming, "Coyote! The geese! There's a coyote attacking the geese!" I went running onto the deck, still screaming, calling the coyote a few not-so-nice names. Katherine jumped off the deck about the time the coyote grabbed a gosling. He kept snapping, and it looked like he grabbed two of them, but I didn't think he'd be that ambitious. Mike came running out of the basement, asking where's the coyote. I told him it had taken off behind the pond. "Katherine's going after him!" Mike ran after Katherine.

I counted the goslings on the pond. Four. I counted again. Four. A few minutes later when Mike reappeared behind the pond, I yelled at him to count them. He counted four. There were six before the attack, so the coyote did grab two goslings. Mike came limping back to the deck. When he stepped up, I noticed he had lost a slipper somewhere in the grass as he was running. Later I learned that Katherine had taken off barefoot. She didn't come back for more than half an hour. She was determined (as usual) to at least get some answers. She thinks the coyote ran east; the humans ran south. I think the coyote ran west because that's the direction that Porter, the English shepherd, ran. I think his nose is better than our eyes.

Last week, we lost a turkey hen who was sitting on eggs. She seemed to have a nice secluded spot. It was under a fallen tree with lots of branches and tall grass around her. It was difficult for me to find her nest, but I don't have a coyote's nose. When I was coming home one day, I saw turkey feathers scattered on the unplanted corn field across the road. After parking the car, I walked to the place where the turkey had her nest. She was gone. There was nothing left but a pile of feathers, broken egg shells, and three cold, unbroken eggs.

If there can be any consolation, it would be that at least the goslings died quickly as the coyote crushed them. The turkey hen's fate was probably much worse. From seeing coyotes in action, we've learned that if they feel safe, coyotes will grab a bird, hold it down, and start to pull out the feathers while the bird is still alive. That's why there was a huge pile of feathers next to the turkey's nest.

It's unlikely that we'll have any home-hatched turkeys this year. A bourbon red hen had been faithfully sitting on eggs until the last day or two. They're not fertile. One exploded. Yes, it stinks horribly. Maybe the turkey hen also thinks it stinks. Maybe that's nature's way of telling her that it's time to give up and move on.

The coyote is definitely a problem. Now that he thinks he has discovered a wonderful buffet of poultry and water fowl, I doubt he'll want to move on. Last fall, we'd lost six lambs before we decided to have someone sleep in the pasture for more than a month. That was the only thing that got them to move on. The gosling attack was in daylight though. I'm not sure what we're going to do.

The mystery of the blood on the patio

Last night, Margaret came in and asked why there was blood on the patio. Blood? We went outside and saw a dozen or more spots of blood, some as big as a quarter. It was bright red, still wet. There was no bloody trail to see where the animal had come or gone. At this point, I should note that the "patio" is the concrete slab in front of our house that used to be under the mobile home, so it's 28 X 70 feet, and the blood was in the middle. I was immediately worried about our cats. We've been hearing coyotes a lot for the past few nights, but two of our three cats were found within minutes. The third one showed up on the back porch this morning. All ducks and geese are here. Everything else was locked up last night.

If a coyote or coon grabbed something right there, I doubt it would have started to eat it less than 20 feet from our front door, and if a coyote carried it off, wouldn't there be a trail of blood going somewhere? At this point my best guess is that Sneakers the barn cat killed and ate something there. In addition to killing mice and voles, he has also killed squirrels in the past.

Now it's time for me to get out in the garden and thin lettuce. It's really one of my favorite things to do in the garden because it means salad made from baby lettuces!