Last year, one of our favorite ewes had a pretty lamb. We named her Pet. Unfortunately, Pet's mom died, so we had to bottle feed Pet. That Pet made even more friendly.
We kept Pet and this year she two lambs. They are both boys, which means we can't keep them. Maybe she'll have girls next year. Usually, we don't really treat our sheep as pets, but Pet really is kind of a pet. (Her name IS Pet) Below is a link to a blog post that we did on Pet last year.
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It's lambing season! We have several new lambs. There are a couple that were born too early, but they are doing fine now. The newest ones were born this Sunday.
Usually, our breed of ewes has two lambs. If there is only one, it's usually pretty big. Sometimes there are triplets, and we've also had four(that's pretty unusual). Once a ewe has had her lambs, we move her and her babies out of the big pen and into their own little pen. These little pens are called "jugs". We have to keep a close eye on their water buckets and their hay. After a few days we usually move the mama and babies back into the big pen. Sometimes the babies get a little confused about who's their mama, but they figure it out eventually! The new thing about lambing season this year is: the new shed! All the sheep are kept inside the shed and we have a little office room with all the sheep supplies in it. It's much more convenient than our old set up. We used to have to run back and forth from the house to get supplies, mix up lamb milk down in the basement, and bring the ewes and lambs out of the outside pen and all the way into the older shed. The sheep are out of the rain and mud and the lambs don't have to be in all the bad weather. We also have security cameras so we can watch the sheep from our phones, which is nice, because otherwise we would have to keep running outside all the time to check on them. We are using animal paint to mark the lambs this year instead of ear tags. This past Saturday, Sammy and Anne spent a good chunk of the day painting the furniture for the shed office. Sarah helped some too and John sanded down the furniture.
We painted the chair, the big table and a little shelf. It was fun, but we got tired of it. Sammy was getting bored with painting and was being careless and rolled paint onto Anne's face. No harm was done, but it did get on her hat, hair, and face. We had to be careful not to get paint on the floor. If we did, we had to clean it up quickly with a damp rag. We still have to paint a tall shelf. Our dad made all the furniture. We got our puppy on September 13, late at night. He had been born on 7-23-19. He is an Australian shepherd, and his coloring is red tri. We decided to name him Copper. He is super cute and has lots of energy. We already have taught him to sit (sort of).
We went to Iowa to watch Grandma and Grandpa harvest their honey. Our cousins were there too.
First Grandpa used a hot-knife to cut off the wax caps on the honeycomb in the frames. Next we put the frames in the extractor (which used to belong to Grandpa's dad) and spun it. The honey would fling out of the comb (centrifugal force). It drained to the bottom of the tank and there was an opening you could open for it to pour out through a colander into a bucket. After that, the honey was warmed by setting the bucket into hot water. Then the warm honey was poured through cheese cloth to strain it, then poured into clean, dry jars. We chewed the wax caps that were covered with honey. It was very sweet. Grandma had fresh rolls for us to eat with butter and fresh honey. We all had lots of fun. We had the old barns taken down and built a pole barn in their place. The shed went up really fast. We had the Amish build it. They had it up in eight days. The gutters still have to be put up and there are a few other things that need to be finished, but it is mostly done. The shed will be used for sheep and there will be a small office space that has a sink so that we can mix up the lamb bottles. We plan to put screens over the big open windows on the sides. Here's the progress of the barn day by day. I took a picture every day after it had been worked on.
We put together a video! First John wrote the script. Then we selected the Lego characters and made a stop motion video. After we recorded our voices and downloaded everything on the computer, we worked forever on editing it. At last, we finally made the video perfect ( not quite ) and Anne downloaded it on YouTube and wrote the blog post. Hope you like it!
Every year we have bluebells come up in our woods. They are so pretty and they smell really sweet.
For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. Isaiah 61:11 NIV The daffodils are blooming! They were even blooming when we got snow.
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