Tag Archives: In Pictures

I’ve been looking through some old photos this morning and I can’t get over how green the grass is in these. It seems perfectly impossible that grass could ever be so green!

I go through this every February. It’s the point at which Spring starts to seem like a story someone made up. But before we know it, it will arrive in all it’s verdant glory.

Any time now…

This photo totally cracks me up. It’s like a picture from the Bible.

Sam looks like the angel at the top of the Christmas tree.

Luna

Lyra

Churchill and Charley

Suspicious Bertie is watching you!

Hannah

Feenat

Erin came over yesterday in the morning to help me work the sheep and goat flock. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Erin came over and I helped her work sheep yesterday. It’s very physically demanding and exhausting work.

[I love this picture of Callum. He looks a little bit like crazy and very much like his mama, Feenat.]

The whole flock needed to be checked for parasites loads and de-wormed and a few of them needed their hooves cleaned up. This kind of work can take forever, but Erin and I have been working sheep together for years and we were able to get through the whole flock in just a few hours using the system we have worked out.

Erin has been bringing her Border Collie Ben with her to the farm for the last few months, and it has been a pure joy to watch Ben developing into a proper herding dog.

When Erin got Ben from the Border Collie Rescue last year, he hadn’t really been used as a herding dog very much, in part because he had trouble focusing on commands because he was so excited whenever he was around sheep.

Erin has taken Ben to some sheep dog clinics recently, and worked really hard with him, and the difference was evident when we used him to drive the flock back into the pasture after worming and trimming.

My sheep are particularly challenging for herding dogs because they spend every moment of their lives with our livestock guardian dogs. They can be…shall we say nonchalant with Ben, and since Ben isn’t the most aggressive of herders, it’s a bit the opposite of a battle of wills.

Sometimes Ben does what he is supposed to do and the sheep just ignore him. Very definitely the sheep equivalent of a teenager rolling her eyes and saying “whatever…“.

Ben, who is pretty chill for a herding dog, sometimes responds to this snub by responding with gestures that are the dog equivalent of “Or  not. I mean, you probably know best.“

With Erin’s encouragement, Ben kept at it until he got those sheep to pay attention and go where he wanted them to go.

(Incidentally, Ben never bites or snaps at the sheep to get them to move. If he did, he wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them.)

By the time the sheep where properly penned where we wanted them, Ben was beat.

Herding sheep is thirsty work.

 Huge thanks to Erin and Ben for helping me yesterday. It’s much easier for me to leave for a two week trip to Texas knowing that my flock is healthy and well-care for.

Last week, we have our first snow of the season, which might have been lovely if it hadn’t come hard on the heels of a week and a half of rain.

Since the flock was already wet and cold from all the rain, I made the decision to move them to the pasture with the biggest shelter in advance of the snow. The only problem was that there was no hay in that pasture. We feed round bales that weigh hundreds of pounds, so moving them is not an option. Where they are delivered is where they stay. Still I figured the animals would be okay for 8 hours and that warm and dry was better than wet and cold.

Moving the animals between pastures isn’t really a problem. They know that an open gate means that their is food waiting for them somewhere else, and without any grass to distract them, it only took a few moments to get them from the back pasture to the front. In an effort to save time, I took the flock across the driveway instead of running them through the gates of all four pastures, which wold have taken at least twice as long. They behaved perfectly, only pausing for a moment to make sure this evergreen tree wasn’t something delicious.

Fresh hay is a powerful draw.

I was just patting myself on the back for my brilliance and efficiency when I noticed the cows weren’t around. Weird. I couldn’t see them in the pasture we had just left, either. Thinking maybe they were in the barn, I walked that way and when I turned the corner, I found this:

Luna was INSIDE the chicken coop.

That’s about 1000 pounds of dairy cow standing in a building designed for 3 pound chickens, y’all.

Once I rousted her from the coop, Luna slowly made her way across the driveway, stopping to sample a magnolia leaf along the way.

She and the steers slowly made their way into the proper pasture. Then the cows caught sight of the fresh bale of hay.

And took off at a thundering run. If you ever find yourself between a cow and new bale of hay, move.

Monroe was in such a rush that he couldn’t stop when he got to the bale. He slipped on the snow and fell. It was kind of hilarious.

Hannah apparently thought so too. I love the look of haughty derision on her face in this picture.

By afternoon the snow had gone.

There’s a kind of magic in snow, isn’t there?

World’s most pathetic looking rooster. Poor Chanticler!

Even Charley has had enough of the mud.

Hannah & Buster, enjoying the relative warmth and dryness of the run-in shed.

A river runs through it. The front pasture, that is.

The view from the front porch.

Just out of curiosity, when does this stop being an puddle and become a body of water?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–  it’s a great week to be a duck.

Dear Whomever;

Enough with the rain already! We are all just exhausted from being wet and cold all the time.

I don’t know if you can see that tiny strip of dry gravel next to the barn, but that’s where the chickens are attempting to huddle. Ever heard that expression “Madder than a wet hen”? It’s a fact, y’all. These chickens are ticked the hell off.

The sheep and goats have spent the whole week perfecting their pathetic baas. Apparently that’s a better use of their time than just, you know, going into the barn and drying off.

Cini, the elder statesman of the farm doesn’t believe in suffering in the rain for no good reason.

Lucy and Gnocchi have gone full mud puppy, though.

Only the ducks seem to be happy with this grim and dreary weather.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an ark to build.

If I were to marry a dog, it would be Cini.

If my best friend were a dog, it would be Sabine. She is always happy. Always.

Mrs. Doubtfire is such a smiler. If some toothpaste company were looking for a spokesgoat, it would be Mrs. D.

Willoughby is just lovely. Nothing funny to say here.

 Churchill & Charley are not exactly lovely, but they are beautiful to me.

I am officially homesick, y’all.

Emily, my friend and sheep shearer, spent last night at the farm along with her daughter, Lydia. Since the storm was much worse in Maryland where she lives than it is here so far, I talked them into hunkering down here for an extra day. Lydia is great friends with Amy’s daughter Oona, so we invited Oona over for a playdate.

She arrived with a backpack full of plastic cake and a pink wig, as one does.

Pumpkin pancakes for breakfast.

I asked Oona if the pancakes were good and I got this reaction. I think that’s a yes?

I’ve made a quick trip to the post office to ship out a bunch of CSA Shares. Now I’m making cupcakes (chocolate AND vanilla because there was no consensus) and prepping one of Amy’s precious and infamous chickens for roasting this afternoon.  Emily is reading. We’ve got a roaring fire in the woodstove and there is a nap in my near future.

So far, we’ve had some unimpressive rain. Here’s hoping that this is as bad as it gets!

Yesterday I let the sheep out to graze on the lawn for what will likely be the last time till Spring.

The view from the back deck.

Roquefort

Insert your own “Ebony and Ivory” joke here.

Buster and Cosmo, just relaxing in a pile of leaves.

Little Cam

Lyra and Cassiopea

Meanwhile, I spent the day making sure all the hatches were battened down and the stock tanks were topped off ahead of the impending storm. When we lose power, we also lose our water supply. And, since we lose power during normal rainstorms, I figured it was better to be prepared for DOOMY-HELLSTORM 2012.

I’ll let you know when the power is back on.