Cold Lambing Season....

 Lambies enjoying some sunshine.

It's been below zero every night and part of the daytime for several weeks.

Snow and wind make it even colder.

We are about three quarters of the way done lambing 195 ewes.

There has been some loss and lots of life.

 

 Heidi and I played tug-of-war today.

 It felt warm at 11* with the sun shining and no wind.
 

 

Another sketch composition.

My OnlyDaughter and her hubby brought me some shells from their Florida trip.

We kept their 3 girls for a few day and that was fun. 

The shells colors are my own invention -- ink and watercolor.



Moving sheep and cow/calf pairs...

 

 

The last couple of days we've been moving the ewes and lambs to fresh pastures and today we will work through them, sorting out the lambs and giving them a dose of de-wormer before sending them out on the range to graze.  They've come through the harsh winter and spring and are finally picking up and looking much better than they were.  Look at that big baby sucking his mama.  Most of the time they get down on their knees to nurse.

Tally:  179 ewes, 289 lambs

We're getting down to the last 100 head of cows left to calve and in the meantime, we have been taking out pairs to larger pastures.  Gradually, we will work each bunch back to the barn to brand and vaccinate calves.  We branded one big bunch of calvies this morning. 

It has warmed up here and we've had some gray, drippy skies.  The moisture has been light, but still, we welcome it and are thankful for it.  The grass is slow-growing at present, but a few warm days should really bring it up.  The cows and sheep are really loving this fresh grass.  It feels like spring has finally arrived.

The cows come home (and new calvies)

 

On a sunny and mild Wednesday, the men and I went over to The River Place and gathered the cows to bring them home.  The men had made a trail for them with the tractor through deep snow cross-country.  We couldn't have done it otherwise.  It was a 6.5 mile trek for the cows.  I led the way with the pick-up and cake feeder to coax them, and Hubby followed behind with the Ranger with the tracks on it.  The girls came home in pretty good time and were glad to find hay and water ready for them.

On another note, the heifers have started calving and right now we have four cutie pies in the corral with their mamas.  These are Hereford/Red Angus cross.  I love their splotchy faces.  So far, the heifers are calving with ease, and most of the time we don't know they are even calving until we see a calf on the ground.  Now that's how we want to do it.  

There are still three or four head of ewes at the barn left to lamb.  This past week we docked three bunches of lambs and so far we've had good numbers.  We still have the youngest lambs left to dock.

Tally:  115 ewes, 184 lambs equals 160% lamb crop.  These number don't account for the number of bum lambs we've had.  We took another 8 lambs to Dr. Liz last night and she is happy with her bummies.  We are hoping we can buy back some of the ewes from her when she gets ready to sell them in the summer.

It's been a mild week here which has been so wonderful.  I even took a little snowshoe walk around and enjoyed that.  On Sunday and Monday we are expecting more snow with high winds gusting to 70 mph which means BLIZZARD.  Thankfully, we have all the livestock fairly close by and have plenty of shed space for young livestock.  I suppose the county roads will blow shut with drifting snow, but we have stocked up at the grocery store and have our barn supplies so I think we're ready.  When I look at all the snow around us and the snow that's coming, I just imagine green grass and full reservoirs in spring!  One needs to keep that perspective.

Today I got to be at home for most of the day, being a housewife.  I enjoyed it so very much.  I've been tidying up, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning bathrooms, and catching up with the laundry.  I even washed my chore coat, hats, and gloves so they smell and look so much better.  Supper is in the crock pot and I'm looking forward to soaking in an Epsom Salts bath this evening.  Ahhh.  I hope your Saturday has been just right.  God bless you and thanks for stopping by.

Bummies and first calf born...

We've had lots of bummies this year due to the large amount of triplets being born.  It's quite amazing how many trips we've had -- about as many trips as twins, and we have had very few singles.  We even had a set of quads.  They are very unusual, but they do show up.  Generally, ewes cannot raise more than two lambs successfully so we take one lamb off of every set of triplets which means they become a "bum."  Dr. Liz is taking all of our bums again this year which is so nice.  Dr. Liz has a little girl who is about 4 years old and together they take good care of all of the bummies we send them.

I brought three lambs in to the mudroom for a warm-up, and as you can see, Heidi was willing to lick them off and tend to them.  Like most ranch dogs, she likes the smell of the wet sheep and the poop smell, so she was very accepting of them being in her space.

Heidi has been a little bit lame in her left foot for the last couple days.  Upon inspection, I noticed that the pads of her paw have some cracks.  I'm thinking that is why she is carrying that paw because I don't see any other reason.  The cold and snow must be taking a toll on her feet.  So I got out the good old Corona Ointment  from the cupboard and have been greasing her paw pads generously day and night.  I think it's helping.   My old tube of Corona Ointment has 50% lanolin, but the new Corona has only 30%.  Upon further research, I found another lanolin product that is said to be just like the original Corona with 50% lanolin along with beeswax for skin protection. It's called Lantiseptic.  I'm going to order a tube of it to try out and compare with my old tube of Corona ointment.  If you ever need to attend to cracked pet paws or human paws, Corona (or Lantiseptic) is an amazing balm. We've  used it for over 35 years on cracked udders and for chapped skin and burn issues in our livestock, and we've used it on our own chapped, cracked hands and feet.  You can even use it on diaper rash.  Good stuff.

The snow is still deep and almost every night our temperatures have sunk into the sub-zero numbers.  It's like there is so much snow that it just can't warm up much, but we are seeing signs of a little change.  The last couple of days we got up to about 25* for highs with sun, and sunshine feels so good to us and to sheep.  Grandpa J. says we're getting tough since we think its warm on a day that gets above 15*.   We are hopeful there will be warmer days coming.

The first calf was born today!  It's a couple weeks early, but healthy. The heifers are in close to the barn and look ready to have their babies soon.

Back to the barn I go.  It's chore time!

New lambing set-up...

 Redpoll 

 Downy Woodpecker

Moving snow off the road in front of our house.

We are all so happy with our newly revamped lambing barn and the new lamb panels set-up.  Not only did the men improve our barn exterior, but they built these wire and steel panels.  When the ewes and lambs spend a day in a small jug (pen) they graduate to a larger pen before they are sent out the door to the wide world.  These larger pens are the ones you see above that the fellas made this fall.  The whole set-up in the barn is different and very handy.  We think the ewes and lambs like it too because although they are separated by the panels, they can see each other and that gives them some security since they are herd animals who do not like isolation.

Last night another wave of snow hit and made driving up to the barn a problem.  With the blowing  snow drifting across the road, it was a little tricky and at times I felt I didn't know if I was actually on the road or not.  The last thing I wanted to do was to wind up in the ditch and have to walk home at 3:00 a.m.  But I made it just fine.  Today we've been having more and more snow which continues to drift everywhere.  We are hoping that it lets up this afternoon so the men won't have to plow the roads anymore and we can find our way up to the barn as well as to get out and feed cows.  The good thing about all this snow is the moisture.  We've been quite dry here and although snow isn't "wet" right now, when it does melt, there is hope of fresh, run-off in creeks and stock dams.

The Redpolls have been swarming the feeders today and we've had a visitor from the Downy Woodpecker too.  They are so fun to watch.  I'm spending a little time in between barn checks with my embroidery.  I have a couple projects going as well as the TAST embroidery stitches each week.  It's been fun incorporating the stitches into my projects.

Tonight the Winter Olympics start with Curling for one event.  It's the funniest sport to me.  I'm thinking that they are showing it early in hopes of gaining viewers.  There's also figure skating and downhill moguls tonight.  The Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow. Yay!

First lambs are born...

 

The first lambs have dropped!  Twins were born last night, the first set of 2018 with over 200 more ewes to go!  We got another dumping of snow last night which made our county roads pretty drifted.  I have to admit, it was a beautiful sight to see the prairie road drifted over like waves on the sea.  Much more wind and more snow will make roads impassible.  Thankfully, we know the man with the road plow and he plans to make a pass down our road today.

 Going out with no trail.

Coming back with a drifted trail.

 Image from American Sheep Industry

If you like wool like I do, be sure to notice the U.S. Olympic Team's official outfits for the opening and closing ceremonies in South Korea this February 9th and 25th.  They will be sporting American-raised wool sweaters, hats and mittens by designer, Ralph Lauren.  Korea is expecting very cold temperatures during the ceremonies and so wool will be a good fit for keeping our athletes warm.  If you'd like to read the full story in the Sheep Industry Magazine, click here.  I just love watching the Winter Olympics, and I look forward to checking in on all the events and the stats in the days to come.  Are you a Winter Olympics watcher?  What's your favorite event?  I like the downhill skiing and snowboarding.  I do love to watch the luge and bobsled and never miss the speed skating or figure skating either.  How about curling?  That's a funny one to me.  The biathlon (cross country skiing and shooting) looks very hard to me.  As you can see, I really love ALL of it!

Woolly & Naked...

 More snow

 

Woolly 

 Naked

 Hello person.  Got anything to eat?

It snowed and turned cold right after we sheared the sheep.  It is winter, after all.  The wool was thick and beautiful and the wool warehouse manager was so excited to receive our wool that he immediately cored a bale of wool and took a sample of it with him to the American Sheep Industry annual meeting in San Antonio this weekend.  He said he wanted to show off the good wool we grow up here in the north country.  That was cool.

On Friday we worked through all the sheep and sorted off the pregnant ewes from the yearling ewes (who will lamb in May) and the late lambing ewes.  The bucks also went with the late lambing ewes.  Then we paint branded all of them -- red paint for the early ewes and green for the yearlings and late ewes.  Then we squirted some insecticide on their backs and turned them out.

TALLY:
206 ewes will start lambing on Feb. 7th or so
77 yearling ewes will lamb in May
22 late ewes will lamb in May
10 bucks
TOTAL:  315

We calculate that the ewes should begin to have lambs any day.  February 7th is our first due date, but the 206 ewes could drop lambs from here on out for the next two weeks or so.  It's going to get busy around here as we kick off the "spring season" with lambing.  I'm excited.  The men completely worked over our lambing barn this past fall.  They tore off the old holey tin, took out the rotted posts and roofing, and made everything like new again.  They even lined the interior walls with an inexpensive pressed board and painted it.  It's going to be a much warmer place for baby lambs.  We have the lambing barn all set up with jugs and some newly made twin pens.  The pens are bedded with straw and we are ready to roll.  It sounds like we are going to contend with winter as we go into lambing.  It was -14* F last night and stayed cold most of the morning.  We warmed up to 16* but are down to 3* for tonight.  I do hope we can get a nice little stretch of reasonable weather, but it will be what it will be and we will just deal with what we get.

I'll report back soon when we start having our first lambies. 

Quiet, stay-at-home Christmas...

It has turned out to be a quiet, stay-at-home, cozy Christmas for Hubby and I.  The whole lot of us (kids and grands and us) came down with the Christmas Crud (stomach virus) this past week and even before that, so we all opted to stay at our homes and just take it easy, recover, and not have our traditional Christmas Feast on the day.

As it always is here on the ranch, the winter feeding chores must be done no matter whose birthday it is or which holiday celebration is happening.  The Sons managed feeding the calves and thawing out the frozen water tanks.  After our morning coffee and a little breakfast, Hubby and I went to feed the cows and sheep.  It was -6 degrees F when we left so the livestock were very happy to see us pull up.  I thought the black cows' faces looked so cute with their whiskers all frosty white.  The sheep came on the run and were absolutely crazy for the salt blocks that were alongside the water tank.  It's funny, they know where the salt is, but they don't think about going to it unless they go down for a drink, and they don't drink much when there is snow on the ground.

I always think fondly of livestock on Christmas Morning, wondering about the animals that might have been in the same barn as Jesus was.  How strange to have people lingering so long and not going in to the house.  I wonder if Joseph might have had to feed some hay to cows or sheep or mules that morning while Mary suckled a warm baby Jesus, tucked in close beside her -- full and content. 

For our Christmas Dinner, I made a simple roast beef with potatoes, onions, and carrots all in the same pot.  The gravy that comes from that combination is the best!  As we enjoyed our salad and dinner, I popped a cherry pie in the oven.  I like to make mine with a mix of frozen sweet and tart cherries.  Hubby says it's his favorite pie.  Here it is, hot out of the oven.  We'll let it cool and have it for afternoon coffee along with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.  Oh!  speaking of ice cream, do you ever put a small spoon of ice cream in your coffee?  It's a nice treat once in a while.

It's been a quiet day for us, the first Christmas we've spent "just the two of us".  We've enjoyed it, but it's different from the rowdy houseful of kids and grandkids that we are used to for holidays.  We will all celebrate together very soon though.

I hope you're enjoying this day when we remember the Reason for the Season -- Jesus!
Merry Christmas, friends!

Summer goodness...

 Lemon Rosemary Zucchini Bread

This recipe is so magnificent!  I found it on Simply Recipes, where I find lots of delicious recipes.  I constantly refer to it when in doubt about how to fix something.  The flavor combination in this bread is excellent.  I hope you try it, especially if you're loaded with zucchini like I am.

 

A spade 'o spuds!

Do you see my broken spade handle there?  The spade is perfectly fine, but it needs the right sized handle to replace the old, broken one.  But guess what?  The new handles, this size, are hard to come by and they cost more than a brand new garden spade! Do you ever find this as frustrating as I do?  It used to be that we would replace handles on everything, and we still do, for the most part, but on occasion, the new shovel is cheaper than the handle.

About the potatoes:  I dug a spadeful to check on them and see how they are coming along.  Quite a nice bunch of medium sized red spuds.  And no scab so far this year!  We dined on a nice skillet of fried potatoes this evening along with our green beans with onions and walnuts.  So good!

A bowl o' beans!

The green beans are prolific right now.  Every few days, I can go pick another bowl of beans that feeds us at least twice.  These are the nicest beans I've grown.  They are slender and tender and just the way I want my green beans to be.  Of course, if I don't stay on top of picking them, they get  F A T  and tough, which I do not like at all.  The variety I'm growing this year are from Renee's Garden Seeds and they are called, Rolande Bush French Filet Beans.  They are definitely a "do again" in my garden.

 

A remuda of horses

On the drive to town last week, I took the short cut on the gravel road.  It's 35 miles of winding gravel road and just 10 miles of paved road into town this way.  It's the scenic route, for sure.  See what I met at one of the car gates?  The neighbor's horses all standing together swatting flies.  Pretty, aren't they?

A herd of ewes

This morning we moved the ewes to greener pastures.  Can you see the green pasture they are going to graze?  It's our hay field which is coming back nicely due to some recent rains.  We won't hay it again, there's not enough there, but we will graze it this fall.  Lucky ewes!  It doesn't look like many sheep now since we weaned the ewe lambs off the ewes two days ago. All the sheep got wormed and checked -- poor teeth and poor bags and any other undesirable features were marked. Those ewes will be culled.  There are 50 ewe lambs and they just got their tags -- red this year.  Each year we put a different color in the ewe lambs ears so we know their age.  It won't be long and we'll be turning the bucks into the mature ewes for breeding.  Time sure does fly!

Yesterday we bought a box of Colorado peaches.  Oh my, but they are juicy and delicious.  I had one for my breakfast this morning and this afternoon I made a pie.  Such summer goodness all around me.  I hope you're enjoying the goodness all around you.

"We might think we are nurturing out garden, but of course it's our garden that is really nurturing us."  ~Jenny Uglow

Sunflowers and sheepies...

 

It's sunflower time!  You see their sunny faces lining the gravel roads where I live, and they are towering over the shorter flowers in my garden beds.  They also grow wild in weedy pastures.  I love them.  They come up with little effort or care.  You know it's summer when the sunflowers make their appearances.  Speaking of sunflowers, they are a favorite food of sheep!  If you have a weedy lot or pasture, sheep will clean it right up for you, and they really love sunflowers best of all.

This past week we've been working sheep.  It was time to bring them home to sort off the lambs for sale.  They were grazing our Far North Pasture so it took a couple trips to bring them home to the sheep corrals.  It's been so hot that we didn't want to trail them too far at once.  They get so hot and tired with all that wool.  We went out very early in the morning the first day.  I had a great birthday gift that first morning out -- trailing sheep in the cool of the day with a pinky-orange sunrise behind them.  It really was a treat!

Wednesday the men sorted sheep while I tended to three grandgirls who spent the night -- Bee, Rootie Tootie, and Lily.  Then we loaded up the pick-ups and stock trailers and headed down the road.  NumberOneSon, CarpenterSon, and I were the truckers for the day and we made two trips each with loaded trailers to the Sheep Sale Barn about and hour and a half away from home.  After unloading my trailer, one of the yards girls commented to me what beautiful lambs we had.  That was a nice reward for our labor!

Thursday was sale day and so Hubby and I made the trip to the sale barn and watched the lambs sell.  You learn a lot about people and sheep when you go to a sheep sale.  Sheep barns are very smelly, there are flies and dust and there's poop, and there are hard-working folks who process the sheep through the corrals and onto trucks.  Lots of women are working in the yards at the sheep sale.  It's not glamorous in the least but they like the work and they like sheep. The folks sitting in the bleachers are not afraid of getting dirty, they like sheep, and are proud of their livestock.  There were crusty old ranchers, teenage girls, large Mennonite families, and middle-aged folks like us.

There was one middle-aged lady sitting next to us, Patty was her name, who brought in a LOT of lambs -- probably over 1000 head.  She was interesting to watch.  She had about 6 hired men surrounding her and she was busy keeping record of all the facts and figures as her sheep came through the barn.  They always announce the seller's name and the kind of sheep being sold, and then you can look up at a TV screen that shows how many head are coming through as well as the total pounds and the average weight per lamb.  The auction starts and the buyers can buy all or a gate-cut of the sheep.  When her ewe lambs came in, she raised her hand and announced that all the lambs with notches in their ears were twin lambs.  That was smart of her and a good selling point.  I took note of that in my mind.  After the sale Hubs and I both thought that it would be something we should do when we lamb next year -- just notch the ewe lambs' ears that are twins to good ewes right out of the jug.  It would make deciding which ewe lambs to keep as replacements an easier task.  We found out later that Patty has a herd of 3000 ewes in our county.  We had never heard of her before, but we could tell, she knows what she's doing.

Our lambs came in the barn, 262 head of mixed lambs with an average weight of 118 pounds, and boy oh boy, did they look smart.  They were fat and woolly and were one of the most uniform sets of lambs that came through the barn that day.  Getting lambs to all look the same and weigh approximately the same is something that is very desirable to a buyer.   We were happy to have gotten a very good price for them.  The thing about sheep is that they cost so little to run, they love to eat weeds, and they provide two crops -- wool and meat.  They are a great way to break into the livestock business on a small scale.  We like sheep!  On the way home we were talking about whether or not we should increase the herd a little more.

As I said before, the days have been really hot here -- in the 90s and reaching to 100 occasionally.  The wind is blowing a lot too and so the country is drying up fast.  We still have very good grass and pretty good water in the pastures which is a blessing.  Our yards and gardens are struggling, and I'm choosing to water vegetables over the lawn.  I'd rather have a homegrown tomato or cucumber than a green lawn any day!  The hay is all put up now and the bulls are turned out into the cows.  It's the summer mode we are in at this point.  There have been a few thunderstorms roll in, but they are mostly wind and lightning and so now we are watching the horizon for fires.  The men got called out to a small fire nearby, but thankfully, they snuffed it out.  We think about all the other folks in the country who are fighting big wildfires all over the USA.  Prayers go up for them.

I hope you're having a good summer. 

May lambs...

Spring lambs are arriving daily!

I love seeing baby lambs on the green grass.

We are keeping our distance from these yearling ewes and 

letting them have their babies on their own terms.  

Everything is looking good!

..................................................

A Frisky Lamb

 

A frisky lamb
And a frisky child
Playing their pranks
In a cowslip meadow:
The sky all blue
And the air all mild
And the fields all sun
And the lanes half shadow. 

~Christina Rosetti

 

Purple and blue hues...

    

 

The purply-blue skies are providing the rains that are making our country green up and grow lots of grass and hay and flowers.  The reservoirs are filling up too.  It's an exciting time.  The earth is slow to awaken this spring, but it's coming.  We have gone from the golden pea, daffodil, and dandelion yellows to more purple and blue hues of chives and allium, columbine and creeping charlie on my garden steps, catmint and violets, and the wild-growing blue flax.  The iris are just about to open too!  I love seeing the varied colors of spring coming and going.

As you see by my last picture, we have got the yearling ewes in and they are ready to lamb any day.  Since these will be their very first lambs, we will not fuss with them, but let them have their lambs on their own without our intervention.  Oftentimes when you fiddle too much with these yearling ewes, they get nervous and take off and leave their lambs behind.  We'll keep watch on them from field glass distance.  If the weather turns extremely wet for a long period, we will get them to the Big Barn, but still let them alone for the most part.  I love seeing newborn lambs on the green grass of May!

My gardening is slow-going right now.  It's just not been warm enough to plant too many things.  We had a low of 29* a couple of nights ago so we aren't totally out of the frost yet.  So I've been busying myself outdoors with mulching.  I brought over a couple of old, rotted, round bales of hay and set it on the bank near my yard.  I've been forking it up and wheel barrowing it here and there where I need it.  I've been mulching shrubs and trees and flowers, and I've thrown a good bunch of it over the potato patch.  I've also been tossing a lot of mulch over my veggie beds.  I don't really need it much yet, but I will, and I figure it might as well lay on the good soil and rot a little more and keep the weeds in the dark.  Later I'll tuck it around  new plants.  I plan to deep mulch everything in the garden when plants get large enough, that way I'll conserve water and soil moisture as well as make a good weed barrier with it. The mulch also helps with keeping water from running down slopes and hills.  The worms will love it, and so will I.  Needless to say, I'm feeling it in my hands, arms, and shoulders, but I'd way rather fork hay and push a wheel barrow and have something to show for it rather than do aerobics.  (I don't like exercise.  I'd rather do physical work.)

I've been taking a few Epsom Salts baths to relieve my tired body and I rub my achy spots with a  homemade magnesium butter.  I think it helps me sleep better at night besides soothing my muscles and joints.   This is the recipe I use from Wellness Mama.  You can also buy magnesium lotions and creams online like this one.  I like to rub it into my feet before bed.  I think it helps keep my feet smoother and it really feels good too.  The big plus is you get a good dose of magnesium right through your skin!  Have you ever tried magnesium butter or magnesium lotions for stiffness and achy muscles?  I think it's great.

Thanks for stopping by.  Happy Spring!  What colors are blooming where you live?

Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair... ~Susan Polis Shutz