I spent Friday catching up on some cooking and cleaning. Our laundry was out of control, so I tackled that also.
It was also bath time for a couple of our cute little bottle lambs. Their mama has zero milk and even though they get bottles and have a bucket whenever they are hungry, they still proceed to snitch (steal milk from other mamas via the back of the ewe) so their faces are dirty and nasty from using the rear entrance to the milk supply. So I took a bucket of warm, soapy water out to them and went to work.
Before
After
They look better and they have to feel better.
I secretly had every intention of curling up for a nap Friday afternoon. One little guy took my place.
What I wouldn’t give to be a dog (at our house) somedays.
We surprised my uncle for his 60th birthday with a little family get together. He was surprised and enjoyed himself with food, fun, and of course cake.
Friday afternoon while we were getting ready for the surprise party a fire had kicked back up in this good ol’ Kansas wind at mom and dad’s. They had burned some old hay piles from winter on Tuesday and the wind on Friday was enough to get the fire going again. It blew through 3 corners of their (fairly new) fencing and burned a whole round bale of hay.
Saturday morning Craig, Randy, and I headed to their house to replace corner posts. While the guys worked on the corner post I was in charge of removing the copper wire attached to a telephone pole. It will be cut into posts to use on some of the other damaged corners.
This is what the posts are supposed to look like.
This is what you get after a fire blows throug them.
Here is what it looks like when they are burned entirely to the ground. This is the corner the guys rebuilt.
My project, the telephone pole.
You can see the copper wire running the length of it. Luckily the rams (20 or so) and the donkey had made their great escape through the downed fence so I could work in peace without worry about one of the slamming into me.
Here’s a closeup of the copper wire that needed to be removed.
I did get to feed this cute little thing a bottle and let him tag along behind me everywhere I went.
He’s an Icelandic ram lamb and just as cute as he can be.
And such a good little helper.
While we were doing that Dad moved all his sheep home from Grandma’s where they had spent the last part of winter. I helped him de-worm and get set up to work lambs. We de-wormed 70-80 ewes (I’m guessing) and once mom got home from work we ate lunch and headed back out to work just over 100 lambs.
Saturday night Randy and I had a retirement party to go to. So, we went home, did our chores, showered, and headed to Wichita. We could have easily crawled into bed for the night, but did have a nice time visiting with some new people.
Sunday morning started early with chores, and corralling all of our sheep for shearing. At 7:30am the shearers showed up, and we were going.
All the girls ready and waiting.
We had to pull the lambs out one by one out of the shute.
After our sheep were sheared we headed to mom and dad’s. We sheared until 2:30 (about 200 sheep) when the rain finally hit. We probably only had 60 sheep (1 hour’s worth) left to shear, but they will have to come back another day to finish it up. It poured as we picked up and got all the sheep back where they belonged. We had a quick bite to eat there then headed home to do our chores and shower.
By 6:00 we were tucked in bed while the thunder and lightning boomed and flashed outside. Our “lovely” blue heeler, Ash, spins in circles and barks when it thunders. No idea why, but she did this all throughout the night. So even though we got to bed in time to get plenty of sleep we were awake off and on all night by her barking.
Animals obviously rule our world! Have a great day!
A Simple Prairie Life 