Homesteading, homeschooling, animal loving, adoption loving, country living family
My Dad has ewes lambing right now. They are tired and don’t have the time to take care of bottle lambs, so I volunteered.
How could I refuse. They now inhabit a dog kennel in our home. We named them Ebony & Ivory. Ivory cries his head off when he’s hungry. It sounds like he’s saying Maa…it’s so cute!
Ebony wasn’t feeling 100% last night. Do you think her brother may have known?
Hope you all have a good day!
My Dad has ewes lambing right now. They are tired and don’t have the time to take care of bottle lambs, so I volunteered.
How could I refuse. They now inhabit a dog kennel in our home. We named them Ebony & Ivory. Ivory cries his head off when he’s hungry. It sounds like he’s saying Maa…it’s so cute!
Ebony wasn’t feeling 100% last night. Do you think her brother may have known?
Hope you all have a good day!
For those of you who have never had the opportunity to be the proud owner’s of a blue heeler….well you just haven’t lived. This little girl has given us more headaches and laughs than any of our other animals put together.
Her list of catastrophes is endless, but here is a quick rundown of what occured the other evening.
I got home from work and let all three dogs inside as usual. I started getting stuff around for supper and putting things away from the day. I kept getting a wiff of something not-so-pleasant. After searching and searching for what I thought might be an accident in the house (which hasn’t happened in FOREVER) I bent down to pick up my purse that was laying near our blue heeler, Ash. Eh hem, I found out what the odor was. She smelled somewhere between a dead animal and animal poo. I hurried her outside to wait for Randy to get home to deal with her. She’s techinically his dog by the way!
When he got home he tried to wipe her down (with a wash cloth I (used to) us to wash my face with, it was promptly disposed of after (I threw a fit) he wiped our poo covered dog down with it) to no avail and deteremined a bath was in order.
And so it begins!
Poor thing!
And finally, when she knows the end is near, she forgives her dad with a kiss.
This did NOT, however, rid her entirely of the smell. She was definitely more pleasant to be around post bath anyway.
Just remember, when your dog is bad, we probably have one who is worse if that makes you feel any better at all. Have a great day!
For those of you who have never had the opportunity to be the proud owner’s of a blue heeler….well you just haven’t lived. This little girl has given us more headaches and laughs than any of our other animals put together.
Her list of catastrophes is endless, but here is a quick rundown of what occured the other evening.
I got home from work and let all three dogs inside as usual. I started getting stuff around for supper and putting things away from the day. I kept getting a wiff of something not-so-pleasant. After searching and searching for what I thought might be an accident in the house (which hasn’t happened in FOREVER) I bent down to pick up my purse that was laying near our blue heeler, Ash. Eh hem, I found out what the odor was. She smelled somewhere between a dead animal and animal poo. I hurried her outside to wait for Randy to get home to deal with her. She’s techinically his dog by the way!
When he got home he tried to wipe her down (with a wash cloth I (used to) us to wash my face with, it was promptly disposed of after (I threw a fit) he wiped our poo covered dog down with it) to no avail and deteremined a bath was in order.
And so it begins!
Poor thing!
And finally, when she knows the end is near, she forgives her dad with a kiss.
This did NOT, however, rid her entirely of the smell. She was definitely more pleasant to be around post bath anyway.
Just remember, when your dog is bad, we probably have one who is worse if that makes you feel any better at all. Have a great day!
Randy will be working late tonight, so I am on my own with chores. I thought this might be a good opportunity to give a little rundown of what our evening chores consist of as of right now.
The first thing I do when I pull in the driveway:
Let the cats (2) out of the pool house so they can get some fresh air and stretch their legs.
Unload the car
Let the dogs (3) inside, and take off collars.
Feed them and add cod liver oil to each bowl. Give them fresh water inside and outside. Let them back outside after they have all eaten.
Change into work clothes and head outside.
Cats: feed, water, change litter box, and feed our stray kitty
Chickens: collect eggs, feed, and water, give kitchen scraps, and check oyster shell
Sheep: feed grain to three separate groups, fill stock tanks for three separate groups, give a handful of grain to the llama, move protein tubs around, check salt and mineral and fill if needed, look over well to make sure everyone is healthy, and close pasture gates.
Get the mail.
Head inside to assemble dinner, eat, hand wash dishes, and wash the eggs that have just been collected. After dinner it’s back outside.
Before dark:
Lock up cats in pool house.
Close up the chickens.
Let the dogs out again (and back in).
Change into pajamas. Snuggle with the dogs for awhile. Read. Go to bed.
This is daily. Rain or Shine. Hot or Cold. Sick or Well. This doesn’t include the extras when someone is sick and in need of doctoring, lambing, bottle feeding, baby chicks (which should be arriving in a week or so), etc.
Luckily, although my workload will be increased significantly without Randy there to help, I will not have to make and clean up dinner.
The “simple life” isn’t always easy, but it is rewarding.
I was just talking to a co-work about lambing and having to pull lambs. She said the usual, “I could never do it” (pull a baby lamb). I told her I never thought I could either until there is an animal who counts on you to take care of them. They look at you with those eyes saying, “help me” or “I don’t know what to do” and you know you have no choice. I told her I have two baby lambs (not really babies anymore) walking around our farm that would not be here today if I had not pulled them (mamas either). You do what you have to do, for their sake and for your sake. It’s not for everyone, but it is the most rewarding way of life I have lived so far. I hope to be able to live this life for a long time.
Pretty sure we have lost it. Yesterday we placed an order for more Rhode Island Red chicks. We had another one fly into the backyard (two total) to meet her end. We have debated on clipping their wings, putting chicken wire of the back of their yard, and some other ideas. We want them to be able roam free for a couple of reasons. The cost of feed would kill us if we had to feed them 100% of their food intake, the eggs are healthier due to their foraging, and it is healthier for our sheep when they forage and eat larvae so the sheep don’t pick it up. We will see what kind of winter project we come up with to keep the chickens and dogs separate. In the meantime we will be preparing to have babies on our farm once again. We have been roofing our house the past two weekends. I will post pictures once it is presentable. We did dark green shingles and they look so good. I love it! We had our first big freeze early Monday morning, so the tomatoes are history. It wasn’t the greatest gardening year, but financially we did just as well as the previous year (thanks to supply not meeting demand which enable us to raise our prices some). Now we are relying on our eggs for some cash flow. Not only is the number of hens slowly dwindling due to lack of brainpower, but the onset of winter and shorter days will begin to take its toll on the girls laying ability. By spring, if the girls stay out of the backyard, we should have a nice sized flock again and be able to meet the demand we suddenly have. Hope everyone is doing well. We are keeping busy and enjoying our little Eden Pure heater to keep us warm on these cold evenings. We still haven’t turned on our heat and with the price of propane hope to hold out awhile longer. We couldn’t make it without our little heater.
Pretty sure we have lost it. Yesterday we placed an order for more Rhode Island Red chicks. We had another one fly into the backyard (two total) to meet her end. We have debated on clipping their wings, putting chicken wire of the back of their yard, and some other ideas. We want them to be able roam free for a couple of reasons. The cost of feed would kill us if we had to feed them 100% of their food intake, the eggs are healthier due to their foraging, and it is healthier for our sheep when they forage and eat larvae so the sheep don’t pick it up. We will see what kind of winter project we come up with to keep the chickens and dogs separate. In the meantime we will be preparing to have babies on our farm once again.
We have been roofing our house the past two weekends. I will post pictures once it is presentable. We did dark green shingles and they look so good. I love it!
We had our first big freeze early Monday morning, so the tomatoes are history. It wasn’t the greatest gardening year, but financially we did just as well as the previous year (thanks to supply not meeting demand which enable us to raise our prices some). Now we are relying on our eggs for some cash flow. Not only is the number of hens slowly dwindling due to lack of brainpower, but the onset of winter and shorter days will begin to take its toll on the girls laying ability. By spring, if the girls stay out of the backyard, we should have a nice sized flock again and be able to meet the demand we suddenly have.
Hope everyone is doing well. We are keeping busy and enjoying our little EdenPure heater to keep us warm on these cold evenings. We still haven’t turned on our heat and with the price of propane hope to hold out awhile longer. We couldn’t make it without our little heater.
We have made some decisions on our farm for the years to come. Saturday, Randy and I had to take 9 ram lambs to the sale barn to sell. It was hard for us to drop them off at the sale barn having some idea of what their future has in-store. By Sunday we had made the decision to buy a grain cart to store bulk grain in, buy more alfalfa than the previous year, and feed our lambs to butcher weight before taking them to the sale barn. In doing this we will eliminate the need for them to go to a feedlot and undergo the stress and cruelty these facilities tend to generate. We also backed out of taking our cull ewes (ewes that have bad udders on one or both sides or are sickly, in our case they just have bad udders and aren’t actually sick) to the sale barn and decided we would keep them indefinitely, buy 1-2 dairy goats in the spring and either graft baby lambs onto the goats to allow them to milk directly from the goat or milk the goats and feed their milk to the lambs via bottles to supplement our milk replacer and hopefully cut costs. We don’t want to be like the conventional farmers all around us. We want to raise our animals in the humanist way we financially can.
We hope to own more pasture land one day so we can subdivide and rotational graze to an even larger extent than we do now. In time we will hopefully be able to provide our own hay and grain or at least supplement our needs.
For now we will strive to make the changes we can to ensure our animals are healthy, happy, and with us as long as possible.
Although the irrigation systems are sucking us dry, chemical fertilizers are seeping through every piece of soil, and hunters are overrunning us, we hope to maintain a tiny piece of the earth where life is simple and kind and as pure as possible.
Hope everyone has a wonderful week!
My parents have two dogs.
My brother just got a puppy to bring his dog count to two.
And now we have a third dog at our house.
Here are my brother’s two hound dogs. They are too cute and so happy-go-lucky!
Biff
Dax
And here is our new addition in the midst of a game of ball.
Thai
He loves to play ball, however, he is faster than our blue heeler, Ash, and she gets kind of testy about it. So, my mom, “Grandma,” bought Thai a new ball of his very own. He loves it. Koal just hangs out behind us where it’s safe from flying objects.
We have our hands full, as if we didn’t before the third dog came along, but I just can’t imagine him being locked in a shelter hoping for a good home. He still favors his foot from time-to-time, but it’s healing well and doesn’t slow him down.
Randy sprayed the stickers in our pasture last night, so hopefully we can get Thai out there soon working with the sheep. I really didn’t want to use chemical on the pasture, but we didn’t know what else to do. We will be planting Bermuda seed this weekend (hopefully), so that should help choke out a lot of the weeds we are having problems with. We’ve started rotational grazing and hope to burn in the fall, so that should help also.
We have an abundance of herbs and salad supplies in our garden.
I picked herbs the other morning, tied them with twine, and hung them to dry in my kitchen area.
Oregano
Spearmint
Lemon Balm
All tied up and ready to hang.
This is my first attempt. I think they are supposed to have brown paper bags over them, but I’m trying without first.
Lettuce
Spinach
To freeze my spinach I quickly steam it (3 minutes I believe) and place it in ziplock baggies or use my Foodsaver.
While I was preserving the harvest our blue heeler was taking it easy.
We also milked out our mama ewes after a few days of weening to make sure their bags didn’t get over loaded with milk. Here is the frozen milk on it’s way out to the big freezer. It will be used next year as needed for bottle lambs.
And here are the boys (Thai and Randy) hard at work fixing our fence after a tree trimming “oops” and a few storms (hence all the limbs and wood).
Last but not least is a picture from our front porch. There used to be a row of Australian Pines to block the road and wind. However, they became diseased and had to be cut down. The view is amazing, but the openess to the road is not very enjoyable. It was a little hazy the morning I took the picture, but it’s still pretty.
Have a Wonderful Day!
A Simple Prairie Life 