Category: Animals

I know I haven’t posted recently.  There isn’t a lot going on at our little farm.  Lambing season is winding down.  We had a wonderful season with no casualties thus far.  We still have two more ewes to lamb; one is our absolute favorite, so we still worry about them.

Our black cat, Spooky, has found a new place to sleep and if I can get a photo I will be sure to post it.  He likes to sleep in the nesting boxes in the chicken coop.  Every evening we have to go retrieve him from the coop and put him in the pool house for the night.

We have once again decided to work more with our Blue Heeler and allow her to go out with the sheep more.  She has so much energy; maybe it can be put to good use.

Isn’t she cute?   hahaha

Spring seems to be slowly creeping in.  I have a few seeds started, will start more this weekend, and I’m also trying to get some black berries started from cuttings.  No luck yet, but I was told to cut near the main vine and try to start those cuttings.  This weekend I will cut a few more and see what happens.  I also need to trim up the crabapple tree this weekend.  I can’t wait for crabapple jelly!  The grape vines, boxwoods, apple tree, and black berries have all been trimmed.  I need to go through my herb garden and see what need to been cut back and get them situated.  I’ve been cleaning out lambing pens and using it to much the beds and garden.  Peas are in the ground, so hopefully they start pushing through soon.  I will get my potatoes this weekend so I can get them cut and curing.  I might even try to get some lettuce going in a small box near the house.  Spring is in the air!

Have a wonderful day!

My Dad has been going to our house throughout the day to check on the sheep and now to supplement a noon bottle to the 3-4 who need one.  Yesterday he had two ewes deliver single boys to bring our lamb count up to twelve.  Now, single boys aren’t exactly a sheep owner’s dream come true, however, the mamas had the babies by themselves, mamas are fine, babies are fine, mama has plenty of milk, and are good mamas.  As far as we are concerned, it’s perfect!

Does it get any cuter than little baby lambs?

I mentioned before how we have help outside a lot.  Well, we have two more additions to the “helper” list.

Our oh so nosey ram, Cash, has to be in everyone’s business and has a really bad habit of putting his front feet up on panels and gates.  Cute as he can be, but a pain more often than not.

And the other star of the show, Cooter.  He’s been rolling around behind the chicken coop.

What a sweet little guy!

The cats get locked in our pool house during the night and anytime the dogs are in the backyard.  Our little black dog, Koal, is a cold-blooded killer when it comes to the feline family.

Part of the fun is catching the little kitties.  Cooter had been “avoiding” and running from us the whole evening.  He has been caught, handcuffed, and hauled downtown!

It is supposed to be in the low 50s today.  Yippee!  We are so ready for warmer weather here in Kansas.  Hopefully it stays that way.  I have a garden to plant.

We hope to get our peas in the ground and some boysenberry bushes transplanted from my Grandma’s.  I’m also hoping to trim some of my blackberries up a little and try to start some new ones from the cuttings.  Will this work?

We are up to 10 baby lambs on our little homestead.  We are also up to four bottle lambs which is not a good thing.  Lamb milk replacer has nearly doubled in price since last year, so it could get a little costly.  Although it will be time consuming, we hope to another ewe will lamb soon and have extra milk we can swipe to supplement everyone with.

Starting around noon yesterday the wind picked up and was blowing 30-35 mph with gusts up to 45 mph.  Life on the prairie can be a lot of fun sometimes.  It was nerve-wracking hearing it whip everything around.

Of course I had plenty of help.

Here is a yearling ewe lamb from last year. 

We chose not to grain them heavy and push them to breed in the fall, so they get a whole year and a half to grow before they become mamas.  We are considering keeping Dorpers for fall lambs and Texels for spring lambs.  We just have to get our fences built (and re-built due to heavy ice and limbs crashing down on it) so we have enough pens for everyone.

We had dinner Sunday evening at Mom and Dad’s and Grandma brought down our afghan she crocheted for us out of Hank’s (our llama) wool.  What a great keepsake to have from her.

I also got to try out my new juicer Monday morning.  I juiced and organic cabbage in hopes of taming a ulcer that has resurfaced.

To say cabbage juice is an “acquired” taste is pushing it.  I added a little carrot to help it, but it will take more than a carrot to make cabbage juice palatable.

Hope everyone is having a great week.

As of this morning we had six baby lambs alive and kicking.  We have two boys and four girls.  Yea!  I’ll take some pictures over the weekend.  Taking pictures of them in lambing pens isn’t very easy.

Randy and I are in a disagreement this morning over Dish Network.  There are few things I find as big of a waste of money as cable/satellite television.  Originally he convinced me it needed to be a part of our lives because he wanted it for football.  Okay, fine.  Well, they have yet to have his team on the channels we are offered, so every year he complains about it.  This year Dish Network moved the NFL package to a higher package and it would cost us another $200/year to get it.  Hello, I’m already freaking out about the $400/year we already throw in the toilet for it.  The TV shows we do watch every once in awhile are all on the local stations and we live too far away to get cable.  I would much rather use the $400/year on entertainment outside the home whether it be concerts, movies, or even buying a season of our favorite television show when it is released on DVD.  Who cares if we are a year behind?

In other news, it was 61 degrees on my way home last night and supposed to drop to 18 in the night.  Whoa!  Gotta love Kansas weather!  All the animals are on lock down today because it is only supposed to get up to 25 degrees today and snow tomorrow.  Randy and I agreed we don’t want the chickens out an about without Hank (our guard llama) out and about to protect them.  We have caught a coyote sneaking up in the daytime, so it’s better safe than sorry.

We are still trying to eat out of our freezer to make room for half a grass-fed beef we are splitting with another couple.  We started off with 25 or more homegrown chickens, half a pig, a deer, catfish, and a lamb.  Not to mention all the things I have frozen along the way (broth, cookies, fruit, etc.).  We aren’t doing too badly.

Last night for dinner we had venison fajitas which turned out really well.  Randy grilled four venison steaks on the grill the night before, so all I had to do was cook up an organic onion and red bell pepper in some olive oil, add the meat to heat through, and wa-lah!  I did have to break down and buy ww tortillas because I didn’t have time to make them Monday.  We also had brown rice with homemade ro-tel and taco seasoning added and topped our fajitas with homemade yogurt and ro-tel salsa.  They were really good!  We will definitely whip this meal up again.

Hope everyone is having a great day.

In Kansas you learn fast you have to take the good with the bad.  If you have a 72 degree in January with gusts up to 30 mph, you still think it is a nice day.  We took advantage of the nice weather over the weekend and got quite a bit done.

Friday, Randy was off work because he had worked really late the night before.  So, we went to a town 30 minutes away to get our passport pictures taken and saw a girl I went to high school with and had a nice chat.  Randy and I went out for a nice lunch and spent the remainder of the afternoon hanging out together and stopped to visit our neighbors on our way home.  Saturday, we picked up limbs around our house from the ice storm.  We are MAYBE a quarter of the way done.  It is really a mess.  Sunday, we spent the better part of the day building our shute. 

Halfway There

The finished product.

Here are the girls and Hank just relaxing and doing some cud chewing while we worked and slaved on their shute.  Randy tried to lure them down the shute with a bucket of corn at feeding time.  Our registered Texel ewe, June, was the only one who followed and got hand fed a bite of corn.

Here are the Banties roaming.  We have chicken wire between the dogs and where the chickens roam.  The little black dog in the background doesn’t look like much, but he is a cold-blooded killer.  Notice the ice we have been scooping out of our stock tank.  The sad looking cedar trees have been converted to back scratchers for the girls, notice all the wool.

Sunday, we were invited to Mom and Dad’s for dinner so after we finished up our evening chores we headed down there the hang out with them and eat.  I also took a few pictures of his baby lambs to send to my cousins in North Carolina. 

Spooky and I had a little photo shoot two weeks ago, so I thought I would share.

Gotta love camera strings.

and of course a self portrait

This is what our older, wiser cat, Cooter, thought of the photo shoot.  He high tailed it out of my reach.

I have also started using some of the things I got in my Mountain Rose Herbs order.  Their coconut oil is wonderful and less expensive than I could find it anywhere else (even including shipping).  I used my citric acid to make mozzarella over the weekend.  And hope to get in my lip balm tubes I ordered on eBay so I can make lip balm this weekend.

We have started using Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar on our dog’s food to try to combat some skin allergies Koal is having.  We use one teaspoon morning and evening.  We didn’t know if they would eat their food with the ACV on it, but it hasn’t affected their eating at all, and Koal is a very picky eater.  Hopefully it will help neutralize their little systems. 

Monday was house cleaning day since it didn’t get done Friday.  I also made homemade corn tortillas (I’ll post this a little bit later), enchilada sauce, and crockpot enchilladas.  I also made mozzarella, cream cheese, yogurt, and kefir, so I had a pretty productive day. 

Now it’s back to the office to work!

I’m going to do something a little different this time around.  I’m going to make separate entries for the different days I was a away from the computer and couldn’t post them.

Friday it was really cold and windy here.  First thing in the morning I got started on laundry, cleaning the kitchen, made the bed, and baked bread.  Once the sun came up, around 7:30, I headed outside to do our chores which include feeding, watering, and changing the litter box for the cats, opening the door, feeding, and watering the chickens, and breaking the ice on the sheep’s water, looking them over really well, and turning off their building lights.  I also try to fill our four bird feeders at least twice a week with millet or sunflower seeds.  Then I head back inside to warm up with a cup of hot tea.

Dad and Randy went to an auction to look at a tractor for us, and a grain truck for Dad.  Dad’s hoses were frozen that morning and he couldn’t get his sheep watered.  So, once the sun had been out for an hour or so I headed down to their house to water his sheep.  An hour and a half and 16 tubs and stock tanks later everyone was watered, and I was on my way home.

Once I got home I still needed to vacuum the house, get dinner started and do the evening chores.  I vacuumed first then headed outside to do the chores.  We were out of corn, so I loaded up four five gallon buckets and headed to Grandma’s where the corn is kept.  I gave the sheep their corn, collected eggs, and fed the cats.  When I got inside Randy called to see if I had started dinner yet, “nope,” he suggested we go to dinner, just the two of us.  I can’t even remember the last time the two of us had gone to dinner together, probably on our California trip in September.  It was so nice.  We went to a nice little restaurant in a town 20 miles away (that’s about as close as it gets here).  We talked and laughed and just enjoyed each other’s company.

Remember the dog we found last week?  Well, no one had claimed him and his time was coming to an end.  So, we were debating what to do.  We felt responsible since we were the one’s who found him and picked him up.  So, we decided we would bring him home with us and as long as he got along with our dogs, couldn’t jump the fence, and didn’t harass the sheep, he could live with us.  We would go the next morning to pick him up and bring him home.