My list of things I wanted to get accomplished wasn’t my finest effort to be posting about, but I have a good excuse. Grandma was put in the hospital Thursday with pneumonia, so we ran in to visit her Thursday evening. Friday I did get a few things done such as tagging a few of our newest lambs, laundry, filling our bird feeders, some kitchen/food catching up, and just checking in on and tending to the sheep. We did have a nice, healthy set of twin ram lambs mid-morning on Friday. Yea….twins!
Saturday was nonstop, mass confusion. I was up at 5:30 to do our morning bottles. We had twins on the ground, no lambing pens ready, and I had to call for backup. Randy came out to help me get things in order, filled salt and mineral feeders in all the sheep pens, and finish up our morning chores. Once those were done we got cleaned up and headed to town. We stopped at the hospital to see Grandma and visit with her for a little bit. She wasn’t feeling the greatest at that point so we headed on to mom’s store to pick up a protein tub for the sheep. By then the bank was open so we went there to have our adoption papers notarized. At the bank we realized our papers were dated wrong, so we had to run home, update the dossier papers, save them to my jump drive, and head to town to print them off at mom’s store. Her computer didn’t have Word, so I called a friend to see if I could use her computer and printer. She was on her way to the city to go shopping, so we tracked down some other friends of ours and used their computer and printer to print out the nine papers needed. Thank you Ryan and Beth!
We were back to the bank well before their noon closing time. We got all our papers notarized and had a nice visit with the notary who is also in the adoption process. We headed to Subway where Randy bought us lunch then hurried home to eat and do noon bottles.
We did some running around for Grandma, loaded corn for the coming week, and just did the usual catching up around the farm we normally do on the weekend. Saturday evening we managed to work in a movie, The Other Boleyn Girl. It’s loosely based on Henry VIII, so of course it is pretty scandalous.
Sunday we got up early to do our chores and head to mom and dad’s to help mom with their chores. Dad was sick, and it was so icy mom had no business doing all those chores on her own, let alone on the ice and out in the freezing cold.
I think we got there around 7:30-8:00 am and didn’t end up home until 1:00 pm. We did threw 8 5-gallon buckets of corn at their house, fed bottle lambs, and loaded more corn to take to the sheep at Grandma’s. Mom stayed home to water while Randy and I headed to Grandma’s. We threw 4 5-gallon buckets of corn and started assessing the damage from another freezing, icy night. There were four new babies and one without a mama. They were all cold, but doing okay for the most part. Then we noticed a ewe in trouble. She had obviously been in labor for sometime and needed assistance. Long story short, it was a situation where didn’t know if we would save the ewe. We new we had already lost the baby, but needed to get the baby out to save the ewe. Randy and I worked and worked and managed to deliver the baby (it was not alive). Mom brought us medicine to doctor that ewe and another ewe. We built make-shift pens for all the new mamas and babies. Randy and I ran home to make a bottle for a baby at Grandma’s we had noticed wasn’t getting enough to eat.
We checked in on our sheep, grabbed a warm bottle, and headed back to Grandma’s to check on everyone, and feed the hungry baby. Mom had headed home to make us lunch, so after all was in order at Grandma’s we headed to Mom and Dad’s for a quick bite to eat.
After lunch we headed back home. We still had to feed our bottle lambs and milk out a ewe who had lost her baby. Once all of that was taken care of we headed inside to relax. I fell asleep nearly as soon as I hit the sofa.
When I woke up I made Randy and I snacks, made up two meat loaves to throw in the oven, and warmed up bottles for the lambs. We headed out to do our evening chores while dinner baked. We called mom to see if she needed help. There was a ewe at their house with an empty 5-gallon bucket with the handle stuck around her neck. So we headed down there to try to catch her and get the bucket off. Thankfully she had gotten herself into a small catch pen and was easy to catch, bucket removed, and we were headed home shortly afterwards.
We went inside to eat dinner, clean up, do bedtime bottles, and eventually went to bed. I did get to read the first few pages of Rick Warren’s book God’s Power to Change your Life. I’m not sure I’ll get it done before I have to return it to the library, but thought I would get in what I could. I was up at 11:15 pm to check on everyone, and back up at 3:30 am to do bottles and get ready for work.
That was our weekend….the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Dad is still really sick and headed to the doctor this afternoon. We will hurry home to do our chores then up to Grandma’s to do chores up there and help mom and their house if she needs us to. We are praying Dad is healed quickly and back on his feet soon. Craig has stepped in to help today while Mom, Randy, and I are at work, but even the four of us cannot manage his livestock as well as he can. We need him healthy as soon as possible.
Happy Monday!
A Simple Prairie Life 