A Simple Prairie Life

I took an extra day off this weekend allowing me four days to get my house and life back together.  We have dedicated our lives (dh and I) to my Dad’s sheep ever since he broke his ankle.  We are still helping with chores, but the workload has really decreased between the weather improving, she girls being on pasture, and lambing season slowing down.

So, I took the weekend to clean and experiment with a few recipes.  I went to the dairy near our house and bought four gallons of milk/cream.  I made kefir, yogurt, cream cheese, whey lemonade (not so good), and bread.  I made my husband a really good dinner (Santa Fe Chicken).  I will try to remember to post the recipe tomorrow.  Most people a long weekend makes them ready to go back to work.  It just made it harder for me and my husband.  He is on a mission now to get me home.  He said it just made him feel so much better knowing I was home with the animals so if there was a problem I could help them.  I also think he likes walking in the door to dinner and a smile. 

We had a set of triplets Saturday evening and mama is doing well to mother all of them so far.  There are two girls and a boy.  We are thinking we may supplement the little boy with a bottle if he doesn’t keep up in size.  However this morning dh said they were all taking turns at breakfast, so hopefully they will all be fine without us getting involved. ~Smile

The chickens have slowed down some on egg production.  The weather has been warming up, so that will start to play a role.  Kansas isn’t really a place to live if you love spring and fall.  They don’t exist here!

We worked on fencing this weekend also.  Hopefully we will be done by next weekend and the girls can go out to pasture.  Then we will start working on Toby’s (our ram) pasture.  We are planning on running my Dad’s Katahdin ram, Lewis, with Toby to keep him company.  Also, he’s the ram we are considering using on our Texels.

The garden is slowly but surely getting planted and mulched.  I intended to be real creative and try some new things, but due to Dad’s accident have decided to plant the things I know we like, know I can preserve, and know how to grow.  I have thrown out a few fun things to try, but for the most part I will use the space to grown the usual and dedicate my time to preserving it.  We want to experiment and see how little we really need from the grocery store.  Dh figured the staples (milk, bread, and eggs) are what take you to the store and what cause you to purchase other items you may or may not need.  So, we will buy our milk from the dairy, we raise our own eggs, and make our own bread.  Done!  I can buy the ingredients to bake bread at a bulk food store where there aren’t so many enticing impulse buys.  The garden can fill in the gaps.  Problem solved!

I love living on a farm and learning how to be more and more self-sufficient.  I also love my dh for being so understanding and heading down the path with me.

Have a great Monday!

It rained last night, so chores were interesting last night.  The rain always seems to slow us down, so we didn’t get home from Mom and Dad’s until 8:30.  Dad had a Romanov who had twins and left them (a VERY common occurence sadly enough).  However, a beautiful Katahdin yearling took them under her wing until Randy and I got therer to sort them out.  It was really sad because we put the new mama in a little pen and pulled her twins off the “foster” mom to put with their real mama.  The little Katahdin (foster mom) went wild crying and running around looking for them.  She’s never even had babies before and was still more aware of mothering those babies then their own mama was.  Poor thing!  I think I’ve said it in every blog lately, but I love Katahdins.  Our Texels are WONDERFUL mamas too! 

Our little crier is still not an aggressive eater.  We hold mama and get him to nurse, but he is very reluctant.  Tonight we will be supplementing a bottle if he hasn’t improved.  Another ewe, who is gigantically pregnant, didn’t come for food last night or hay this morning.  Hopefully this is just a sign she is getting ready to lamb.  She is really big and making Randy and I a nervous wreck.  Hopefully she will deliver today without any problems.

Our chickens productivity is down.  Only five eggs yesterday.  The weather hasn’t been the greatest for them, so maybe this is the reason.

Still contemplating the goat milk idea.  Dad thinks we need to find another supplier and give it a second try (he has a bit of a vested interest knowing he could have extra milk for bottle lambs and not have to buy the expensive replacer).  He also mention just buying a good Nubian and trying it for ourselves.  I really think with spring and all the heavy rains the bad flavor of the milk was most likely caused by the multitude of weeds popping up everywhere.  Just a guess!

My dh has requested I take tomorrow off work.  Yea!  I am way behind on housework and baking.  Hopefully the long weekend will help me get caught up around the house.

Have a great Wednesday!

We finally had a little girl lamb after having four boys.  Woohoo!  She’s a twin, so that is even better.  They are growing like weeds.  Our first little lamb kicks his little back legs around and tosses his head.  Just like his daddy!  Toby (our ram) has some butting issues we are trying to work through.  Water in the face is not one of his favorites. ~Smile.  Me picking myself off the ground is not one of my favorites, so water in the face it is.

We are still having a struggle with Dad’s ewes.  There are just so many of them to try to keep an eye on.  We are still very much amateurs and really have no business tending to a 400+ and growing sheep flock.  His doctor’s appointment was yesterday.  He can start applying pressure on his ankle and start walking in two weeks.  Now I realize we will still be in charge of chores and the grunt work, but he can be out there to call the shots which will be a HUGE relief for Mom, Randy, and I.

My dh has had to do some incredible things this week with lambing season upon us.  He even missed a day of work and saved one of our ewes.  He possibly saved a ewe last night with lambing complications, and I just can’t say enough about how he has stepped up for my parents and for the two of us.  I’m so very proud of him.

It’s supposed to get really cold here in Kansas, possibly even snow.  So, I will go to Mid-States (where we buy our sheep supplies) to get raincoats for the newborn lambs.  Our sheep and dd’s will be let out to pasture over the weekend, so lamb slings are on the list also.

Have a wonderful weekend.

I haven’t blogged for awhile.  We’ve lost some baby lambs at Dad’s and are kind of bumming.  We were in the teens and twenties, so it was not a good weekend for the little ones.  For anyone with baby lambs or even goats for that matter.  They have little disposable, clear plastic, raincoats for babies.  I honestly think they are the reason we didn’t lose more babies than we did (raincoats and good mamas).  The mamas would lay on the north side of their babies to block the wind.  Wow!  It’s just amazing to watch animals interact with themselves or their babies.  How people can convince themselves they are just dumb creatures with no feelings or thoughts I will never know. 

We were so excited Saturday with the arrival of our first baby lamb.  A boy, Dorper/Texel cross, and the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life.  We weighed him last night (at two days old) he weighed a whopping14 pounds.  Then we had another baby last night (Texel boy) who weighed 10 lbs at birth.  However, he had a baby sister who didn’t make it.  Mama is having a slow recovery, so we will worry ourselves sick over her until she is back to normal.  She is our little buddy, so my dh and I are having a hard time with her being down.

I finally have pictures!

Our little (first born) Texel/Dorper baby boy.

Our little (second born) Texel baby boy.

I just love them!  When everything else fails I just look at them (or the 10 bottle babies at my parent’s house), think about how much they rely on us to care for them, and it give me the strength to go another day.

Dad goes to the doctor tomorrow to see if he can start putting weight on his ankle.  Just him being out in the lots for short spans of time calling the shots would be a blessing.

Have a great week! 

Mom is off today so she can try to keep up with the babies dropping at home.  We are guessing 12-14 babies last night.  Two more ended up in the house to bottle feed.  One fell into some sort of bucket for a water line out in the lot.  They are buried in the ground and supposed to have lids on them (it’s a new house and I’m not sure everything is completely finished out in the lots), but between the sheep and the wind it had lost its lid and a baby fell into it.  Dh found the baby in the bucket sitting in stagnant water.  Yuck!  We tried to get one of the new mamas to claim it, but we have no idea how long the baby had been there and no one would take him on.  So, into the house he went.  Then, there was a set of quadruplets (or so we thought) we left for last to move to avoid confusion.  By the time we went to move them the mama had kicked one of the babies to the curb.  It was the runt and didn’t look like the others, so it may not have even been her’s to begin with, but I felt bad for the little thing.  We put her in the pen with the mamas and babies again hoping one of them would latch onto her.  No luck!  I warned the little lamb when we got to the front door of the house if we got a dirty look when we walked in not to take it personal.  She’s a crier too, so I bet that made last night pleasant for mom, dad, and the four other lambs.  Dd keeps saying he has more babies in the house than in the lots.  Not true, but close.  He has five babies to tend to in the house.  There are boxes and dog kennels everywhere.  We are hoping to get them all into the stock trailer and onto buckets over the weekend, but it’s going to take some doing. 

Tuesday a mama had twins (his Romanovs have had a time this year) who weren’t doing well.  One of them was born with a crooked neck, the other just never had much life to him and didn’t make it.  Dd said mama probably laid wrong and got the babies turned funny, so they didn’t grow correctly.  Once we took the one with the bad neck in and got her warmed up we started working with her.  She took a bottle better than any of the other lambs and fights so hard to stand up on her own even though the odds are stacked against her.  Dad, however, was discouraged and told me to go set her with her mom, but she would probably never nurse and never make it.  So, we put her in the stock trailer with her mean mama and peak in on her from time to time to find her fighting to get rolled over so she can stand up or up on all fours staggering around the trailer.  Last night dh and I pinned mama in the corner and got the baby to stand on her own and nurse from her mama nearly on her own.  She isn’t strong enough to hold her little head up on her own “yet,” but Randy and I have vowed to work with her every evening if Dad agreed it was worth the effort.  He said he has had them grow out of it and their necks have straighted out as they have grown.  So, we are going to make an effort to work with her and hope we are not just prolonging the inevitable.  If she wasn’t such a fighter we probably would have all given up, but she won’t back down.  She will kick her little body around until she finds her feet, take a bottle with no effort at all, and when we tried to get her to nurse she was a pro, like she’d been doing it all along.  We most likely got her nursing off mama in time to get colostrum from her which will only help her grow stronger.  Wish us luck!  The little girl has a long road ahead of her, but as long as she keeps fighting we are going to stick with her.

I know I keep promising pictures, but I haven’t gotten it done yet.  I will get some taken today and with any luck at all have them posted Monday!  Last night one of the babies inside had actually gone hoarse from crying.  She won’t take a bottle very well (so she’s not growing like a weed or anything), so Dad is spacing her feedings further apart in hopes she will get more aggressive at feeding time.  She just squeaks like a mouse in her little box because she has no voice left.  She has a buddy now (the little boy who fell in the water bucket), but is still squeaking away  : )     She is the smallest lamb I have ever seen in my life.  I found her Tuesday out in the lot by herself getting butted around by the other mamas for trying to steal a gulp of milk here and there.  Her little mouth was getting cold, so she became orphan #3 (Dad already had a set of twins who were abandoned in the night Monday). 

We are trying so hard to keep it all straight, and I know Dad is discouraged with the lack of organization.  He’s always so good with the sheep and has everyone squared away.  The dm, dh, and I all working full-time and picking up the pieces in the evenings it’s just too hard.  Too much happens during the day when we’re not there.

I will be off tomorrow and hopefully be able to tend to things as they occur.  I’m leaving even earlier today than I did Tuesday and Wednesday.  My Avon order comes in this afternoon, so I’m hoping to get done with chores early so I can get home and get it checked in and bagged up for delivery tomorrow.  Sometimes selling Avon seems like too much, but it’s helping us get one step closer to paying off our bills and having me at home full-time.  In my mind it’s worth it!~Smile

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  It’s going to be a yucky weekend here weatherwise, but the show must go on like it or not : )     They are even calling for a low of 26 Saturday night.  Our peach tree is past the blossoming stage, our crabapple is in full-bloom, and our newly planted grapevines are well on their way.  Hope everything hangs in there.  We will really miss crabapple jelly if the freeze gets them!

Oh yeah, I pulled another baby last night and it is up nursing and doing well.  Yea!

We came home from work to eleven new baby lambs at Mom and Dad’s. Katahdin, Dorper, and Romanov ewes all had babies yesterday. Overall the Katahdins have been really impressive as far as being prolific. We are considering crossing our texels ewes with Dad’s RR Katahdin ram. Hmm…. wonder how that will work.

The chickens are still doing well. We had 10 eggs Tuesday and 7 last night. Hope they keep it up. Still contemplating if we want to hatch out some bantie chicks. Not sure how we will keep track of which eggs we are hatching and which ones we are collecting. They stockpile eggs underneath them like crazy. One chicken had nine eggs under her in one day. They are funny!

We had really bad thunderstoms including small hail last night. Hope all the animals did okay. Our’s were shut in the the building and our llama, Hank, refused to come out this morning when Randy opened the gate. There was still lots of lightening so he probably figured he was too much of a target .~Smile

It’s the end of the work week for me! Yippee!