Mid week Chores

Just a brief update as I have some things that sooner or later I have to get too. It’s sunny and bright right now with the promise of rain and cloud later on if the weather man is to be believed. Its early, however sunny and bright as the longest day of the year just came and went.

This following is a photo of a little lamb who is all tuckered from the strenuous journey of coming into this world. Here is a little history for you, one year for my birthday Mom and Dad gave me a orphan lamb. Her name was Nickie and she was a little black lamb. She lived with us on the acreage until I left for my summer job, at that point she moved to live with the flock for the rest of the summer. For this reason I have a soft spot for black lambs.

I worked only one day at the farm so far this week, Kelsey and I arrived at the yard about 5:30 PM. I was able to wrap up chores with only minor incidents and Kelsey got the majority of the yard mowed.

Part of chores is climbing into the hayloft for a bale of rich hay for the runts and quad momma's. This is a picture of the stairs to the loft.

I didn't get out last night as I had a late meeting and basically went home, ate a late supper and called it a day.

This isn't a very long post; however had some cute “baby” pictures so thought I would get them posted.

This picture is of one of the new Momma's with her triplets.

Clubbers first day of work for the summer starts today, I hope he does well this year. He managed to get his learners yesterday which is really cool.

What a wonderful day I love sunny Sundays this one started by taking the kids to work. Each of them was working today.

After delivering the kids to their respective places of work, I came home picked up some groceries got cleaned up went off to meeting. Following this I came home, got some lunch, got changed and went to work on the sheep Ranch. Pictured below is an aerial view of the Sheep Ranch currently. 

Arrived at the ranch to find that there had been a plethora of babies born this morning; this in turn required processing several older babies, emptying their pens, cleaning their pens and then bringing in the new moms. Processing consists of tagging the ears, de-nutting the boys and docking the tails for both boys and girls. The photo below was taken on my way out to the Sheep Ranch.

Once this was done we took a wee break for sausages and pancakes, strawberries and ice-cream. Right after lunch we moved a freezer and then it was off to process more lambs. This is a opportune time for giving their moms a pedicure which they don't seem to relish at all. In fact a couple today were down right bi*#€y about it.

When we got to the final pen, we were just in time to welcome a new little lamb to the farm. Fortunately we had made room so it was very straight forward to get mom and baby tucked into a nursery pen.

The following was taken as I was leaving the Sheep Ranch. This is one of the "free range" babies that is a very good escape artist.

The last item on our agenda for the day is chore time, time to fill the waters, feed the grains and finally the hay.  We wrapped this all up in time for me to drive home through the countryside in the gorgeous evening sunshine as the sun started to set over the western horizon. 

Sheep Ranch Adventure Entry #1

A big new chapter in life for me is underway. Thanks to a promise to my wife to move if she ever found something for cheaper rent than our mortgage, in short order we are moving to a small house tucked in some trees on a Sheep Ranch not too far out of town.

It’s an old ranch, has been in the family for over 100 years and in some ways its showing its age. However, I am going to start recording for interest sake the adventures we are having, I am really, really excited by what lies ahead.

I am going to do lots of before and after pictures. We should be moving sometime in the next month so will be interesting to see what unfolds. I am anxious to actually be on the ground, right now while I have already started working with the shepherd and the sheep, it is still a bit hit and miss as I am going out after work and then travelling back to town once the chores are done.

I have already arranged for the various scrap iron pieces lying around to be salvaged and hauled away. This will begin once summer lambing is over. Currently we are right in the middle of summer lambing and bursting at the seams. We really need to expand the facilities and are in catch-up mode big time right now. Already we have constructed two nursery pens, hope to do one more this weekend. Have to come up with some type of feeder along the edge of pens to improve feeding and feeding times. Have to construct and plan an orphan pen and then start on rebuilding numerous fences. It’s been very rainy the last few days, this means mud to our eyeballs and its very evident we have a ton of cleaning and grading to do. Drainage has to be addressed so that we don’t end up with such a sludge pit the next time around.