Breaking News! A hail storm hit the farm last night and the following are pictures of the damage. We will heal, we will repair, however let this be a lesson not to ever take Mother Nature lightly and when she gets pissy its not pretty!

The following are my pictures:

Hail in the ditch as I was driving to the farm.

The leaves and such on the road

The lawn was white and crunched underfoot.

Hail was drifted up against the back door

The front yard, not a flower left.

The shepherd checking his brothers barley crop

Not a seed left on the stem.

Fortunately this car was already destined for the scrap yard.

The siding damage to our cabin in the woods

Gloria's garden... nothing left but to dig the potato's.

First please let me introduce you to Duke, he was born when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were visiting Canada for the first time as a couple so hence the name. Duke is a large Suffolk ram that is pretty much king of the ram pen. He really isn't a mean sort; however he does like to get fed promptly and if you get between him and the feed trough he will move you!

To better facilitate growth and wellbeing in the sheep we did a ton of sorting this weekend. The recently weaned babies were sorted and bigger ones were put together, smaller “runts” were separated to better enable them to compete for feed.

The little ewe lamb pictured below is “Nicki 2” she is #317 the first new lamb that was my father’s day gift this year. She is named after a tiny black orphan lamb that my parents gave me as a birthday gift one year. She has strong Suffolk roots and hopefully has babies next year.

One of the hard things for me has been the “deaths” that happen frequently on the farm. There are numerous contributing factors. While this is part of it, is not an easy part, I felt for a poor ewe who didn’t survive the weaning process. Everything I tried to help her was too little too late.

Now that the last round of ewes has had their babies weaned it was time to “process” them and get them turned out to summer pasture; this included several immunizations, rounds of medicine and of course pedicures (some which hadn’t had them for a long time.) It was grueling, muscle numbing work. It also was an opportunity to separate a number of “culls” from the flock. These were loaded and taken to be shipped for meat. The following show the process right from the start of the sorting process to the final weighing of the culls at the feedlot where they will be shipped from.

Kelsey has been travelling most of the summer, time at Salmon Arm, Didsbury and then a week in Kelowna predated her recent trip to Manitoba to spend the next two weeks with my Mom and some of her relatives. She did however while passing through Calgary squeeze in a ride on Arizona and there is a picture of her jumping below.

The following are pictures of her arriving in Manitoba. I understand it was a good trip although the plane was tiny, full and the flight a little bumpy.

Finally in conclusion a little touch of cuteness to complete the post. There are several barn cats that help keep the mice at bay. A few of them had kittens this summer and due to the attention of Kelsey and the shepherds grandchildren some of them are very tame. The little fellow pictured below is my favorite and always comes to say hi as we are working on chores around the front of the barn.

It is late in the afternoon on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend. This office is virtually a ghost town and any calls I have made lately have resulted in extended absence greetings.  So now before I too wrap up my week, here is a little update on the week that was.

I helped haul some of the last loads of hay last weekend at the Sheep Ranch. This helped me get to the point where I logged over 90 hours on the farm this month. It also wrapped up the move out from the little farm house of the previous residents and now the cleanup and move in process begins in earnest.

All loaded up

Hay all put away

The next item on the agenda was to get the cleaning accomplished and new carpet installed in the basement and one room upstairs.

I didn't get to spend alot of time at the farm this week, Monday night I drove to a job site in Maple Creek Saskatchewan and then Tuesday night I worked at the farm for a few hours. The following is a picture of the three girls I hangout with while I am working. It was hot on Tuesday afternoon so they chose the coolest spot they could find.

Breena, Keevee and Ginny

Wednesday I met the bus as Kelsey and Jelayne returned from Kelowna, Jelayne to begin her new adventures here in Calgary as a student and Kelsey to briefly stop over on her way too visit her relatives in Manitoba for a couple of weeks. 

Thursday I got to play in a company golf tournament. For some of my co-workers this happens on a regular basis throughout the summer. For me its not a very routine occurrence, in fact to illustrate this I will tell you the dust on my golf clubs was so thick I washed them with the high pressure hose at the car wash on my to work. I stocked up on golf balls and felt very positive about this as I lost three balls per hole on the first two holes of the game. Actually things did get a bit better until the lightening came and chased us all in for supper. The following are some pictures to document the day.

We started with lunch.

Found our cart

Headed out for our afternoon

The following are some of the shots from the adventure.

Off to play for the afternoon

My professional co-workers

My loosing streak ended
with the hot pink ball.

A thunderstorm blew in and the result was that we were all pulled off the course to avoid getting zapped.

A wild Ring Necked Pheasant that was zeroing in on some Robbins and not paying any attention to us.

The following was shared for my daughter. She gets it she said.