Sheepy Sunday

My daughters and I had a terrific time at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  Knitters all, we fondled a lot of yarn, and even made a purchase or two.  Or three.  And there was the spinning fiber...

And I got my yearly dose of sheep petting.  (I miss my little wooly beasts.  Piglets are cute, but they're just not as soft and snuggly...)

This contented lady was peacefully chewing her cud, and I caught her in mid-chew so she didn't look all whopper-jawed.

This sweet little gal had apparently been waiting for us all her life, and wanted to be scritched and petted and cooed over forever.

And I got several shots of sheep being way too curious about a camera.

Just like old times.

My one regret of the day was that I didn't get a picture of the three of us together in our matching hats.  (Oldest daughter had knitted them as a surprise, just for the occasion.)  Though we chuckled all through the day as total strangers came up to us and asked permission to take our picture.  It was almost like being a celebrity!

The closest thing I have is this pic I took of the two girls while they were in line for something to drink.

So, anyone out there who was at Maryland Sheep and Wool on Sunday, and who took a picture of three women in sheep hats, one of whom looked like this (only possibly less goofy) (or possibly more goofy) -

could you send me a copy?  I'd appreciate it!

All One Big Happy Family Flock

We had A Plan.
(Hey!  Who said "Never learn..."?  Oh.  All of you.  Well.  Okay, then.)
Somewhere in the next month or so, we were going to move the ewes (Goldie, Onyx, Abigail, and Tiny) up to the boys' pen, so we'd have lambs next spring.  And, you know, just for a change, we'd know who the Daddy was.
We forgot to share the details of The Plan with the sheep, however.
Yesterday afternoon, we heard the ewes and lambs start a huge blatting ruckus out front.  It was too early for supper (not that that would make much of a difference, actually.  In their world, it's always time for supper.  Or breakfast.  Or both.), but this didn't sound like the usual feed-me chorus, anyway.  We ran for the windows to see what was up.  Madman saw it first.
"Oh, ****.  They're out."  And he ran for the door.  I didn't even bother to keep looking to see who was out;  I just ran for my boots and followed him outside.
The boys were out.  They were checking out the girls through the fence.  Not good.  We've had a few adventures with the boys being out, over the past summer.  (Once they went half a mile up the road to visit the neighbors.  Took us most of the afternoon to catch them and bring them home...) 
Madman made a grab for them a couple of times, but they weren't going to let him catch them, and took off running.
He headed them off from going down the driveway, and sent them around the girls' pen, following close behind.  I went the other way around to cut them off, so we could herd them back up the hill toward their pen.  But, instead of running away from me, they came right up to me and let me grab them both. 
"Oh, sure."  Madman snorted. 
"Want one?"  I asked.
"I'll take the one with handles," he said, and grabbed Orion.  Merlin then broke away from me and headed on around the pen.  (And what I was thinking when I grabbed them both to begin with, I'll never know.  Either one of them could drag me away, and both of them together could probably launch me...)
The Tug of War of the Century had now commenced.  While Madman and Orion are evenly matched for stubborn, Madman has the weight advantage and can usually carry the day.
However, Orion has a lower center of gravity and four legs to brace with, and he had clearly decided that he was Not. Going. Back. To. My. Pen.
Standoff.
There wasn't much I could do to help.  What with all the flailing elbows and horns, I didn't want to get anywhere near them.
"He's not gonna move. What do you think about just putting them in with the girls?" 
"Well, it's October,"  I said.  I counted off the months on my fingers.  "November, December, January, February, March.  I've got no problem with lambs in March."
Done deal. 
Orion, who was tiring a bit at this point, but not nearly enough to make it possible to drag him all the way back up to his pen, was a little less resistant when he saw me opening the gate to the girls' pen.  The phrase 'rocket-powered' comes to mind.
Once inside, he was the happiest ram on earth.  Girls to the right of him!  Girls to the left of him!  Girls, girls, girls!  Everywhere girls!
It's fall, you see.  Mating season.  Getting into the girls' pen was the whole reason he'd gotten out of his pen.
Merlin still needed to be rounded up, and he led Madman a merry chase.  He couldn't find his bosom buddy Orion, and didn't know what to do or where to run.  (He's easily confused, our Merlin.  Not the sharpest thumbtack on the bulletin board, if you know what I mean.)
Finally, though, we persuaded him to join the rest of the gang, and everyone settled in for supper.  Though Orion kept getting distracted from the food, because Girls!!
Our next step will to be to pull the lambs out and put them in the erstwhile boys' pen (after figuring out how the boys escaped and fixing it, of course.) 

But that's A Plan for another day...

Creeeeeeeeeaaak

Well, the hinges on the door seem a bit rusty, and there's definitely a lot of dust on the windowsills, but I'll get the blog shipshape in no time...
It's been a busy summer.  After endless soul sucking rain in June and a good bit of July, the sun finally came out.  And then it got too hot and humid to breathe.

So, a summary of summer:
Madman heard a report that we'd had 21 days of rain in June.  I honestly don't recall there being 9 days without rain - I'd put it closer to 3.  Maybe 4, tops.
So the garden is an abject failure this year.  What didn't wash away, rotted in the ground.  The soil was usually too wet to work (and was always too wet to work on my days off), so the only thing growing out there is grass and ragweed.  And 6 corn plants.  And I found a beet the other day.
Not a banner year for gardening.
The goldfinch finally gave up around the end of July.  My guess is he finally suffered a terminal concussion.
Something has been eating our laying hens and got one of our adult turkeys.  We're not sure if it's a skunk, a raccoon, or a fox - all have been seen lurking around here at one time or another.  We've revamped fencing.  Again.
There have been numerous sheep escapes - some more harrowing than others.  (I'll share a few in a later post.)
We lost a mama rabbit, but gained 12 baby rabbits. 
All 12 of our Barred Rocks have survived, and are almost ready to join the remnants of our laying flock, once we're certain that we've thwarted whatever carnivore is out there.  There are several roosters in the crowd, who don't know that they're auditioning for the role of Only Rooster in the Coop.  (The ones who get voted off the island will end up in the freezer.)
All 15 turkeys are also still with us.  They've still got some growing to do.  There's been some gobbling starting to go on out there, so we're hoping there's a male or two for our future breeding flock.
I had a lovely vacation, with family visits, yarn, bubble blowing, and a RenFair.

And I had a major milestone birthday.  One of those that end in zero.  There weren't any party hats or balloons, but my daughters kidnapped me and took me on an adventure.  And, as with all really good adventures, I got to wear a superhero costume.

Anyone care to hazard a guess?

Hey! It finally quit raining!

But the sheep are on the new pasture, with plenty of grass to take their attention, and Abigail wouldn't come over with her lamb.
This was the best picture I could get.

At least you can see the black legs and tail, and the raccoon mask.
I think he looks like he's wearing musketeer boots...

And that makes five.

I've been taking my camera out each morning when I do chores, hoping that Abigail would finally get on with it and have that lamb.  Day after day, no lamb.  She just kept getting bulgier and bulgier with no end in sight.  Not off her feed.  Not pawing the ground.
Nothing.
This morning, I forgot to grab the camera on the way out the door.
Yeah.
I was pitching hay and talking to the girls when I realized there was a strange lamb walking around in the shelter, and Abigail was standing there with a puzzled look on her face.

I ran back inside, texted Madman (who was at work), grabbed the camera, and ran back out.  By that time, the lamb had lain down, so I couldn't get a good picture, but here's for starters, anyway.
It's still a little gunky and yellow.  Abigail isn't like her sister, Tiny, who licked her lamb spotless.  ("My lamb is gonna be shiny!")  Abigail is more like her mother, Onyx, who gives some token licks and says "Hey, good enough."
I had to go to work, but I figured I'd get some more pictures when I got home.  But by that time, it was pouring rain, I was tired, and just couldn't face going out with the camera in a 40 degree rain.
The lamb is adorable - black tail and legs, black polka dots (including one giant one) on its back, white ears and face with a black raccoon mask.

Unfortunately, it's a boy.
*sigh*

I was really really hoping it would be a girl.  But somebody had to break the string of girl lambs we'd had so far, I guess.  (I'd just been joking with Madman last night that Abigail would screw it up by having twin ram lambs.  I only missed it by one...)

Here's a picture of Goldie's little girl that I took yesterday.  And it looks like Goldie is going to continue in her history of being a helicopter mom.  She follows her lamb around like a shadow, and chases the other lambs away when they come to ask if Sweetikins can come out to play.

I caught this picture when Goldie and the other moms were busy eating, and the lambs were all happily bouncing and dancing and racing each other.  Though Goldie soon put a stop to that when she suddenly realized her lamb was out there having fun.
"You sit your woolly butt right down there while I eat my breakfast.  Don't pay any attention to those hooligans - they'll only get you into trouble."
Did you know that lambs can sigh?

Well, let's add 'midwife' to my resume...

Of the sheepy persuasion, anyway.
I grew up with sheep.  When I was a kid, my folks raised Suffolks, and we had quite a good-sized flock.  Mom was the Chief Midwife during lambing season, heading out every couple of hours to check on ewes and drag them into the barn from whatever snowbank they had decided to lamb in.  I sat more than one vigil with her back in those days, waiting for a lamb, helping the ewe through a rough time.
But that was over 40 years ago.

Goldie had a hard time.

I knew when I went out to feed the sheep this morning that she was very very close to lambing.  Not only did she eat almost nothing (which is totally unlike her), she'd been quiet.  Normally she's leading the chorus of "The sun has been up for a whole 5 minutes, so where's breakfast?" with great enthusiasm and volume.
So a quiet Goldie is a spooky Goldie.
I checked her several times over the course of the morning and early afternoon.  She was doing a lot of pacing and pawing of the straw in their shelter - sure signs of impending lamb.  But there must be something in the air this year, since all the sheep are having their lambs in the daytime, instead of at night like they're supposed to.  Soon she was making a noise that spoke clearly "I'm experiencing some discomfort," and a sac of amniotic fluid had appeared.  That meant the lamb was due any minute..
But "I'm experiencing some discomfort" turned into "Giving birth really sucks" and still there was no lamb.  I was staying just out of sight, peeking at her to gauge how things were progressing without letting my presence upset her.  (Skittish, our Goldie is.  Not a people sheep at all.)  When the sounds turned into "Holy shit, someone help me!"  I went for a closer look.
Now normally, it's best not to intervene.  You can do more harm than good, without meaning to.  It's hard, but sometimes the best thing to do is just stand and watch.  And normally, sheep don't need any help.  But this wasn't one of those occasions.
Goldie, who should have been laying down and getting on with it at this point, was still on her feet and pacing.  And bellowing.  Worse, I could see a lamb head sticking out behind her, but no sign of legs.  Normal presentation is the front hooves first, followed by the nose, then here comes the rest of the lamb.
We've got trouble.
I ran inside to wash up - hands and arms to the elbow (because I might have to stick an arm in and fish for legs) - and ran back out.
Even though I approached her slowly and carefully, and even though she was clearly in huge distress, Goldie wouldn't let me get anywhere near her.  I kept softly crooning her name, trying to get close, but she would move out of reach as quickly as she could.  I didn't want to scare her any worse than she already was, so I finally stopped moving around and just kept quietly talking to her.
I think finally she decided that I wasn't the scariest thing in her life,  and approached me.  I could see at that point that there was one hoof sticking out a couple of inches, but no sign of the other leg, and both legs should have been out further than the lamb's nose.
The lamb looked like it was dead - strangled, probably, or just too crushed by the birth-gone-wrong.  Its eyes were lifeless and glazed.
I could hear my mother's voice in my head - "Okay, you've lost the lamb.  Now save the ewe."
Goldie was still crying and her eyes were wild, but she seemed to accept that I was there to help.  I gently grabbed hold of the head and exposed leg in one hand, and tried to fish around for the other leg, but she was straining too hard for me to do anything.
"Okay, girl," I said as she flopped herself down.  "You push, I'll pull, and we'll get this done."
And we did.
Once the shoulders cleared, the lamb popped right out onto the straw.
And amazingly, it kicked!
It wasn't dead!
I quickly cleared its nose and mouth of mucus, and let Goldie get on with the business of licking her little bundle of joy clean.

 I can't begin to express my relief at the sight of that little one raising its head.

I hung around to see if it would be able to stand.  That's where the non-intervention is advisable.  In assisting, all kinds of damage can be inadvertently done to the lamb - leg or joint damage, spinal damage - or to the ewe.
If a lamb can't stand, it can't nurse.  If it can't nurse, it dies.
It took a while - the poor little thing had a really rough entry - but finally it struggled to its feet.
And bigtime phew again!
.
Still don't know if it's a boy or girl - it was way too gaumy at first to check, and now I'm staying clear to let Goldie calm back down and bond with her lamb.  Just because I was her BFF when she was in extremis is no reason for her to really trust me now.
I'll get a peek soon, though.

You knew there'd be more lamb pictures, right?

Here's our newest little one:

 She looks a little better all dried off.

One of Onyx's babies came up to investigate the strange lady squatting amongst the sheep.

And I managed to sneak up behind this little girl and scritch her under the ear.  She enjoyed the scritching right up until the moment that she realized she didn't know what was going on and looked over her shoulder.  Then she bolted to a couple of feet away and gave me such a Look..
.

We had a great time at NH S&W, looking at all the wonderful fiber.  I kept visualizing the multiple bags of fleece waiting for me at home in order to restrain myself from buying more fiber.

But this was the big find:

I have big plans...

Make that eleven...

I had a surprise this morning when I went out to feed the sheep.  I thought Goldie would be next, but I was way off.

That's Tiny with her brand new lamb.  And literally brand new - she's about 15 minutes old in this picture, and already on her feet.  (When you're born to be prey, learning to walk as soon as possible is a really big deal.  Learn to run, live to breed.)
I'd really thought Goldie would be next, and that Tiny would be last, judging by their relative tummy and udder bulges.
Tiny looks like she's going to be a good mama.  She was licking and licking and licking this lamb, getting it all cleaned up.  At one point, the lamb got herself dirty, and Tiny sighed and started over...

It was hard to tear myself away, but it was NH Sheep and Wool today, and my daughter and I needed to hit the road.  (This is my Mother's Day treat every year - my girl takes me to NH S&W and we have a wonderful day ogling all the colors and textures and magic.)

So Happy Mother's Day, all, from all of us here including the newest mother, Tiny.

Well, at least it wasn't triplets this time...

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.  Ten sheep. Hahaha...

Onyx finally got tired of carrying all that extra weight and dropped a set of twins - cute little girls.

They're pretty much identical, except one has a couple of tiny white spots on her head

and the other doesn't.

They're still pretty scruffy looking.  Onyx isn't one of those wash-behind-your-ears kind of mothers.

I knew she was getting close.  Yesterday morning, when I fed the sheep, she kept stopping eating and wandering off by herself, staring blankly into space.
Onyx not solely focused on food?  Onyx not pushing and shoving to get at least her fair share and as much more as she could bully the other sheep out of?  I believe that might be one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
Or at least a sign that lambing is imminent.
I kept an eye on her all day, figuring that she would lamb during the night (as sheep always do) and that we'd have some results in the morning.  At 3:30, I left for work.
At 4:30, Madman came home and found Onyx with a very wet lamb.  Apparently she thinks the sheep-only-give-birth-in-the-dark-of-night rule is an old wives' tale.  He had to run a couple of quick errands (made even quicker by the fact that he was dying to get back home and see what was happening) and got back to find a second wet little lamb.  He kept a close watch, but this year she stopped at two.
Phew.

Here's one of the two checking out Sauron.

 No, sweetie.  Not all black sheep are Mama.  No milk there.  That's your uncle...um... half-brother... um... daddy?.. um.... daddy's half-brother?... um...

There's only two relationships that we can swear to -
1.  Onyx is the mommy.
2.  Orion, since one of his two sons is the daddy, is the grandpa.

That's right, Orion.  Only 2 years old and you're a grandpa.

Say what?

After that, it gets complicated.

Peeps and Sheeps

Another sign of spring is when we do this:

It was really hard to get a picture, since they all move so fast. 

This year's choice for our Chicken of the Year is the Barred Rock. 
It occurred to me last fall that if we got a different color of chicken each year, we would be better able to keep track of how old each chicken is.  After years of getting Rhode Island Reds, we had no idea which hen was from which year.  And we've still got a bunch of them in our flock - they could be anywhere from 4 to 7 years old.  Now when a chicken inexplicably drops dead (and they do) at least we'll be able to figure out whether it's from old age or from some chicken health-threat. 
And Barred Rocks are really pretty...

Anyway, the little dark chicks are the Rocks, and there are 12 of them all together.  Straight run, so they'll be a mix of boys and girls.  We plan to keep one of the roosters, since our previous rooster inexplicably dropped dead.  (Oh, hell, there's one of those plans again.)

The lighter chicks are actually baby turkeys.  We got 15 Bourbon Reds, which is the same heritage breed that our present two turkey hens are.  (We didn't really want that many, but that was the minimum order.  Given the fragility of turkey poults, it may be just as well that we start with extras, though.)
The plan here (there's that word again) (and I can hear that giggling, ya know) is to keep the best tom turkey out of the group for breeding purposes.  We'd really like to be able to hatch our own turkeys. 
BTW, I might need you to remind me later that I thought that was a good idea.

In sheepy news, all the girls are 'making bag' - which means that lambing could start any time.  Onyx looks like she's getting ready to feed the multitudes - if her udder gets any bigger, she'll be stepping on it...
I hope she doesn't have triplets again.

Why there's no LambWatch2013

It's a little embarrassing, frankly.
Last year, I had a blast running LambWatch2012. It was a ton of fun, tracking the days and who had guessed what.  I had fond hopes of making it an annual event.
Well.
Last fall, Madman and I did a little quick math and realized that Sauron and Smoky, pastured with Onyx, Goldie, and the girls, were fast approaching the age that Orion was when we bought him the year before. They were already starting to have head-butting contests and generally starting to behave like adolescent boys trying to impress the girls by doing any dumbass thing that occurred to them.  Since we wanted to breed Onyx and Goldie to Orion again, and we didn't want to breed Tiny and Abigail, something needed to be done. 

Clearly, we needed A Plan.

Longtime readers of the blog are now giggling.  (I can hear you, you know.)  Some are even guffawing.  You've seen what happens when Madman and I form A Plan.

So, here was The Plan.

1.  Put Sauron and Smoky into a separate pen so they don't get up to any shenanigans once they figure out what shenanigans are.
2.  Count backward from the general time we want lambs in the spring to figure out when to move Goldie and Onyx up to the pen where the Big Boys live.  Orion and Merlin have been leading the bachelor life for months up in the upper pen while the lambs grew up.  Orion will be glad to see women in his life again;  Merlin's interest will be more in the company.  (And possibly the entertainment)
3.  Leave Abigail and Tiny in the original pen, so they won't get bred.  We don't want to breed them until they're over a year old, so they have a chance to fully mature before the stress that pregnancy would put on them.

We'd end up with three pens, with from 2 to 4 sheep in each.

Sounds simple, right?

Yeah.

So, we moved the little boys into their own pen, next to the girls' pen.  That lasted for a couple of days, then we got up one morning and there were six sheep in the original pen.
The boys had rejoined the girls.  And started acting all possessive and rambunctious and stuff.
We checked the fencing (I'm not even going to link.  Click on either 'sheep' or 'chickens' in the label cloud and start reading anywhere.  We've had issues with fencing.  *sigh*), strengthened the areas that they might have  escaped through, and moved them back.
The next morning there were six sheep in the pen again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
It reached the point that we'd move the little
bastdarlings and they'd be back before we made it into the house.  We finally saw how they were doing it - they were literally climbing over the fence.
So, we did what any sensible couple with years of animal husbandry experience would have done.
We gave up.  Short of cutting off their legs, there wasn't much we could do to discourage them, and by that time, the damage had probably been done. 
So, there was no way of figuring a starting date for LambWatch2013 - we'd been stuffing those boys back into their bachelor pad for weeks before we bowed to the inevitable.  With no Ready-Set-Go date to do math with, there was no way to set up a contest.
So, we're just winging it this year.  Genetically, things could be awful, or almost awful.  Or maybe okay.  For Onxy and Goldie, the outlook is better.  If they weren't bred by their own sons, then their lambs have parents that aren't related to each other and would be fine.  If they were bred by their own sons, well, maybe not so good.  And the little girls are the real problem - their choices are their brother and their half-brother.  There's an old saying among animal breeders - "If it works, it's called line-breeding, and if it doesn't work, it's called in-breeding..."
The only thing we know for sure is that lambs are due any time now.
After all, Madman planted peas last Sunday...

A sure sign of spring

The sheep shearer came yesterday.  Nothing says Spring like bare naked sheep!

Here are a few pictures from the gazillions that I took -

This is Tiny, just about done.  About 30 seconds after this was snapped, she took off like a rocket.  It was her first experience with shearing, and she wasn't impressed.

Here's Smoky getting his mani-pedi.  He didn't like shearing much, either.

He thought the whole thing was undignified.

 "Look what that bad man did to me..."

I tried to get a good picture of Orion and Merlin post-shearing, but they wouldn't let me get any closer than this...

One thing we confirmed with the fleece removal is that all the girls are pregnant.  Here's Tiny and Onyx, both a bit bulgy.

And a closeup of Onyx, showing that, once again,  she's as big as a house.  I hope she doesn't have triplets again.  (Or from the size of her, quadruplets...)

The final tally?  Eight, that's eight, bags of fleece out on the deck.

I need to start spinning faster...

Yep. This one's gonna stick.

Crap.

The sheep, shown here happily munching on hay, have a light dusting of snow on their backs.  Cuz, why would they go inside a shelter when there's a perfectly good snowstorm to stand out in?
.

 The ones who seemed ticked off by all the white stuff are the turkeys.  They're too young to have experienced it before, and they spent most of the day stalking around making loud "Pwweot!  Pwweot!"  noises.  Apparently this is Turkey for "WTF?"

They spent the latter part of the afternoon perched on their gate.  I think they were tired of walking in the white stuff, and why would they go inside their shelter when there's a perfectly good snowstorm to stand out in?

I think they've been taking sheep lessons.

Okay, quick show of hands - who wants to see some pictures of sheep?

(AKA the Lazy Blogger finally gets a post up...)


Leading off with the fellas, Merlin and Orion.  They're still by themselves in the back pen, waiting to be reunited with the girls.  (Another week or two, or when we can get ourselves organized to do it.)

I knew that Orion's horns had grown, but I didn't realize how much until I took this pic:

 and compared it to this one from last year when we first brought him home:

And here are the Little Guys, who are now about the same age as Orion was.  Which means we've gotta do some sheep separating soon (or hopefully, sell them) before they realize they're Almost Grownups and take some unfortunate action.

 

You all remember little Smokey.  (Formerly known as he's-not-named-Smokey.   Because he so totally is named Smokey.)

 And a side-view of his snazzy little horns:

 

And this little guy is now known as Sauron.  (Only because Beelzebub is too hard to say when you're chasing him through the garden...)  Actually, he's a little sweetheart, who loves to be petted.  Just don't stand between him and the food.  Just sayin'.

 

 

And here are Onyx's other two lambs.  The one on the left is the one Madman named Abigail (formerly known as the Spotty One), and the other one is Tiny.  She was the smallest of the three lambs, and in my efforts to not name her, I started referring to her as 'the tiny one', and somehow that became her name.  (Names are such a tricky thing.  Even when you don't name things, they end up with names anyway.  Hmmm.)

Check out the crimp in Tiny's fleece:

 Just makes you want to squish it, doesn't it?

And I have to share a sheep story with you.  When the meter-reader comes to our house, he has to walk between the sheep pen and the house to get to the electric meter.  When our sheep see anyone in the yard, they go nuts, since in their not-so-humble opinion, the only reason for humans to exist is to feed sheep.
The last time, I happened to be home when the reader arrived.  He must have been a new guy, since I'd never seen him before.   The sheep went on Full Alert the minute he hit the top of the driveway, and started sounding off as soon as he opened his vehicle door.
"Hey!  Human!  Human in the yard!  Hey!  You there!  Yeah, you!  Feed us!  We're hungry!  Really!  They never feed us here!  It's been days!  Or weeks!  Or maybe months!  We don't know because they won't let us have calendars!  But it's been really really really long!  Really long!  Food's in the can over there!  Hey!  Poor starving sheep here!  Hey!"  All six of them were blatting their heads off at the poor fella.  He strode dutifully down the path to the meter, glancing over at them a couple of times.  I don't think he spoke 'sheep', so the expression on his face could best be described as 'WTF?'  When he was almost back to his car, he stopped and stared at them for a minute.  The sheep were totally batshit by this point, because he had walked right past their food can without feeding the sheep! 
I'd been watching through the window the whole time, and at this point I was laughing so hard it was hard to stand up.  I don't know if he thought they were going to jump the fence and eat him, but he sure did have a sheepish (sorry sorry sorry - you know how I am) look on his face.

I imagine he's used to barking dogs in his profession.  But I don't think he was prepared for a bunch of raving sheep.

.

Hey! What happened to August?!?

And how did it get to be September already...

So, what have I got to show for the summer?

Here's the sum total of the knitting I got done:

Wingspan.  (This is the best of a bunch of really bad pictures.  I can't get the colors right and the focus defeats me.)  I love this project.  Though if you count over to the fourth and fifth wedges, starting from the right, you'll see that the color sequence went south.  Minutes after I posted about how the colors were transitioning perfectly for the pattern, I hit a knot in the yarn.  *sigh*

The garden pretty well went south this summer too.  What with the sheep getting out and eating most of it, there's not much left but swiss chard and green beans.  And the tomatoes are being eaten nearly to the ground by a sudden infestation of hornworms, which we've never had before in all our years of gardening up here.  Growing up in Kansas and upstate NY, I was familiar with them, but Madman was all "WTF?!?" because he'd never seen one before.  Picture a caterpillar the size of your middle finger, chomping on your tomato plants and pooping the equivalent of elephant droppings.  The only good thing about them is that they explode rather spectacularly when you stomp on them.  (Just be careful not to point them at anyone, as they go off like a cannon.)

One of the few bright spots is that my lovely Black Austrolorps have started laying eggs.  (*sniff*  They grow up so fast...)  They've now been moved in with the main laying flock, though they spend most of their time next to the fence between poultry pens, gazing at their beloved turkeys.  The turkeys are also now spending all their time pressed up against the other side of the fence, gazing right back at their little chicken friends.  And this morning, Madman found the hen turkey in with the layer flock - she must have climbed the fence since she's now too fat to fly.  We foresee trouble, but the turkeys' days are numbered (because Thanksgiving.  And possibly Christmas.  You know.  Don't tell them.) so it will all work out in the end.   Because it would be just great if something on this little farmlet would just stay where it's supposed to.

But I'm not holding my breath...

Nothing like a little late-night sheep chasing to get the heart pumping

Especially when we only had one flashlight between us.  At least Madman was home for this little escape party.  Though he got the flashlight - which was actually a headlamp.
The girls and the lambs were bustling all over the property in the dark when Madman heard them, and we headed out the door to round them up.  The porchlight showed they were up in the garden, but they came barreling down the hill when they saw us heading for the pen.  (You'll possibly remember that there's a 3-step plan for when the sheep are out.)  Then they barreled back up the hill, then down again.  For sheep that should have been fast asleep, they were awfully lively.
At one point, I was stranded in the dark - caught in the long gap between the light of the porchlight and Madman's headlamp, not daring to take a step.  Sheep went thundering past me, and at least one stopped and snuffled my hand (just in case I was carrying anything good to eat) but I have no idea which one it was.  All snuffles sound alike in the dark...
Eventually we got the fence fixed and all the sheep back inside, though as usual, Goldie was a trial.  She's quite content to climb fences or knock down posts, but for some reason an open gate just scares the crap out of her.
I remember thinking earlier in the day that it had been a nice quiet spell with no animal breakouts.
*sigh*

Welcome to Stalag 13. Colonel Hogan will escort you to the escape tunnels as soon as he's done goofing on Colonel Klink.

This is getting ridiculous.
This week my days off were Tuesday and Wednesday.  Tuesday I'd planned to spend weeding the garden, but as usual, rain kept me indoors.  (It always rains on my day off.  I don't know why.)
So I was puttering around indoors when I heard a really loud noise from the neighbor's house up the hill.  Apparently the house has sold again, and the new people were working on some project that involved a lot of banging on metal.  I looked out the kitchen window to try to see what was going on, and saw Merlin and Orion in their pen, raptly looking up the hill as well.
Unfortunately, Goldie and Smoke were standing nearby, also staring just as raptly.
They are supposed to be in their pen on the other side of the house.
Just as the first bad word was coming out of my mouth, Onyx appeared with the Terrible Trio in tow.
Bad words started gushing out of my mouth...
I ran out the door, trying desperately to come up with a plan.  Madman was at work, miles away, and totally unavailable for sheep-chasing.

Okay, then.

Step 1:  Check the pen to see how they got out.
Step 2:  Fix the problem.  There's no sense in putting them back in the pen if they're just going to get out again.
Step 3:  Catch sheep and put them in pen.

So, the fencing that was (allegedly) holding the ewes and lambs forms a big pen that is divided down the middle by fence and a gate, forming 2 paddocks  (We alternate them between the two, giving the grass time to recover in between.  They started in paddock 1, then were switched to paddock 2 a couple of weeks later.)  The problem - the corner post of paddock 2 had collapsed, taking down one end of the pen.  The sheep had just walked right out over the fence.
Step 1, done.
As far as step 2 - there was nothing I could do to fix the corner post.  I'd have to wait till Madman got home.  So, I decided to put them back into paddock 1, which we were planning to do this weekend anyway.
I opened the gate to paddock 1, threw some grain into a food dish and left it inside, then grabbed the other food dish, filled it with more grain, and headed out to attempt step 3..
Luckily, they were easily lured by the grain.  Though still apprehensive about the clanging noises from up the hill, they followed me all the way back and into the pen.  (I just had to stay ahead of Onyx, who was trying to climb into the food dish.)
I closed  the gate, breathed a sigh of relief, and went back into the house.  The rest of the day was much less exciting, with only thunderstorms for entertainment.

Wednesday dawned clear and bright, so I finally got to head up into the garden.  I spent several happy hours weeding, occasionally chucking some grass over the fence to Merlin and Orion since they were amused by grass falling from the sky.
Then Orion started blatting.
Now, Orion is usually a pretty quiet sheep.  (And when he does speak, he sounds like he's battling laryngitis.)  It's totally unlike him to blatt more than a couple of times.
He blatted a lot more than a couple of times.
I looked up from my weeding just in time to see a little black hairy butt flash through the garden.
"Hey!"  I yelled at the lamb.  "What are you doing out?!?"
Just then Onyx peeked around the end of the greenhouse, with a "Who, me?" look on her face.  And another lamb leaped over the lettuce and beelined for the broccoli.
I headed down for the grain again.  Goldie and Smoke were still down by the galvanized trash can that we keep their grain in, trying to figure out how to get it open.  (Damn that lack of opposable thumbs...)  I lured them inside with grain, then set off to get Onyx and her crew.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
This time they'd scaled the fence between the paddocks (and just why is it that we have the only sheep in the history of the world who climb fences?), pushing it down, then had gone out through the end of paddock 2 that was still down from yesterday's escape.
I did some fence magic with posts, props, and cussing, and went back to my gardening.
Madman was equal parts amused and exasperated when I told him about the latest escape.  "Damn sheep," he muttered, shaking his head.
I thought the sheep were settled for the day, but I should have worried when Madman ran into town to pick up a couple of things at the store.  After all, they always wait till he's not around...
Yeah.
Let's do this one more time for luck.
This time, they'd figured out that if they pushed at the lower corner of the gate between the paddocks, they could juuuuust squeeze through..  And since that damn corner post was still down, they could walk right out again.
So, as Madman drove up the driveway, he saw me with my frowny face on, holding up the corner post to keep the damn sheep in any pen at all, while trying to find anything to wedge the post up with.  At that point I had Goldie in paddock 1, and everybody else in paddock 2.
Between us, we got the post up, and after a lot of confusion, all the sheep back into paddock 1.  (As we were getting Onyx and all the lambs from #2 to #1, Goldie crossed from #1 to #2.  And got too upset to go back.  Because she's Goldie.)

No wonder Colonel Klink was always so grumpy.

"Where did everybody go?"

The boys are a little lonesome.  This morning was the appointed time for moving the girls and the lambs to the new pasture.  (This would be the area formerly known as our front yard.  Both of us would rather have sheep than lawn...)
The lambs are old enough to be weaned, and once they are, their mothers can go into season again.  Shetlands are capable of having lambs twice a year, but we don't want to do that.  First of all, it's hard on the mothers, and second, we don't want lambs born in the middle of winter.  We'll put the flock back together this fall, so that the lambs are timed for March or April.

Goldie was the first, as Goldie always has to be first in anything smacking of Not Routine.  She's hard enough to catch when she isn't already suspicious.  An apprehensive Goldie is a faster-than-a-photon Goldie.
Madman managed to grab her and get a halter on her while I caught and picked up Smoke.  (And then had to climb over a fence while carrying a large struggling lamb.  Too bad we didn't have an extra person to take photos.  On the other hand, if we'd had an extra person, I would have handed over the struggling lamb and done the photography myself.)  (On the other other hand, Madman had to get Goldie over the fence, so I really had the easy part of the deal...)
I lead the way, carrying Smoke, and trying to call Goldie's attention to the fact that she probably wanted to follow us.  "Look, Goldie!  I've got your lamb!  Goldie - look look!"  Goldie, meanwhile, was simultaneously trying to dart in three directions at once, while dragging her feet to keep from going in the direction Madman was trying to lead her.  And just to keep things real, she threw in a double backflip that startled the hell out of Madman.  (We think it startled her, too, since she landed on her side.  She might not have known she could do that.)
Once we got them through the gate and they realized there was FOOD in this new place, they settled right down to cropping and chewing. 

Two down, four to go.

The rest were easier.  I carried down two of Onyx's lambs while Madman was catching their mama, then carried the third one while he dragged Onyx.  Though he'd had a better idea by this time, and carried a scoop of grain to hold in front of her - the old carrot and the stick trick.  Much better.

Orion and Merlin spent the morning being upset.  Merlin cried and cried, and Orion kept whacking him.  I'm not sure if it was because he wanted Merlin to shut up with the blubbering or if he figured it must somehow be Merlin's fault that the girls were gone. 
Madman was a little surprised at how upset Merlin was, until I pointed out that it's the first time in his life he's been separated from Onyx.  They grew up as lambs together, and even Goldie has been around ever since he could remember.
Poor little guy.

After everyone got settled, I tried to get some photos, but mostly I got shots of sheep with their heads buried in the grass.


Here's a couple of pictures of Smoke.  I still think he's the prettiest thing.

And here's how the spotty ewe is looking these days.  (Madman has taken to calling her Abigail, but the name doesn't really resonate for me.  I still usually refer to her as 'the spotty one.')

And here's the ewe I've been calling Tiny, since she was the smallest of the lambs, even though she has now caught up with her sister.  And yes, she does have her head through the fence so she can eat the grass growing on the outside.

Cuz, you know, the grass is always greener...