Magnificent

Unicorn is magnificent-even as he is waiting for me to bring him his morning hay.

Autumn is late this year. For years, by this time, all the leaves would be gone except for the brilliant gold of the aspens set against the grey wood of the bare forest. This year the basswoods are still greenish gold. The maples are in full red spectrum glory. The oaks are beginning to russet.

Our first frost visited last night, and it was unexpectedly hard. I will have a lot of peppers to gather this afternoon for drying. I think the plants mostly protected the fruit. My potted herbs got nipped pretty badly, but if I clip them short they should regrow indoors just fine. I just don't know where I'm going to put them yet. They will probably end up in the sunny kitchen. In the dark of winter, I love sitting by a sunny window and stroking the lavender or the Thai basil to release a burst of scent. It uplifts my soul to smell something so fresh in the middle of February.

This photo shows a line down the middle with fresh pasture (and sheep) on the left, and used pasture on the right. I am still rotating sheep through fresh pasture. However, while the grass grows slowly, I move them slowly. The sheep get one fresh grass day, then a bit of hay while they nibble the last of the good grass. Then more hay on the days when they pick at the less palatable plants. After most of the green is gone or flattened, they will be moved again. The pastures should be finished by mid November. Then I will move everyone to their winter or breeding pens for the first month of winter.

The sheep are getting restless. The baby rams are starting to push each other around. Unicorn will occasionally butt a tree trunk. Usually on the same day one of the ewes is acting overly silly, which means she is cycling and he can smell her clear across the farm. Bombarde, being the less dominant ram to Unicorn, has to keep a tight reign on his instincts and urges. He doesn't dare express himself too vividly until the Big Guy's presence is removed.

Little White Pine Silverthorne was put into the ewe pen this past week. The first hour was hard for her but then I did a little "round penning" with the ewes and they decided it was less work to leave her alone than suffer the shepherd's continuous direction. (I have found I can work sheep very similar to horses.) Now they flatten their ears if she gets too close. But she is fast becoming part of the flock. After she's been to ewe lamb boot camp with the other babies during breeding season, her place in the flock should be secure. She is such a cute little bug.

October is Here...

Let Your Spirit Soar!

Autumn Beauty

This is one of the views across the lake. It's such a lovely time of year.

White Pine Rams

Garrett asked how his babies were doing so I took a few photos of sheep yesterday.

The katmoget is Arvada. He is so beautiful, and his fleece is lustrous, like the reflection of blue sky in water.

When I brought Arvada home around 3-4 months of age, he had very small horns. But they have grown significantly. I am willing to accept that this ramling could be a half-poll, because of his dam's line and because I know from experience what large horns/scurs? half-polls can have. Arvada's horns are not exactly round. They are not massive D shaped horns either, but there is some definition there. Only test breeding to some known poll-carrying ewes will tell for sure. At least that is what I think. Please inform me if you have more insight into ram lambs like Arvada. The good thing is that Arvada is a very good ram in all other respects. He has wonderful conformation and fleece.
Parker lost his one scur (left side of photo) and it is regrowing, though wobbly. His original scur (right) is almost desiccated. It is also quite loose. He will probably loose and regrow scurs more than once. He's already learned to avoid Arvada's attempts to head-butt.

Parker is still my lovey-dove. He plumps himself down beside me anytime I have to be in his pen. It's like my very presence is a sedative. I do try to avoid working with him. But he's always right there, waiting for me to pause and stand still long enough for his knees to buckle. If I move on, he gets up and trots over to my new work spot and tries to lie down there. No matter how coldly I return his lamby affections, he doesn't seem to notice he's been spurned in love. Silly ramling.

What Flower Are You?

I am a Daisy What Flower Are You?

Have fun! And thanks, Kim.

From the Deep

Snapping Turtles are sooooooo left-over dragons. The boys think so. And really, I'm not about to argue. Myths more harmful than that are believed everyday.

Asa took this picture Sunday evening. It isn't the biggest turtle we've ever seen, but she was definitely large. (I read somewhere that only females emerge from the lakes to lay eggs and travel. The males stay in the lake all their lives. I'm not sure that's true but I do tend to call snappers "she's.")

The biggest snapping turtle I ever saw was so large it looked like something my Dad couldn't have lifted. It had emerged from Upper Puposky Lake and was trying to lay it's eggs in the gravel at the edge of the road, about a mile from the house I grew up in. Each plate on it's shell had a horn, like the tail spikes. The tail itself was so ridged it looked like an alligator tail. The claws were fearsome. It could raise it's head almost as high as Dad's knee. And it's entire shell was encrusted with moss and "barnacles" like the bottom of an old ship.

It must have been a very old turtle. I was convinced it was around during the dinosaur age. Maybe it's grandmother was...

What does our reaction to such a creature say about us?

The boys and I tend to make up stories about where the turtle has lived and which dinosaurs and dragons it has swam with. We speculate about it's secret lair and how mysterious it's underwater life must be.

Sometimes, after seeing a snapper alongside the road, we might see it run over the next day in that same place. Obviously, someone went out of their way to kill it, only to leave it behind...shell, meat, claws, everything.

Acts of cruelty like that...what compels someone to behave that way? Are these people deeply offended by the predatory mystery of this animal?

Last month my Mom looked out her window, and she saw a tawny cougar crouching beneath the trampoline about 20 feet from the house. A tremor of fear rippled through my entire family that day. We changed several patterns of behavior - just like the the person who swerves off the road, I guess. I confess to wishing I could kill that cat so I knew it wasn't a threat anymore. The DNR claims cougars in Minnesota are not a threat. Do people that kill snappers simply feel like I do about cougars in the forest? They just get more opportunity to live out their reactionary fear?
I don't know.

A few weeks after the cougar siting, I read that the cougar is a symbol of leadership and power. I relayed this to Mom and we discovered some profound meanings the cougar could symbolize for her. After that I no longer wanted to kill the cat. I just wanted it to never harm my family.

I've been dreaming about a cougar lately. These dreams are disturbing, to say the least. But I believe dreams come to us from the depths of our psyche...the depths of the universe...the depths of God.

Who can tell where the ancient snapping turtles come from? Do we see them rise from the surface of the water, expected? Usually they magically materialize at the edge of our paths. All of a sudden, a messenger from an unfathomable place is before us, displaying evidence of worlds we don't fully understand. We can swerve to kill that messenger. We can sometimes ignore it. Or we can look and listen; radiating and absorbing our fears for whatever they may be.

The cougar in my dream is only looking at me. It chooses to sleep behind the red barn of my childhood, or on the slope down to the lake. It isn't hurting anything. But awareness of it's presence causes me to be very agitated in the dream. I'm convinced it is dangerous. In the dream, eventually I want to provoke it so that I can have an excuse to kill it.

I'm not really that different than the person that swerves the car to hit the turtle, am I? Time to visit the depths of my soul, and face the mystery of my own fears...once again.

Labor Day

Rain is supposed to move in tonight. I sincerely hope we get plenty. It is very dry here.

The lambies have been moved to the shady area in the central part of our yard. We do have some grass there. But most of it is the kind Shetlands don't like. For a couple of days, it will suffice though.

Silvy is starting to warm up to me. If I grab her while she's distracted, she immediately gets all blissy on the pets and rubs. She doesn't even want to leave. But she is still that bit flighty about the being caught part. I don't care. I love the chances I do get to snuggle with her.

Parker lost a scur the other day. It measured less than an inch long. Underneath was a bit of blood and a small bump in the depression of his skull. You can see the remaining scur on the right-hand side of this photo. It is very loose now too.

Today, we took some time to do ordinary fun things like fishing, ordering school clothes, watching Cadfael mysteries, and painting racing stripes on the Mercury. (I'll blog about that some other time.) The South Wind was so hot, no one was inspired to do much more than be comfortable.

Tomorrow it is Back-To-School. Summer has ended on a good note.