Rachel and Her Flock

I just love my girls!

Now that it's fall, I have a lot of flock maintenance to do. The ewes need to be evaluated for internal parasites and de-wormed if necessary. They also need their hooves trimmed. Our soft clay soil doesn't wear the hoof material away very well.

These aren't really hard jobs. I just set up my three sided catch pen made out of cattle panels. I install it between the place where two rolls of electronet meet. Then I feed the girls their corn treat in there for a few days until they don't worry about stepping in and out of the small space. Once their flight response has been sufficiently dulled by greed, I close it and capture the flock.

The trick is to catch Rachel. (The grey ewe front and center in the photo) She's a savvy ewe that has no desire to be my pet. I usually defer to her preferences because, after all, she is the matriarch and I respect her judgement. But I can't just let her run wild through the countryside without hoof trimming and shearing. So twice a year, I have to employ the catch pen. In the spring I use it to take her out to pasture. In the fall I use it to bring her back up to the pens near the house. The rest of the girls would follow me and a grain bucket. Those girls are greedy little cuddle-bugs that won't leave me alone. I usually can de-worm each of them without the rest of the flock even catching on to the fact that, one by one, I'm sticking a syringe into their mouths. But not Rachel. She always knows what's up.

The last two times I used the catch pen, Rachel refused to go into it with the rest of the flock. She decided to forgo the corn for the sake of her independence. Eventually, I got fed up and just took the other ewes to the destination. Rachel was left behind in the old pen. By the time we got back from working with the other ewes, Rachel had accepted her fate. I put the pen back by her fence, opened it up, put corn inside, and waited. She walked right in. I let her eat the corn. Then she willingly walked toward the flock while Clancy and I pulled the pen in that direction. (I suppose it's hard to be queen without one's subjects.)

It's rather tedious to accommodate Rachel and her demand for special treatment. She's a smart ewe, though, and I've learned to respect her decisions the way I accepted my grandmother's decisions. I always think of Rachel as older and wiser than myself. In the end, Rachel is the easiest ewe to handle. She dislikes being caught, but once she is caught, she accepts the situation with grace and cooperation. Her more friendly underlings are perfectly willing to be caught, but they are exceedingly intolerant of being parked on their hind-ends to get their toenails clipped. Rachel is a dream to trim and shear.

So that is what I have to look forward to: 6 ewes that are happy to walk into the catch pen, and 1 ewe that refuses to do so. 1 ewe that sits quietly for manicures, 6 ewes that try to turn themselves inside out to escape the insulting shepherd. I better get busy if I'm going to have those girls ready to meet the rams by Thanksgiving.

Surprise...

Last night I tried and tried to get one of my good autumn photos to load. I was so tired of grey in all my posts. I wanted some color! But those photos were too dense for my dial-up.

Look what I woke up to this morning. SNOW! And lots of it. With my grainy old cam-corder I snapped this picture of a sumac branch against the snow. It will have to suffice for the color I craved since the whole farm turned shades of grey last night. I took it around 7am so the light was pretty bad too. You probably get the idea though.

The winter storm really raged last night. Winds were strong from the west and they coated everything with more than 2 inches of wet, dense snow. Snow ball snow.

I took a little walk this morning only to find my lilac bushes by the lake and the round pen bent low under the oppressive weight of clinging ice and mush. They looked like drop cookies pressed down with a fork.

The electronet around the ram pen was down in three places. I can hardly believe I didn't have rams all over the yard this morning. It would have been easy for them to just step right over the fence buried in the snow. I'm grateful they decided to behave.

North Side-Completed!

Here it is...the north side of the house with all of it's siding. Woohoo!

We worked in the light rain yesterday to finish the last bit of siding and repair the fascia.

The scaffolding was too high for our ladders so Clancy had to crawl in and out of the bedroom window. He reminded me of when we were actually building the house...we used to tromp in and out of any window hole on the second floor. There was also a huge pile of sawdust inside where the boards got cut.

It seems like a snail's pace to get the siding finished. But we've come so far. To get a better perspective it does help to look back at where we were last year at this time.

Onward to the South Gable Peak!

Sunday Brunch Buffet

North Side-Continued 2

We almost made it up to the gable peak last night. But not quite. There are about 6 boards left to go. Clancy stained most of it by the light of a large halogen bulb while I made pancakes for our late supper.

Heavy rains moved in early this morning. We have some pre-stained boards we can hang if the conditions under that peak are not too wet. The piece of fascia that blew down in a storm can be reinstalled. Then we can remove the scaffolding and celebrate one more side completed.

(Except for the tiny amount needed to frame the front door. But that can't be completed until the door frames are put in. We hope to achieve that this fall still, but the larger areas are priority right now.)

Here...Chick Chick Chick...

Red Light-Green Light! It's a long name for a hen, I know. But this little chicken plays the game so well, it is a fitting moniker.

All of our 6 chickens were bought from our local kindergarten class when they were little puff balls. Teacher pried them from the death grip of 5 year-olds with sticky fingers and put them in a little cardboard box for us. Needless to say, those chickies fled from human touch the minute we set them loose on the farm.

Well, a few weeks ago I noticed this hen seemed to be nearby quite often. Pretty soon she was constantly 3 inches off my heel. If I turned to look at her, she froze. I guess I didn't see her if she stood still.

Of course, if I was on my way to give a bit of treat to the ewes, I'd toss a bit to this hen. Admittedly, I was flattered that she had decided to take an interest in the people that supposedly run this farm. All I have to do now is step out the back door and this biddy comes hustling across the yard to greet me.

Eventually, the rest of the flock caught on to our little game and the rooster had to take charge of the situation. He sprints into second place so Red Light-Green Light doesn't get all the credit for the corn. He likes to keep the other hens thinking he has something to do with the bounty raining from the short heaven that is my old ice-cream pail. Surely, it must be his crow that calls down the manna.

Plump little Red Light-Green Light follows me even after the scratch has been flung. Maybe she thinks I have something better in my pail just for her. And what do you know: a few kernels left that I offer in my hands. She gingerly pecks them up. I gently reach out to stroke her feathers since she is so near. NOPE-that's not going to happen! She maneuvers just out of reach. Too many memories of kindergarten class, I guess.

North Side-Continued

Well...we've had some delays. The weather didn't cooperate this weekend for us. Reinforcing the scaffolding also took a lot more work than planned. But you really don't want to be that high up with a support hanging by one nail.

This morning I had to run to town to get another gallon of stain. This afternoon I used the sunny weather to pre-stain a bunch of long boards. When we work on the peaks it is nice to not have to return to that height to stain everything.

Last night, Clancy called me out to see the view of the house shown in the second photo. I cried. It was the first time in all these years that I have seen this angle of the house with siding and without scaffolding. I think it looks beautiful-even with the construction mess.