Catching Up

 

I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. To start with, all of us have been battling the cold that never leaves. I thought it was supposed to be 7 days from start to finish. It has now been more than 21 and counting.

To add to my distress, I caught some kind of chicken thing from cleaning out the coop without a mask. Who knew? Now that we have 10 chickens, there is a lot to clean and I guess a lot more pathogens (or whatever they are). Take it from me: wear a mask. The cold was irritating; the chicken germs were toxic. I was pretty darned sick and I still had to stagger out to minister to my flock.

 

 

Speaking of the flock, there is more to dumb Dora than meets the eye. Or less, actually.  She has lost almost all her neck feathers and most of her tail feathers. I felt really, really sorry for her since I thought that the other chickens were picking on her. Nope. She was hell on wheels going for the seed and the others kind of gang up on her to keep her out. So she is now not only too dumb to find the coop but scrawny and ugly as well.

The egg production is down as we head into winter. Everything changes with the seasons. It is part of the continuing fascination of a farm. Grass stops growing, it starts raining, and it gets colder. When I lived in Washington, or even Prescott, these were changes that barely impacted me. Now, this means that our source of raw milk is compromised. The organic  dairy lets its milk cows ‘rest’ for 2 months before introducing them to the bull. So what do we do in the meantime?

I wasn’t too keen on raw milk to begin with and we had a scare here in New Zealand with one dairy being closed down after making its customers ill. I feel better overall but since the raw milk directive came at the same time that I finally had my tooth pulled and got rid of the ‘massive’ infection, who can tell which (if either) is the determining factor. But I don’t want to go back to store bought milk. I am sure that that is not a good option. Perhaps Dan can strike a deal with the dairy farmer. We’ll see.

There is one winter change that I am looking forward to. I get a heat pump installed in my room this week. I can’t wait. It doesn’t actually get too cold (compared to North Dakota) but it is very damp which makes life a little less pleasant. So with the heat pump organized, I can settle in to do some of my indoor chores. Or not.

Open Door Policy

 

Here at Stone Tree Farm we believe firmly in an open door policy. I don’t remember which President originated that US foreign policy but Google tells me it was under Sec. Hays’ watch and I think he worked in Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.

All I can say is that Teddy never had to deal with sheep. When the Suffolk ram came to visit (euphemism for impregnate), we were very cordial. Gave him the run of the place so to speak. He repaid us by leading a revolt out our open gate. Sunday night one of our neighbors called to say that some of our sheep were roaming the shared driveway and some had ended up in one of their paddocks.

Yael went up to the paddock to see how many were there and I, like a fool, took a flashlight to see how many remained in the new barn paddock. Tip of the day: if you lose some of your guests, don’t try to find them in the pitch black of night armed only with a flashlight. If they don’t want to be found, they won’t be. All they have to do is shut their eyes to be invisible unless you literally trip over them. Needless to say, I didn’t find very many. But I did manage to shut the gate which some gremlin had opened.

Then I drove down to the main road looking for signs that any sheep had escaped in that direction. Clue = sheep poo. No poo, probably no stray sheep. Yael and I took turns checking the house and reassuring the kids and then back out to see if we could spot any of our flock. We couldn’t and finally arranged with our neighbors that they would call us in the morning before they left for work and we would move our sheep from their paddock.

Farmers get up early. Even farmers with day jobs so we were rousted out literally at the crack of dawn. We tossed the kids in the wagon; Alessia and Jesse were still in their jammies but for some strange reason Naavah was fully dressed. That kid is a walking miracle.

So Yael goes back up to the paddock to roust the sheep and I drive down past the gate to block any escape route down the mountain. And then the kids and I wait. And wait. And wait. And the frustration level inside the car rises. Jesse is screaming lustily; the girls are arguing at the top of their lungs and I have had enough. I figure if I drive a short way up and down the driveway, perhaps Jesse will calm down.

And perhaps he would have if I hadn’t run the car into a ditch. I hadn’t thought those kids could scream any louder. I was wrong. I was also absolutely furious with myself. Yael had warned me that the grass was slick and now I had to face her and tell her that HER car was nose down in an invisible (to me) ditch.

So I haul out the kids, carry Jesse (no lightweight, believe me), pull Naavah along by her hand and watch Alessia stomp her way up the hill in her feeted jammies. Couldn’t have been too much fun on the gravel with only a piece a flannel on your feet for protection. She never said a word. Takes after her mother!

I put Jesse in his cot (the only safe place) give the girls some comfort food and take my car to find Yael. It seems the sheep don’t want to leave our neighbors’ place and don’t. I tell Yael about her car and she is not pleased. She is also remarkably restrained. Breeding tells! The neighbor goes to haul out the car with his Ute (New Zealand for truck) and I crawl miserably back to the kids who have recovered completely. Oh to be young again.

Dan comes up from Auckland after his meetings, gets on his quad, takes Yael and in a remarkably short time has rounded up the sheep and put them in the back paddock. Unless the gremlin wants to traverse our entire farm, he’s not going to open this gate.

So the sheep are in a ‘time-out’ in the back paddock and I am to try to supervise the ram and check on the Suffolk ewe that is limping badly as a result of running into a wire fence as she ran away from Yael. I suppose it serves her right but she is still pathetic.

 

While I am in the paddock, I also try to check the water trough. That’s the blue thing peeking out from the Suffolks’ legs on the right. You can see why we call them the Borg and the Suffolk ram goes nowhere near them. They are pretty confident that I won’t challenge them but they are wrong. I do and the water is fine. I have to confess, I am not warming up to these Borg, oops Suffolk as I should.