Sometimes, it is Just Plain Weird Around Here

So today was a livestocky sorta day.  All day Bet and I worked on things for the livestock branch of the insanity around here.  When Dirt got home, he joined us.  After all was said and done and Bet told me to go in and finish up dinner, I ran out to my Market Garden and put the floating row cover back on over the eentsy weentsy carrots and beets, picked Brussel sprouts, mustards, a cabbage and came in to the house and retrieved some tates from the cellar (the well house). 

But before that quick vegetable whirl wind,  we spent the day for the livestock, sheep to be exactly exact. 

The sheep pathway to the barn needed immediate attention.  It needed to be built up and the fence needed repair, more accurately, it needed to be pulled up out of the mud and turf that had grown over it.

So it was a tractor sorta day for a good deal of it, yay.  Hauled many loads of dirt over to the walk way.  Used the bucket to pull the fence up and shake off the sod.  Okay, that last part didn’t work so hot, so with the fence lifted in the air by the hooks on the bucket, Bet and I ripped sod chunks off of it.

Bet put in this fine gate to keep the horse off the sheep walk way, And of course, everyone is very helpful here at VF&G so a group of helpers made sure that Bet had all the help she could possible want.

And then some.

Sheep don’t like to be caught in action in the fall. So it is hard to tell exactly when lambing will start.  But we don’t keep the ram with the ewes all the time.  We turn him in with his flock in the fall and take him our several months later.  So we know the earliest they ewes can lamb and the latest.  It never goes until the latest, not even one ewe.  But it never is quite the earliest date either.  But pretty close that is for sure.

This year Dirt has been saying mid-February, then a month ago he narrowed it down, February 15th.  I said last week it would be this week, but I sensibly chose not to get quite so specific. 

Sure enough, all this week the girls have been lookin’ mighty large.

And acting suspicious.  Earlier today, when Bet and I were working, one ewe walked all the way to the west fence line.  Bet checked, nothin’ and the ewe walked back to the flock as if she were caught, caught, tryin’ to escape most likely!

But then..  a little bit later she went back out to the fence line and….

Our first lamb of 2012!  Yes, it is there, by the time we got to the ewe and lamb we were in work mode, and someone’s admonishment or rather their wondering if I had gotten admonished to put down the camera, rang in my ears.  I’ll have pics of the two all snuggly in the barn tomorrow. 

All schedules are suspended for the next month!  Yay!  But I will try very hard not to use it as an excuse to stay up all night writing.  That said, Good-night Dear Reader!  See you all tomorrow!