Here Come the Lambs!

On Sunday afternoon, one child came bursting into the house with the exciting news that there were lambs in the pasture. And not only lambs, but triplets.

One, two, three, all in a line.

This is the first time in fifteen years of lambing that we have ever had a ewe have triplets. While exciting, we didn't really expect all three to make it. Sheep have a hard time keeping track of and nursing that many lambs, and we don't bottle feed lambs. 

However, as of yesterday night, all three seemed healthy, so maybe they will all make it.

A set of twins was born Sunday night, as well.

Babies everywhere.

They seemed healthy, too. 

Thankfully, we're in a stretch of notably warm weather, which is what we want for lambing. Even a healthy lamb has a hard time if it's 15 degrees with wind, but in this weather, they don't have any trouble.

We're off to a great start so far with the lambing. There are four more older ewes that should lamb in short order, which means there will be lambs popping all over the pasture in a couple of weeks.

Spring is coming, and so are the lambs.

Update: Two of the triplets were dead this morning, for no particular reason except that they apparently didn't follow their mother overnight, and she didn't go find them. So now we have three live lambs. And that's the way it goes.

Git Up There, Sheep

We did something fun and certainly unusual yesterday: We had a sheep drive.

You've heard of cattle drives, right? Well, this is the same, but with sheep instead of cattle.

The reason we did this is because our neighbor is the caretaker of our ghost village's cemetery, and he agreed that it would be very helpful to put the sheep in there to clean up the weeds and tall grass that have grown up around the trees and headstones. 

Cemeteries are very labor-intensive to landscape with weed eaters or mowers, because of all the grave markers, flowers, etc. that must be avoided. But sheep are very skilled at picking around anything in their way while they're grazing. They are also small enough that they won't cause any damage, unlike cattle. So our neighbor asked anyone he knew who had relatives buried there if they minded sheep being in there to eat down the grass and weeds. None did.

This cemetery is fully fenced and quite large, about an acre. A. was happy to have a new place for the sheep to forage while we're waiting for the grass in their usual pasture to get establishd, especially one so nicely fenced. He waited until after Memorial Day, when quite a few people visit the cemetery to decorate graves. But first thing Tuesday, we prepared to move the sheep.

This cemetery is about two miles from our house, and it required us to get the sheep across the main road. We started early, so as to avoid the traffic resulting from Texans going home from their holiday weekend in the mountains. Luckily, we can see a couple of miles down the road in both directions from our village, so we waited until there were no vehicles in sight and then ran the sheep across.

Why did the sheep cross the road? To get to more grass, of course.

The rest of the drive was just keeping the flock from turning off into open pastures or other roads.

I drove the Honda so I could get ahead of the flock and block off intersections where they might go the wrong way. 

Waiting for the flock at the intersection to turn them left.

Little Bo Peep was with me.

One boy was on his bike, so he could drive the sheep from behind but also get ahead of them as necessary. A. and the other boy were on foot behind the flock.

It took about an hour, but eventually . . .

Success.

A. has to haul water up there for them in his truck, but it's otherwise a very nice place for them to spend a couple of weeks. And at the end, the entire cemetery will be well-manicured, thanks to the sheep.

A Gelatin Mistake and a Surprise

Awhile ago, I bought a fairly large bag of gelatin. It was the non-GMO grass-fed whatever beef gelatin, and my whole idea was that I could use it to make rhubarb jello when we had lots of rhubarb.

Now we have lots of rhubarb! It's time to make jello!

Except . . . I couldn't find the gelatin.

Poppy and I spent at least twenty minutes looking for it. I remembered when I used it the first time, I decanted the contents of the bag into a jar, because the bag wouldn't really re-seal and I didn't want gelatin powder all over my pantry.

I knew I had labeled it, though. And I could not find it. 

Then I had a thought.

That gelatin looked an awful lot like the cream of wheat I also keep in a jar in the pantry. And the last time I made chicken food because we ran out of store-bought food, I poured cream of wheat and hot water into the chicken scrap container, but remembered thinking it didn't get very thick.

Perhaps because I poured the ENTIRE JAR of gelatin powder in there instead of cream of wheat?

Yes. I'm pretty sure I did.

So! I hope the chickens enjoyed their gelatin treatment! They're sure to have lovely strong toenails now.

Sigh.

On a happier note, look what we have now!

LAAAAMBS!

You can't really tell in the photo, but there are two. One girl, one boy, and both doing very well.

Boo gelatin, but yay spring lambing. 

That's all.

T.T.: Powdered Pills

In my experience, a kid has to be around ten years old to really be able to successfully swallow a pill. I don't know why this is. Something about the fact that they can't chew it makes it seem impossible for them to swallow.

This is why children's medicine is always sold in liquid form, of course. But my kids have always hated children's medicine. And sometimes, we just don't have it. When we run out of things, we can't just run to the store to get them.

This is why I have more than once needed to give my kids a regular adult pill in a smaller quantity*. 

But then there's the swallowing issue. What to do?

I know! Because I learned from the MiL when Cubby was very small and needed a dose of Tylenol for a fever and we didn't have any in children's form.

What you do is, you cut your pill into half or quarters or whatever dosage you've figured is appropriate for the child, and then you powder it by crushing it with the flat bottom of a jar or glass.

Next, you scrape this powder into the jar or glass, and then add a spoonful of something like applesauce or yogurt. You want something that can be scooped up with a spoon. Because that's exactly what you're going to do. Mix the powder thoroughly into whatever food you chose, get all the mixture onto the spoon, and feed it to the child needing the medicine.

Done. 

I don't have a photo of a powdered pill. It wouldn't be a very interesting photo, anyway, so here's a much better photo of the surprise lamb A. found in the pasture Sunday afternoon.

No pills needed for this healthy little boy.

* Obviously, I am not a doctor, and I am not going to give advice on dosing even over-the-counter stuff. But it's pretty easy to find dosages for different medicines by weight online and figure it out from there based on the milligrams or whatever listed on the medicine's package.

Answers to Woolly Questions

Between Linda and Jenny, there were several questions about the sheep's wool. 

This is a topic I never thought I would know a thing about, but here we are.

How much total wool did you end up with?

We haven't weighed these specific fleeces yet, but last time we did weigh fleeces from this sheep breed, we found that one fleece is 10-15 pounds of wool. Our breed (Debouillet) produces some of the densest and heaviest wool per sheep of any breed. That was when we had the professional do it with his electric shears, which cut much closer and get off ALL the wool. A., being not a professional and also using hand shears, left a bit more on the sheep. But it's still 70-100 pounds of wool.

What do you do with the wool?

The first year we were here, when we had the professional shearer come, A. sold the fleeces as-is on Etsy. Literally just the fleeces straight off the sheep in garbage bags, shipped out to various people who were most probably hand-spinners. This worked in that it got them out of our shed and paid for the shearing with a little profit, but the shipping was really high and complicated on them because they were so bulky and heavy.

Last year, A. had a lot of trouble with his shearing equipment and ended up basically just chopping the wool off as best he could so the sheep wouldn't expire from heat. The fleeces weren't good enough to sell.

This year the fleeces came off much better and he wants to try bringing them to a custom wool mill a couple of hours away to get them made into actual yarn to sell.

We also have a bag of slightly less nice wool that he might try to sell to crafters and so forth. A. might wash that wool here before selling it, because then he could charge a bit more for it.

Does it smell?

Well, the wool smells like . . . sheep. The natural grease that makes raw sheep's wool very water resistant (lanolin) is what gives them their distinct smell. It's not bad, it's just . . . sheepish. But maybe I'm just used to it.

Sheepish smell in this scene was strong. (As was the inadvertant alliteration in that sentence.)

Do you have to wash it or do anything to it?

No, but you can get more money for it if you do. When A. sold the fleeces last time, he specified that they were directly off of range sheep. That is, not washed, with grass, hay, etc. still in the wool. 

But if you want to do anything with it, yes, it needs to be washed. And for yarn, it has to be washed, all the bits of vegetation removed, carded (basically combed out to be all fluffy), and THEN spun into yarn. It's a process, and one I am happy to have a mill do for me.

How often do you shear?

Every year. Some people do it before lambing, so it's easier for the lambs to find the udder and so the back end of the sheep doesn't get matted with after-birth and so on, but we don't do it until after lambing. Both because it's really cold here until after the sheep lamb, and because we don't want to be wrestling a pregnant ewe to the ground.

Do they look little afterwards?

Yes, quite comically so in the case of professional shearing, which takes the wool off right down to almost pink skin. You can see a photo showing the contrast between sheared and unsheared on our old Cotswold sheep (their wool is more long than dense) in this post.

The contrast isn't quite as noticeable on our current sheep, because the density of their wool makes it look like there isn't as much there. Also because A. didn't shear them right to the skin for fear of cutting them.

How does it look when it leaves you?

I will get a photo of the wool in a bag and post it this Sunday. Why not now? Because it's still dark outside and the bags are in the unlighted shed. 

I think that covers it. Unless there are any more questions about wool and sheep.

Breaking: A Very Special Snapshot

Well, looky what Cubby found in the pasture this morning:

LAAAAAAMBS!

The very first lambs of the year--twins--have appeared. They were both already up and nursing when Cubby saw them just after sunrise, and they seem to be doing well without any intervention. Hooray.

A. thinks they're both female, but he has a pretty hands-off policy with new mother sheep, so he hasn't actually been close enough to examine them very closely.

In any case, the current lamb count can begin.

So! Current lamb count: 2--two girls (we think), no boys, and five ewes left to deliver.

We're Ready for Thanksgiving!

 

We've got decorations!

These are not Christmas lights. They are Thanksgiving lights, because they're only white and only in the kitchen, which is the center of all Thanksgiving festivities.

Window decals courtesy of my sister and applied by my very careful children.

Preschool art from one of the children. Maybe Charlie? There's no name on it, and I have now had three children go through preschool, so who knows.

Turkey centerpiece given to me by my mom seventeen years ago (yikes), with the further embellishment of two malformed squash that never matured before the frost. Festive!

We also have lots of meat on hand:

Conveniently located in the apricot tree right outside our front door. 

A. killed the ram yesterday--for reasons mostly to do with wanting to avoid inbreeding with his incoming group of offspring--and it is currently aging for a few days before we butcher it. So that, along with the bull, will ensure we have a very full meat freezer.

How are your Thanksgiving preparations coming along (if you're American, of course)? Any big plans?

What Stalks in the Night

 

Good news! It didn't freeze Tuesday night! We squeaked by with 33 degrees, which means all the battling I did with covers in the howling wind to protect my tomato plants was unnecessary. That's okay by me, though. It's going to get warm again, and I anticipate some good harvests of green beans and tomatoes. I'm very glad none of the plants died.

Something else did die that night, though: a sheep. And that is definitely a story you don't hear every day. I will tell it, with fair warning that it involves nature in a somewhat grisly form. 

Although we didn't know it, the drama actually began late in the afternoon. The sheep and the horse were together in the field adjoining our next-door "new" house, which is visible from our kitchen windows. We were eating dinner when Cubby jumped up from the table, saying, "What are the sheep doing? They're running. And the horse is going crazy!"

The sheep were bunched up in the way that they do when they feel threatened, and the horse was galloping around, which is not something he does unless greatly agitated. We thought maybe there had been a rattlesnake or something, so Cubby and A. went out and looked around a bit. They didn't see anything, so A. wrote it off as a nervous reaction to the incredibly high winds and changing weather.

When night fell, the horse was back in his pen near the house, and the sheep were in the vineyard pasture that A. had fenced off for them to eat all the weeds in it. The vineyard pasture is right behind the house, and it adjoins the same pasture the sheep had been in earlier. I was just about to go to bed when Cubby came running out of his room, saying there was a commotion in the pasture. 

His window looks out on the vineyard pasture and the horse pen, and he heard the two dogs going nuts and the horse whinnying and galloping around. A. took his spotlight out to investigate. He found the dogs in with the sheep. They had the flock all rounded up in a bunch in a corner of the pasture. 

These dogs come from cattle-working breeds and are instinctual herders, so A. figured they were just having a little fun and scolded them before putting the sheep back into the next-door pasture and closing the gate so the dogs couldn't get at them. He shut the dogs in the porch for good measure, to ensure no more unauthorized activity.

The horse was hysterical, A. assumed in reaction to the sheep's nervousness and running around, so A. went in with Samson and patted and soothed him a little.

The next morning, just as we were about to all get on the bus for school, A. came in to tell us there was a sheep dead only about six feet from the house, practically under Cubby's bedroom window. It's throat had been ripped out and a few bites taken from its udder. 

It was clearly not a natural death. The question was, what killed it?

Here's what A. thinks happened. A mountain lion was passing through when it smelled the sheep and stopped to investigate. It was probably hiding somewhere around all the old sheds and things by the next-door pasture when the sheep and horse got so agitated in the late afternoon. Then it jumped the fence and took down the sheep when night fell. It only got a few bites before the dogs chased it off, though, and shortly after that, A. went outside. He didn't see the dead sheep in the dark.

Mountain lions generally live in the canyons here, where the larger game animals live and where there is plenty of cover for the lions' preferred stalking method of hunting. They do sometimes travel on the plateau where we live, particularly when the weather is changing. They are very large--males are over 100 pounds--almost completely fearless, and undaunted by fences. 

They will also kill small women and children, so it's definitely not something you want to have around your house. And I was not too easy in my mind when I considered Cubby tromping around the pasture in the afternoon while a mountain lion watched him from its hiding place.

A. made sure his spotlight and gun were ready last night, but everything remained quiet, so it's most likely that the animal has moved on. The ewe that was killed was a very old one we were going to cull anyway. She was already bloated and inedible by the time A. found her, but there wasn't much meat on her anyway, so it wasn't a great loss.

The real heroes here are Jasper and Odin, who chased off a predator that outweighs them by fifty pounds or more. Those dogs are apparently entirely unafraid of any animal, and those are definitely the kind of dogs we need to have.

As A. said, we had gotten accustomed to living here, considering it just like anywhere. And then we get a reminder like this that we do indeed live in a remote and wild place, where mountain lions might appear at any time.

For All the Mothers (Ovine and Otherwise)

We have a brand-new mother around here, and for once it isn't me. One of the full-to-bursting ewes had a lamb three days ago. It's another girl lamb, and it was lucky enough to be born during our warm spell and thus did not require any shepherd intervention.

Do I have a picture of it for you? No, I do not. But! I do have a picture of the Megaton cabbage plantation!

Cabbages are just as cute as lambs, right?

Because it is Mother's Day and I get to do what I want, I spent the morning planting out almost all of the starts that were in the kitchen grow box. There are now 12 tomato plants and two pepper plants out in the backyard cells A. prepared for me. They are protected from our vicious winds with the most aesthetic of objects:

Our house is definitely going to be on the next Home and Garden Tour.

I got the idea for the tires from the lady we used to buy milk from. She said they work really well, and you can just keep stacking them up as the plants get bigger. God knows, we have plenty of old tires on our new (abandoned) property. I'm also hoping the heat absorbed by the black tires will keep the plants a bit warmer and happier during our cool nights in the summer.

I also planted out the remaining eight basil seedlings in various places. Those have some attractive plastic milk jugs around them, too.

A. spent the morning cutting up and hauling away the board fence that used to be where that stone wall is in the above picture. It was big, heavy, and awkward, and has been sitting in the middle of the yard near my lettuce for months now. His gift to me was two hours with a chainsaw and wheelbarrow to get it off the ground and out of my way.

Beautiful bare ground, just waiting to be planted with something. More cabbages, maybe?

Cubby nailed up some of the wood to cover gaps in the fence to keep the dogs from racing around that yard and over my carrots. He also used some hinges that had been on the section of fence A. cut up to actually afix the gate to the post to that yard, so now I have a fully-functioning gate there, instead of various propped-up pieces of wood that were always getting blown over in the wind.

I knew all those hours he spent playing with tools as a toddler would pay off later.

After Poppy's nap, A. took all four kids (and the dogs) to our neighbor's canyon so I could sit here in a quiet house. Except it's not all that quiet, because I'm listening to music on my computer. I love music, but I absolutely cannot have it on when my kids are around, because they make too much noise of their own and the combination of them and the music just makes me crazy.

So for now, it's just me and Gary Allan.* And both of us are right where we need to be.

Happy Mother's Day to all my sisters in arms. I hope the day is exactly what you wish it to be.

* It occurs to me that I should be taking advantage of my children's absence to listen to something not appropriate for their innocent ears. Pink, coming right up!

A Homesteady Sort of Day

A. discovered during shearing that one of the sheep that had been sold to us as a bred ewe was, in fact, a wether. That is, a castrated male sheep.

A. found the silver lining, though. His exact words were, "What the hell? This thing isn't going to give me a lamb. Oh well. We needed more meat, anyway."

After the fleece was removed, all we had to wait for was appropriate butchering weather. When we woke up to 34 degrees with clouds today, A. decided the time had come.

The wether was duly killed, gutted, skinned, and hung up in the shed to age for a few days. As A. was gutting it, he discovered this sheep had a great quantity of fat around its kidneys, known as leaf fat. This fat is the best, purest, and mildest tasting fat on an animal, and A. was very excited to see it.

He proudly bore in a big pan of fat and deposited it in the kitchen.

Based on a lot of past experience, I knew that the best course of action was to render it immediately, lest I end up trying to store an unwieldy pan of fat in my refrigerator.

So I immediately cut it up and put it in my cast-iron dutch oven to render.

Cubby was very interested in this and hovered over the pan. "Can I make a candle from it?" he asked.

Huh. Can you? Well, I didn't see why not. I mean, I know people make candles from beef tallow, which is very similar in consistency to sheep tallow. So I quickly looked up a few sites about making tallow candles, and we made one in a jar.

All you have to do is render tallow*, pour it into a jar into which a wick has been suspended, and let it harden.

You can buy wicks online (of course), but I already had cotton kitchen string, so we used that. I saw on one site that soaking the string in a solution of water, salt, and boric acid makes it burn slower and more evenly, but we didn't have the boric acid, and our wick worked just fine as is. All we had to do was drop the string in the melted fat and put it in the freezer to harden and get stiff so it would be straight.

The hardest part was getting the wick to stay up straight in the jar. The top of the wick is wrapped around a pencil that is placed over the top of the jar. A dab of hot glue was recommended on the bottom of the jar to hold the wick straight. I don't have a hot glue gun. The best I could do was some bright blue Elmer's with glitter in it.

It sort of held the wick, but there was a lot of minute adjustments, dropping the thing entirely and starting again, many, many times (plus, I must admit, some cussing--it was really frustrating) before I decided it was good enough and let the tallow harden.

After an hour or so in the refrigerator, we tried it out. And lo and behold, it burned.

This little light of mine . . .

Yes, my wick is still not straight, but nonetheless, we burned the candle all through dinner. Despite the frustration with the wick, it was fun. Maybe next we'll try making a dipped tallow candle. We got nothin' but time, and there can never be too many lights in the darkness.

* I didn't use A.'s precious leaf tallow. We still had some regular old fat from the wether we butchered last spring, so I used that.

How I Homeschool

I fear that I, uh, don't.

Today was the first day of the three-week (yeah, we'll see about that . . .) school suspension. I thought, "Hey, what a great opportunity for Cubby and Charlie to do some things they don't normally get to do at school! Geography! Typing! Spanish!"

Let me tell you what we actually did today, which was sunny and almost seventy degrees.

We put some potatoes outside that were already sprouting to sprout further and get ready for planting. I put seventeen potatoes in the sun and had Cubby help me figure out how many potatoes we might potentially get from those seventeen potatoes. We came up with 134*. (Math!)

The shearer came and we all stood around watching him work and helping however we could. Cubby took care of the gate so A. could go in and out with the fleeces, I wrote down the ewes' ear tag numbers along with a description of each (so we can figure out which ones to cull), and A. actually caught the sheep and moved the fleeces. (Agriculture!)

Cubby on gate duty.

That's a lot of wool.

A. dug many feet of dirt so I could plant 500 beet seeds. Cubby filled pots with soil and planted watermelon seeds. (Botany!)

The boys made boats out of paper and had a contest to see which ones would sail the longest in the bathtub. (Science! And also, lots of screaming and tears about cheating!)

So, all in all, a most academically successful day.

I was obviously born to be a teacher.

* They're really big, so our calculations included cutting each potato in half and getting a minimum of  four potatoes from each half planted.

Alleluia, the Lettuce and the Lamb Live!

Yes! Even though it got below zero the other morning--it dropped another degree after I wrote this post--the layer of snow on top of the windows covering the lettuce was apparently enough insulation and the lettuce survived.

I was so happy.

Tonight we're supposed to get anywhere from 3-8 inches of snow, which is good because then tomorrow night it will be single digits again. So the baby lettuces should be okay with their snow blankie on them.

The other baby that will need protection from this storm is the lamb that was born yesterday morning.

Yup, time to update the Current Lamb Count! But first, the story.

Yesterday morning before church, A. went out to feed the animals and discovered a just-born ewe lamb in the neighbor's pasture where the sheep have been grazing (with permission, yes). She looked healthy, but she wasn't getting up to nurse and there's no shelter in that pasture. It was right around freezing, but the wind was picking up and the lamb was just too cold to get a good start.

A. didn't want to take her from her mother, because that makes it harder for the bonding between the baby and mom to get established. He didn't think he could move the mother all the way back to the shed by our house without her getting upset about being too far from her flock.

So he stuck the lamb inside his own wool coat. She quickly responded to the warmth and tried to kick him. He put her down, she stood up, and the mom came over to lick her. A good sign, but the lamb soon went down again. A lamb on the ground can't nurse. If it can't nurse soon after being born, it will die.

Right about this time, I had to leave with the children for church--Cubby is the only altar server at our church, so it's kind of important for him to be there--leaving the shepherd with his lonely vigil.

When we got back around 9 a.m., we heard the rest of the story. A. had continued to put the lamb in his coat to warm it, but she kept having trouble once she was exposed again. He eventually had the idea to make a hot water bottle out of a mason jar and wrap the lamb in his coat with that. Then he left the lamb in the pasture with her mom and came inside himself.

As he explained it to me, it's important to do what you can and then step away and stop messing with the lamb. Intervention causes stress for both the lamb and the mom.

When he went back out twenty minutes later, the lamb had gotten out of the coat on her own and was following her mom around. By the time we got back from church, she was nursing and looked just fine.

A. will move the sheep into the pasture with Samson for the duration of the coming snow event so he can put the lamb into the old pig pen there for shelter, and all will be well.

So. Current lamb count: 2--two girls, no boys, and who knows how many sheep left to deliver.

Current Lamb Count: Sad News

The male lamb got stuck in some fencing, exhausted himself struggling, got too cold overnight, and died this morning despite all we tried to do to save him.

Having livestock means there will inevitably be deaths, but it's a hard lesson for the new shepherds to learn.

It's Been Awhile

Look!

LAAAAAMBS!

Cubby went out about seven this morning to shoot some more of the wretched rabbits and discovered those two baby boys there lying on the frozen ground with their mother. They had been born very recently, which was lucky for them because it was 20 degrees outside.

A. carried them into the shed he had prepared for them and put a small space heater in there to help out the smaller, weaker lamb. After a couple of hours drying out in the hay, he was up and nursing with his brother. Mother and babies were out this afternoon, grazing and nursing, respectively.

Cubby is very excited because he chose market lamb as one of his 4-H projects this year, and one of those boys there will probably be his show lamb.

There's one other ewe that looks pretty close to lambing, but we hope she holds off until it's not in the teens at night. We'll see.

So. Anyone remember Current Lamb Count? Here it is, after many years lamb-less.

Current Lamb Count: Two--two boys, no girls. And an unknown number of ewes left to deliver.

There's No Escaping Sheep

At least, not if you're married to A., who considers life a sad and empty thing if there aren't wool-bearers somewhere on the property.

The last sheep we had were the three ram lambs A. bought to fatten over the summer and feed us over the winter. The last proper flock we had was at least five years ago.

It was a long, sad five years for A.

But no more! For yesterday, the sheep man brought home the beginnings of his new flock.

Baa.

Those are Merinos. A. drove to the southern part of the state to get them (sleeping in the open trailer on the open range so he could be at the ranch early in the morning, but that's another story) and got them from a large sheep operation that was shipping older ewes to Mexico. There are six ewes there and one ram lamb. Most, if not all, of the ewes are probably pregnant and could have a lamb anytime in the next couple of weeks.

A good start to a flock, indeed.

Although A. and the children were very excited at the arrival of the sheep, you know who wasn't? Samson. 

Well, that's not strictly accurate. He got excited all right. As soon as he caught the scent of the sheep when A. was preparing to unload them, he galloped right across the pasture and jumped two five-foot-high fences to get away from them.

Twenty-three-year-old horses are NOT supposed to do that.

Luckily, we live in a ghost town, so he can run quite a ways before he gets to anything. What he did was make a beeline for one of our neighbors about half a mile away to visit her horse. A. went after him and brought him home with no trouble, and thankfully no injuries from his athletic endeavors.

Then A. spent some time in the pasture with Samson and his halter, feeding him hay, patting him, and reassuring him that his new pasture-mates were nothing to be afraid of. He's fine now.

Don't even think about trying to leap that fence again, Samson.

I have no idea why Samson freaked out the way he did. He's been around plenty of cows, but I guess the scent is different. Luckily, the sheep are accustomed to both horses and dogs, so they were perfectly placid.

Anyway. The current menagerie stands at four chickens, two puppies, one horse, and seven sheep, and who knows how many lambs to come.

At least it's never boring around here.

We've Only Just Begun

Last night was the village Halloween celebration. Of course, we went, with the under-10 set in costume.

From left to right we have a very sulky Crusader king, a fighter pilot who needs a couple of years to fill out that flight suit, the world's most adorable chef, and a very fierce ninja in Converse. Plus a couple of puppies who are hopeful that the chef has some treats in that apron.

Part of the celebration is one of those trunk-or-treat deals where the kids go to (parked) cars and get candy. They also got candy at the haunted house. Between the four of them, they came home with this:

Baby Candy Bowl.

After the first day of treats, I always dump all the candy in that one huge colander. So that's the beginning of The Candy Bowl. 

Later this week, there will be a Halloween party in Jack's classroom, as well as one for Cubby and Charlie. And then on Thursday is the actual trick-or-treating. Soon The Candy Bowl will be overflowing into a Candy Bag. 

Given the rate at which I allow my children to eat candy, this means that it will sit around until about Christmas, at which point all the good candy (i.e., chocolate) will be gone, leaving only the unwanted DumDum lollipops and weird stuff like Atomic Fireballs, which I will throw out eventually. It's a tradition.

But for now, we have KitKats and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in The Candy Bowl, with the promise of much more to come. 

Let the sugar-fueled revelry begin.

Eating My Mutton Words

Okay. Time for me to eat crow. Or rather, mutton.

Remember when I was all, "Mutton is strong. Mutton is gross. I do not want to eat mutton.This wether is going to be disgusting and I want to get rid of it." Or something to that effect?

Well, I was wrong.

We ended up only having Big Boy for about 24 hours before A. decided it would be kindest to just slaughter him. Sheep are flock animals, and without his flock and in an unfamiliar place, he was very distressed and unhappy. So A. killed, skinned, and quartered him on Wednesday night and hung the meat up in the shed to age.

It was pretty warm during the days, but very cool at night, and the meat was in game bags to keep off any flies. A. also cut off the tenderloin and put that in the refrigerator to age. He decided to grill some of it last night. I smelled the raw meat. It had no smell at all that I could discern, so I allowed myself to hope that it might be edible.

Not only was it edible, it was downright tasty.

I've eaten some pretty good lamb and some pretty rank sheep in the last several years, and this was one of the best we've had. Not only was it not strong tasting, it didn't taste of lamb at all.

Never have I been more surprised.

I thought maybe it was because of the vinegar marinade A. used and the grilling over juniper wood. So today, when we butchered the remainder of the meat and A. made stock from the bones, I tasted some of the meat from the boiled bones.

Nothing. No lamb taste. It may as well have been beef. Even the fat A. rendered doesn't have an unpleasant sheep-y taste.

I don't know if it's the breed, the fact that it was a wether, or the aging process--or maybe a combination of those factors--but whatever the reason, I'm very, very happy to be proven wrong.

I'm still going to leave the line-dried sheep jerky to A. and the boys, though.

My clothesline isn't just for clothes anymore.

Shepherd Vibes

First we got a reputation around Blackrock as people who will dispose of unwanted roosters. This reputation was re-established at our home in northern New York, where we once again found ourselves offing extraneous male chickens for neighbors.

And now? That reputation is only growing in our new home.

We have a new short-term resident.

Say hello to Big Boy.

Yesterday A. called the guy we get our milk from to tell him we wouldn't be there today to pick up our usual two gallons because I'm still trying to catch up from the backlog of milk that accumulated during A.'s trip. When A. got off the phone, he informed me that we would shortly be receiving a wether to butcher.

Say what?

A wether is a castrated male sheep. They're castrated to make them easier to handle as they grow, so they can grow to a bigger size before being butchered. It also keeps the meat from getting too strong a taste. The milk people, who already have sheep, had been given three wethers by a woman whose father had always had sheep. He died; she wanted to get rid of the sheep. 

The milk people did not, however, particularly wish to butcher three large sheep. In the course of conversation with the milk lady, I had mentioned that we used to have sheep. And that we butcher our own animals. So I guess we were a logical home for an unwanted meat sheep.

We also suspect they do not wish to eat that much mutton.

Because this dude most definitely ain't no lamb. That's a full-grown sheep. And wether or not, that meat is going to be strong.

I was not enthused about this. I eat lamb, albeit somewhat grudgingly. It's not my favorite, and I have zero interest in eating mutton, which is of course even stronger tasting than lamb. A. said he would probably give most of the meat to some of the older people in the village, many of whom grew up raising and eating sheep.

In the meantime, however, we have a sheep. 

My parents are coming for a short visit on Thursday*. A. very thoughtfully said we could wait to butcher Big Boy until they left. They're not really into the homesteading lifestyle, so I think they'll appreciate that. Also, the weather is going to be too warm to hang the meat for aging until a week from Thursday.

But mostly, the delay means that A. is a shepherd again, if only for a little while. And that makes him very happy indeed.

* They asked what they could pick up for us before they came, no doubt expecting I would ask for something like lettuce or avocados. Instead I asked if they could pick up fifty pounds of feed corn for the sheep. And this is why I have the reputation in my family as the weird one.

A Cultural Exchange Courtesy of Craigslist

A. decided last week to list his remaining three ram lambs for sale on Craigslist, either for butchering or breeding. One less thing--or rather, three less things--to worry about with a baby due any day. Plus, we thought it would be nice to get some cash for some of the lambs and then buy a half of a cow for some variety from lamb meat.

On the very same day he got sick of dealing with the escaping lamb and slaughtered it, he got a call about the Craigslist ad. It was a man from Vermont who didn't speak particularly good English, but managed to get across that yes, he wanted to buy the lambs, and he wanted to slaughter them himself.

A. figured he was Muslim and wanted to follow the Islamic law of halal by making sure they were properly slaughtered. So he arranged for the man and his friend to come this morning to slaughter the lambs here.

They rolled up in a maroon Toyota Scion at 11:30, exchanged their bright white sneakers for slightly older white sneakers, pulled some beat-up track pants over their jeans, and pulled out their fillet knives. Approximately three minutes later, the lambs were on the ground and kicking their last.

These were obviously some men who have slaughtered sheep before.

A. then helped them bring the lambs to the back of the house where he hangs them to work on skinning and gutting and so forth. And then A. got an education in how a Bosnian butchers a sheep.

Because it turns out that the men were from Bosnia, and they had a very particular method of butchering. The one guy who seemed to be the more professional butcher told A. he could start skinning one, but when he saw how A. did it, he jumped in and took over. And then proceeded to cut the hide off so cleanly the resulting hide was perfectly smooth on the skin side.

They kept the head, tail, and everything else on and just skinned the whole thing. After the skinning, they removed the innards in one go and separated out the lungs, heart, and liver in one big chunk for separate cooking.

The man who was doing less of the work told me these lambs were for a wedding, and showed me on his smart phone a video of how they cook them. The entire lamb is put on a wooden pole, which sticks out through the mouth and the rear, and then the pole is attached to an electric rotisserie device--brought, apparently, from Bosnia--which is in turn hooked up to a generator so the animal continues to turn without any further labor from the cooks.

The same guy handed a spectating Jack twenty dollars and told him to buy some chocolate*.

The men worked for almost exactly two hours, finishing up by carefully wrapping the lambs up in plastic bags, along with the boxes of the innards they wanted to take with them.

Then they paid A., pressed an apple into Jack's hands, and drove back to Vermont.

They were very nice men, and it was extremely educational for A. to see how an expert dresses out a lamb. Plus, now we have cash in hand and an extra apple in exchange for two lambs we don't have to butcher ourselves.

Works for me.

* I took the twenty dollars for safekeeping and future chocolate buying, as I don't think Jack is getting to the store anytime soon.

Of Cookies and Carcasses

Two important food-related events yesterday: I finally made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies, and A. slaughtered another lamb.

The reason I made the cookies is because Charlie happened to be assigned the class Halloween party as his turn to bring in a treat, and I really don't think I'm going to be up to treat-making at the end of this month. So I decided to make a bunch of cookies and freeze half of them so I can just pull them out of the freezer and send them in on October 31*.

They're not as fun as, like, cupcakes decorated to look like ghosts or something, but they're better than buying a box of Little Debbie snack cakes, right? And anyway, the odds of me making intricately decorated ghost cupcakes are . . . well, it's not going to happen even when I don't have a newborn baby.

And by the way, baking chocolate chip cookies when on a restricted diet due to gestational diabetes is no fun at all. All that delicious cookie dough . . .

Anyway.

A. slaughtered the lamb because it kept escaping the pen, and after the fourth time it got out yesterday morning, he decided the forecast was favorable enough to hang meat. And just like that, that lamb was done for.

You did it to yourself, lamb.

So my mom was going down the stairs yesterday with Jack to play in the playroom and was treated to the sight of A. skinning the hanging sheep just outside the downstairs door. We may not live at Blackrock anymore, but we still know how to roll out the welcome mat for guests.

I suspect testicle parmigiana might be on the menu tonight. I'd rather eat the cookies, but I suppose I'll have to content myself with roasted vegetables. Whee.

* The first person to so much as whisper the word "nesting" gets a chocolate chip up the nose.