Tag Archives: lambs

A New Year

Posted on by
Reply

Our limbs may be cold this morning but spring still beats in the heart.

December has been mild, though this morning is the coldest at 25 degrees before sunrise. The now annual too soon bud swell has begun with the plum and peach trees threatening an early bloom disaster. Seed catalogs are stuffed in the mailbox each day and in another few weeks we will begin to disc the pastures and sow with rye and clover for an early start to the grazing season.

Meanwhile the cattle and sheep are eating last year’s forage in the form of square and round bales of hay. Each morning and evening we bring a half square bale to the sheep and every few days a round bale to the cattle. The bees are being fed sugar water to avoid starvation. And we are still getting greens and turnips from the garden, where the garlic and onions for next year are thriving.

So, even though winter is now only nine days old our thoughts are on its end game. New lambs, baby chicks and ducks, gardening, pastures, orchards and grapes, it all begins again in just another 8-10 weeks. Between that new season and today we have cattle and hogs to get to market, orchards to be pruned, seed to be started and a few freezes to be endured.

But for now our old year is limping out the door, battered by unexpected freak weather and the usual predations by our species. Let us raise a glass and pledge to treat the New Year a bit better. I pledge to plant a garden, drive less, recycle more and learn a new skill, save some seed, visit with neighbors (including those I don’t particularly like), write letters (email counts, texting doesn’t) and be a good steward to this patch of land we call home.

Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving

Posted on by
1

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, a sacred day slowly being encroached on by the steady beat of commerce. A day we pause in our mad rush to accumulate more things. Things we manage to forget the ownership of even more quickly. A day when we hopefully pause to reflect on what we are most thankful for in our lives.

For most of my childhood Thanksgiving morning started around four am at the Duhon duck camp. All the men and boys rolling out of bed for a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits and homemade fig preserves before piling into pirogues and pushing out into the marsh to hunt ducks. By mid-morning, loading up our game harvest we pushed back through the marsh. A light lunch before everyone headed home with the cleaned ducks. We arrived to find the dinner preparations well under way for the main event. Not a bad way to spend ones youth, hunting ducks in the company of your father. For that memory and experience I am thankful.

Last Friday I deboned a twelve pound pork shoulder roast, prepared a corning solution and immersed the meat to brine for five days. I pulled it out today, rinsed and put it back in to soak overnight. The corned pork roast will be the center piece for our dinner tomorrow. A classic boiled dinner of turnips, cabbage, carrots and potatoes to accompany the meat with a fresh pumpkin pie for dessert. Not a traditional meal. But I’m thankful to have a partner in Cindy who is willing to indulge these culinary whims and thankful we are able to provide the majority of the food from our farm.

Saturday we had an excellent dinner with the Fuja brothers a few valley’s over. The brothers entertained us by showing off their farms extensive ornamentals and vegetable plots. Sunday Mr. Kyle drove his tractor over to see us and chat. Earlier in the day I hung out with Lowell, an older farmer over the hill, talked and loaded a truck load of hay. Monday evening our friend Adrienne came up the hill to see the new lambs born over the weekend and stayed for conversation and a glass of wine. For all of them and so many more I am thankful.

Everyone enjoy the day.

A Fall Update

Posted on by
Reply

That first real hint of the winter to come rolled in yesterday. We were in the middle of conducting a workshop for fifteen participants on how to raise a homestead hog when we all felt the temperature drop. Felt more keenly since all were dressed for a sunny sixty plus degree day. What we received instead was an overcast windy day with temps dropping into the mid-fifties.

Odd how our bodies adapt, soon a day with the temperature rising to 55 will remind us of the warmth to come in spring and summer. For now the change has us reaching for cups of hot tea and thinking of warm hearty foods.

Lambs: The lamb, injured by a dog, is recovering nicely. Her appetite is strong and she is very active with no trace of a limp. She is still confined in the hospital ward, aka the dog pen, and receives a shot of penicillin twice daily. No recurrence of maggots, thankfully. The old injured flesh has fallen away leaving large circle, perhaps 12 inches in diameter of new pink flesh. A smaller area of about four inches is still scabbed over. But consider where she started and you will agree she has come a long way.

The other lambs are healthy and close to 100 pounds each. A date with the processor has been set and they will make the fateful truck journey the week of Thanksgiving; A cruel irony for the lambs and for the customers plenty to be thankful. The injured lamb will remain and join the other ewe lambs as breeding stock.

Gardening: I love fall and winter gardening. The bugs are at a minimum, the weeds are sluggish and whatever you plant seems to thrive. A bonus is the absolute thrill and joy to walk out on a cool morning and harvest beautiful ten pound Hubbard squashes.

Hubbards

The squash patch has another fifty to harvest in the next four weeks as long as we can avoid a heavy frost. Perfect for stews, we love our winter squash!

The turnips and the collards are all up and thriving. The mustard greens were the first to reach a harvestable size this past week. Sweet potatoes are still holding out and will not be harvested until the leaves begin to die back.

Bees and horses: If the weather warms enough today we will complete our fall harvest of honey. We hope to be able to get forty pounds of rich dark honey, more than enough to see us through to next fall. Having your own honey in the cupboard is real food security. Like Tolkien’s character Beorn in The Hobbit, we feel capable of shape shifting and accomplishing mighty deeds with our honey surplus.

Last night after a nourishing stew of roast pork, greens and potatoes we had delivery of a new draft horse to the farm. A Haflinger named “Candy”, an eight year old mare, Amish trained for farm work. An absolute beauty in appearance and temperament, she offloaded easily and we secured her in the corral before turning into bed.

Well, the animals are signaling by bleats, whinnies, meows, crows, cackles, snorts and honks that our presence is requested outside. Everyone have a great week.

Full moon

Posted on by
2

My apologies for the late post this week. Too much to do and so little time.

I was standing in the oldest orchard. The light was provided by the full moon. High and staggered clouds were moving across the sky providing a stop and go slide show with the moonlight. And, I was reminded again that one of the principle joys of living in the country is to experience through your senses the world around you in a most intimate way.

Living in Knoxville and sitting quietly in the backyard provided its own revelatory moments. But, a moonlit night in the country has a special quality a city neighborhood lacks.

A loud cough of a buck on the hill signals a failed attempt to cross above me discreetly. Now that deer-hunting season is almost upon us they are moving at night more than in daylight. They know the time for prudence is now. Opening day and we will be greeted by a barrage of gunfire at daylight.

I reached out in the darkness and grabbed the scuppernong vines and gave them a shake. Like large soft heavy raindrops, overripe grapes fell into the wet grass.

Walking back down the slope through the orchard, past the equipment shed, I closed the door to the chicken run. The noise caused the hens to stir. Breathing like an asthmatic child they wheezed and shifted and went back to sleep.

A hammer hitting wood and the clank of clamps and I know Cindy is in our workshop. She has moved on to building a kitchen cupboard with glass doors. The occasional expletive signals a perfectionist’s ongoing struggle with a project that has been well done. I, on the other hand, can scrape the bark off of a branch, call it a walking stick and be absurdly pleased.

After closing the chickens up I lean across the fence and smell the lambs. The sweet smell of wet wool and the poop of an animal that eats forage rise up out of the pasture. They have quiet and meek little bleats. A soft tread in the grass is just audible as they are torn between curiosity and alarm at my presence.

I lean down and pull off and chew a turnip green, what a wonderful explosion of spice, mustard and the texture of a tobacco leaf.

I turn back to the house. All three dogs vie for the honor of walking by my side. They snarl and fight. Robby wins and heels by my left leg as I walk up the steps.

Husbandry

Posted on by
2

To be a good husband or a husbandman or to practice husbandry all mean essentially the same for a farmer. Managing land, animals and resources is what we do most weeks and some weeks more than others.

Which brings me to the subject of maggots. Did you know there is a spray that makes maggots uncomfortable? If the topic of maggots makes you squeamish then read no further for this is a tale of woe, pain and redemption and not for the delicate of stomach. It started a week or two ago, the exact day or time frame still subject to debate, when we noticed one of our ewe lambs limping. We made a half-hearted attempt to catch her up in a pen. She was too cunning and fast for us which seemed to indicate that whatever was bothering her was insignificant.

Over the next week we noticed her continued limp and her wool was discolored. Again an assumption was made that the wool was dirty from her prolonged contact with the ground. She was spending a lot of time lying on the ground. Long about Thursday evening we decided that come hell or high water we were going to get her up in a pen.

I had just returned with two ram lambs bought off a neighbor. After unloading the newcomers we made a concerted, long and ultimately successful attempt to catch her up. The discolored wool turned out to be putrefying flesh on the back left leg and smaller patch on her right. Clear puncture wounds from a dog bite. A dog bite we recognized as coming from Robbie, our English Shepherd. He had gotten into the pasture a week or two ago, the exact day or time frame still subject to debate.

The wound had time to fester. As bad as the wound was the lamb seemed alert and clear eyed. We put the lamb in the dog pen, sans dogs, washed, sprayed iodine on the wound and called our vet. He showed up the next afternoon. With Cindy’s help he sprayed the wound area with the anti-maggot spray. After a few minutes they began to exit the wound. Using tweezers he removed 30-50 maggots over the next 30 minutes.

A shot of penicillin, a spray of anti-bacterial mist and a liberal coating of fly repellant and he was off leaving us with a bill equal to a new lamb. For the next three weeks we will give her a shot of penicillin twice daily, check for maggots with the spray each day for a week, spray the anti-bacterial mist and use the fly repellant as needed.

The woe and pain in this tale belongs to the lamb. The redemption is ours to earn when she recovers. If all goes well this ewe lamb will “lamb” in February or March. And we will be more attentive to our livestock in the future, we promise.