I started my day with a trip to the gym which was nearly the only ordinary thing about yesterday.
When I got home, my boomerang son met me with the fact that we “have a very limping big white sheep” which was the start of my unusual day. I assumed she managed to get a foot caught in her coats which happens occasionally. Not so! After some work, I managed to get her and another sheep into a partially empty stall. It is at times like this, you find doors that don’t work and other “fun” farm chores needing attention.
Diagnosis: prolapsing started. Vet called. Meanwhile I stayed at the barn since I had a stall that I needed to clean and had actually started the day before. This stall floor hadn’t been cleaned in 6 weeks, so there was a lot of wet, matted, decomposing, heavy hay. I worked on that until lunch, ran home, made lunch, mopped two floors, ran to the grocery for half a dozen items, and came right back to the job. Intermittently, I was keeping track on what was going on with this sheep.
The vet was here about 1/2 an hour and a friend came to help. Now the two sheep will stay in this 10 x 12 stall until she lambs in 2-3 weeks (sheep always need a companion). The extra hay has been removed so they have more room. I will check on them 2-3 times a day. It appears there will be 2 or possibly 3 lambs. We don’t have long to wait. This is why I always like to have another stall ready to go. One just never knows. I did finish cleaning out the other stall, and have 5 more to go. 3 have deep winter bedding which means it is about 2 feet deep in places and will take a lot of time and effort unless I get lucky and find someone needing a few dollars. Now that the weather is warmer, I need to clean the stalls every 2 weeks
Yesterday was definitely not an ordinary day, and I stayed and worked there until 4. I came home and fell asleep. It has been years since I worked that long and hard. As I continually point out to my DH, “the sheep will keep us healthy as they make us use our muscles and we have to get outside daily”
And if I didn’t have them, I probably would have done more shopping, or sewing, or even house cleaning. There definitely would not be some unusual muscles complaining today. And I would have had my blog done yesterday, instead of so late.
However, I love this way of life and am so thankful to be living here. Enjoy the day. Company will be here shortly.
Beau enjoyed riding out to the meat market to get bones for the dogs this morning, then he “helped” me do some cleaning on one of the stalls.
Because I tired of the other quilt, I started this Spool Souffle quilt. I had it partly cut out, so cut out the background today and
sewed the background onto the sides. And guess what!. The top and bottom of the spools have 144 lovely triangles that I get to draw diagonals on. Not happening today and tomorrow I have gym and cleaning the house. Maybe I should start another quilt – no, maybe I should finish something started.
In finished the 200 flying geese for step two and since today was dry, I cleaned some in the barn. It has been so wet, that it’s a real mess and the loads are heavy, so I’m cleaning that in increments.
It was such a beautiful day, I decided first to clean a stall. Well, the sheep wanted to stand exactly where I wanted to clean so after 3 wheelbarrows, I called it quits for today. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe just a bit each day. It is difficult to move anything when a sheep is standing on it.
I spent some time cutting these 1000 – 2″ squares for the quilt “On Ringo Lake”. Now I need to find time to draw a diagonal line on each of them and then sew them to a neighbor.
Daisy and cords do not belong in the same room. She is an 8 month old puppy and everything is for chewing. EVERYTHING! Sunday I will be purchasing new extension cords and some tubing to run them through. It seems while the power was off, she managed to chew through the cord that connects to the hotwire, so the fence is still not hot. Then she chewed through the cord that heats the water for the rams so we don’t have to break ice when it freezes. Yes, she is still a puppy, but is getting to be a rather expensive puppy. And it is the human’s fault because we know she is a puppy and it’s our job to make sure everything is safe.
We have power at the barn again after 2 weeks without. That means the hot wire is up and running again. I had fears the animals would discover it was off and break through the fences. But that didn’t happen, for which I am grateful.
These blocks are not only finished, they have been mailed. It’s the kind of thing that if I don’t do it immediately, it slips my mind. So it is now in the hands of the post office.
There were bowl cozies and pea pods.
Then there were the baby lambs and additional sheep and puppy. I don’t want to forget there was a garden with canning and freezing.
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This 2/3 yard of sparkly fabric insisted on coming home with me when I stopped at JoAnns for some rotary cutter blades. And for 1.50, I couldn’t refuse. Now, I’ll be on the look out for the perfect use.
This is called “portion control” or maybe, I should just say, they were so late for lunch, they thought we’d already eaten so stopped to eat before coming, and therefore weren’t hungry when they arrived.
This is what the tag might look like when you don’t have tags, but you do have an embroidery machine and some felt. Truly we had a wonderful Christmas. We took a group self photo of the family by setting the camera and the operator, ran to get into the photo on time. This is the first time we’ve had the entire family together at one place and one time since they started leaving home. However, you will have to wait a day or two for that because I have to wait for him to upload to his computer and then send it to me. But I will share it with you. We were so busy visiting with each other, that photos in general didn’t happen.