Snack time

This is what happens when there are sheep pastures just on the other side of the fence from the landscaping in your yard. I love, love, love hydrangeas (I guess sheep do too) and have many varieties that are finally starting to look as though they have been here for a while. My step-daughter's wedding was here at the farm 4 1/2 years ago and that "inspired" us to really get busy and finish the landscaping and spiff things up a bit. My husband joked at the time that if we could have just one more wedding (meaning his son's), then we might finally get caught up on all the projects that needed finishing around here. (Nothing like a little pressure to speed up the process!) This hydrangea bush is planted outside the garden fence and next to our little pet cemetery. Look closely and you will see that this girl has stuck her head through a small, square opening in the fence to snack on a morsel or two of hydrangea leaves. (This is often how the sheep manage to pull out their ear tags---by snagging it on the fence when they retreat.) I have to say, her expression caused me to laugh out loud, when I should have been scolding.

I'm not the type to have (and maintain) any sort of formal landscape. When we had a plan drawn out for landscaping around the farmhouse, I specifically requested that it look like nothing more than an old fashioned country yard, with hydrangeas, viburnum, hollys and lilacs. The part I didn't envision was two Great Pyrenees lounging behind the hydrangeas and amongst the hostas and daylilies. What we seem to have created is an ever evolving series of snacking and napping spots!

Happy summer Monday! I hope your week includes some time for snacking and napping!

Flying high

Saturday evening, after spending a day working outside, we decided we may as well vaccinate and de-worm the new lambs (given that we were already incredibly dirty and sweaty) before coming to the house and calling it quits for the day. Separating the lambs from their mothers is always a bit of a rodeo event, so we try to get through it as quickly as we can. All in all, I'm pleased with the way the lambs look at this point in the season. They are starting to really get into the creep feed and are growing into good size lambs. Except for one slightly messy bottom, every one of them looked great. (The lamb with the messy bottom got a dose of Specto-guard and a quick rear-end scrub job in the big sink. Needless to say, I ended up wetter than the lamb when it was all over.)

It may be hard to imagine, especially if you don't live with a collection of animals, but every day brings a new drama. Saturday evening when we walked into the barn, Mrs. Dandy was on a rafter high in the top of the barn and her chick was sitting on top of the feed bunks. We watched, incredulously, as the chick tried to fly up to where it's mother was roosting. She was "talking" to the chick the whole time, obviously encouraging it to keep trying. The chick is maybe 5 inches tall and doesn't really have a body built for flying, but rail by rail the little thing kept going up and up. The top of the barn is easily 30 feet above the ground, if not higher, and all I could think of was how bad it would be if the chick missed his landing spot. When the chick got to within one rail of where Mrs. Dandy was sitting, I had to stop watching. The poor little thing was walking back and forth, stretching it's neck, screwing up the courage to make one final leap. After we finished with the lambs, we went back to check and there it was, all the way up and tucked up under Mrs. Dandy's wing. Amazing! Every night since, the daring feat has been repeated. I think I'm going to have to stop denigrating Mrs. Dandy's mothering instincts.

The killer roses

That's how we refer to these roses because walking through the garden gate can often be a treacherous endeavor. This is a "New Dawn" in all it's glory. It covers the entrance arbor to the garden and about twice a year we have to hack it back severely to be able to get through the gate! I love roses, but I'm just too lazy to grow the high maintenance kind. I only grow a few climbers and some of the new Knockout roses. I go for low (as in NO) maintenance types.

When we first moved here, the garden area was a big flat place where the elderly owners had planted for many, many years. The soil was not so great. When I decided to put in raised beds, I spent weeks digging out the aisle ways, heaping the soil into beds and then adding composted bedding from the sheep pens and the chicken house. Now the soil is almost too good. Not only does it grow great vegetables, but the weeds grow fast and big too. Since I'm trying to raise plants as naturally as possible, I don't use herbicides on the raised beds and have had to come up with a method for controlling the weeds without spending every waking moment out there weeding. Right now I'm putting layers of newspaper down around the plants and then mulching heavily with straw. This seems to do a better job than anything else I've tried. When I started planting this year, there were a few beds that still had the coverings from last year and NO weeds at all. I once read that every time you turn the soil over, you expose more weed seeds. Disturbing the soil as little as possible supposedly gives less weeds to deal with and this method seems to accomplish that. Every year my husband tries to talk me into letting him get in there with the tractor to flatten the raised beds and plow the whole thing up. His arguing point is that it will be much easier to keep the weeds in check if we can just run the rototiller between the rows. It's such a man thing to want to use a big machines to accomplish a task instead of doing it by hand!

I don't know what variety this rose it, but I just love the color. And it must be hardy or it wouldn't still be here!

A star is born

I'm going to indulge in some grandmotherly bragging this morning. Last night my son Chris and I went to see his daughter, Brooke, perform in "Beauty and the Beast". Brooke is 11 years old now and it's no surprise to any of us who know and love her, that she has a real flair for drama. She was wonderful (if I do say so myself) in the part of a "Silly Girl" and also did a bang up job as the knife in the flatware ensemble (you have to know the story to understand all that!) She danced and sang and, best of all, seemed to be having a great time while she was on stage. I'm continually amazed at how confident my grandchildren are, whether they are performing in music recitals, acting in plays or playing sports. I know for a fact that I was not that confident at their ages (and probably, truth be told, I am still not that confident). Anyway, it was great fun seeing Brooke perform and I'm so proud of her.

Yesterday was the first time in ages I have been away from the farm from morning until late at night and when I got in last night, it appeared that things had fallen apart while I was gone. My husband was dealing with a really sick ewe, having trouble with the bottle babies and thought there was a chicken missing. After putting in a very long day making house-calls, he was pretty frustrated with all the problems facing him when he came home. This sort of thing presents an interesting dilemma and we talk about it fairly often. We both love our animals, but sometimes we just need a break from the routine. It is so difficult to find someone to farm sit, or even do feeding chores to free us occasionally. We have mostly depended on my sons and Mike's son to help us out at various times, but they all have busy, complicated lives themselves these days, so that is not the answer. How do other people with livestock go about finding competent people to help out once in a while? If anyone has the answer to that question, I'd love to hear it!

My goal for the coming weekend is to get caught up on the mowing around here. The yard around the farmhouse is going to require a hay baler if I don't get it mowed soon! I hope you have good weather and easy chores wherever you happen to be.