Itsumo Mawaru

Today’s been quite a moopy day. Rain and grey clouds, and even a few hours of snow and slushy rain!

All of the animals decided to stay in the barn today. I don’t blame them at all, I essentially did the same. Still, it was wet enough in the few seconds they ventured out as well as overall in the air that it’ll take a few days of nice sunny warmth before I can shear any of the girls. Considering the weather has taken a dive for the chilly, this is probably a good thing, but I do need to get it done before they have their babies (that way the baby doesn’t try to nurse from a chunk of wool, yes it’s happened before!) and so that they can grow back enough fleece to protect them from the summer sun.

Speaking of animals, it’s time for the evening feeding and egg-check. Today we found one of the girls had laid their egg in their nestbox for the first time. How exciting! The duck, named Jane Doe, is hands down the most reliable, producing one duck egg every day we’ve had her. In fact, we finally got to sample our chicken and duck eggs this morning and it was a cool experience – the duck egg is massive and quite yolky, my chicken egg’s yolk was more orange than yellow and was the tiniest cutest thing! A few more days of egg eating while we finish up their coop and then we’ll let them raise some of their babies to increase the fowl population.

This weekend we went out to the Vernon bird auction and I stocked up on fowl of all kinds!

I’ve blogged about them over at the Happy Panda Rainbow Farm blog.

Meanwhile, here are some more pictures I’ve taken over the past few days here on the farm.

Girl looking awesome!

Frankie sitting out alone, keeping warm on the ground now that he’s without his fleece.

A nice end-of-winter shot of the house and barn from the back fields. It will be fun to take this same shot in the summer when everything is in full bloom.

Girl and I walking the fence line, making sure everything’s a-ok.

Over by the garden area are a bunch of different trees and bushes. You can see they’ve been planted purposefully in lines. I believe the ones in this shot produce red berries which I hope are edible! There are other trees planted in similar rows, we shall have to wait till Spring to see what kinds of trees they are exactly.

Work continue on both the land and the house. There’s still a lot of cleaning and organizing to do, but every day the place looks better and better!

Let’s let the pictures do the talking for a second:

Before:

After:

Can you tell it’s my first time ever shearing a sheep? Let alone a ram who doesn’t really want to be doing this at all. Even though it took us over an hour, using those old fashioned blades, and I still have his butt to trim, not even one scratch was made by anyone. I’ll take that over the professional result of someone who actually knows what they’re doing. I mean, everyone’s had a funny haircut once in their lives, right?

Beyond the aesthetics, he seemed to really enjoy the trimming for the most part. His little tail was wagging  just like a puppy. He wanted to stretch when we did, and got grumpy near the end as we did too, so I don’t blame him for that. When we put him back in the pen he chased the girls for a bit, then did some leaps and jumps, including a new move of shaking himself off just like a wet dog would. I think he’ll enjoy being without his heavy coat, and I know I’ll enjoy working on his fleece, even if it is a dirty mess and more of a heap than a fleece:

For the details on the shearing, I’ve made a blog  entry over at Adventures with Yarn, please take a look if it interests you.

No related posts.

I’ve made a blog entry over at the Happy Panda Rainbow Farm blog about the animals who joined us this past weekend. Here’s a link to check it out.

On a somewhat related note, can I just note how tired I am at the end of the day nowadays? I can barely muster the will to do the dishes, let alone upload my pictures and get a blog entry written down! Of course, this is to be expected considering I’m still moving and unpacking boxes, taking care of the animals twice a day, working on cleaning out the barnyard pen from the few feet of poopie hay, walking the fence line or property, plus two hours of driving each time I go in to Ottawa… there’s barely any time to do the things I love.

However, this lack of free time does make you think twice about how you spend it, it lets you really evaluate whether spending it watching Episode X of Show Y is really what you want to do. In recent days I’ve been enjoying such fine “TV shows” as Log (watching the fireplace go) and Animals Doing Things, both which are surprisingly entertaining and very relaxing after a day of hauling hay.

I knew my life would be changing when I moved into this farm, but I really didn’t expect it to change this fast!

We’ve been moving, cleaning, and renovating for the past week. Every night in the one hour I have to myself I’ve tried to muster up some strength to take a picture or write a blog post, but I’m just so completely drained of energy! All this box lifting and scraping and moving really takes a lot out of you, especially when dishes are now done by hand and laundry is dried by hanging on hangers versus using those two appliances.

Yesterday with the help of my dad we walked the fence line and made repairs, in anticipation of the many animals coming this weekend. Turns out there will also be a miniature goat named Ruby and a rooster joining the farm on the weekend in addition to my Shetland sheep and their guard dog Spirit. Those additions are courtesy of one of my relatives, thanks Michelle!

So by the end of this weekend there will be six different animal types on this farm: our bearded dragons, my angora rabbit, a rooster, a miniature goat, my Shetlands, and our Maremma guard dog. What a menagerie!  Here’s hoping we don’t have too many scuffles on our hands…