Itsumo Mawaru

It’s been Spring for a few weeks now but only in the past few days has the feeling really sunk in. Gone were the gloomy days of rain, out came the Sun to help everything grow. And grow it did! My front yard garden isn’t anywhere near done growing and already it looks so spectacular. I make sure to take the effort to go outside and enjoy the pretty flowers. Best of all, I come back inside and read up on them and learn a bit more about how the world works.

Whoa! What a surprise! Turns out there are some tulips growing in the front yard. I didn’t notice them until just this morning, and now that I’m looking around attentively I’ve found more places where other tulips will soon grace us with their presence.

In addition to things I do know, I find tons of things I don’t know. Like these guys. Anyone know what they are? They seem like some type of bulb plant but I have no idea how to even look up these types of things! If you’re interested in more mysteries of plant identification, there are a few more pictures in my Flickr stream.

Edit: A friend has told me they are Hostas! I’m excited to see what type they will be

For the past few weeks we have been working on preparing our garden area and sprouting various seeds. We’ve discovered that our garden area’s dirt is a wonderful clay and rock bonanza, so we will likely be building raised beds and filling them with a ton of wonderful black soil from the marshy areas surrounding the garden. Our indoor seedling growing adventure is going surprisingly well considering we don’t know a lot about doing this. The tomatoes are growing steady and strong, we bring them outside on nice warm days to let them have lots of sun and a bit of wind. My pepper plants have all sprouted and are growing slowly, but that’s to be expected. The eggplant seeds just popped up a few days ago, and we’ve planted two more trays of various melons and gourds and other veggies. The most surprising aspect of this adventure so far has been the radical success in growing the seeds I saved myself back in September – in fact, out of all the seeds that have sprouted so far, it’s my very own saved super spicy purple pepper seeds that have the highest germination rate! And just today one of my mom’s tomato seeds sprouted, despite me having pretty much forsaken it and assumed it was dead.

Last but not least, we are still waiting patiently for lambs to arrive. Well OK, by now we’re starting to get a bit impatient; every day I think Ginger Rogers will never get bigger than she is, just to be proved wrong the next day. However, I would put my money on lambs being born before next Sunday. In fact, based on absolutely no knowledge of her exact date of conception, I will go ahead and predict that Ginger Rogers will give birth to twins, a ram and an ewe, on Wednesday at 4pm! Let’s see how wrong I am on that day.

Check it out! It’s the first skein of 100% home processed Frankie yarn, and another two are working their way down the pipeline. I took the opportunity to document the experience on my Adventures with Yarn blog.

Farm life continues to go on uneventfully. We are still waiting for the lambs to make their appearance. I have half a mind to bet that Ginger Rogers is producing twins, given how long we’ve seen her baby bulge for.

Here are some pictures of yesterday’s day in the sun. Nothing surprising to report, no births or strange events, just a regular fun day.

Here’s Riker being poofy. It’s been about six weeks since he was shorn and he’s already this furry again! I comb him every few days with my little dog brush and collect a small amount of fiber that way. He seems to really enjoy the grooming sessions. I’ll probably comb up his softness with Lady Baba or Maggie’s fleece.

Wowzers! Look at Ginger Rogers up front. That bulge there, that’s a baby! Maggie (at the far back) is also pregnant but seems to be a week or so behind Ginger Rogers. Lady Baba, in the middle, was to our knowledge not pregnant but perhaps she is. As you can see they are mostly shorn, they have a bit around their legs but most of this is easily pulled off.

On a lamb related note, I think I have decided that this year’s lamb naming theme will be one of my favorite musicians, Wax Mannequin. We will be naming the lambs based on his lyrics and song themes. His music is strange and unique and wonderful to my ears in such a way that I will adore calling my sheep to me with their unique names.

You see, in addition to their given name, each registered sheep has a farm name. Ginger Rogers’ full name is WillowGarden Ginger Rogers, as she was born on WillowGarden Bill’s farm. Franklin’s farm name is Ewenique, which happens to be a farm in my area; however they seem to not raise Shetlands anymore. I will be registering my farm as HappyPanda (no rainbow, there’s a 12 character limit), so any lambs born from my sheep will be named HappyPanda Themename. That’s why I want to name my animals with themes, it’ll be easy to know what year they were born without having to look it up, all Wax Mannequin themed ones were born in 2010!

Jane was helping out in the garden. What a thoughtful duck!

The Silkies are exploring around the area finally. They were pretty timid and stayed close to the barn up until recently. I don’t blame them, if I couldn’t really fly cause of my poofy feathers I wouldn’t venture far either!

Oh my kiddies are growing up so fast. Look at them harassing Ginger Rogers. They’re conspiring, I know it! Is this what having teenagers is like? Eh, probably not. But they sure do keep me on my toes. All the time. Grow faster kiddies so you can’t fit through the fence easily…

And finally, John Doe would like you to see how pretty he is. He works hard for that look, let me tell you!

I’ve made a post over at the Happy Panda Rainbow Farm blog about the past week on the farm. Nothing new or dramatic to report, just a slow week of growing up for the kiddies and growing out for the pregnant sheep. I’m sure I’ll look back on these times in 10 years and have a chuckle about my first lambing season and my anticipation for a numerous two ewe birthings! Nonetheless, every day I get more excited about meeting the new babies, whenever they do choose to pop out into this world.

It’s amazing how fast time flies here on the farm!

I guess a part of it is simply that there’s always something to do, usually something that takes time and/or effort enough to make an hour or two disappear. I know a good part of it is that all this effort makes you want to fall into a nice warm bed at 9pm!

I do love the routine, though. We get up and check on the animals first thing in the morning – open the chicken coop door (pictured above), turn on their lights, and give Spirit a snack. Then it’s coffee and breakfast time, followed by various activities which currently consist of unpacking and tidying up the house & farmland. We have lunch around noon, give the sheep and goat kiddies some grain, and work on more cleaning through the afternoon. Dinner is often around 6-7pm for both us and Spirit, then it’s time for the precious few hours of relaxing and leisure activities! We check on the animals before heading to bed anytime from 9-10pm and I get to read a few pages of whatever book is on my nightstand before passing out for the night.

Thankfully with such a small flock of animals, it only takes us a few minutes each visit to accomplish our feeding and maintenance tasks. And now that Tom figured out how to get the garden hose working, the burden of bringing buckets of water from the house to the barn will be eliminated. Each day we’re finding ways to reduce the time spent on animal chores, so that we can spend an extra few minutes snuggling and giving love to all of our quirky animals.

Speaking of quirky, here’s my Shot of the Week: it’s Ginger Rogers making a funny face!