We’ve been working sheep a lot lately. Sorting lambs from the breeding stock…sorting healthy from those falling behind…sorting for sale from for keeps…
We’ve all being working sheep.
It was a little chilly this weekend, but sunny and overall nice. A little muddy from rain on Saturday. I made the crew wear their hats because we have a complete terror of ear infections and take no chances!
We’ve had so many visitors coming to the farm lately. We’ve had Egyptian-Americans, Bosnia-Americans, Nigerian-Americans, and Iranian-Americans stop by just in the last week or two. I love when customers bring their families with them. Our kids run around with their kids, chasing the barn cats and climbing on gates and we hear the most interesting stories about people’s travels and customs. It’s not unusual for customers and visitors to stay for more than an hour looking over the flocking, chatting, and picking out their animals.
Speedracer has asthma-like allergies that seem to only kick in during the winter, and they’ve been kicking up a lot of coughing and wheezing with the weather change lately. I try to keep him out of damp weather, but otherwise we bundle him up and let him get fresh air with the other two. It worries me sick, but we keep praying he’ll grow out of it and counting our blessings that it’s not worse! He was quite the helper this weekend.
The sheep have gotten so use to moving back and forth between the top field and the sorting field that you open the gates and we almost don’t even need to be there. They just gallop from one to the other. Our older ewes are really good about the chute too. They know that if they go in one end, they get out the other end. So they go through pretty easily once they get pointed in the right direction. But the lambs are more nervous and flighty, so they can get stubborn and really hold the line up.
Right now we’re mostly taking deposits for later pick ups. We sort the sheep into a pen, the customer picks which animals they want, and we mark them with washable wool paint for when they come back to pick them up.
The crew spent a lot of time this weekend running back and forth, opening and closing gates, and carrying buckets, fixing fence and moving cows. They were tired last night!
Fall is in full swing around here!
How was your weekend?
