Jack’s supervising. Or something.
I love the evenings. I go down to the meadow and hold the babies while the sheep get their feed. The mamas forget they have babies when feed is involved. I snuggle the babies and keep them out of the fray. I tell them I will give them a bottle and let them live on the porch any time they want. They prefer mama. I settle for a few moments of cuddles while I stroke their curly new fleece and hug them to my chest.
Babies, babies, babies. It’s all about babies in the spring on a farm. I love living on a farm. I mean, they just wouldn’t let you have lambs in the suburbs, you know? Somebody would turn you in! This is our first year to produce livestock instead of acquiring it. Finally, we have our breeding stock in place. We have our own lambs!
Hopefully, we’ll have our own baby goats. I’m even going to let the chickens sit on their own nests this year instead of incubating. (Okay, well, I might incubate some anyway, but I’m going to let them sit, too.) It’s about time these animals did some work! Poky is about 15 months old, so she’ll have to wait. She should be about two before we breed her. And won’t that be the happiest day of Jack’s life?
Our first babies on the farm came almost exactly two years to the day we moved into our new farmhouse. We’re entering a new phase for our farm. So much has happened in the last two years. I’ve become much better at canning. I’ve learned to make cheese. I’m learning to make soap. I can knit! I’m crocheting again. I can drive on snow (if I must) and I can make fire! Two years ago, I thought I was doing pretty good to buy chore boots.
We’re still waiting for the Cotswolds to pop–I hope! They look gigantic, so I’m hoping there will be more babies soon, and maybe, yes maybe, even Annabelle? She’s still a lamb who thinks she’s a dog, but she’s actually a mature sheep, fourteen months old, and a part of Mr. Cotswold’s growing harem. Not that the sheep have ever actually accepted her as one of them. After all, she doesn’t think she’s one of them, either. She hangs with Jack, who is pretty tolerant. Unless he’s eating. But her true friends, her best friends, are still her dog friends.
She’s also still a very friendly sheep. You can’t walk into the pasture without her bouncing right over to you, following you around. You might even call her obnoxious occasionally, like when she almost knocks you down–except that she’s so sweet and cute.
Really, she’s pretty ridiculous. Watch Annabelle and Boomer, playing hide and bounce around a hay shed in the sheep meadow. (Video taken this weekend.)
She may be a Giant Lamb now (or even, you know, a grown-up sheep, shhhh, don’t tell her), but she’s still got it!
