Roller Coaster Week

The big news around here is obviously the new sheep. We have never had sheep before and purchased three young ewes last week. They are all 5 months old. The two spotted face girls are twins. They are a cross between Suffolk (wool sheep) and Katahdin (hair sheep). If you care to know, their names are Willow and Daisy. Willow is the leader of the group and thankfully is very friendly and enjoys getting her belly scratched. If I can get Willow to do what I want then I can get the other two to do it to. But lets be honest, all I really need to get them to do right now is to come over and snuggle me. The third sheep is that cute little white one. Her name is Radish and she is as cute as a button and sounds like she has a frog in her throat when she goes Baaaaaa. Radish is a Barbados Katahdin cross. Those are both hair sheep. And in case you couldn't figure it out for yourselves hair sheep have hair and wool sheep have wool. Your welcome for that very scientific answer.

Along with the sheep there have been the usual projects going on. Start painting this or that and then stop half way through and work on something else.

I guess we did get our entire pasture fenced within the last few weeks. Neither of us have ever built a fence. We feel pretty good after accomplishing that. I will try to remember to get a picture of it for next time.

Saturday was our first big butcher day. And let it be known I hate butcher day. Really hate it. For two days I wasn't able to eat meat. We butchered 16 ducks and 4 chickens of our own. Plus, 2 chickens that a cousin brought over. He helped with all of them and we were very grateful. My job was catching all the birds. It was probably the most emotional job I could have had except for the actual killing. It really brought it home that I was the deciding factor of wether they live our die. We decided the catching would be my job since the animals are calmest with me since I am the person they see the most. There is a saying that farmers only want their animals to have one bad day, but we like to try and take it a little farther. We don't want our animals to know that it is going to be a bad day and we try to keep everything as calm and clean as possible. Which means, me doing the catching and Timothy doing the killing here in our backyard. As much as I hate butcher day I hate factory farming more. So at the expense of me crying over our chickens and ducks my family is fed and my animals had a great life.

All in all this past week has certainly had its ups and downs. But so it goes with this life.

Happy Monday friends.