I’m Wooly Tired

I may feel human again, oh say, in another century or so.

Well, when you consider in the last week, mostly the last 4 days, I got 100 bags of fiber ready for sale, I guess it’s no wonder I’m a bit done in.

Wednesday I worked on wool.
Thursday The Farmer and I both worked on wool.
Friday morning I worked on wool.
Saturday I worked on wool.

I was sooooo thrilled when I threw the final bag of skirted wool onto the pile yesterday! And then took down the skirting table, swept up the bits of fleece scattered all over the floor, mopped the kitchen floor and otherwise got rid of the mess I’d made.

Of course, the den is now full of fiber. One couch is buried, with wool up the sides of the wall, and piled in front of the couch.

There are bags of wool, bags of alpaca fiber, bags of llama fiber, and even a bag of mohair. There are bags of trash wool, bags of scrap wool, and old bags from previous storage.

At least the smell is better with the wool bagged up, but it

Wooly Bad

Things are wooly bad around here.

Why do I say that? Well, there are bags of wool all over the house right now. I had them stored in the basement, but then I made the mistake of putting an ad for the fleeces at a greatly reduced price on an elist. I just wanted to clear a few out of the way.

Over 45 inquiries later, and I’ve probably got more requests than I’ve got wool.

At first I figured I’d just work on it whenever I had some extra time, and sent out an email telling people it would take a while before I got through all of the wool, and please be patient, I’ll get to them as quickly as I can.

But then I realized that wasn’t going to get it. The wool gets everywhere, and it’s too big a hassle to clean it up every time I get a fleece ready. My living room and den have been taken over and I can’t stand the mess or the smell… time to finish this up.

So tomorrow The Farmer and I are going to have a Wool Work Day. I hope we can get through all the bags of wool, then I can clean up most of the mess and start packing up orders.

That’s going to take a wooly long time. (I know, I’m really baaaaaad.)

Update from the farm…

This particular clematis is on a fence alongside the yard. The blooms are about 6″ across.
3. We’ve got a new occupant in our pond, a great big turtle. That’s okay until The Farmer decides to stock the pond with fish. We don’t want to buy sushi for the turtle, but for now he can subsist very nicely on frogs and tadpoles. We have a bazillion of those, ha!

4. I still haven’t got the sheep shorn. Note to self… set a date SOON!

5. I’ve also been trying to give away 3 roosters. No luck. They’re tearing the feathers off the backs of the hens. They need to go one way or another.

That’s the short version. I just don’t have time to write about everything that is going on right now. Why? Well, I’m taking a 6-week class, and it is INTENSE. I barely have time to keep up with regular chores, let alone any extras.

So if my posts are sparse, you’ll know why!

Sometimes Farming is Hard

Let’s face it – farming isn’t always fun.

If you raise crops of some sort, there are problems with the weather, fuel costs for heating greenhouses and running equipment, and a sometimes fickle market, to name a few.

When you raise animals, you have all those problems and then some. And it’s easy to get attached to animals, especially the little ones. Babies of any sort are cute! It’s great to look out and see lambs or kids or calves or colts or any little critters frolicking around in the fields.

Yes, it’s great — that is, IF the moms are taking proper care of the youngsters and everyone is doing fine. But it isn’t always like that. Sometimes things go wrong. That’s when farming really tops the charts in the “not fun” department. That’s where I’ve been this week.

You can raise the same sort of critters for years, using the same husbandry practices, and then all of a sudden, one year it all goes wrong. Sometimes you can figure out the cause and adapt or change things. Sometimes you have no idea what the problem was, so there’s just not much you can do about it.

When our little twin goat kids were born this spring, I was a little concerned. The mother is getting up in years and had a difficult labor. Worse, she was NOT supposed to be pregnant in the first place, but was bred by one of her sons. One of the kids had a deformed leg, but that eventually improved. Overall, they seemed healthy enough.

At least, they seemed fine until this week. Then one get sick, and within 24 hours was dead. Then the second one got sick, and within 24 hours was dead. I worked over them until I could barely straighten back up, giving them antibiotics, dextrose, vitamins, and every other therapy I could find that would pertain to the problem.

Nothing helped.

I knew it was a slim chance going in that I could save either kid. It didn’t help that I read even though they’ve had vaccinations, once in a while, some kids still get sick. They were in my care, and they died.

That’s hard.

This morning Son #2 and I had burial detail. The ground is too hard and rocky here to dig down very deep, so we opt for an above ground burial. It’s easier, but not easy. It has to be done right to make a hot compost so the body is broken down quickly and with no odor. We had 5 big carts full of stuff we put in the pile: some below, some above the bodies. It was hard work. To make matters worse, it was raining.

While we worked the llamas hummed and the mama goat cried. Their mournful dirge made a hard job even harder. I’d moved them as far away as possible from where we were working. It didn’t matter. When we were finally done and I let them out, that mama goat made a beeline to where we’d buried her babies and cried some more. It was heartrending.

Sometimes farming is hard.

More Dancing with a Peacock Prancing

It’s Saturday Night Live around here every day. We have chickens tap dancing across the lawn, roosters who think they’re Irish, goat kids who try Russian folk dances around the fields, and occasionally I do a little break dance (aka falling on my… behind).

Today we feature the Romeo of the Roost, our handsome Prince of Peafowl, Sir Peacock of Prance, waltzing around the aviary.

During the day he periodically prances about, trying to entice one of his harem with his lovely fan of feathers. He sashays around the aviary, looking for love. Finally, he tires and has to let his feathers fall.

This frenetic activity will continue for some time yet, as he dances his courtship during the day, and gives raucous cries at night, telling the world he’s looking for love.

It’s Desperate Housewives meets Dancing With the Stars.