Good Food is Everybody's Business
What a year for weather! January started off with a nasty storm of freezing rain, and our patio and driveway were a glare of ice. By the middle of February and shearing day, we got our winter in earnest. All summer we had plenty of moisture and in September we were hit by torrential rains, including 19″ of rain in a single night!
It was looking like a good part of the year would be spent on putting the final touches on the previous years’ landscaping activities. I was finding that the old saying, “The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get,” certainly applied to me! I wasn’t moving as fast as before!
The APHIS inspector declared me a poster child for the Scrapie Certification Program! I wondered if they would let me do commercials like all the other icons… I could endorse ram harnesses, ear tags, tattoo outfits, drench guns, dewormers, lamb nipples, and all sorts of glamorous stuff!
It’s a thrill to hear a quail whistle, just a thrill! Just to hear one really close and talk back and forth (whistle) with them. Last year there were some just over the garden fence. I couldn’t see them, because there was a lot of undergrowth there, but we had quite a conversation.
Things at the farm were going along well. The lambs had been weaned, the feeder lambs sold, so life was pretty peaceful. Time to settle back and enjoy life a bit. However, some people never know when they are well off!
During the winter, I had ordered 50 young Red Twig Dogwood trees to add an inner row to the windbreak, and also 25 new perennials for the flower beds, so I had plenty to keep me busy through early spring. If I had known what was to transpire later in the year, I might have thought twice about the perennials!
I was extremely proud of an exceptionally big, handsome ram out of my best 4-year old Texel-cross ewe and already anticipated the nice progeny he would produce when paired with the crop of ewe lambs. On a mild day in early November, I set about getting the big ram out.
Despite all the carefully laid plans made previously, events conspired to change them. Fortunately, the changes were mostly to my benefit!
