Good Food is Everybody's Business
One day I received a strange phone call from a gentleman with a deep voice, and a heavy Mid-eastern accent. He announced, “Dees ees de Casablanca Restaurant,” and then asked, “Do you have lamb?” I at first thought this was some wag pulling my leg, but as he continued the conversation, I realized he was serious. He wanted to purchase a small lamb, “Not too beeg.”
Life became more complicated and at the same time more interesting with each passing year. I was now not only doing the sheep full time, but also a good bit of farm planning and we were making good progress with the farm. One big benefit to me, was that we now had the barn full of our own hay as a result of haying the excess Birdsfoot Trefoil pasture the previous year, and this year would have hay from a 9-acre field we had seeded to Wrangler Alfalfa. It was a welcome change from having to buy large truck loads of hay and unloading it.
Lambing went much more peacefully this year, although not without its usual challenges. One thing was different this time – “Big Mumbo” slowed down a bit, and only delivered triplets! “Big Jumbo” also had triplets, as did several other ewes, but the majority had twins, very few singles, and the flock’s lambing average increased to 204%. Lambing average is the number of lambs saved per ewe per year, not the number born.
Lambing time, and things were hectic as usual, but going well. “Big Mumbo” delivered quints one more time! One lamb was born dead, but four survived… three ewes and one ram. One of the ewe lambs was an extraordinarily fine specimen, and outshone her two sisters.
The sheep flock kept growing and demanded a lot of my time. The lambing went well, and we had an absolute deluge of ewe lambs. This proved to be fortunate, as it turned out the demand for breeding stock was very high that year. “Big Mumbo” again had quintuplets, and all survived, but three were added to the bottle lamb pen.
Not a perfect year, but it could have been much worse. And I learned, the hard way, to “never trust what a feed salesman may tell you!”
Lambing was going very well, and by March 20, Bluebird produced twins, and as usual they were both ewe lambs! A few days later, her daughter, #146, who had quints the previous year, delivered a set of quadruplets: 3 ewes, and 1 ram. Another thrill! Two days later her twin, #145, delivered twin ewe lambs. No wonder our ewe flock was growing by leaps and bounds!
We had begun calling these two ewes “Big Mumbo,” (#146), and “Big Jumbo,” (#145), they were both good sized ewes, capable of carrying a lot of lambs! I made sure I gave “Big Mumbo” extra rations, and she raised all four lambs herself and did a good job of it!
We came through the lambing with no lambs lost, the second time for that joyful event,
I started off the year by answering the many congratulatory cards and letters I received after my “Silver Bell” speech at South East Minnesota Sheep Producer’s Association (SEMSPA) Annual Meeting in December, 1982. Most said my talk was “highly entertaining” and/or “informative,” and there were also lots of questions to answer.
