Category: Food Sources

It had been a very productive year. We had now completed our 5th year of farming organically and were an officially certified organic farm! One more goal accomplished!

Knee deep in lambing! It was going well, and toward the end of the month Big Mumbo, now in her 10th year, finally lambed, and had a single ram lamb! I was relieved! She had done more than enough, and deserved to have things a bit easier for once. Big Jumbo though, had her usual set of triplets! It was hard to see these two special sheep growing old.

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.