Our Lambs Have a New Home!

Another HOT rainless day here on the farm. Today however, this 2015 lambs got their new home. They are not too far away with a nice family who are very excited to have some sheep on their property. Mom and I really liked our chats and meeting them, I'm sure they are going to a great home!

So Rain's baby boy and Nina's white ewe lamb are off to their new home. Best of luck and hope to hear updates about life in their new pasture : )

With their departure, we've welcomed some new little ones this week. Mom was VERY excited to get a few pet ducks for the property again, so we found someone with Indian Runners, and just got them this week. We've got four runners and a girl and boy Rouen. We're undecided about where they'll be (we're still having trouble with the snapper turtles out in the pond), but looking forward to having happy ducks in mud in just a few months. 

Charlie is beside herself with interest. She "talks" to them and crawls over to watch them through the window. They're in a very messy tote at the moment, so we'll take nice pictures soon! Ducks do make a mess quickly..

We also had a visitor, Rachel, stop over this past week. Her sister came as well, and wanted to do a little fishing. It was a nice, warm day, and the perfect way to get outside and do something fun on the property. There was canoeing, shrieks, and some slimy catfish. Not a bad afternoon. Thanks for making us all relax and enjoy the day. 

The 2014 Lambs

Well, just like every year, we had beautiful baby lambs. Fluffy and all white this year.  There were two ewes and a little rambunctious ram (check previous posts for tons of just born pictures). 

These weren't especially bad, but just like every other lambing season, they figured their way out of the gates and fences to explore all on their own. We had lambs in the front yard for parties, lambs by the chicken coops as I fed, and lambs eating things lambs should not eat (boy was that messy!). Overall, it was lovely to have new life on the farm, yet wonderful to see them go to their new home. This year all three were picked up by a nice woman who does a travelling petting zoo. She enjoys the small, docile breed and wanted to add a few ones to her flock. We are very happy to have them going together, and after weeks of chatting with their new owner and confident they went to a great home! 

We learned some
new tricks with these guys and got to bottle feed one ewe to keep her healthy. It was an exciting year. We'll miss you little ones!

The real arrival of springs comes with bleating lambs

April fools day was quite exciting for us. While they are almost a week late, we finally had our first lamb! Mom was still at work, and I was going out to see how everyone was doing. Nina was laying next to this little long legged fur baby. Our first little ram lamb! 

Nina is the perfect mom, just like last year. Her little lamb is sweet, quiet, and absolutely adorable! Especially in his grey sweater that Mom bought this past winter.. I'm pretty sure they are puppy sweaters, but it works. Don't worry, there are more cute lamb sweater photos below!!

 

  

Next mom up was Raindrop. By the time Mom was out there this morning at seven here baby was completely clean and already making little lamb bleats. Everyone easily moved into their individual pens with the shake of a little grain. As always she is a great mom to her little ,white female lamb. 

Olivia was last, for today, (Mellie is still expecting too) With her white female lamb. She's REALLY loud, and was not being cleaned or fed at all. So we stepped in to clean, warm her up and show her where to get the food. It took a little coaxing, and I had to squirt her in the face with milk before she finally latched on. Silly lamb was trying to suckle from my fingers. We'll keep an extra close eye on her, just to make sure she's nice and healthy. While being cute and loud, she's also wiggly. It was almost impossible to get a picture of her this time. The one of her lying down on the left was a small fall. She was back up and moving around within seconds. Maybe we'll name her wild thing.

Here are everyone's day two photos. Well minus Nina's baby. He's three days old. I went out and everyone was sleeping peacefully.  '
Not quite positive, but her little boy may be named Randy, unless of course anyone has any better names they'd like to offer up : )
The girls are still un-named. The picture below is little Raindrop's baby, I think she needs an elegant name.

 Everyone looks healthy and is eating. Even if Olivia needs a little coaxing to feed her noisy babe at times. We'll start looking for the perfect homes for our lambs soon, so if you are interested please contact us as soon as possible! We already have a few people who we've spoken to in interest of lambs. So hurry hurry!

As I've said, spring is finally here, these nice perennials popped up right off the front porch. It's nice to have a little color out there.

Still lamb-less

Well the yard looks a mess from all this rain, but all the sheep stood still long enough to get a picture. I was trying to get a few of their enormous bellies, but as soon as they  learned the cookies were gone, everyone scattered. This picture was sort of funny though, everyone looking in different directions. From the front we've got Rain (drop), Olivia, Nina's butt, and all the way in the back is Mellie. Mom was quite sure we'd have babies in all this rain, but still not lambs. 

Olivia's large belly looks to have a dropped a bit, I'm hoping she will be giving birth soon. If history repeats itself we should have twins, too : )

Here's another shot of our pretty little mama, Olivia

We wandered over to give some lunch to the hens and silkies. Donnie's little black hen wanted a closer look before we started feeding them their snacks. She's such a silly hen. 

Donnie had gotten some great work done in the new silkie shed so that we could move a few in. Right now we've got the 6 week old chicks in there along with our newer silkies. 

When we went to feed, Sundance did a little dance around Donnie's feet. I tried to get in on video but he was moving around him much too quickly.. one day I'll get a good one.

This week SHOULD be warmer, we just need to survive this weekend of rain first. Maybe we will get our new lambs with the nice spring weather. Don't worry, we'll make sure we update here immediately! 

Sheep and Chickens

We figured it was about time to give you an update about our lambs. Our handsome ram went in with his girls in November, which means we are expecting some new lambs around March 28th!

Yes that's right, in just a few more weeks we will have more of this :

This year Olivia, Mellie, Nina, and Rain have been with Arthur. So we are expecting at least four little ones. If you are interested in buying a sheep or two to start your own flock, feel free to contact us here or email with any questions. 

Another fun update is our lovely chickens have just started to lay again! After a few weeks of slowing down the laying, then absolutely NO eggs from molting, we have seen the light! They started laying one or two a day last week. Here is hoping it starts to increase. Honestly, thirty some chickens and we get one or two a day? I've informed them they will be stew soon if they don't step up their game... This weekend I brought one in to check his leg, he had a bit of a limp, but is overall perfectly healthy. We took a second to snap a picture before I let him back outside with some snacks. He is one of our newest chicks this fall. Out of our five new chicks, FOUR of them were roosters. How about those odds? It works out well though because T-rex loves the two older ones, he even taught them to crow. So hopefully we will be one happy flock with a few more roosters. 

And, last but not least, we've restarted the fodder for a healthy winter snack. The chickens and sheep absolutely love it! And, it's really nice to have something green and growing on these cold, short days.

Our New Year

With this new year, we figured we should update you on what's been going on around here.. 

We've had no new additions to our little farm, but all of our babies are grown up and lovely. It's hard to believe the chickens from our last post are now two adult roosters, and a BEAUTIFUL black and green hen. They are Donnie's favorite hens, and they still come running when they hear someone outside. These three are always out, which means they are always getting into trouble. Here they are trying to get onto the front porch.. and then they chose the front gardens threadleaf maple to roost in for a early afternoon nap.

Clearly we'll have to get a few close ups to show off their beautiful coloring. The roosters are just starting to crow and have a few short, green plumes coming in. 

We also have had a few nice snows. Nothing too serious, no electric lost (thank goodnes). Our property is wonderful in the snow, so I ran around to snap a few pictures of the snow covered land. This first one was as the sun was setting so everything was a really pretty blue color. I wish cameras could paint the beauty that's there, but not being all that creative, these few pictures will have to do : )

 And of course, with snow comes the extra care of animasl. As you can see, some of our babes are not fit for snow. Here's T-rex, my favorite Ameraucana rooster, trying as hard as he can to stay out of the snow! Above is one of our sheepy girls, Olivia checking out what we were up to out there, without having to go out in the cold wet snow. Can you tell we have some spoiled brats for animals?

Below, my big handsome (DIRTY!) American cream draft, Remy, was enjoying frolicking around and kicking up his feet out in the back field with me. This was another early evening photo when the sky was getting darker.  

 Our great pyrenees mix, Christian, got some time to show of what a little snow dog he is. He has fur perfect for this cold wet weather!We celebrated our one year of having him right before christmas with this snow. He is almost two, but a puppy at heart. Which really helps make my little black mix, Luna, be extra playful. So here are two pictures of all the pups enjoying the snow.

 Christian rolling around.

We'll have more updates as we get closer to spring! Hope everyone is enduring the cold winter. Keep thinking warm, happy thoughts and before you know it we will be starting to plant our peas!

And then there was one

Here's our lone lamb left of this season:

Our oldest and our fist babe from Nina is the only lamb we have left after a wonderful family came along and bought the others (as pets). It's wonderful that a group of them left together and also that the twins got to stay together since the family planned to make the boy a wether.

Anyone interested in this handsome ram? There's still time to make him a wether too if you're only interested in a companion. He's silly and full of personality!

Lambs

What a busy morning it's been on the farm. Last night Mom got an email from someone interested in coming down to look at a few of the sheep. We're both awfully happy she answered so quickly. A couple came down and left with four lambs! And, what a great home they are going to with kids, goats, and lots of space. Good luck little ones, enjoy your new home!

We only have one lamb from this year left if anyone is interested. It's Nina's little ram that is growing up to be very  handsome! The picture to the right is from the day he was born, and the one below is him at 6 weeks. He is still an intact male.

We have a few girls from previous years that are for sale as well. Check them out on the "for sale" tab!

It sure is turning out to be a surprisingly good morning here on the farm. Someone must be looking out for us up there. Enjoy your Monday!

More Babies, More Sweetness

Sweet little Rain had her baby the yesterday afternoon. She and her new baby will be available in eight weeks, once he is old enough to be separated. Unless you are interested in Mom and baby of course! He is an unfixed male at the moment.

That's right, more babies on the farm! Thursday evening, while working out on the horse barn, we heard a fresh new lamb cry, and went to find a very new baby with her mom, Rain. A first at this farm, a white baby born from a brown babydoll. Quite the little stunner too, he is as white as can be! Neen's baby boy is just starting to get bouncy, and he is looking very handsome in his rocket sweater. He is still not named, any suggestions would be appreciated! You can see his smug little face in the last post. He just KNEW he was the cutest thing in the barn in that picture with me.




Also, Mom's one little green house got broken into by one of the dogs the other night and let in the cold air.. Bad news, almost all of the plants that were out there are looking awfully rough. This afternoon, I planted about 200 new tomato seeds, 50 of our green peppers, 50 of our red pepper seeds from last season, and a few miscellaneous squash& watermelon just to add something interesting. Here's hoping these all do well and start popping up soon with all this great weather!


Next up, we have our two other expecting ewe's, Olivia and Mellie. Liv is ENORMOUS and looks ready to pop any day now. Mellie is the brown girl who is usually pretty chubby anyway (she's Mom's favorite, so very very spoiled). Hopefully our girls give us a few baby girls now that we have the two males! We promise to keep you updated with more baby cuteness : )

I figured I would snap a shot of our proud papa, Arthur, while we were taking pictures of everyone else. He's snacking on some of the fodder that we've been growing. This handsome big guy loves it.

First Time Mom

Our most recent addition, Nina, had her first baby on our farm! Yesterday morning as Mom headed out to feed she heard the wonderful noise of a little lamb. We were very happy to welcome this little man. And, Nina has made an excellent mother! She was sweet enough to let me pick him up and snap a shot before putting on his sweater.

Now we just have to figure out a good name for this little thing! He is for sale, and will be available once he is old enough to be separated from his mom. Babydoll sheep make wonderful pets and have excellent wool. Contact us if you are interested in adding a few to your flock : )

Repotting and preparing for our lambs

With only a few more days until the sheep due dates, we are just finishing up our preparations. The bonding areas are full of fresh straw and clean buckets. The girls, much to their dismay. all got their shots this weekend, and of course lots of animal cookies. So now we wait, hopefully we will have some exciting news and pictures by the weekend!

The rest of our time has been spent mostly preparing plants for outside. We have hundreds of tomatoes, some peppers, strawberries and flowers started now. We have all different stages at the moment, and have been repotting until we run out of room!

Here are some of the stages of growth. 

We had quite a few of the more stable plants out in the green house today. While out in Mom's little greenhouse I got some other shots of what's growing..

Nice and green, looking great : )                        Some gardenias Mom planted

Some of our strawberry plants from last year that we brought in.  The outside ones were coming up nicely until our little herd of teenage chickens found them. Hopefully they didn't pull up the whole plant, little brats. 

And of course, the beets that we're very excited about! I think they are looking great! And they taste great too, can't wait to get what is growing in the dirt.