While nursing this evening, Little Guy was driving his little car on my arm. Major heart-eyes on this mama! I love him so much.
He also was tickled pink to find a toy gun at my aunt's house the other day. He has zero association with guns, real or fake. He does not know they go boom. How is he already attracted to them?
He loves balls and he loves throwing things whether it's a ball or not.
He is doing well with weaning. That's bittersweet for me.
"I don't want soap in my eyes and I don't want soap on my face. Soap is MEAN. And splinters are mean, too."
-my 3yo after a soap ordeal
I'm so tired of fences.
We have had issues off and on for a long time with our electric fence. It was tangling in a nearby old, loose barbed wire fence. Took a lot of work to get that out of there. Then another line was tangling in barbed wire. Couldn't take that out as it isn't ours, but ours was the majority of the problem anyway, as this particular line was loose. We had wrapped electric wire around a LOT of wooden fence posts, as I was confidently assured it WOULD NOT be a problem, unless perhaps everything got VERY WET. Well, that is the problem we spent seven hours on yesterday, but we got all of it off of wood! It had also routed through some trees, and Son added t-posts to jut the fence out of line a bit in those places and go around the trees.
It finally seems to be working!
There are still a few things to complete, things that shouldn't interfere with the fence working for a few days, but that won't be sufficient long term. I'm hoping Son will be able to fix those small issues this morning before we let the sheep and goats out.
(I started this post last night. In fact, I finished most of it before I fell asleep...)
Today was full. My Man and I went out for breakfast and to discuss our budget for this year. Sounds crazy in April, but we just got part of our tax return after a couple months of tight purse strings, and it's a good time for us to plan our budget out.
My Man, Son, Sissy and Honey burned drain ditches with a neighbor. I worked some on digging ditch on our property. We are re routing the way it drains from our pasture. After burning, my Man and Son worked on this also. I also was involved in showing off the lambs. The office lady from my Man's job brought her grandkids and their parents, to enjoy the lambs, sheep and goats for a while. We had crock pot meatloaf with salad and green beans for dinner. We are working on baths now, and I'm about to wash some hair. Little Guy got six hours and twenty-seven minutes outside today. 89/1000!
This morning, we finished off lambing for a bit. Six ewes have lambed within two weeks, and they added 12 ewe lambs and 2 ram lambs to our flock.
The proud mothers;
Raspberry, Strawberry, Splash, Frost, CD, Rose.
The bereaved mother; Blackie.
We went through quite the ordeal holding down Blackie for a few days of milking. We wanted to freeze the colostrum in case of future emergency, and we milked her for 4 days just to get all the best beginning milk. We were going to ease her off slowly, but we wound up deciding to just let her try to dry off cold turkey. Hopefully she won't be hurting too much. She does seem a little more comfortable now than she was a few days ago.
Raspberry had triplets. She is raising two ewes and lost a ram.
Strawberry had triplets. She is raising ewes.
Splash had twins. She is raising ewes.
Blackie had twins. Stillborn rams.
Frost had twins. She is raising ewes.
CD had triplets. She is raising one ewe, one ram, and she lost a ram.
Rose had triplets. She is raising two ewes and a ram.
We had several present with elbow lock this spring. My Man had to assist in multiple births and I had to assist with one.
We anticipate that Hairy and Blondie are likely pregnant, but they just lambed unexpectedly in November, so we don't think they are far along. We have the adult rams locked up for now, just in case.
My Man got the 50% ram he was hoping for out of Rose. 50% Dorper and 50% Romanov. He's a cute little guy, too!
My sister has been sending screenshots to the family group chat. Screenshots of posts from my Mom's blog. Back when she was in the throes of raising and homeschooling 8 young children. Those are precious memories, and I'd like to fill my blog in with more of the same, for my kids to reminisce over as adults.
Here is a scene from my life, while in the throes of raising and homeschooling 7 young children.
My Man has a tradition of taking the kids out early on Saturday mornings for breakfast. It has evolved through the years, but for the past couple years, they take turns. Today was Sweetie's turn, so she was up quite early. She had a wonderful day, but by the time bedtime rolled around, very exhausted! After dinner, I sent her to start her bath, which her older sister had run for her. She started having an emotional breakdown because she had to use the hall bathroom. I helped her calm down. Then she had an emotional breakdown because the water was too hot. I felt the water as she was stepping into the bath, crying "I need cold! I need it cold!" It wasn't overly hot, but I turned the cold on and she immediately put her hand in the running water.
"AAUUGHH!!!" she screamed. I can just imagine a cartoon strip with the character screaming, with their hair all standing on end! It's exactly what she sounded like! She instantly turned the water off and started swishing the "cold" water in to the "hot" water. There was still a tiny stream coming from the faucet because it always does that after it's turned off. So she started pushing and pushing on the knob until the stream stopped a couple seconds later.
"That's how much I needed, Mama. That's enough cold now."
(The water was on for possibly one full second.)
