Flood Waters Receeding?

Well, hopefully my quandry about the drive to the warm will be over soon. The flood has gone down a bit and now we are able to drive the truck through. I'm still waiting and looking forward to the first chance to pull on my tall wellies and walk down, not to mention pull out the bike and our "peapod" trailer for the season.

Fortunately or unfortunately (as my friend Duffy always used to say) Dan had a Judo injury last week. He was thrown close to the edge of the mat and his heel landed on the hard wood floor. We was pretty much out of commission for the week. I got to do all the milking and most of the other farm chores for the week and it was great for me. Ever since Bea was born I've been disconnected from the farm. It has been strange to not even know where certain crops are in the fields. So this week got me back in the swing of things. Dan was home with Bea; she was no longer my first priority while I was at the farm. Having a baby at the farm isn't that easy. I suppose there are lots of women who put their kids in the backpack and get to work, but for some reason that never really worked for me. Now that Bea is more independent (she has no fear or inhibitions about doing things at the farm - collecting eggs, feeding animals, etc. & chasing her beloved cats) and is totally comfortable at the farm I'm hoping that I'll be able to work more. Last week I could freely go about my work. It felt great. I think Dan enjoyed it too.

Quandry

Many of you, dear readers, know that our road is often (all winter at least and a good part of spring and fall) flooded between our house and the farm. This means that instead of the half mile walk/bike/drive to the farm we have to drive 3 miles to get to the there. Yes, a huge inconvenience and waste of gas. My most recent quandry concerning the flood is this: Since Dan has multiple tasks to do at the farm other than the milking and chores he most often ends up doing the milking. I'm torn because I do want to take on the milking, but does it make sense for me to drive to the farm to milk and drive home when Dan just has to turn around when I get there to go down to the farm to do his work.....? The clincher of course is Bea. Ideally we'd all load up in the morning and go to the farm for the whole am, but those with a 2 year old will know it's never that clear and simple. Dan made a good point this morning, that things don't always have to make sense... yet. Of course there will be that time in the season where every single thing we do should make sense. We have to be as efficient as possible when things get going, it's a survival mechanism.
We're not there yet, though. My looming concern is how to keep Bea occupied during the 25 minutes it takes me to milk. In the midst of the season things can get really crazy down there and I'm hoping that Bea and I can manage the milking on our own without having to pull Dan out of his work. Dan is getting faster, it only takes him 15. Hopefully by the time it rally matters, I'll be down to 15, too.
That being said, Bea loves the farm and I'm sure she can manage on her own for a few minutes. As we sat seeding in the greenhouse the other day we watched her go out to the chickens, into their trailer, come out with two eggs and announce she was on her way to feed them to the pigs. What a farm girl!

3.8.08

Ah, wallpaper.... Dan and Bea went up to New Hampshire to visit Ucnle Chris and Aunt Jen. A little escape before the greenhouse gets started up. I've been holding down the fort, feeding all the animals. It is also great timing for me to finally get around to the painting and wallpapering of Bea's room. We did a lead test a while ago and it didn't look so good. Thankfully, the paint wasn't peeling. I figured best to just cover it up, hence the wallpaper. My first time! My dad, CJ and I spent the day plugging away on it and were still talking at the end so I take that as a success. We didn't get to finish. Hopefully it won't take to long to wrap it up so Bea can have her room back. Better than ever. No, we never did do the whole painting the nursery thing before she was born.... Today the thought did cross my mind, why didn't we do this three years ago? (Probably because we co-slept and never really needed to have a special place for Bea to go to at night. And for those wondering, at 2 and a half yes she does love her big girl bed and room. Although we still love snuggling with her, too.)

Can't wait to get my hands into more spring projects... cleaning up the yard and ofcourse starting seeds. When Dan gets back we have 60 flats of onions to start as well as celery, celeriac & tomatoes!

Confused Maternity

It turns out that Coco and Patches may have fallen too hard for the sweet little lambers. When I went down to the farm yesterday morning Coco was guarding them from Lulu! The lambs were as content as could be, sleeping in the sun. Lulu was not so happy. I put Patches in her pen for milking and tied Coco up. Then I moved the sheep and lambs in with the chickens. Our main concern was that if cows weren't letting Lulu nurse the little ones, her milk supply would dry up. The lambs seemed to be getting enough food from Patches! She gave about a quart less when I milked her. This could have been a sign of heat, but her teats were sticky as if they had been sucked on.

The sheep seemed happy enough in their new home with the chickens. The chickens didn't even seem to notice. Coco was heart broken and bellowed all day about it. However the move was a bit of a short term solution. The sheep have shelter in the greenhouse, but eventually it will be too hot in there. Also it means managing seperate pastures for the sheep and cows, something we were going to try to avoid if possible. After several years raising sheep we had decided we were going to stop and then these little ones came along. If anyone is looking for a few nice pet sheep please let us know. Lulu is a sweetheart. We've had her for about 7 years. Blackie is her companion and actually has good wool, not that we have been using it. If you'd like the pair and the lambs, let's talk.

Tomorrow is Pig Day! Things are really starting to happen on the farm. It must be March!

Fertility?

We've been watching for signs of heat in Patches so we can have her bred again. We haven't seen anything really obvious except for her tail sticking up a little bit and maybe some wetness from her vulva. Other signs can include mounting other animals (even people), giving less milk and other friskiness. Since we don't have a bull, we've asked Debra Tyler to come do the deed (AI) when we're all in agreement that Patches is ready. The window for cows to concieve is pretty short - from about 10 to 18 hours. So you want to try to get the timing right. If we don't see a really strong heat, it looks like we might wait a few months to breed her so that she can calve in the spring instead of the dead of winter.

The lambs are doing really well. We've let them out of their pen and as we expected from Coco's gentle moos, the cows have taken a real shine to these babes. Both Coco and Patches follow them around, licking them. Boy, what a strong maternal instinct in cows! Dan has seen the lambs try to latch on to Patches. I guess we'll judge by the amount of milk we get tomorrow morning how successful they were. Hopefully they won't have an identity crisis and grow up thinking they are cows. So far Lulu doesn't seem to be too jealous.

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