Harvest & the Garden Cleanup Crew

Today was the day to harvest the remaining things out in the garden – the rest of the potatoes, beets, the squash, and the few stray onions that were left behind in earlier diggings. Oh, and the wheat and sunflowers.

The veggies were piled on a tarp (tarps are easy to load and drag around): a generous pile of potatoes, then the beets and onions, then the spaghetti squash. We only grew a little wheat this year, as an experiment, so it was harvested with scissors, one head at a time – the heads plunked into a bucket, and the straw left on the ground. The sunflowers were broken off at the stems and taken to the shed to dry out.

Once the harvest was complete, the strawberry bed was covered with boards and the sheep were let in to graze all the leftovers. There’s a lot of grass in the garden area (not all of the fenced off area was planted this year, so it really got to be quite a jungle), plus all the leftover beet tops, squash leaves, sunflower stems, and assorted weeds. The pastures are dry and overgrazed, the sheep are hungry, and I don’t want to spend two days hacking my way through all that vegetation … they might as well eat it!

So the cleanup crew is on duty in the garden, and I’ve started the preservation tasks indoors: potatoes were washed, sliced, and boiled briefly then bagged and sealed with the vacuum sealer. The boil-in-bag packages are in the freezer, where they’ll be very convenient come winter time.

Next will be the beets, but I think I’ve done enough for one day. :)

A whole new flock for Apple Jack Creek

We've been thinking about shifting our flock base over to Icelandics for some time now - the Icelandic sheep we have had just seem to be better suited to our shepherding style: they are seasonal breeders, so our inability to keep rams on one side of the fence and ewes on the other isn't a problem; they are very hardy and deal well with cold weather (Iceland ... yeah, lots like Alberta!); they are small, so easier to handle (small is a disadvantage if you're marketing to the auction houses, but we sell direct to customers, so it's not a problem for us); they have gorgeous, colourful, high quality fleece (which should explain itself!).



We had two purebred Icelandics in our starter flock, but culled one a year ago for infertility and discovered this spring that our much loved Natalie (amazing mama and all-around awesome sheep) is suffering from one of the common chronic sheep ailments (OPP for other shepherds out there). It's invariably fatal, but it doesn't condemn the carcass ... it's a chronic lung infection that just makes the sheep sicker and sicker over time. So ... Natalie will be added to this year's butcher list and we will honour her life by making sure her suffering is alleviated and by enjoying the lamb sausage and toasting her memory!



However ... all that left us with no more purebred Icelandics. Some nice cross bred sheep, yes, but what we really needed was some good breeding stock.



Then, an online friend of mine let me know that she was selling her entire flock: they have no pasture where they are located, and bringing in hay all the time was just not working out. Prime breeding stock, lovely sheep, from someone I know, needing a home.


Well, that was an easy decision. :)



Okay, not quite, but it was so clearly the right thing for us to do that we did our thought experiments, checked and double checked the budget, and said "okay, we'll go for it". All but two of our existing flock will be headed off to freezer camp (the Immunity Challenge winners are Jack, the Southdown ram and Cherub, the Columbia/Hamp bottle baby ewe), and our new flock has arrived:

Everyone survived the trailer run from BC quite well, and they are out nibbling on pasture grass very happily with no troubles at all. It's already been grazed down quite a bit, so it's not too lush and we should be able to avoid any digestive troubles with switching from a hay diet to a pasture diet, but we'll be watching closely to be sure.

It's sad to be saying goodbye to some of our existing ewes, we have some real personalities here and letting them go is a tough decision. However, we have found a new butcher who does small runs of sausage, which is an excellent use for older animals, and we have to do what will work best for the farm as a whole. Icelandics fit the bill for us, but we are grateful to have had the opportunity to experience the other breeds first hand as the only way to really learn what works well in your particular circumstances is to experiment.

So, we give our thanks and love to the sheep who have served us well during our apprenticeship, and welcome the new flock as we say farewell to the old.

The first purebred Icelandic lambs have arrived

Natalie *finally* delivered her twin lambs today! The Boy was keeping an eye out for a delivery, as we knew it had to be fairly soon, and he was right there, ready to help if need be. Nat was pretty tired by the time the second twin arrived, but she managed without assistance ... still, it's really reassuring to know that we have a skilled shepherd on hand just in case. What a kid we have! :)

These are the first purebred Icelandic lambs born on our farm: Natalie miscarried her fall pregnancy some time during the winter, possibly due to toxoplasmosis exposure, and was rebred by our new Icelandic ram lamb just after he arrived in mid February. Today, the lambs arrived at long last!

Two lovely ram lambs, a solid black one and a solid white one, with perfect little Icelandic faces and short little Icelandic tails and curly soft Icelandic fleece are walking around the pasture with their mama - one of them was even nibbling on grass and he's not eight hours old. :)

So, that should be it for lambing for this year - we had a couple of ewes who didn't settle at all ... and with the new breeding ewes coming to us from Flannelberry Farm later this year, we are reorganizing the flock a little. We love the Icelandics - they are the perfect sheep for our management style and our weather, so we'll be phasing out most (but not all) of the Columbia/Hampshires. It's always a tough decision, choosing who goes off to freezer camp, but for the good of the flock, it's a decision that has to be made.

The Boy and I will have some more conversations about our choices, but I think we're pretty much in agreement. There are a few who have "won the immunity challenge" and get to retire here ... Cherub the annoying but sweet former bottle baby, and Jack, the superb Southdown ram (who fathers excellent sturdy crossbred lambs, with that sumo sheep build of his, so he earns his keep). The rest, though, have to earn their place ... either in the pasture or on the plate!

At last, Cherub’s lamb!

Cherub was expected to lamb back in February, based on our observations of activity in the pasture last fall. Apparently, though, the activity we witnessed wasn’t as productive as one might’ve hoped and Cherub needed to let the ram have a few test runs before finally settling into pregnancy. February passed with no lambs … then March … then April and May. Cherub was clearly pregnant … but where were the lambs?

My dad always looks at the presents under the tree on Christmas day and says “Oh, they are too pretty to open! We should just put them away until next year.” (This elicits the predictable cries of protest from the rest of the family, but it makes me laugh every time!) Anyway, The Boy started saying that Cherub had obviously decided to just save her lambs for next year … either that or she was planning to deliver a market lamb, ready for the butcher from the get-go!

In the end, Cherub finally had enough of pregnancy, and a single ewe lamb was standing all alone out in the pasture when The Boy went out to top up the hay feeder the other night. Cherub wasn’t particularly interested in her offspring – the sight of a pitchfork full of hay was way more interesting than a bleating soggy newborn.

This is the first lamb we’ve had born with an orange fleece: she wasn’t actually orange, just stained orange from the birthing fluids. I suspect that is a sign of meconium staining, similar to what happens in humans, an indication of some stress just before birth, although I’m not quite sure and the quick research I’ve done hasn’t told me much. Regardless, we got the little girl dried off with a towel and convinced her mama to go into the barn by offering her alfalfa pellets (food is a very reliable bribe for Cherub!).

In the barn, Cherub still seemed to be in some pain, even two hours after lambing and passing the afterbirth, which is unusual … as is having a single in the second year, we were really expecting twins. We kept a close watch on them both: Cherub wasn’t really thrilled about letting the baby nurse, and we weren’t positive that there wasn’t a dead twin inside, but after another couple of hours went by the bleeding stopped and Cherub was letting the lamb nurse, and being her usual self.

We are keeping them in the barn for a bit longer than usual, as I’m not quite convinced that Cherub won’t abandon her baby nor am I completely sure that she has recovered entirely … I’ve read of other shepherds finding out several days later that a dead twin wasn’t delivered. That’s a situation I really don’t want to find myself in, but at least with her in the barn, if anything is wrong, we have a decent chance of noticing and of getting it dealt with properly.

I think we might need to name this little one Endurance – she was very persistent and was not at all put off by her mother’s kicking and fussing. She’d struggle up to her feet, stagger to her mama, and butt her nose against fleece, legs, sides, and udder until she found what she was after, and a kick or a shove from Cherub did nothing more than convince the lamb to try again. What a trooper.

Oh, she’s clearly Jack’s baby too – she has that adorable little Southdown grin, and the really long tail. We’ll dock that in the next few days (we don’t dock medium or short tails, but this one’s pretty much guaranteed to get mucky enough to be a risk for fly strike), and see how she does.

One more lamb, yay!

4-H Achievement Day

Today was the annual 4-H Achievement Day, but it was different than the previous years as we had no animals to go with us. All our sheep have been exposed to orf (contagious ecthymia, basically, cold sores on sheep) and pink eye (same as in humans) and although both are fairly mild illnesses, they are not ones you want to share with other flocks, so our critters are home under quarrantine.

The Boy, however, went along to help, and was in the show ring leading lambs for other kids who had mama sheep with babies, and one of the other members loaned him a sheep to use for the showmanship classes. He did an excellent job in showmanship - one of the best performances I've seen him give! - and took second in the two classes he competed in.

We are home now and enjoying the late sunshine - it's almost solstice, and it is very nice to have such warm sunlight so late in the day.

At long last...

Despreaux, our black mostly-Icelandic ewe, born here last year, finally delivered her lamb!

Despreaux is a small one-winter ewe, not quite fully grown but she did a great job and is doing really well as a mother. Her own mother, Natalie, is a fabulous mama, and this is a trait you can breed for so ... good to see that coming through! Her lamb was born this evening, and was up and looking for milk within about 30 minutes, with mama doing a great job of cleaning him up and taking care of him. For a first-timer, Despreaux did awesome.

We've been waiting a long time it seems for these last couple of lambs - Despreaux started showing signs about a week back, so we knew she was close, but we still have no idea if Cherub's ever gonna decide to deliver hers ... and I don't *think* the other two possibles are pregnant, but ... who knows?

Farming's definitely an adventure. :)

Sheep, for elementary students

Friday, The Boy and I volunteered to help the Alberta Lamb Producers show groups of elementary school students what the sheep industry is. There is a large exhibition with booths from the 'big producers' - canola, beef, dairy, poultry, pork - and room for some additional demonstrations as well - we were 'little critters', and the 'eat locally and think about your food miles' people from the Alberta Government had a really neat inflatable globe right in the center of everything and showed kids the difference between the honey you get from, say, Tofield, and the honey you get from Australia. Buying local makes sense!

My job was to convey to the kids a three point message: meet the farmer (so you can see who raises your food), explain what sheep need from us, and explain what products we receive from sheep.

Here's the blurb I ended up with (given about every fifteen minutes all day!):

Hello Grade Fives! (or whatever grade they are)
*You have to imagine me standing in a pen of about five sheep, emphatically gesturing and shouting to be heard over the general din.

I live on a farm about an hour west of Edmonton where we have about 15 sheep. The lady over there, who you'll go see in a bit, has over ONE HUNDRED sheep - and all their babies! And this boy lives with me 'cause he's my kid, and he actually does most of the chores at our house so he's a shepherd too - anybody who takes care of sheep is a shepherd!

I am here today to tell you that A HAPPY SHEEP IS A TASTY SHEEP! Did you know that? It's true! What do you think a sheep needs to be happy? (Lift up some hay) ... kids usually shout 'hay' or 'grass' ... yes, they need hay to eat, hay is just dried grass and they will eat it when there's no fresh stuff around, but in the summertime they like to go out and eat the fresh grass - so they are the lawnmowers! No mowing the grass, they do it for you! What else do sheep need? (point to the water bucket) "Water!" yup, they need fresh water and what else? Grain ... yes, some sheep eat grain, not all of them but some do. Some kids also mention pellets, and I usually pointed out the table where they could see the different kinds of feed sheep can eat. (Hold up the bucket of mineral). What's this? (usually nobody guesses) ... what do you put on your french-fries, besides ketchup? Salt! Right, sheep need salt and special minerals, it's like taking their vitamins every day.

Okay, now when it's time for the sheep to go to bed at night, do we need to tuck them into a nice warm bed and cover them up with a blanket? NO! Because sheep wear their blankets all the time! They have nice thick coats of wool (point to the unshorn sheep - or the plastic model of an unshorn sheep, late on Friday afternoon!). They can be outside all winter and be just fine wearing their nice big coats. But if we don't give them a haircut in the springtime, that'd be like sending you out to the playground in your snowsuit in July! Would you like that? No way, and neither do the sheep. They really need their wool taken off so they are not roasting all summer.

So we give the sheep food and water and haircuts, and in return they give us wool (The Boy would walk along the rail with a sample of wool, wearing fingerless gloves made from our wool) ... wool is a wonderfully useful renewable resource. Have you talked about renewable resources yet in class? (expanded on this for the older kids, sometimes mentioning that sheep can use marginal land that wouldn't be able to support grain or even cattle, so it's a good use of land that couldn't be used otherwise.) Some resources, like oil, aren't renewable - when it's gone, it's gone - but there's a new crop of wool every spring and the sheep are really happy for us to take it. Does it hurt to give them a haircut? Not really .. sometimes they get a little nick but it's just like a shaving cut and it doesn't sting for long (we had one return from the shearing demo with an obvious cut so had to mention this). What can we use wool for? We can make mittens (hold up my fingerless-gloved hands), or hats and scarves, blankets, sleeping bags, you can even insulate your house with wool, that's a good environmentally sound choice and much nicer than the itchy pink stuff! Over on the other side we have a place where you can see some more things you can do with wool. (The cowboy hat was a big hit, most had no idea felt was wool.) So using wool is a good choice, it's not wasteful - there's lots of it and there'll be lots more!

What else do sheep give us? A happy sheep is a TASTY sheep right? So they give us meat. Who eats lamb meat at their house? (We had at least one in every group!) It's pretty good, eh? Not a whole lot different than cow - if you eat cow, you'd probably also eat lamb. (And to the occasional objection "but they're cute!" my reply is "so are baby cows, but I bet you eat at McDonald's, eh?") (And to the very occasional comment about slaughter, I mentioned that it's actually against the law to hurt them at the end, it has to be quick and not hurt, and so we honour the sheep by taking good care of them through their lives, and then by being grateful for the life they share with us at the table.)

Now there are THREE products we can get from sheep - anyone know what the third one is? (some could guess - although occasionally I got 'lanolin' which was an awesome surprise) Milk! Yes, you can milk a sheep (at which point The Boy often said "yup, I milked that one!" which was true, his ewe lamb was in the pen and we had milked her when her baby was born and wouldn't nurse!). It's a bit harder than milking a cow (some had seen the cow and the milking demo so miming grabbing big cow teats with my whole fist vs using two fingers to milk out a little teeny sheep teat was quickly understood). There are dairy sheep, just like there are dairy cows, and they are bred for milking ... none of these are dairy sheep. There are some traditional cheeses made from sheep's milk, like feta (lots of nods from the teachers there).

So for our sheep to be happy we need to give them good food, clean water, and regular haircuts ... and in return, they give us wool and meat and milk. Now if you go over to the green carpet, we will show you some of the neat things we can do with wool! (over at the green carpet we had a master spinner working with a wheel, and a table with different fibre things out for them to look at ... plus a dressmaker's form with a wool jacket and shawl, and of course, the cowboy hat!)

It was a really long, exhausting day but it was fun. It was really encouraging to see how many people do eat lamb and enjoy it. For the hesitant ones, I usually tell them that it's about as different from beef as turkey is from chicken - you know it's not the same stuff, but it doesn't leap out at you.

And, although I didn't mention this explicitly to the little kids, there were some grownups who came by at the end of the day who knew the actual reason why a happy sheep is a tasty sheep: if you stress an animal, particularly close to slaughter time, the meat doesn't taste as good. Handling our animals gently and treating them kindly, right up until the last moment, is not only the right thing to do - it's the way to get the best product, too. Nice how that works out, eh?

Ethan and Emily go to school

A little while ago, we picked up two bottle lambs. They are Katahdin/wool crosses, so they are definitely meat sheep (Katahdins are hair sheep, and the cross breed sheep don't have fleece that is useable for spinning) - we aren't having the most productive lambing season ever, so we figured we might need a few extra sheep around come fall.

Anyway, The Reluctant Farmer also wanted to take some sheep to visit the school ... and bottle lambs are perfect for that. He and The Boy took the two lambs to Dinosaur Boy's school a couple of weeks back, and the kids in the class chose names for them. These two are now known as Ethan and Emily!

They will go back for another visit and the kids in the class will measure and see how much they have grown. Hopefully on their next visit they won't eat the artwork off the walls!

Okay, THIS time it was obvious we needed to intervene!

I went outside around five tonight to do chores and check on things, and I noticed Pugsy was all by herself in the sheep shelter, pawing at the ground. Ah, good, I thought, finally she's going to have that lamb!

I headed over and there he was! A big ram lamb already on the ground, and Pugsy hadn't even passed the afterbirth yet. I managed to get her into the sheep feed pen (everyone else was distracted by the hay I set out for them in the pasture) and watched to see how she and the lamb were doing. The lamb was still wet, so I helped get him dried off and poor Pugsy was obviously in a lot of pain with the continuing contractions. She was also famished! She ate and grunted and ate more hay and pawed at the ground and fussed some more. The lamb wouldn't nurse for some reason ... but I thought maybe he was still a bit dazed from birth and she was obviously not comfortable so a few more minutes wouldn't hurt.

The Reluctant Farmer and The Boy came home right about then and helped me get the sheep into the barn, where the lamb STILL would not nurse. Pugsy let me milk her, though, and I put the colostrum into a bottle and tried to get the lamb to take that: no go. He just didn't want to suck, although he'd suck on my finger if I stuck it in his mouth, at least for a minute. Well, we have a solution for that problem: we stuck a tube down his throat (and checked to make sure he'd swallowed it and not inhaled it) and poured the colostrum directly into him. That strategy ignores his opinion of the process entirely!

We got him all the way dry and checked his temperature - which was fine - and then let him go back to mama. A few hours later, he still wasn't able to nurse even with encouragement and help, so in he came again - much to his mama's dismay, she is hollering for him from the barn. He did take some milk from the bottle, and newborns only need about 300 mL a day, so we don't want to overwhelm his system either. He's in the bathroom where it's warm, and he seems okay - not really perky but not really sick either. We had another one like this a couple of years ago, wouldn't take the bottle (and we didn't know how to tube feed yet, so boy was that a struggle) and after three days of babying she went back to her mama who took her right back and all was well! That doesn't happen often, but hey, it's nice to know it's possible.

We haven't settled on a name yet ... working through our E list. I'll get a picture up soon!

Update: He's taking the bottle nicely now that he's warmed up ... we have him sleeping in the bathtub (without water!) so that we don't have to worry about him being underfoot if we need to use the loo. He seems content to just sleep ... we'll give him some more milk in a bit and take him back to his mama in the morning.

Can't save 'em all

The new lamb only made it for a week. :(

In hindsight, we should have realized that he wasn't getting strong enough fast enough - they are sometimes a bit wobbly for the first few days, and we did check on him and his mama regularly ... but the time got away from us and we didn't really process the fact that it had been nearly a week and he was still shaky on his legs, and occasionally cold in the mouth.

If we had it to do all over again, we'd have brought him in for bottle feeding - I think his mama just wasn't quite enthusiastic enough about taking care of him, so although she'd let him nurse (and whenever we went to check we made sure he got something to eat), I think it was too much of a hassle for him to make the effort as often as he needed to. Of course it's always possible something else contributed, especially the cold (it was a very cold week) but ... well, you can't save 'em all.

The Boy was very sad, as was I. He and I talked about what we had done in this case, what we'll do differently next time, and what we have learned, and having learned from it, all we can do is move on and do things differently with the information we now have. We are still really new to this, and it's part of the process of learning - and experienced shepherds don't save 'em all, either. It's part of the process.

So, the Blizzard baby has passed on, and we're now anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next lamb. Pugsy is in the barn, as she was starting to show early signs of lambing - but that was a few days ago and now she's just standing there, irritated at being separated from everyone else and looking like she ought to deliver any minute ... and nothing's happening. Cherub is so heavily laden she walks on stiff peg legs when she gets up from chewing her cud ... but she still manages to jump the fence and get into the bale storage for her favourite snack.

Lambing is always an interesting adventure, that's for sure. :)

One more lamb!

The Boy's market lamb from 4-H last year was purchased by a local business man who turneed around and gave her back as a gift. :) Dilly Bar is a beautiful purebred Hampshire lamb (she was very chilled when she was born - we had to warm her up a bit, hence the name). Well, today Dilly gave us her first lamb!

The Boy went out to do chores at 4:15 and Dilly's lamb was on the ground, just born. Bob the Dog was keeping watch and drying off the lamb, so The Boy got a towel and helped finish the drying as Dilly wasn't particularly interested in the task herself - the Hamp babies aren't born with as much wool as the Icelandics and it's important to get them dried off quickly so they don't chill. As The Boy could see the weather starting to turn, he took the lamb into the barn and got a forkful of hay which prompted Dilly to follow him in. The lamb was up and nursing well when we got home and went out to visit, so he's off to a good start!

So, The Boy now has a lovely large single ram lamb that he wants to call Blizzard in keeping with the weather and the Dairy Queen theme! A nasty snowstorm started just after this little one arrived, but the new arrival and his mama are tucked into the barn and are nice and warm.

Now, Blizzard doesn't quite fit our naming convention of an 'e' year, so his full name will have to be something like ... hmm ... Evening Blizzard, just to be correct. And, the storm DID start in the evening. :)

In all the blowing snow, The Boy has gone out to check everyone ... nobody else appears to be in labour at the moment, thankfully. Dilly does seem to be a bit skittish about the baby as first time sheep mamas often are, but with some time in the barn stall they should get used to one another. The Boy is taking her some beet pulp pellets which will hopefully distract her and calm her enough that she won't fuss about the baby quite so much. We'll keep a close eye on them for a day or two and see how things go - if she decides not to let the baby nurse, it can become a serious problem in a big hurry if we aren't paying attention.

The Boy is an excellent shepherd, though, and he knows his animals. He'll take good care of these two. :)

Next lamb!

The Reluctant Farmer went out to check on everyone this morning and found this little ram lamb with his mama, Cola.

Cola's a two-winter, so we'd hoped she'd give us twins but ... we'll take one healthy lamb, too. :)

He has lovely colouring - his fleece is a mix of brown and white (the wool is actually brown - lots of the newborn lambs look darker just from birth fluids and such, but he really has coloured fleece). I'm not sure where the brown came from ... but it's very pretty! It'll be intersting to see how that grows out.

We'll call this little one Enterprise. ;)

And the winner is ...

We had to do a random selection from the names submitted ... we just couldn't decide!

The random number generator turned up ... Elvis!

Elvis is doing very well, although I think he is impatient for the other lambs to show up ... he was chasing the chickens the other day. :)

Lambing Season

The Icelandic sheep are very seasonal breeders, meaning that they generally time things so that lambs arrive close to Easter. The Columbia and Hampshires, though, are nowhere near as particular - probably because they hail from Great Britain where spring comes a good deal earlier and when it does arrive, it's really not all that much different from winter ... unlike spring in Iceland ... or Canada for that matter. Regardless, the Columbia and Hampshire sheep tend to lamb earlier in the year, although they're not quite as hardy in the cold as the Icelandics are.

If we were sufficiently organized and had adequately sturdy fences, we would keep the rams away from the ewes in the fall in order to time the arrival of lambs in the spring. While we did make an attempt at this last fall, our fences proved to be inadequate barriers to the determined efforts of the rams who sensed ewes in dire need of their services and did all they could to address the situation.

The first result arrived this morning, in the midst of a (thankfully) very warm spell we've been having.

He is a lovely large ram lamb, born to our purebred Columbia ewe (the biggest sheep we have here), and it looks like he was fathered by our Southdown ram, most likely (look at that little smile, that's a very Southdown grin). He arrived some time in the night with no noise from the dogs, no fuss from the sheep, and no intervention from the humans. The Boy found him when he went out to feed the sheep this morning ... this little guy was up and walking around, chasing his mama around the pasture quite happily. That's a great way to start lambing season!

This year is an "E" year, meaning all the lambs will get names that start with E. This little one hasn't got a name yet ... please give us some name suggestions in the comments, for him, and for the others still to come!