Category: Sheep
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Sheep, at the Border
I have secondhand news that the sheep have arrived at the border. Lois is not yet across, and there are very long lines in both directions. We’re not sure yet whether she’ll load up and try to come back later tonight, or whether she’ll stay overnight in MT with the sheep. Continue reading
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Sheep, on the Road Again
As of 7 AM on Thursday morning, the sheep officially made it to Butte, MT, and are headed towards the border. They should arrive by 1 PM or so. Lois is meeting them at Sweetgrass and will hopefully be able to cross the border before the end of the day. Continue reading
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Sheep, Stuck
As of this morning, the Canada-bound sheep are stuck in Bountiful, Utah, where the hauler has broken down with a blown transmission. Lois may be driving down to Utah to pick them up. We won’t know more until we hear whether the rebuilt transmission that was ordered arrives and gets installed. It looks like it Continue reading
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Sheep, Shipped!
Some of you know that I’ve been working for several years to document and register all Canadian purebred Black Welsh Mountain sheep. Once things really started to get underway, I realized how critical they were genetically. They’re in a precarious situation in terms of numbers and bloodlines. About four years ago, I started working to Continue reading
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Winter Storm
On Monday, the construction crew got the joists up on the roof, but today they had to quit due to the snow. Ken’s been up top clearing snow off to try and keep it safe for when they have time to work on it. Our fencing crew couldn’t make it up the hill, so the Continue reading
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Hervey and Friends
This is Hervey the ram and 2 of his girlfriends. When we first saw them, the one in the white coat was sleeping on his shoulder. As I tried to get the camera out, the other ewe came up and started bothering them. I sure hope that that means they’re in heat and we’ll have Continue reading
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Off to Slaughter
This year, I vowed not to go into winter with as many sheep as I had last year. Our fall slaughtering has started. We’ve already done 16 adult ewes, and today we sent off 10 young rams. We have to schedule slaughter dates over a year in advance. I have 66 slots reserved for this Continue reading
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Back on Pasture and Why Labels Are Misleading
The early snow has pretty much all melted, and we got one batch of ram lambs back out on our triticale pasture regrowth. We made sure they were all pretty full of hay before putting them out, and we made an aisle of electric fencing to prevent too much plugging of the permanent pastures. We’ll Continue reading
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Emergency Preparations for a Farm
Watching the news about the big fires in San Diego yesterday and today prompted me to review our farm emergency plan. We used to live in Ramona, San Diego, one of the towns in the path of the fires. The latest data indicates that our old house was either on the very edges or was Continue reading
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Winter Snow
It’s the first snow of 2007 here on Gavin Mesa. It’s a bit early this year. The sheep love the snow! I think it’s because they have such warm, woolly coats. They enjoy playing in it. The rams are eagerly awaiting their breakfast. The ewes especially like to go around the corrals, licking and eating Continue reading