Those other sorts of weeks

I suspect when most folks think about farming they envision physical labor under a beautiful blue sky in a heavenly pastoral field. There's the freedom of working for yourself and the joy of not being tied to an electronic device. It's a peaceful image.

This is true of most weeks on the farm. I love it.

There are other weeks though, that are a bit more stressful. We just got through one of them.

Kaylee, our goat with the funny ears...you know her:

She's the timid one. A bit smaller than Saffron, but a tough little goat. About three weeks ago she started limping and falling over for no reason. We probed her legs and thought she had pulled a muscle, so we locked her up for a few days of rest.

(Try keeping a 5 month old goat restful. Just try it.)

After a few days she wasn't getting better. In fact, she was getting worse. So we called the vet. By the time he was able to come to check her out, Kaylee wasn't even able to stand on her own. I was terrified she'd get dehydrated and was out in the barn every 20 minutes propping her up near the water bucket. She remained perky, was eating and pooping well, but she continued to lose function in her front right leg.

Our vet suspected she had a weird, rare parasite or virus that ended up in her nervous system. He wasn't sure if we could help her, but we threw the goat medicine kitchen sink at her - two shots a day along with an oral dewormer for 5 days.

She started to improve every day, and keeps reaching new milestones (today she got both legs up on the second rung of the barn gate for the first time in weeks). She's been running and head butting and can keep up with everyone now, though I still worry about a relapse. It seems like she is going to be ok and we're impressed with her tenacity. I have now formed a rather strong attachment to her, but she's recovered enough to remember that she doesn't really like being hugged and keeps evading my embraces, which both delights and saddens me.

During Kaylee's downward phase, when I was going to check on her at regular intervals, one of our ewes died suddenly. I have read about sudden sheep death, but found it totally shocking nonetheless. On one trip to the barn Donna was totally fine, scampering about and vexing me by trying to escape from the pen to chomp on mulberry leaves. 45 minutes later, without any warning, she had died. We're not sure of the cause yet. We took her to the Purdue diagnostics lab and should be getting a report soon.

Donna was nearly 6 years old, which is middle aged for a sheep. She was the crazy-looking, loud-mouthed one. Even though we only had her for 4 months, we liked her and are glad we got to know her.

(Donna on the left. Her lamb Clara is in the foreground.)

So, it was one of those weeks. It's hard to face the realization that we don't control everything, but figuring out how to deal with these emotions and move forward is part of our learning process.

We're learning.

Winter is Coming

This past week has been Winter is Coming week. Bill took a few days off and we've been stockpiling important things for the coming cold.

Hey! It's hay! We have a pile of hay that we (mostly Bill) scythed this year, but it's not enough for the entire winter, so we purchased some bales as well.

We've been stacking wood too. Last year we got a small electric splitter which is tied with our chicken plucker as one of my favorite purchases.

This is about an hour of splitting. Not nearly enough yet! Some of that wood is cherry, which means our shed smells amazing. 

Lastly, I've been doing a little quilting. Having my own craft room and working on project bags for my little Etsy shop has reacquainted me with my sewing machine (and fabric shops), so I'm hoping my quilting bug returns. I'm machine quilting a pepper quilt I started when we first moved to Indiana.

The archived process of making this quilt is on my very first (I think), rather old blog. Here's the best photo from the series:

We have lots more work to do before the snow (I hope!) flies, but we've gotten a good start.

Red, Yellow, Green

We've been eating lots of red and yellow meals lately. Wanna see?

Delicata squash soup and tomatoes on garlic bread with NY wine.

Two pots of tomato sauce for canning. Bill was pretty insistent that the yellow pot stay purely yellow. There were two separate spoons for stirring, and the immersion blender had to go into the yellow sauce first, lest some red bits contaminate it.

Not being eaten are these yellow pickling cucumbers. Bill has trepidation about them, and I rightfully know that all cucumbers are vile. So, I've been picking them and they sit on our counter...destined to become chicken food.

Finally, here's what the goats and sheep have been eating. That "grass is greener" thing is apparently not to be taken lightly, as I noticed when we moved some fences around this weekend. The old paddock where the ruminants had been confined is on the left. There is a clear line where the fence was with the "other side" of the fence on the right. Makes you think that maybe we've been using that saying incorrectly for all these years.

A belated garden update...

Here is how our garden looked about a month ago. My recent life has been totally devoted to canning tomatoes, though we did enjoy some delicata squash soup last night.

(clockwise from top left) Chocolate cherry, Martino's Roma, Wapsipinicon Peach, Opalka and Sungella tomatoes. All heirlooms. 

All these peppers have been eaten by a capsaicin -loving bunny. 

Reid's (Reed's?) yellow dent corn for feeding the birds over the winter and for making masa flour to keep us in corn tortillas for every meal of every day. YUM!

We've never made tortillas from freshly ground corn, only from the store-bought flour. I understand we are in for a treat.

Squashes - butternut and delicata. 

Pink Shawl

I have a big blog post planned for you with all sorts of garden photos...but our internet is being slower than usual and uploading each photo takes about 5 minutes. We hope to resolve the issue early next week. In the meantime, here is a shawl I recently finished.

It is the Aestlight Shawl by Gudrun Johnston in Tosh Merino Light, which is a single ply. The shawl is knit in the traditional Shetland construction, which means I knit the big garter triangle from the bottom up and then picked up stitches along the edges to make the decorative border.

And, just so you don't think I'm turning into some sort of Fancy Lady because now I have a pink shawl...

BABY ANIMALS!!!

They're cute! They're cuddly! They make you forgive me for being so negligent at blogging!

A chicken being raised by a turkey:

Clara. Seriously, this must be the most adorable lamb ever born.

Kaylee and her ears. What is she looking at??

Do you see the white speck at the top of the photo? That's Bill at the back of the field and the goats certainly can see him.

They love him because he spoils them. Kaylee especially loves him. She isn't really sure about me, but whenever Bill is in visual or auditory range, she cries for him. And he always goes to scratch her ears and give her some fresh mulberry branches. Totally spoiled.

Let's pretend I'm going to start blogging regularly on Fridays. I think can handle that?

Look at this picture of my dog

Have you ever seen anything cuter?

No. No you have not.