Lambing

Lambing seemed fast and furious this year.  Fortunately it did not start until after we were back from the hospital.  My brother-in-law had all the phone numbers lined up for help, but he was very thankful no lambs came while he was house/farm sitting!

 Bernice had twin rams lambs early 12 March, Eina had a single ram lamb 16 March, Bethany had twin ewe lambs early (1:30 and 2 am) 17 March (Happy Birthday to me), Desana had twin ram lambs early 20 March and Charity had a single ewe lamb on 20 March.  Except for Charity, all the births were uneventful and easy-just the way you want them to be.  Of course, none of the lambs came during the 3-4 day spell of nice weather.  Oh no….it was either cold and frosty, or in the middle of the 2nd major snowstorm of the winter (St Patrick’s Day weekend). 

For the first time ever, we had to call the vet in for an emergency though.  Charity had some minor problems last year with the lamb’s head briefly stuck, but this year it was clear she would not lamb without assistance.   It turned out the lamb had one leg forward, with the head and other leg turned backward.  The vet was able to pull the lamb, and revive her.  That just brought tears to my eyes, as I watched the vet swing (yes, vigorously) and rub the little ewe.  She is a small lamb, but probably the spunkiest one we have!  She and another of our ewe lambs are also what is called “lilacs”: instead of typical Jacob colors of black and white, they are charcoal and white.  They also have blue eyes.  So, we will definitely be keeping one of them.  We are looking around to find a home for Charity, as she must not be bred again.  We have some feelers out to 4H families.  As a last resort, we’ll put her in the freezer, but would rather not have to.  However, we are not set up to have pasture space for non-breedable ewes.

Rabbit Sad News

I lost Toby, my beautiful REW German cross angora about 3 weeks ago.   He was fine at 3pm when some friends visited Steve, then dead  in his cage at 6 pm when we went out to do chores.  No visible signs of problems.  The best we can figure is he may have had a heart attack when some birds got stuck in the barn near his cage.  He was a sweetheart-very friendly and easy to clip.  He had gorgeous white fiber.  I will miss him.  This may sound a bit macabre, but he is in the freezer until we can bury him in our pet cemetery in the pasture.   I have now lost 2 rabbits in the past year (unrelated causes).  I will be getting 2 more this spring/summer, but it is hard to  lose the “friendly” ones.

I’m Back!

Yes, I know it’s been a while (over 6 weeks!) since my last post.  In the interim my husband had major surgery, the ewes all lambed, and I had lots to do at work.  God is sooo good.  Steve’s surgery went well; the docs believe they have all the cancer.  Lambing went pretty good-we now have 8 new lambs-pics to come later.  And I’m getting back into the swing of teaching again, after being off for 2 weeks.  

I have lots of pics of lambing, so will try to learn how to put them in the blog.  Bye for now from snowy upstate NY-we got over a foot of heavy wet snow yesterday (but had a snow day-yippeee!!).

Sick!!

Well, some sort of nasty virus snuck up on me Tues pm/Wed am.  I’ve been down and out with nausea, vomitting  and a fever.  I felt so awful I couldn’t even get on the computer (and that’s unheard of!).  I’m better today, just feel like I’ve been hit all over with a baseball bat.  I have now used up all my sick time at work, so time off for Steve’s upcoming surgery will be without pay.   On the positive side, I did manage to get 3 weeks worth of lesson plans written on Tuesday before all this hit.  And, it appears Steve’s sinus infection is clearing up.  We’re praying he doesn’t catch whatever I had, or the surgery will need to be postponed.  

Farm news: my husband tells me all the animals are OK.  Jugs are set up in the barn for lambing.  All we need to do now is hang the feeders, since he will be on lifting restrictions post-op.  Lots of work to get done this weekend!  We’re praying for lambing to hold off several days.  My brother in law will be here house/farm sitting, but has no experience with lambing, and we’d rather he not have to learn the hard way!

Burdock

Well I just came in from the barn…brrrr!  The other two rabbits were OK-I just trimmed their nails and clipped off a few small matted areas on Bart.  The sheep are a mess.  There is burdock stuck on their neck wool, and some have burdock elsewhere from lying down in hay that had burdock.  We have done a really good job of cleaning up our pasture of this nasty weed, but have less control over the hay.  We are fortunate to be able to buy hay nearby, and this is the first time we have had this problem.   We’ll just keep pulling the burdock out as we find it in the hay.  Fleece skirting will just take longer this year.  I’m pretty agressive picking out the VM, so it just means if I sell any fleeces this year they will be a lot smaller than usual!

Rabbit Maintenance and Burdock

I have 3 angora rabbits: one French, Jake,  and two German crosses, Toby and Bart.  Jake is prone to what I call “poopy butt”.  He tends to have soft droppings, and then he sits in them.  I brought him inside last night to dry off, then went to clip off the soiled wool (he’s at about 2″) this morning.  That part went pretty well, then I discovered the fur under his chin/chest was one big matted mass from burdock.  Yikes! Burdock are like incredibly strong little velcro bits.  They do not go well with angora wool.  He wasn’t very happy, but I did manage to get everything clipped out.  Now I need to check the other two rabbits to see if they are hiding more of the same.  Sigh…they were all fine 2 days ago-it doesn’t take long to get messed up.  The rabbits are all due to be shorn the end of March, so I would like to keep their coats nice.  This was especially frustrating, since Jake had a really nice coat with no other matting.  The burdock is coming in with our hay.  We first noticed the problem with the sheep.  I try now to go through all the hay before putting it in the cages/feeder, but some of the burdock must have still slipped by.

Welcome to Amazing Grace Farm’s First Blog Post!

Hello everyone from rainy and snowy upstate New York.  This is my first foray into blogdom.  I don’t know how to use a digital camera yet, so it will be text heavy for a while.  My first goal is to be able to post some photos of lambs this year.  Jacob lambs are just so cute that I wanted to share them with everyone! 

 For those who don’t know us, my husband and I have a small farm in upstate New York.  We are the third generation on his family farm, but the first to do any farming since about 1942.  We have a small flock of Jacob sheep (for more info on these wonderful sheep see www.jsba.org), along with some angora rabbits.  We have had guard llamas off and on (currently none). 

 The name of the farm reflects our Christian beliefs: without the Lord’s amazing grace we would still be lost sinners.  My husband is a pastor of a small rural Baptist church and I am a teacher/RN at the church’s Christian academy.   We are both retired from the military.

I’ll blog more later on how this Army brat (me) ended up on a farm.  Just a warning….if you are a knitter, who starts spinning, then decides to buy some handcards, which come with some black and white fleece to play around with….be careful where it leads you!