Friday was a whirlwind day for us.  We dropped our child off to help with housework at her Grandmother’s house (she is getting paid ) and drove to Baker City, Oregon to pick up five new barbados cross sheep (hair sheep) from a gal over there who had been using them to train her border collie.  The sheep are supposed to be around 3 months old.  Once we got on top of Cabbage Hill the snow on the road started to appear.  It is no wonder people run off the road.  They act like they are invincible and just speed on by.  We met at a gas station in Baker City (it used to just be called Baker, but they changed the name, go figure).  When the gal showed up she had all five sheep in a calf crate.  I figured the crate would be packed with sheep, nope.  They are tiny sheep!!  Only weigh about 20-25# each.  They also have sore mouth.  The lady was very apologetic and offered to drive them over later once it was healed up.  I had no clue what it was.  Annmarie told me it was a virus and typically goes away.  The lady had treated it with iodine that morning.  Basically, it is the same virus that causes hand, foot and mouth disease was what I got out of it.
So we took the sheep and vowed to put them in a separate area.  She had been keeping them in a pen outside so the sheep were used to no shelter.  It was pouring down snow now of course and the restroom on the highway was closed and I missed the only turnoff to LaGrande.  So Annmarie really had to pee.  At the bottom of Cabbage Hill we stopped at the Arrowhead Truck Stop.  I gassed up while waiting for Annmarie.  As we were pulling out of the gas station heading toward the stop sign we head someone honking.  We looked around but didn’t see anybody so we pulled up to the stop sign.  More honking ensued and I saw a truck pull in behind us.  We got out and some gentleman came out and asked us if those were Barbados sheep?  We went in to our story and plan and he tells us that he raises Barbados Blackbelly sheep and lives in Pendleton.  Not only that he would only charge us $50 for a small ewe and he has a ram occasionally so we can diversify our bloodlines when necessary.  So he gave us a card so we could get out of the way (we were blocking traffic and the cars were starting to line up).
I asked if Annmarie wanted Chinese or Mexican food in Pendleton.  She wanted Chinese.  So as we are entering town she changes her mind and states she wants Mexican.  So we go down to the Mexican restaurant order food and eat.  One of the cooks comes out and asks if we have sheep in the pickup (someone must have told him, there was a new cook who had just arrived and they had been talking in Spanish).  We told him yes, he asked to go look at them and then came in and asked if we would sell any.  We said yes again and gave him our name and number.  We said we would charge $50 for a 20-30# animal. This was the weight range he was looking at.  We also told him we had a bigger weather at the house if he was interested.
He hasn’t called yet, but the new sheep have settled in nicely.  They are pretty skittish around the dogs.  I finally had to yell at Sprout to quit running through them.  He knows better than to chase the sheep, but these are so skittish that if ran in front of them they scatter.  After three times, I had to tell him to knock it off.
So it looks like we can get a few more ewes this next year locally.  Will be nice to not have to drive a long ways away.  It was kind of funny the way things kept falling in place for the day.  Sometimes it just works.

Annmarie had a whole list of things for me to do today.  All of them outside in the freezing cold.  Her number one concern was the back fence.  The back creek had started to dam up against my fence.   This is not good and could lead to the water tearing down my entire fence.  So I needed to get out there and dig out the tumbleweeds and leaves and raise the panels above the water level.  I had every intention of just going outside and doing that this morning, but I got distracted.
I found someone on Craigslist selling hair sheep over the weekend.  Annmarie called them and arranged for us to purchase and transport them home this up coming Saturday.  We got a good deal $60/each.  They are still teenagers.  I believe they are only 3 months old.  At 6 months old they go into estrus.  Now the problem with this is we still do not have  trailer.  Plus, the racks on our pickup were pretty bad, so I have been slowly taking them apart to use as wire tighteners in the fence I have been building during the Summer.  Luckily for me, I slowed down on the fence building and there was still uprights in the pickup bed to build onto.  So another one of my jobs for today was to build new racks for the sheep, plus the lady selling us the sheep was worried about the cold and weather so it needed a cap to keep the weather out.  Sarah reminded me this morning that we needed another feeder for the sheep and wouldn’t it be nice if the feeder was just under the open window where the baby enclosures were.
So I went into the barn leanto and moved the baby enclosures and drug another feeder from the other end of the barn into the sheep area.  I re stacked the hay to get it away from the open window and filled the feeder from all the loose hay on the ground.  I scavenged the wire doors from the front of the baby enclosures for the back of the pickup.  Next I went to the old granary and dug around inside for some scrap wood.  I ended up cutting a large chunk of conveyor belt (made out of wood, canvas and leather) to use as the walls.  I pulled the pickup into the yard so I would have easy access to power and began my new pickup racks.  I added a four foot deep lid made out of two pieces of OSB with a blue tarp sandwiched between them.

 Who really knows where the conveyor belt came from?  It was probably some old combine but I don’t know for sure.  It was just sitting there not doing anything.  Eventually, I am going to use up all those old things and go wanting.  But at least they will have had a second life.

Now nothing goes this smoothly.  I had to take a break before building the racks to cut down a pine tree (the chain saw was on the old house porch in my way).  So I fired up the chainsaw, it was fairly easy, and it died.  No gas, so I filled the gas and oil and fired it up again.  I went over to the tree, decided my plan of attack (the tree needed to fall into the orchard not our yard or on the house, of course it was leaning toward the back creek) and started cutting.  I would have made more progress with a butter knife.  After five minutes I had to stop and go sharpen the chain saw blade (another 30 minute operation) and then reattempt cutting the tree down.  It took me 3 tries to get the notch right and then when I came in from the backside the tree fell just where I wanted it to go.  I guess all that hard manual labor cutting firewood as a kid paid off.
So after finishing the pickup rack I went out to lock the chickens up and every door was wide open.  So as I am closing the door inside the coop that goes to the supply room (my chicken supplies and food and access to all the nest boxes is in a separate room that the chickens cannot get to.  I hear frantic scrabbling, some of the kittens are inside the coop.  So I had to leave the inside door open so they could get out.  I did lock the chicken yard gate down so the cats will have to spend the night with the chickens.  If they don’t like the chickens then they will be a little more careful tomorrow.

I looked out the back kitchen window at lunch and noticed the back creek was running.  This is very bad.  The back creek is a runoff creek only.  It normally runs from late February to June.  It is December and it is running.  This is a first for us in the last three years.  That means we are way too warm.  It has been over freezing for the last three days and we have had a chinook wind come in and melt all of the snow away.  The really bad part is my new fence had to be improved over the creek to keep the sheep from escaping.  If the water is going to keep running I need to go out and prop the panels up out of the water so my fence doesn’t get ripped out.  That would be very very bad.  So I really hope it gets another 15 degrees colder so this problem goes away.  I have been on vacation for two weeks so I have been unable to get my cheap chicken food, so tomorrow I will have to pick up some expensive food for the chickens.  They are almost out.  I keep hearing the coyotes at night howling and carrying on the last few nights.  So far we have not forgotten to lock up the chickens and I have not lost any in a while.