Winter is finally here!  It took its sweet time. If you scrape the snow aside you will find the green grass underneath. It was 9 degrees F this am. That is cold. Annmarie and I broke out the Carhart bibs on Sunday and it has gotten progressively colder. They say we are supposed to get more snow this week.  The cold temperatures will help the snow stay. Sprout is back to just running outside to go potty and then running over in front of the gas stove to get warm. He doesn’t like the bitter cold. The border collies don’t care its just something else for them to entertain themselves. They were so tired last night that before and after dinner they just sacked out. It was a refreshing change. The puppy always wants to play fetch. Whether you want to or not is irrevelant. 

Zeke has been a bad boy the last two evenings. When we go out to feed we use the dogs to push the animals away from us so they don’t rush the feeders while we are turned away. We don’t want to end up on the ground. Zeke does fine until you tell him to stay while you go in a hay room then he sneaks off. He runs away to galavant arohnd the farm. So when you come out with hay,  mouse is the only one still left. This is great that Mouse listens so well but Zeke is the alpha and should be the dominate example for good behavior. He is not a good example for everything and unfortunately the puppy takes direction from him. I think the puppy stays just so he can harass the animals!  

I got a fairy egg last night when I got eggs!!  That means the baby chickens are starting to lay eggs.  It’s a small egg the size of a quail egg and usually has no yolk. It’s from an immature hen’s reproductive system. Getting rid of the five roosters and getting the light going 18 hours a day is starting to pay off again. Our egg customers will be happy. 

The butcher came out first thing on Sunday morning. It had just gotten light when he knocked on our front door. I gave him the good news that the sheep were all ready to go. I was trying to get breakfast and just opted for coffee. While Annmarie and I were talking she hollered about a sheep in the front yard. When we were laying in bed, prior to getting up, Annmarie had noticed one of the sheep bleating. She thought that this was the same sheep. I went outside to catch the lamb when the butcher hollered that the sheep had gotten out of the corral. When he pinned them into a corner to grab three they started jumping on each other’s back to get over the corral wall. Two sheep had managed to get away. I went inside the house and grabbed a dog leash. I was finally able to catch the lamb, drag it over near the butcher on the yard side fence and hog tie three legs together with a dog leash. 

I left it in the yard instead of putting it in with the other sheep. I did think he would do the over back thing again if he was given a chance. I talked with the butcher and looked at the penned sheep. Sure enough the large whether that was so much of a problem managed to get out of the pen and is back with the other sheep. This caused me much angst. I went over to the herd and found him hiding in the background. I was getting ready to push them all in the barn and try to catch him when I realized I could just shoot him. This option seemed like an easy one. So I went back inside and grabbed the Ruger 10/22 bolt action rifle. I pushed all the sheep into the barn and the escape artist was in the very back of the barn hiding. I am not opposed to shooting inside the barn you just cannot miss.  He was not looking at me and I knew it had to. E a head shot. So I took careful aim and shot him in the head. He dropped like a stone. I congratulated myself, laid the rifle down and started to push the sheep out of the barn. He had his head up and was looking around!!  I was able to push the rest of the herd out while he drunkenly attempted to walk. I had given him a concussion!!  The bullet just bounced off his skull. This time I shut the barn doors and waited till he looked me straight in the eyes and shot him between the eyes. I dragged him out for the butcher and he gives me the good news that my hog tieing job only lasted 30 minutes. The sheep got loose. I just got in a position where I could shoot it in the head. I was done with chasing and dragging live animals. 

I saved all the solid organs, cow tails and cow tongues for some friends who feed their dogs an all natural diet. I will take the skulls up on the hillside to decay naturally. I have two skulls up on the hillsidefrom two years ago. It would take six months if I buried the heads but that is more work. I am not in a rush. 

The butcher was done in less than three hours. 

I tried to get on the machine roof and fix the Internet dish. We got all the tools together and I crawled up in the roof. I had not been up there ten minutes when it started to rain. I have worked in the ER too long to not know that I needed to get off the roof ASAP, no internet still. 

 

After getting the cows sorted we went to town to pick up our new piece of furniture from the antique store. I thought we were going to need three people to carry the thing across the bridge but come to find out yesterday it comes apart in pieces!!  It is a stacking modular system. Incredibly clever and well made. We had a spot for it just are not sure what we are going to put in it. 

We also scored some old maps from 1887 to 1913 of several local townships and some of the surrounding land. We are unsure how to mount them. We are thinking about covering an entire wall in the upstairs hallway as it never sees sunlight. It will take us a while to figure out how to effectively mount them. Until then I am going to cut three pieces of plywood and sandwich them under the bed so they lay flat. 

 

Dinner on the hoof!! Grass fed beef at its finest. 

 

AnnMarie had to go to a funeral so the job of sorting the sheep was left to Mouse, Zeke and myself!  We all three were confident in our abilities. 

So the first thing we did was push all the sheep into the barn and then pile them up at the end and run them through the chute. This went stunningly well. The dogs stayed in place with one tiny exception from mouse. I shook him and drug him back to his spot and he stayed. He really does know what he is supposed to do it’s just not what he wants to do all the time. 

We sorted out 15 sheep and once that was done we ran those fifteen sheep through a second time to get it down to ten.  I had one wily large whether that jumped over the gate!  I ran the sheep back into the barn four more times trying to just wade in and grab him. By the third time I wanted to just go get the 22 LR and let a bullet do the catching but the butcher was not coming until the next day!!!  So I kept at it and finally managed to get him and nine of his closest buddies into the corral so they were stuck and ready for the butcher. Every few years we get one animal that is just painful to handle. This was his year.