Sheep - Border Leicester

We’re looking at picking up some sheep. Border Leicester’s, to be precise. They are a heavy wool and meat breed. Any of you spinners know anything about their wool?

Goat Update

Toby died yesterday afternoon, probably around 4pm. I found him around 6pm and Kathy and I buried him in the orchard. At 4pm I prayed that God's will be done and if it was his will to take this small life back then that he do it swiftly to keep Toby from suffering.



I believe he may have eaten something toxic that shut down his rumen. There's some new plants growing in the barn pasture that I haven't seen before. They grow tall where everything else has been nibbled down low, so the rest of the goats are leaving them alone. Someone, however, had eaten 1 or 2. I pulled those plants out and my hands burned and stung for an hour. It's not a nettle, but something weird.

Goat update and garden work

I got my tiller going (the part I ordered wasn’t the correct part so I had to do it the hard way) and got a long row tilled. That soil out there is so bad it takes about 8-10 passes with the tiller before it’s even beginning to be usable. Even then you get about 5-6” of broken clay soil and the rest is hardpan. It’s a mess. Going to take YEARS of work out there to have a workable field. Anyway, the rain was coming in fast but with Kat’s help we got the rest of the fingerling potatoes planted as well as some of the Red Gold potatoes. Tomorrow I need to work up another row or two and then get some other stuff planted as well.

Toby the goat is still alive, but he looks like he’s about on his final lap. I don’t know what happened to him, but he looks pretty bad. He’s laying down his with his head in the straw making pitiful little noises. The other goats are standing nearby, milling about nervously. They don’t know what’s going on with their herdmate but they don’t like it and wish the two-legs would fix it. We gave him some Tylenol, a shot (some vitamins and an immune system booster) as well as some baking soda but he’s not doing any better. He’s doing worse. At this point I’m giving him until Monday morning, and if he’s still suffering as badly I’m going to put him down.

Sick Goat

I get home to find one of my goats is sick. It’s Toby, one of the neutered males. He’s listless, doesn’t move around much and looks droopy. By all accounts he was fine all day today and came up on this suddenly, but I’m not sure how closely anyone else was watching him during the day. He’s grinding his teeth. I’m not sure what the problem is, but it doesn’t look very promising.

Beekeeper Follies

I met another beekeeper recently. He’s young, like myself, or at least young compared to your average beekeeper. I was very excited. As you may be aware, beekeepers are kind of thin on the ground these days and so it’s hard to get information to share back and forth. We chatted a little and it seems he’s been keeping bees for about 3 years now, 2 years longer than me. However every bit of advice he gave me ended up with “but my bees died anyway”. That undermined his position as an authority.

Why can't I be known as Mr. Nice Guy?

I’ve been working with these same folks for over a week now. Today one of them told me, “You can go from laughing and joking to all business in about two seconds, and your all business is mean.”

It’s strange how your self-image can differ so greatly from the way others perceive you, and I’m always surprised when I get a look at myself from someone else’s perspective. I like to think of myself as a friendly person, loved by all, a big cuddly bear. That’s my self-image. Apparently it’s wrong.

Did you see the one about the ...

Goings on

I finally fixed my tiller and got the smaller (last year’s) garden plowed up, and went over this year’s new pasture too. About 4500 square feet of space. It needs another pass here soon, but now my tiller is broken again. The recoil spring for the starter rope is broken. It’s a very minor thing, but the world doesn’t like you to fix things so nobody has any parts on hand. They all promise they can order me one and it’ll be here in a few days to two weeks.

Kat helped me and we got a bunch of potatoes and strawberries planted. I’ve turned over two full raised beds to strawberry production. Everything else grows just as well in the ground, so why not, I figure. I’d like to plant a lot more annual fruit and veggies, just so that I can increase my annual yield without having to increase my spring workload.

The fox hasn’t shown up lately, possibly because I’m working outside most all day every day. Either way, our chickens seem to be doing well.