Month: March 2017

In life there are actions, and reactions, cause, and effect, and the like. What you do has consequences, we sometimes call these ramifications, but that is not really what I am talking about, just needed a clever title to emphasize the amount of rams we have had on the farm lately. You see, sheep are a herd animal and you can have one ram to like 30 sheep. Well thanks to the game of binary gender when you have lambs they are either boys or girls, they do not get to decide later in life, nor do they really care, or if they do, they show no sign of it. That being said, we were given two rams from our Finnsheep Minnie, of the whitish variety, and then her sister not to be out done gave us 3 more black rams, but unfortunately one of them did not make it. So now we have a ratio of 12 rams to 11 ewes. I would say that this does not bode well, but they are all a blessing. We can turn these rams in wethers, and then they will be great company for our other males until they are sold, but in addition to this, their wool will be more abundant as they will not be putting all that energy into other things.

We have not named any of the lambs yet, but here are some pictures of the most recent two.

We are still expecting to get some nice lambs from one of our babydolls Marilyn, however, she is keeping them tucked inside for now. Though her milk bag is getting YEWG(Huge for those who don’t speak President Trump), which is a good sign that she is getting close to releasing the hostages. Our humble farm is slowly becoming a real life working farm, and God willing we will continue to put our efforts in making it a good home for our children and our animals. Of course, if you want to save these Finns from losing their um… male bits, they are for sale. We will be selling them for 400 each, as they are register able rams.

As I mentioned in the previous post we have been blessed with the fields next to us that our sheep can wander in and have all the grass they can manage to chew in a day’s time. Well it is getting to be that time of year where things that are not watered constantly begin to dry up and die and turn into a fire hazard, so the person who owns the field is doing the weed abatement thing, but says that our sheep can still roam up there after all is said and done.

So while we will be losing the food supply for a short amount of time, it is for the best as the dead grass is really not nutritious for them anyway. However, as a repayment to Blaze for letting us, wait for it… ewes…. the land, this coming year he should not have to worry about paying for the weed abatement as they should do a good job on keeping up with the newer stuff that grows. They were at a slight disadvantage this year as it had become so overgrown and they couldn’t graze it until far too late in the season.

This situation has revealed a great amount of selfishness and entitlement in me though. I was frustrated that we had been given all rams, instead of being grateful for all that our Lord and King has provided for us. I have been bitter because the blessing I was given was not the blessing that I wanted. Not even a serious issue like Paul who had some sort of actual problem he was dealing with, asked God 3 times to remove it from him, and God responds with “My grace is sufficient for you”. One of the apostles, counting all as rubbish for the sake of the Lord, and here I am disheartened because I have been given more than I need. Instead I should be called to praising the Father who provides, and asking that He remember our brothers and sisters around the world who are in fact suffering, for His name sake.

It has been roughly 3 months since our last post about life here on the farm, and in that time much has happened. We have had our ups and downs, our struggles and our victories. However, we have also had new blood here on the farm, both figuratively and literally.

Let us go back to the start of the year. Recently someone purchased the land next to us where there is a LOT Of overgrown vegetation. We have been given permission to take all the weeds that we want from up there to feed our sheep with the promise that once it is gated off from the surrounding area we can then let our sheep roam up there all the day long and eat to their hearts content. So we are allowing all of our females up there(11 currently) to go up and clean the lot for the new owner. This is a tremendous blessing, as it has reduced our feed bill huge amounts and lets our sheep really travel and burn off all that um… *gulp* “delicious” grass stuff calories. To facilitate this better we have taken the ewes out of their pens with the respective mates, and brought them out to the area where we have many of our fruit trees and vines. They promptly went to work and ate all the vegetation on the ground and cleared that area along with some of the bark from out trees. We have since fixed this problem but some of the damage was already done. Have I mentioned before that we are learning on the go?

Meet Ender:

 

 

he is lively, super happy to see just about anyone, mail lady excluded, and overall a great dog. He is normally our front yard dog, but we will on occasion take him out to the back lot to help round up the chickens which he does faster than I can even begin to start getting one herded to where they belong. However, recently we had a visitor come over and they did not close the gate behind them, so Ender thinking he had free reign of the land went out the gate, but there were not any chickens to herd, no, only the females we have been letting roam around. So he chased them all around freaking out our sheep, and even biting one of them in an attempt to control them I guess. We got him back in the yard, and everything was fine up until about 2 weeks ago when he got out again, same method of the gate being left open, this time he actually got a hold of one of the Ewe’s legs and tore a good portion of skin off of it, we have been keeping it bandaged and cleaning it, she is no longer limping on it and is able to get around and eat again, but we were very concerned for her for a while as she is one of our pregnant ewes.

As of last Monday we got a set of clipping shears so that I can shear our sheep. I have used these a little bit already to clear the back ends of some of our expecting ewe’s. Problem is that I am not even an amateur at this, I am a complete cotton headed ninny muggins. One of our sheep is showing pretty much one cheek, while another looks like she has coat tails. I figure with time I can get better at this, and save myself some money and turn it into a great homeschooling lesson for the kids. I will be taking pictures of the sheep once sheared for my records or just a good story.

Now for the good news, we just had our first set of Spring lambs(pictured below). They look more like their father Frank, and follow in suit as they are twin males. Minnie, their mother, is already taking to their needs and treating them with all the love a lamb can get. I love observing little lambs and thinking about how our Lord Christ is compared to a Lamb.

 

 

Personally before I owned any sheep, I mistakenly thought of the expression more as Jesus is a sheep, gentle and all, but not really lamb like. Let me explain, a sheep, while being a prey animal is still capable of mauling more than just grass, in particular a full grown ram is rather powerful and not very docile. However, in looking at a lamb, they are gentle because they are not capable of being anything else, they cannot attack, they cannot play viciously, they are gentle, they are fragile, and they are rather loving. Do not get me wrong I am not trying to carry the analogy to its furthest and compare Christ to all these things, He is far from helpless, but the expression of a lamb is used to describe what I believe would be considered by those hearing among the most gentle of animals. Christ as our King is a lamb to those who are His, but He is also compared to a Lion, not only majestic but powerful and terrifying, as our Lord would be to His enemies.