Attack of the Laundry

We're still lambing...up to 65 babies now, all running around the pasture like little hoodlums. For the last week our friend Mary H. (holding lamb above) has been living with us, helping Melissa out on pasture. At least three times a day they bring in a bag full of towels, which they've used to clean off lambs. I gingerly carry the bag to the washing machine, tip the bag upside down, and avert my eyes. When the load is done, I happily transfer the clean towels to the dryer.

Today didn't go as smoothly. As I was pulling Melissa's jeans from the load of clean towels/jeans, something cold and long and well, slimy, leapt from the jeans and wrapped itself around my wrist. I might have shrieked, but in a brave, mature way, then noticed this same filmy stuff was all over M's clean pants, one glob right next to my other hand.

I summoned Melissa and Mary to the laundry room. "What is this? What is this? What is this?" (Take note: An effective technique for communicating distress is to ask the same question several times in a loud, slightly frantic voice.)

Melissa pulled the goop off the pants with her bare hands, examined it, then pronounced it to be the film or sac that the lambs are born in, sort of a biological Saran Wrap. It must have been on one of the towels. I might have begun jumping up and down at this point.

Mary H. stared at me. After a week out on pasture with Melissa, she failed to see how adorable and endearing it is to be grossed out by this stuff. She frowned. "What's the big deal? At least it's clean."

Ugly rumors have begun circulating that I then walked around the laundry room shaking my hands and saying, "icky, icky, icky." These rumors are totally unfounded.

I've learned my lesson. It isn't enough to fear my dirty laundry. I now must fear my clean laundry as well. What will I pull out of the washing machine next time? More "Saran Wrap"? Placental material? Laundered lamb poop?

Mary's right. I should just relax. After all, it'll be clean.

Here are more photos if you need a lamb fix:

Lots of Lambs (and some in slings!)


I think we're up to 41 lambs now, and we've had 6 sets of triplets. So Melissa brought in the smallest of each group, (the smallest always ends up not getting enough to drink from her mother so we help out by feeding it) and now I have 6 bottle lambs. My hands smell like milk. My face smells like milk. My kitchen smells like milk. When I lay in bed at night, I hear lambs yelling for supper. When I stand at the checkout in the grocery store I hear lambs yelling for supper. It's weird.

All 6 are sold, so I'm just getting them used to the bottle before I send them on their way. Feeding bottle lambs 5 times a day is a lot of work, and I'm always relived to see them go. (So why do I cry every time the people drive away with them? Such a big baby...)

Here they are in their barn pen, getting to know each other.





I'll post photos from the pasture soon, but I'm pretty busy with these babies for another day. (And now our friend Mary H. is here living with us for a week, so SHE's out in the pasture with Melissa.) But here's a photo of a great invention we use on pasture: the lamb sling.


No, it's not a device for torturing small mammals, but a way to deal with multiple lambs. Say Melissa is out by herself and is trying to process triplets. She puts two lambs in the slings, where they hang from the four-wheeler or a nearby branch. (On this farm lambs really do grow on trees!) By the way, this lamb above was looking totally perky until I got out the camera, then he hangs his head and looks very sorry for himself. What a drama queen.

If Melissa needs to bring a lamb in, she'll put the sling around her neck so she can drive the 4-wheeler; sometimes she'll roar up with two lambs around her neck.

The other cool use for a lamb sling is moving ewes. Sometimes we need to move a ewe from Point A to Point B. She won't move if her lambs don't come with her, so we catch her lambs and use them as bait. But if we pick them up and hold them in our arms, she thinks her lambs have disappeared. She knows they don't have wings, so her lambs, to really be her babies, must remain on the ground. Walking across the pasture, bent over, trying to hang on to two 8-pound, squirming lambs and keep them at ground level means a sure trip to the chiropractor. But with lamb slings, you can stand upright, and keep the babies at ground level, where Mama sees them, and follows them. Heck of a system, and low-tech at that.




Last night I took a few hours to run into the Twin Cities and be an author (my new novel is out---The Spanish Pearl---am very excited!), then came home, crawled back into my favorite pair of poop and milk-stained overalls, then it was back to being a farmer.

We're Off and Running!

Last evening while I was at yet another meeting, lambing officially began! Ewe #104 had a baby boy. Because I wasn't there when Melissa 'processed' the baby, no photo. But this morning, 9703 had an even bigger boy. He enjoyed the photo session because we scratched his head and chin, and soon he forgot he was supposed to be afraid of us, and just closed his eyes in baby bliss.

When a lamb is just a few hours old, Melissa catches it. It doesn't run away because it doesn't know what's up. She gives the lamb a shot and an ear tag, bands its tail, looks it over to make sure it has all its parts, and feels for a belly to make sure it's nursing. The last thing the lamb gets is a big kiss on the head, then Melissa releases the lamb and it goes scampering back to its bellowing mom. After this, the lamb will be impossible to catch unless we can sneak up while it's sleeping.

We are getting pretty relaxed about lambing. We used to make sure the ewes were in the right part of the pasture days before lambing started. They still aren't there this year, but we're moving them in that direction. No big deal.

Days in advance, I always made sure I had lots of frozen colostrum for a sick newborn, but I didn't start thinking about that until yesterday. Got some from a friend, so that's done.

No straw in the barn in case I need to make a bed for a bottle lamb, so we'll scare some up soon enough.

Is this called "just in time" management? Or "wait until the last minute" management? Or maybe it's called "Relax, we've done this enough times we know we'll solve each problem that arises" management.

Two ewes have given birth, one's in labor as I type, so we have 41 ewes left to go.....

There will be more cute lamb photos to follow, should any of our sheep actually give birth to a cute lamb... :-)

Animal Communication

I have an uncanny ability to communicate with our sheep. Just the other day I walked by a pregnant ewe as she rested on the ground, chewing her cud. She was, to put it mildly, very wide. An untrained eye would read her body language to say, "I'm a happy sheep." I, however, could tell by the look in her eye she was really saying, "I'm gonna need a winch to get back on my feet."

Sometimes animal communication works, sometimes it doesn't. Take the fall when we'd changed how we arranged the big round bales (about 700 pounds each, 6 ft tall, 6 ft. wide.) Instead of putting them one by one, with panels around each to keep the sheep from climbing on them, we put them four together, then put panels around this quartet.

It didn't take long for the sheep to somehow defeat our panel system, and soon they were frolicking on top of the four bales. Not surprisingly, one slipped. Her back end wedged itself between the convergence of the four bales. Melissa tried for half an hour to free her, pushing, shoving, and murmuring words of comfort and encouragement. Finally she appeared in my office. "I need your help."

I changed into my work clothes, perhaps mumbling a bit at the interruption. I marched out to the hay bales, letting the gate slam behind me, then confronted the ewe, a ballerina on tiptoes wearing a tutu of hay bales. "Hey!" I said.

The sheep shot straight up into the air, slid down the bale, and ran off. Melissa's mouth dropped in awe. "Wow," she said. "Anytime," I replied, then went back inside, changed out of my work clothes and started working again.

An hour later Melissa returned. "Got another one." I went through the clothes-changing routine, slammed the gate, confronted the ewe in the same situation as the last one, backside jammed down between the bales. "Hey!" I said.

Nothing happened. She just stared at us. This one was obviously stuck, and good. We slid a long 2x4 in between the bales, trying to push her butt up. The 2x4 snapped. While Melissa returned to the barn, I hung out with the ewe, who by now was greedily eating from the bales forming her prison. I was just about to remind her that eating wasn't going to help the situation, but stopped, since I tend to eat more when stressed as well.

Melissa brought out a long metal pole, which we poked between the bales. The sheep squirmed at this, perhaps not liking the feel of a metal pole being poked at her butt. I was getting discouraged. "Maybe we should bring her a bucket of water and deal with it tomorrow."

Nope. We couldn't use the tractor to move the bales because there was a fence in the way. By now it was dusk, and getting hard to see. Melissa brought down the pickup, a chain, and a grappling hook. She'd sink the hook into the top of the bale, the only part she could reach, drive away, and the hook would come sliding out. We repeated this step an embarrassing number of times, succeeding only in moving one bale about two feet. The ewe dropped down onto her hooves, but now was totally surrounded by the bales. Finally Melissa bravely took the hook in hand, and literally dove up and over where two bales met. Her head was down in the ewe's little prison. All I could see were her boots up in the air. "I'm stuck," she said.

"Maybe I should bring you a bucket of water and---"

"Not funny. Stuck tight---can't breathe---hook's in bottom of bale---pull with truck."

Terrified the hook would slide out of the bale and impale Melissa, I nonetheless jumped into the pickup and drove forward until I heard a shout. I leapt from the pickup in time to see Melissa slide to the ground, and the ewe spring over her through the opening I'd made.

The ewe baaaed all the way up to the barn, no doubt planning to complain to the SPCA about being touched inappropriately in her swimsuit area. I might have to have a chat with her about gratitude. Luckily I know how to communicate with sheep.

"Hey, nice orbs."

For those of you who enjoy a good farm story, I'm sorry but I don't have one today. Come back in a few days and I'll tell the one about the sheep who had just cause to file a complaint with the SPCA. Today, however, it's ROVING and YARN time.





Roving: Yesterday I rolled the big bag of roving into 4 oz balls and it was SO much fun. I can't believe how soft it is. True, it's not Merino or alpaca, but coming from a non-fancy sheep, it's softer than I ever imagined it could be. I had so much fun rolling the balls I was sorry when the bag was empty.

Melissa wandered by and noticed there was a wee bit of vegetable matter in the roving. "Hey, this is perfectly good sheep food," she cried. We thought about it, then decided we wouldn't charge extra, even though you'll be getting a few actual pieces of Rising Moon Farm in your roving. (!) Really, the veg matter is VERY minimal, and Melissa is researching coats, so soon some of the ewes will consider themselves fashion plates, and likely be very hard to live with.

I probably shouldn't call these 4 oz orbs 'balls,' since I've used the word 'scrotum' freely in this blog, so I'll use what another fiber person called them: Bumps. Anyone interested in a book and a bump? Keep reading.



Yarn: The yarn comes in three colors, as named by the fiber mill: soft gray, cream, and fawn. It's soft yarn, 4 ply, worsted weight. The fiber mill made it into whopping 300 yd. skeins.

Since I can't get my website updated for a few weeks, this blog's my only way to share what's for sale. I don't have lots of any of this, but it will be fun to see what you think. And I'd LOVE to see photos of anything you make out of our yarn and roving. Heck, maybe I should have a contest or something....The first entry could be the hat below that our friend Jan, primo knitter and kick-ass librarian, made from #9's first fleece. The reluctant model is Sophie.




Along with the fiber, I can also sell you personally autographed copies of my book, Hit By a Farm, (autograph is free, of course!) Book is $14.95 but I'll knock some off if you buy bumps or skeins.

So here goes:

Roving: (It's all white except I have four bumps of soft gray) $9 per 4 oz bump (GRAY ROVING GONE as of 5/4/07; lots of white roving left...don't make me spin it all myself!)

Book and a Bump? $23
Book and Two Bumps? $30

Yarn: $12 for a 300 yd. skein (ALL YARN SOLD OUT as of 5/10/07...I'll make more!)
Book and a Skein? $25

Add $5 for shipping and handling, and we're good to go. Email your order to me at info@risingmoonfarm.com so I hang on to it for you, then send a check, made out to Rising Moon Farm, to Box 21, Zumbrota, MN 55992.

There. Have I forgotten anything?