Monday, June 19, 2017

Fluttering, fleeces, a fright, and Father's Day

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get – at least on my blog! As a result, you are going to get a several-course meal, should you choose to partake. I'm already losing track of what happened which day, so these are all from "recently."

A red-winged blackbird visited us! I've see them down in the valley but never before at our feeder, so I grabbed my camera to document it.

Oops.

I try to document my lambs' progress when I can. Friday I got photos of two ewe lambs I'd really like to keep, Bernadette and Bette. Bernadette is the moorit (dark); Bette is the musket (lighter). They are cousins and half-sisters, having the same sire and out of ewes who are full sisters. Bette has an incredibly soft fleece, plus a long topline, perfect tail, and "a leg in each corner." Bernadette isn't quite as soft but measures up everywhere else, with the bonus of not having the fading gene. She also has pizzaz. ;-)

Then there's Bogie. He is the biggest lamb by far, with tiny "chocolate chip" scurs and a lovely musket fleece (although he looks dark in the photo above). I'm undecided about his future. His tail is long; while he could yet grow into it, do I want to wait and see or just wether him now? Such are the decisions of a shepherd.... Anyway, as big as he is, he always seems to lead the charge of escapees. Does THIS look like a sheep pasture to you?

How about this? Little truants; they wander around sampling things they shouldn't and collecting trash in their beautiful baby fleeces. The only one who rarely leaves the pasture is Bacall; I guess she's a mama's girl.

My dahlias didn't survive our wet winter, which is giving my Stella D'Oro dallies room to shine in my island flower bed. The white flags are thick this year, and the spirea are blushing pink.

I saw the beauties below in someone else's yard over the weekend. I have no idea what they are; they look like exotic orchids!

Just in time for the official start of summer, our weather has turned hot. Sniff; I miss the cool temps and lovely clouds already.

The other night I headed out for evening chores and saw color in the west. We don't have an unobstructed view of sunsets from our house, so I hiked up our gravel road to get a better look.

Saturday night while we were brushing our teeth, the water in our faucets spit, sputtered – and QUIT. We figured that either our pump died (we haven't replaced it in the 22 years we've lived here) or our well dried up (a dread of mine; it only gives 4-5 gallons/minute but it's the sweetest water I've ever tasted). There was nothing that could be done about it then, so we went to bed and tried not to think about another big-ticket item to add to the list (our dishwasher is on the fritz, my car needs a new intake manifold, and $1k worth of hay is waiting for us to pick up next Sunday).

On Father's Day morning we assessed what we needed to get by until we could call a well service company Monday morning. Rick called our neighbor down the hill to see if we could fill a couple water barrels at their place, and Dennis offered to help Rick trouble-shoot a couple things. Six months ago he had to replace his pressure switch, and thought that might be our problem. Praise the Lord and our wonderful neighbor, it was! He sent Rick off to Lowe's for parts, then came back up to help Rick install them. When water began flowing through our pipes again, it was with better pressure than before. We are so, so thankful!

Rick picked strawberries from our patch for the first time last week. For Father's Day, I made some of his favorite foods for dinner, including a strawberry rhubarb pie. Last night, he and Brian picked strawberries again, and got four times as much as the first picking.
They picked, so I prepped. Twelve pints are now in the freezer.

When I finally fell into bed at midnight, fumes of freshly offended skunk wafted through my open window. At least our dogs were in for the night!

That's it for now from . . .

7 comments:

Susan said...

Oh, those lambs are beautiful! I have to say, even though I don't miss the extra work and worry, I do miss having lambs around. And thanks for the reminder - I need to check my strawberries!

Theresa said...

We had a pump part that needed replacing too. The breaker kept flipping the well off so it was a slog for Gene in tight quarters getting everything replaced etc.
I would love some info on those strawberry plants. I would love to do some in raised beds. How many plants do all those strawberries represent. When to plant for next year?
We must be on the same cosmic plane. Our DW crapped out in February I think. We got a decent one for not too much money after doing a little research. When your ready to replace drop me a line and I'll send along the model number/brand.
Oh...fresh hay. Sweet!

C-ingspots said...

We have one of those rather expensive lists going as well...pulley in our lawn mower went bad and we're hoping we can replace the part only. Our hay should be delivered towards the end of this week too, and that's going to be a big check. Thankful I have the $$ to pay for that! That's just life I guess...your strawberries look wonderful. I got some from my little patch too this year.

Sharon said...

I know well (pun intended) what kind kind of pressure you experienced. One of my criterias when we were house hunting here was to be on city water. I was more than ready to say goodbye to the loss of water in a power outrage. Our city water is sweet and I love to drink it cold right out of the tap. I know I take it for granted.

Mama Pea said...

My husband commented just last night that things would go a lot smoother around here and projects would progress faster if we didn't have all the every day (AND unexpected) maintenance to constantly take care of!

Our strawberries should be ready 'round about the first week in July. I hope. I'm ready for a big bowl of strawberries and cream!

Lovely pictures, as usual. You be a goooood photographer!

Donna said...

Nice update. So glad your water problem was an easy fix. You must have quite the strawberry patch!

Claire MW said...

Wow...busy times, and challenging ones too. Those strawberries look absolutely marvelous. The wild strawberries in my woods are just coming into flower now. They never get bigger than peas, but the taste is fabulous.