How it's going

Shearing? No more progress. I'm hoping to harvest two more fleeces this week, probably the rams because the ewes are busy during the day....

Stretching our hay with grazing? Wonderful! Our good neighbors on the north have almost five acres of grass that someone used to harvest for cattle hay but no longer does, and they have made it available to us. We both had some electric netting and we've combined it so the ewes can intensively graze one small section at a time, eliminating their need for hay. To get them out there, I selectively halter five of them each morning and lead them (with the loose three following) through three gates. To get them in each night, I take out a can with some sheep feed to rattle and they follow me back to the fold. We may end up grazing the horses over there part of the time as well, but right now they have good grazing in our upper pasture. As for the middle pasture, at least some of the grass seed has germinated; hurray!

Hopefully the barn swallows can raise a clutch before we fill the barn with hay again.

Agility with Poppy? Slightly better results at our trial yesterday, and no falls. In fact, I felt better physically than I have in a long time, no knee pain or sciatica to impair my movement or make standing uncomfortable.

Agility goals: This woman is 90 years old and is an amazing handler.

"I just exist to look cute."

Gardening? I bought some starts and Rick weeded the strawberries last week, then tilled the garden Sunday. He says he might till it again to work in some compost but I'm not going to wait too long to plant!

Rhubarb at back left, walking onions in the middle, snowpeas on the right.

Sky shows? Still happening; I capture them when I can.

That's it for now from . . .

April showers...

...bring May grass, hopefully! Flowers we've already got....

Once again Rick tilled up the middle pasture and seeded it, hoping to replace the weeds with quality forage. He did this last year at a time when we should have gotten more rain but didn't, and nothing germinated. Today we're getting some much-needed moisture, so hopefully we'll have better success this year.

The rain will be good for the garden, too. Not that we've tilled or planted anything yet, but we do have perennial strawberries and rhubarb. Monday I decided to take a look at the walking onions I planted last year. They are surrounded by weeds (mostly the Red Dead-nettle that took over the middle pasture last year) but look good – MUCH better than they looked all last summer. Then to my surprise I noticed that there were sugar pod peas flourishing and flowering on the trellis I never took down! That should tell you just how mild our winter was.

All the members of my flock are still wearing their fleeces, but some of them are trailing bits; the shaggy ones will be first on the shearing stand. We've had some warm days when I could have comfortably started, but then it got cooler again. Wouldn't you know it; the next warming spell is over the coming weekend when I'll be at the coast for our church's annual women's retreat! Ah well, the sheep will get sheared, eventually.

While obsessing over the need to start shearing, I've noticed the pairs in my ewe flock. As shown above, I have a pair of black ewes, a pair of moorit ewes, a pair of grey ewes, and a pair of musket ewes (which means half of my ewes have the Agouti/fading gene). A pair of them are spotted . . . all of them are related. My mind likes to play these little mathematical games. 😉

Now that I've caught up on my blog, I think I'll make like the dogs and take a wee nap. In case it's catching, like seeing someone yawn, I'll prime the pump with some of Poppy's assorted places and positions.

That's it for now from . . .

"No hoof, no horse"

Lance's hooves are only temporarily out of commission

The title is a well-known saying to any horse person. This horse person has been living with "one toe, much woe" – I talked about it in my February 20 post and it continued to be extremely limiting, i.e. excruciating. On March 6 I noticed that my right foot was swelling, and I thought it showed some increased redness as well. Yikes; would I be okay until my Tuesday appointment with a podiatrist?

But on March 7 there was a change. The soft, unstructured shoes I wore to church were intolerable, so I slipped off my right shoe during study class and worship service. Interestingly, when I carefully put my right shoe back on to get out to our vehicle for the trip home, it wasn't as uncomfortable. After lunch when I pulled off my tights I looked at the offending toe and saw that the scab/callous had moved, and indeed was now just a flap. I showed it to Rick, who pulled off the flap to reveal a rather alarming hole.

He got some antibiotic ointment out of his vet truck and I kept that and a bandage on it. By appointment time Tuesday morning it looked markedly better. The podiatrist said it was clear there had indeed been infection, but the improvement was obvious so keep doing what I was doing. Then he addressed the toe itself, which had obviously been broken and healed bent, making re-injury from rubbing likely. The possible interventions aren't convincing, though, so for now I'm holding off. It's healing.

Enough about the toe already!!! There are much prettier things to look at around here, so let's look.

frog dogs

couch potato

chair potato?

Bernadette popped out of her sheep suit so I had to get her a bigger one

on the town with my honey

a rare morning rainbow in the west

Inglenook sticklebatt singles, done

navy singles, ready to ply with sticklebatt singles

starting plying while keeping my son company

Oh yeah, happy St. Patrick's Day from . . .