Silly lambs

We were gone all day yesterday and when we got home our 2 bottle lambs were waiting for us.  They were so ready to eat that they followed us up the stairs and in the house.  We were carying things so we could not stop them.

I wonder where they learned that trick from?

Merry Christmas From the Barn

Merry Christmas says the poofy head (Silver laced polish)

Merry Christmas from the Auracanna (blue egg layer) and all of her little friends.

Merry Christmas from Kanga, the rescued lamb.

Merry Christmas from 27

Princess kind of says Merry Christmas. But Na-Na (right) wants to know where her food is.

Merry Christmas from 64, our very first mama ever on the farm and a great mother she is. 27 is her little girl.

Merry Christmas from Meadow, the most adorable girl. She love us even more than her sheepy friends and follows us everywhere.

Merry Christmas from Bam Bam, the fleecy winner of the Lamb and Wool festival. (We need to clip around his eyes so he can see better.

Baaaaaaaaaa, where is our food?

Not all of the critters are pictured.

Brown Eggs vs White Eggs

From the top left corner going clockwise: brown egg dyed blue, white egg dyed blue, brown egg dyed blue and then red

Left: white egg dyed yellow, brown egg dyed yellow

I prefer the brown eggs. The red dyed eggs were red instead of pink when using a brown egg.

The Garden / Weed Patch

The hard way to make hay (this is Dear):


Me using the brush hog (much easier):

Gotta spread all that manure (Chicken, pig, sheep, and llama)

The birdies are having fun finding crickets

Sneaky little hens

We knew we were missing some eggs. With 11 Buff Orpington hens laying, we were only getting 6-7 eggs a day. We looked all over and found some hidden nests in the bushes, but still we were missing some. Barn pick up day came and we moved a stack of wood .....

Sneaky little buggers! These will get tossed. There is no telling how old they are and they were cold, so no little chicks growing in them now.

Getting the Barn Ready

After a long winter there is a lot of cleanup that must be done before the next winter. The sheep are housed in the barn most of the winter and we use the deep bedding method. Deep bedding simply means we keep adding bedding on top of the dirty stuff. It gets about knee deep by spring. Some countries make it illegal to house sheep in any other manner. Deep bedding creates a much warmer environment and is actually more sanitary because all of the moisture goes into the lower levels of straw and the top level stays more dry.

Dear already removed all of the bedding early this spring and it has turned into a pretty nice compost and will be tilled into the garden soon. But, we have to remove stantions, build new corals, build a place for the chickens so the pathway stays cleaner, remove siding, and build hay feeders. We will be working on that today, hopefully.

I will have to hang colorful sheets of material on the walls when I take a picture. Everything is monochromatic on this blog. I need more color! I will try and spice it up. I have some picture of colorful projects to post and lots of flowers. I am kidding of course about the material in the barn...gross! Oh and I will definately climb the ladder into the hay loft so you all can see all of the hay Dear and I moved. 4 tons of it!

The Birds

We have 2 different types of chickens here. The white ones are cornish crosses, meat birds. They are larger than they should be for butchering. Their breast meat will be great, but the rest will only be good for soup. The hens are now laying.

The brown chickens are Buff Orpingtons. They are my favorite egg layer. They lay brown eggs all year long. They slow down in the Minnesota winter, but they do not stop. They are a very hardy bird, only for eggs and possibly soup.

The funny looking creatures are our Turkies. They are really dumb birds. We have to lock them up at night because they like to be caught by predators and killed. They run around saying "beep, beep, beep."

Next I will post about those other flying creatures...flies! My most hated, ok, tied with mosquitoes, flying bug / insect.

The Double Yolk

One of our hens keeps laying double yolks. It is really exciting to crack one open. We are not sure which one it is.