Saturday Farm Happenings

Fences are being erected, new electric chargers are being installed, and grounding rods are being placed into the ground. This is the Saturday happenings here on our little slice of heaven. Michael is putting up temporary fencing for our new addition that will be coming tomorrow afternoon. He is fixing our electric fence issues. We have lived here for 4 years and we have never got our electric fence to work properly. I pray that today all of those issues will be solved. He is also closing off the back of our farm to all of our livestock. He wants to do a more intensive grazing rotation that will allow us to close off certain fields for hay production, and to allow the animals to go into the pastures only when we want them there.

We are still in a bit of a quandary. We will be picking up 10 sheep tomorrow afternoon, but we still do not have any area designated just for the sheep. This will make it very difficult to administer medication if needed or even the basic need of feeding them specific minerals and corn. (Remember our horses...they are the big pigs of the pastures)! We are taking this one step at a time. Today it is fences. Tomorrow it will be to bring them here. Sometime soon we can address the other issues. The lady that we are buying the sheep from suggested that we leave our horses in the same pasture as the sheep. She promised us that our horses would protect them from coyotes. (I hope that includes horses who are just lawn ornaments. Hey if she is right, then the horses just found a real job which means Michael won't be wanting to get rid of them every time he buys a new load of hay)! She said that in her past experience donkeys aren't the best to use for protection of sheep because they tend to kill the lambs. In her experience, the donkeys weren't trying to kill the little darlings, but they just tended to play a little too rough for their well being. I still would like to look into some Great Pyrenees Dogs or maybe some sort of herding dogs. That is way off for now seeing as how I don't even have the basics for the sheep yet!

I am sad to say that I will not be around tomorrow to bring home our new additions. I had already purchased tickets to take my daughter to a Christian Ballet. I would so rather be in jeans and work boots getting new sheep, but I know that would greatly disappoint my daughter. So instead I will dress up in nice clothes and get a little culture added to my life. It should be fun, and I know that it will be a great time for our daughter. I am hoping that Jacob will be taking pictures for me of the sheep in my absence. If he does get some good ones, I will post them for all to see.
grace and peace,
julie