Sheep

This little guy's momma walked off and left him napping so Jacob decided to go and spend a little time with him. The lambs are so soft and sweet when they are new.

Jacob made sure to return him back to his momma after taking a few minutes to enjoy the new little one.

Michael spent a good portion of Saturday working with the sheep. We raise the sheep for meat production. They have to be at a certain weight in order to sell them. Since we are raising our first batch of meat lambs, we were uncertain about judging the weight of the lambs. We went to a farm store that rents out farm scales. We brought the scales back to our farm to weigh our sheep. We were utterly surprised to find that our largest meat sheep weighed in at 80 pounds. They have to be over 100 pounds live weight so we have missed our mark for sure. We need to figure out a way to separate them from the rest of the flock in order to feed them so they will grow quicker. My backyard wasn't designed with keeping live stock on hand so I am not for sure how Michael will combat this issue.

Michael has designed our fences with the sheep being the priority. It will be more trouble in the beginning, but it will give us exactly what we need to raise the sheep. We have spent the last five years trying to make do with makeshift and temporary things for the farm with the hopes of "doing it right" later. This makes for so much more work on a daily basis. It is time to do it right now. I am looking forward to the end results, but I know full well that it will take some time.

I would recommend that people buying farms need to take some time to walk through everyday life before doing major projects. By this I mean, that what looks good on paper may not work so well in the real life. We have spent much time working on fences that really don't provide what we need. Now that we have had our sheep longer, we have a better understanding of what would work best for us. We have spent time looking at other people's set ups. We have asked questions by the dozen and then Michael has spent a great deal of time planning. He will come to me and ask me what I think. When we first started this whole adventure, Michael said something about spending extra money and putting our electric wire underground so we can operate our gates without worrying about the electric fence. I was so busy counting every penny that we were spending that I told him that we could do it the old fashion way and just disconnect the electric wire when we wanted to go through the gate. What I didn't realize was just how scared of the electric fence I really was. When it came time for me or some of my children to handle the wire with the plastic connector, I always just turned the entire fence off instead. I can't tell you how many times I FORGOT to reconnect the fence. It was a irritation that we could overcome by spending just a bit more time and money. In his new plan, we will make it where the electric fence won't be an issue at the gates. While we strive to use what we have on the farm without spending extra money, there are times that spending a little money ends up saving a lot of money in the long run!

grace and peace,

julie