We had two sets of triplets on the same night! One ewe totally rejected one of her lambs, the other ewe wanted all her babies but the smallest was too weak to nurse. I tied up both ewes, helping the two lambs to nurse for the colostrum and sent BJ to town for whole milk, cultured buttermilk and evaporated milk to make their formula. They were so cute and so much fun.
What a blessing!!!!! Such good looking lambs, Bay! Congrats on the big lamb crop. Love that blue tick ewe you've got there, also...love that color pattern.
Chickweed grows well here, through the winter. It’s gone now, it dies back as the weather warms up. But it makes a good salad, mixed with lettuce and dried tomatoes.
That little snow we got in January was no big deal, we thought we were done with winter. Wrong.
February 11 we got an ice storm, freezing temperatures and a lightning storm. My favorite enormous cedar tree was struck. It spreads its shade over the pen where the sheep working chute is set up, so welcome in the summer.
Everything was coated with ice and it didn’t melt in 3 days. It got colder.
February 14, 2021 was our 25th anniversary. It also sleeted that day and it was still icy so we didn’t go anywhere. We celebrated with some leftover chili. LOL
This is Carson laying on the icy ground gnawing on a chunk of ice I broke out of a water bucket. Goofy dog.
It started snowing that evening and we woke up to a snowy morning. I had the outside water faucets cut off to keep them from freezing, so I had been putting buckets of boiling hot water in my wagon to melt ice and water animals. With the snow, the wagon didn’t work so good any more, so I had to carry the buckets. It took 3 hours twice a day, we got real tired of all this winter stuff real quick!
Temperatures broke records that had stood for over 100 years. It got to MINUS SIX! I have never experienced -6F and hope I don’t again. Interstate 20 was shut down, 18 wheelers were stuck in place, it was a mess. Grocery stores were wiped out, no milk, bread, canned food, pet food, you name it, it wasn’t available. Not that we were going anywhere anyway. We got another ice storm and on February 19, we got more snow for a total of ten inches of snow.
A lamb was born in the midst of all this and she was always huddled up shivering. Her mouth was warm, she was eating, but I stuffed her under my sweat hoodie which was layered under Carhart’s, to warm her up while I was outside
doing chores.
Poor little girl. I cut a sleeve off a sweater for her.
Animals all came through the storm just fine, lambs, ewes and Ringo. Horses, chickens, the steer and the dogs, all were ok and none the worse for it. We never lost power and our water pipes never froze. We were Blessed.