Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

[Ridgetop]

The only time we got audited was when we sold our house and bought this one. We sold for more and had 2 years to do renovations to bring the at least $1.00 more than the difference between the sales price and new purchase price. We had to supply all our receipts which I did - photocopies of every receipt to make up a sheaf of papers about 2" thick! During the audit DH had to refer the IRS rep to the page and portion of the tax code he had used. She summoned her supervisor, they read it and then told DH "You're right. Never mind." and dismissed the audit! Our taxes are a little more complicated now though.

It has been raining here for the past week off and on Heavy rain for 2 days, then intermittent showers, then another 2 days of heavy rain. I am so happy about getting this rain since we really need it. We are supposed to get more for the next week.

Hopefully, the rain will bring up lots of forage for the new lambs. I registered all 5 ewe lambs. I will be keeping them for the next year to see how they develop. Since I have lost 2 ewes this year, I might as well keep all 5 and breed them to see how they produce. 4 of them are fall lambs and can be bred in late spring while one of them is a spring lamb which won't be bred until next fall. Since I have 3 different rams, breeding the ewes back will not be a problem and will give me a nice wide gene pool.

My friend/mom has her surgical biopsy of the lymph nodes in her throat tomorrow, then the pet scan next Thursday. After the results come back they hope to know where the cancer has metastasized. Then they will know what can be done about it.

Since all people over 65 are confined to their homes by our governor, I think I will scrub down the kitchen cabinets, clean out some closets, and do all that stuff that I don't seem to have time to do normally. Might as well be productive. Actually, we are lucky that we can all correspond in the computer, and by phone, as well as get our news on the TV. Think what it would be like if we could not get any news or see or talk to anyone during this epidemic!

Happy St. Paddy's Day. Time to put the corned beef in the Instapot cooker. Then add carrots and potatoes. I like to fry my cabbage like DH's uncle taught me to do when we were visiting the farm in Kansas. So much better than soggy cabbage! Yummy!

 

[Baymule]

Have a fun staycation! No running to town for things, it's hunker down time. Hope you get more rain and the forage grows for the sheep.

 

[Mike CHS]

I always get a smile from your posts

 

[Baymule]

Thank you! I have inappropriate humor at times-don't ever take me along to pick out a casket at a funeral home-just a warning! I'll make a joke out of most anything, I have learned to watch my mouth over the years, but dear Lord, I just can't shut up. LOL LOL

 

[Ridgetop]

I have inappropriate humor at times-don't ever take me along to pick out a casket at a funeral home-just a warning!

I should send you a review of a box for crematory ashes I read when we bought one for my aunt. I think I still have a copy somewhere, I put a copy in with her ashes since I figured she could enjoy a good laugh on her journey. She had a wacky sense of humor like the rest of us. One of the best funeral stories I know actually happened at my paternal grandmother's funeral, She had about 30 grandchildren and great grandchildren present. One little 4 year old boy wanted to know what was in the "box" (the coffin). His mother reverently told him "It is Baba's body". The little guy considered this gravely then asked 'Where is her head?" Those of us cousins who heard it agreed that she would laughed and told everyone she knew about it that story.

You can come with me any time to choose a coffin. I can't think of any time you would need a good laugh more.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

At my sisters funeral my grand daughter asked why she was sleeping in that big drawer....lol.

 

[Duckfarmerpa1]

@Baymule ...your humor puts a smile on my face and a jiggle to my belly every time!! I love inappropriate humor...when I understand it....

 

[Ridgetop]

I have been looking for the story I know I wrote a year or so ago about training our sheep. I can't find it o I ill have to rewrite it which will take a while. In the meantime, Josie the Mule has been standing at the gate into the yard weaving and swaying for about 30 minutes. This is odd since it is not suppertime, and she has 6 acres to wander around on. However, the mystery was just solved - DS1 got home and found the field sheep in the yard. I could not see them from my office window, just poor Josie. She was upset because her "herd" had managed to wriggle through the gate while she was stuck on the field. As soon as they were sent back onto the field she was happy again!

DS1 went out to put up the wire around the corral panels. The lambs had oozed under them easily when DS1 sorted them over a week ago. Apparently they did not want to be separated from mama. As soon as they were I the other corral, they simply came out under the bars. We are outing up livestock woven wire around the corrals. This will also prevent Angel fro getting in after any lambs to "play" with them.

It was a nice sunny day and the mud had dried up a bit so he decided it was safe to start working outside. I offered to help but he refused any assistance. He is a good boy but annoys me sometime since he seems to feel that DH and I will collapse and fall down if we work with him. I don't know what makes him feel that we are that decrepit! I stayed in and did a bunch of other work while he went out and started. He had almost finished half of the first corral when the rain came down again. He decided to stop and go get more wire since we didn't have enough to do the whole job. When he got back he found the sheep in the yard!

DD2 called from Big Bear to say that she had been laid off her restaurant hostess job because of the Corona virus. Doofus was also laid off his job as well. I would tell her to come home asap but won't because I won't have Doofus here. They will have to stay with his dad and step mom. She wanted to come down next week and visit us but I had DH call her back and tell her not to. Where is the point in a 14 day quarantine if people who have been interacting with thousands of strangers in their job come to visit and bring the germs. I am worried about her since one of the determining weaknesses for severe Corona is people that have seizures can get a worse case. DD2 has seizures. They are controlled by medicine, but I don't want her to get anything.

DS3 called from Nipomo and said that San Luis Obispo county had put a Shelter At Home quarantine on everyone in his county. He has to go to work though since electrical linemen are considered a necessary job attendance classification, like police, firemen, and health workers. DS2 is also required to go to work - same classification - however in their jobs they are outside and usually don't work in tight confines. DS2 is also working nights, less chance of people interaction.

As soon as we can separate the sheep again, without them escaping, we will weigh and supplement. Now I'm having DS1 supplement the ewes and lambs with grain. They are not nursing lambs anymore and are dry so that will start flushing the ewes to ready them for breeding. I just have to decide how I plan to separate them for breeding and to whom. Which lucky fellow will it be? I better start supplementing the rams a bit too and make sure to put out minerals for everyone.

 

[Ridgetop]

DH almost hysterical this am! First DS2 came home at 7am and announced that Food 4 Less would not let him sho since they were reserving 7-8 am for seniors. Apparently Costco is reserving 8-9 for seniors too. DH woke DS1 up and told him he was going to the grocery store. (Why? We have enough of everything! But DH is stir crazy and of course has not been able to play bridge for 2 weeks now.) DS1 told him he could not leave the house since all seniors are under quarantine except for gas, groceries and doctors. Then the newscasters announced that California was shutting down all businesses, roads, etc. for quarantine. DH interrupted my sacred first cup of coffee in the am time with svreams about not being able to get hay! I could hear him from the other room shouting how his sheep were all going to starve due to Governor Newsom.

I had suggested getting hay last week but was told by DH that it was not a problem. That I was succumbing to panic and there would always be hay. ( Of course, not at a good price but . . . . ) DH stormed into my room and glared at me, telling me that I was NOT to mention I told him we should get hay to him again and stomped from the room. I was glad to see him leave since I needed to finish my coffee and pour a second cup.

There was more screaming and yelling from the other end of the house. DH finally calmed down and called the feed store who assured him they had plenty of hay and would continue bringing it in. Then he and DS1 has a loud argument about whether or not DH would get hay today. More screaming and yelling. I poured a third cup of coffee and shut the door. I wonder when Stockholm syndrome is supposed to kick in? I just saw him walk out to the hayshed to clean it before bringing in a load or having it delivered. DS1 had told me he would do it but I told him to do the corral wire instead and have Dad do the hayshed since it would give DH something to do.

More bad news this am. Another good friend has been in and out of hospital since February 4. He injured his ankle and developed sepsis and cellulitis in his ankle. He was put on an electric wound drain and antibiotics. Then when he left the nursing home the doctor did not send him home with any antibiotics! Or the nursing home forgot to give them the prescriptions. Back to hospital for second round of wound draining antibiotics. He is a diabetic and if the antibiotics don't clear it up he may lose his foot at the ankle. His wife and the doctor did not tell him that, but it is probably in his mind. He is home now in a wheel chair and this time the doctor put him on an antibiotic pic line. Bad situation all around. No visitors except their younger daughter. The older daughter lives in San Francisco and arranged for prepared meals to be delivered to them. Last year both of them had heart surgery!

Last night future DIL decided to cook. She made pork curry. Her curry is to die for! She cooked the pork in the Instapot so it was tender then added the pork to the vegetables and served it with rice. After dinner we decided to escape from non-stop news about Corona virus, and watched Down Periscope with Kelsey Grammer. So funny. After that we decided to watch another old submarine movie - Operation Petticoat with Cary Grant. Also funny. When Tony Curtis as the procurement officer steals the pig future DIL translated the Tagalog that the farmer was shouting! Wonderful evening, old funny movies and ice cream. DS2 missed out because he was working night shift.

Checked ewes and new lambs - one trying to climb on mama. They need to be turned into larger pen so they can run and play. Only one that can't go out with others will be prolapse ewe and her lamb. Need to keep her close so she can continue getting pain meds. She is holding her own and eating well so as long as we can let her nurse her lamb the better.
Angel has also found a comfy place in the barn to sleep near the lambs! Silly girl.
Rain is still coming and going. Got lots late last night or early this am - after midnight anyway. Definitely will be plenty of forage eventually. I wonder if I should order some temporary netting to make sure the sheep eat the right spots first. 200 feet from the house and barn. Otherwise we will have to cut this year. We will just leave it cut and they will eat it. Or we can rake it into piles after it dries and store the piles in a round bale holder of wire inside a corral to keep it for dry forage. Lots of work, but better than letting it go to waste or having to haul it to the dump. We can hitch the trailer and load it in the trailer then move it to the wired corral to store it. I would try to make sileage, but don't know how and am afraid it would poison the stock if not made right. Oh well, maybe with this virus they will extend the fire clearance regulations an extra month or so. That way the sheep would clear most of it off.

Still can't find my story about "training" the sheep so will have to rewrite it.

 

[Ridgetop]

Found the piece on training our pasture raised Dorsets to come into the barn at night. It was in the draft of the book I started writing about Harika, our LGD. I will post it tomorrow. I have to pull it out and cut and paste it over.

We weighted the little lambs and vaccinated yesterday. Nice rate of gain. The surprise was the 8 week old single ram lamb who weighed in at 66.3 lbs!!! I was stunned!

I just reread this and some of the descriptions of my doctoring are sort of yucky! I am too tired to go back over it and clean it up though so if you can't handle reading about pus and oozing sores you might want to skip this post. Our family is so used to this sort of talk that we even discuss it at dinner. Not everyone has a strong stomach. On the other hand they can whimper like babies at a splinter and the sight of me with the tweezers. The ewe lamb that Angel "played" with was still limping in the jug after a week of antibiotics. DS1 flipped her and held her so I could take a look. I felt the scabbed over areas. The scabs were crusty and not healthy feeling so I peeled off one of the crusted scabs. Lots of pus underneath. I went up and got my medical supplies to clean all the scabby areas out, including a mastitis tube to put antibiotic inside the wounds. One hole had a thick bunch of wool and matted pus inside it festering away that I pulled out. I cleaned all the areas on her rear legs. Apparently, in spite of the weeks worth of penicillin I gave her the punctures had healed on the outside and festered inside the holes causing cellulitis. Today I went down with DS1 and again pulled off the crusted scabs. I used Iodophor II in a solution and a syringe with a mastitis tip to flush out all the holes. Got more pus flushed out, and opened up the holes so they could continue to drain. Then flushed again with mastitis meds, and gave a shot of penicillin. Then we decided to look at the wether lamb. DS1 flipped him and he looked at first like he had healed but when I found a couple of crusty scabs and pulled them off he had the same problem going on. Puncture wounds are the worst in animals or humans. They scab over and look healed on the top but underneath they fester until they build up a major infection. I flushed his punctures out with the Iodophor solution, filled them with Tomorrow, and then went back up and got him a shot of penicillin too. When I was giving him the shot, I remembered why I don't like tails - he was wagging his tail and slapping me with it! OUCH. DS1 and I will keep doing this wound cleaning every day until they heal up. DS1 is also putting them on a lower dose of the same pain meds that the prolapse ewe is on. This wether will be going into our freezer since I anticipate a lot of carcass waste with all the injection sites and lower leg infections which will leave scarring in the meat. The ewe lamb should heal up ok and it won't affect her since she will be a breeding ewe. Doing all this medical stuff makes me wish we ad the squeeze in a covered area so I could have used it for these two lambs. It would have been so much easier on DS1's back.

I had a 32 year old mare that fell through a fence and down a cliff and got a little scrape. I put antibiotic on t after hosing her off. Several days later it developed into a severe case of cellulitis. She was so sick she could hardly walk so we rushed her out to the horse hospital. She was there on an IV for a week, then they sent her home with some antibiotics and instructions to swash the wound with a hose. She got worse again and I called a new vet. He was an old guy that had gone to vet school after 20 years as a farrier. He was a terrific vet and I learned a lot from him. He had me mix up an iodine solution and use a Water Pic to flush out the 6"deep puncture wound several times a day. Then he had me scrape the skin under the puncture wound with a table knife so the skin was raw and bled a bit. Once that happened I had to slather Vaseline all over the raw skin. He said that the drainage from the puncture was infecting the top layer of skin as it drained down the leg. she had lost all the hair on her leg where the drainage had dripped. He said fresh blood was what made a healthy scab. Otherwise the skin would fester and get an infection in another spot. There was a lot more that he taught me as we worked together on this mare. It took at least 2 months but she healed. It was a much deeper puncture. I learned a lot from this vet and made sure to keep that old Water Pic for any future wound care.

About 5 years later, my DIL (then still in high school) kept her horse at our house. One day he got a small cut on his leg. She had the vet out and he said it was minor. He told her to wash it off with the hose and it would heal. I kept asking her how he was doing and she said he seemed to be healing but after 2 weeks the horse still had a large oozing scab. She was afraid to touch it. (inexperienced and not sure what to do) Finally, I tied the horse up and inspected the scab. It was crusty and oozy like Dazzle's had been, so I peeled the scab off and sure enough it had some puss and serum under the scab. I flushed it with iodine. When my DIL came over that afternoon I showed her the wound and explained that we needed to keep flushing it with iodine to stop the infection. The scab was crusted pus not a true scab. Once the "scab" was removed, and after several days of iodine flush, the leg healed without any problem.

I recognized the same type of oozy, crusty scabs on these lambs with wool trapped in the scab. I am glad I remembered how to treat those wounds. Probably a type of staph. If they don't start to heal cleanly in another 2 days I will have the vet out to look at them and give me a different antibiotic. At the same time I will have that prolapse ewe euthanized. DS1 and I hate to see her the way she is. Her lamb is only 4 weeks old and not gaining as well as I would like but she is eating hay. I can try to give her a bottle, but I am sure she won't take it. On the other hand, maybe I can give her some calf manna pellets if we have to euthanize her mama. In the past 2 weeks she has only put on 7.5 lbs. She is very healthy and lively though so maybe she is just going to be a small ewe. She was small at birth and her larger sister that died was about half again her size. Maybe her mama is not making as much milk due to her physical condition. DS1 and I just hope we can keep her mama going long enough for this lamb to get a little more size. The ewe doesn't seem to be in distress and is eating like a horse instead of a sheep. She is on pain meds to keep her comfortable.

The rain continues to come and go. Everything is suddenly green. DH is going to get hay tomorrow. He plans to get there around 7 m and wait for them to open. He went on Saturday but when he arrived at 10 am the 2 semi loads that came in were already sold out! Apparently there was a line of trucks and trailers waiting when the hay guy opened! This is a hay seller only, no other feed. DH is not going to take any chances tomorrow. The feed store is charging $3.50 per bale more than our hay guy. The feed store has plenty of hay but when you are buying 50 bales that difference in price adds up. Hopefully if the rains stay we will have plenty of forage again this year. DH doesn't want to do our sheep as a business yet. I am going to add up our expenses and see if the value of the lambs we produced even out. I will also allocate what it would cost to clear the field this year as income. I have received inquiries from 2 people wanting to know if I have purebred breeding stock for sale and prices. I could sell 2 ewe lambs but I was planning on keeping them all after losing 2 of my breeding ewes. I only have 1 ewe lamb in my surviving spring lamb crop while I have 5 ram lambs. I don't suppose they will respond anyway. I get emails occasionally but I think people are just pricing. I do have buyers for the wethers for locker lambs. I just need to call and find out if my butcher will be open or is closed due to the quarantine.