Spring has officially Sprung

Spring is incredibly busy in this part of my world.

The farming part of my life is something I don’t normally talk about in-depth much, other than, yes I am a shepherdess to a flock of woolly sheep. In addition to our usual band of regulars (about 100 ewes (the girls) and 3 rams (the boys, named Tupper, Tommy, and Beau) we also have 4 miniature goats (Sadie and Maybelle, the boys are Woody and Arlo) and 2 cows (Clementine and Dolly). I could ramble off so many names of the ewes, but that list is very long.

So everyone always asks out of interest, what’s your naming strategy about? This is usually because they meet the livestock guardian dogs first. Waylon, Pearl, and Emmylou. So here’s how that all goes. The dogs are named after Waylon Jennings, Janis Joplin, and Emmylou Harris. My pure love of music has influenced most of the non-sheep naming strategy. Of course, the goats, Arlo and Woody are father and son, so, of course, the Guthrie’s are their namesakes. Maybelle is named after Maybelle Carter, and Sadie after the band the Sadies.

Now let’s talk about the Rams. Most farms go with either a numbering system, Ram 1, 2, etc. or A, B, etc. My husband, who is very into politics and Canadian history has started naming them by Canadian prime ministers. An interesting and bold choice I said, but here we are…he puts up with my crazy names for the rest of our brood.

So why are we talking about the farm today? Well, when we said it’s busy, in the last 3 weeks, we’ve had 103 baby lambs, of course, the cuteness overload is intense, but so is the work, and the constant shuffling, between lambing pens, lamb kindergarten, and the 25 other ewes who are about to give birth. It’s pretty intense.

(This is Sadie and her babies, one’s hiding on the other side, a little photo shy and we didn’t want to disturb her)

Other baby alerts, Sadie gifted us a set of triplets this morning and baby miniature goats are just about the cutest thing on the planet. And Dolly, the cow, will be giving birth any day. Also, our cat Wednesday had beautiful baby kittens last week, naturally we named them Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

(This is always my favourite sight, a group of a few day-old lambs, having a cuddle puddle…my heart)

There are so many things going on at once, it’s sometimes hard to figure out which way is up.

There is a lot of reservation about revealing your farm adventures in a way, there are always a lot of questions, and sometimes you aren’t always sure how to answer them. But here I am, being all vulnerable and happy to answer anything anyone wants to know. An open book if you will. Please feel free to ask me anything.

Thanks for reading along, and I hope you enjoyed a brief overview of one aspect of my woolly world.

Heather