We are now officially in the lambing and kidding window, which means that there are at least three frustrated people at the farm at all times. This happens every year, so I expected it’s arrival and I know that it will end, but it’s still my least favorite part of lambing.
We only bred 13 (I think) sheep this year, and I think there is a strong possibility that one of the colored yearlings didn’t get caught, as they say. We know that she was bred by Aldo, the ram we rented, but she may not have actually gotten pregnant. I hope I’m wrong, but she doesn’t look bred to me and she has none of the udder development we expect to see in a sheep this far along. So we are waiting for 12 sheep to lamb, and maybe one will surprise me.
Of course we also bred two of our dairy goats, Sam and Bertie, and they both look like they could go at any time. And the geese are sitting on 9 or 10 eggs that should be getting close to hatching.
So we wait. And while we wait, we find other things to do that have needed doing for a while. Fixing fences. Cleaning out stalls. Clearing away the cobwebs of winter.(I mean that one both literally and figuratively- you would BELIVE the cobwebs in out run in shed! Like something from a horror movie.)
Today we have dedicated to the kitchen gardens. Zac is outside tilling as I write this and Caroline is tending her precious seedlings, preparing them for the journey from the greenhouse to the garden beds. We have some lovely guests right now and my sister and Aunt Ann will be arriving in a couple of hours for a few days at the farm, and we plan to put them all to work.
So it’s not that we have nothing to do while we wait for lambs. Far from it. But the waiting itself gets exhausting very quickly.
The bright spot in all of this, of course, is that we have little Camembert to entertain us while we wait. He’s a bit of a cheat, since we bought him, but he is a delicious cheat.
My friends Jen and Tessa were here earlier in the week and Jen took loads of cute pics of the peanut. Here are a couple of my favorites.
We are also eagerly awaiting our T-1 line’s arrival. All of the equipment has been installed and now they just need to turn on the tap, as it were. We were promised it would be operational by April 1st, but I don’t think that’s likely at this point. I will let you know when it’s in, so that you can turn on the lambcams and wait with us.
