Memorial Day

HEADQUARTERS GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC

excerpted from

General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land.

We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders.

Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.

Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from hishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation's gratitude, the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan.

solstice to solstice

"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come."
~ Chinese Proverb

response to week ten of spring
the solstice to solstice project with urban.prairie.forest
please visit the flickr pool for all the wonderful contributions to this project

Weekly Top Shot

Nettie and her beautiful half-border-leicester ram lamb... loved the wonderfully blue sky and that big puffy white cloud.
Joining The View From Right Here

First Shots

This beautiful, pastoral scene... ewes and lambs peacefully grazing... is really quite different from the activity on the farm just a few hours earlier.  Let's rewind...
We rounded up all the ewes and lambs bright and very early yesterday morning (that was a zoo, there should have been a movie made) and brought them back to the barn for a health check-up.  We herded them through a moving lane we put up on the outside of the perimeter fencing the night before.  It took three of us (Thanks, Mom!), two on the inside and one on the outside.  Once, again, the shepherds' crooks were invaluable.  We did FAMACHA checks on the ewes; most were twos, but we had a few we needed to worm.  The lambs received their first CD-T shots, FAMACHA checks and tail checks. 
We have had a problem with fly-strike this year at the tail docking area... the very thing we are trying to prevent by docking their tails.  We've never had this problem before.  (It's probably a result of the unusually mild winter; the flies are bad already this year.  Has anyone ever tried Fly Parasites?)
Everyone behaved very well in the barn and were very relaxed and quiet.  That was wonderful because it made everything go pretty smoothly.  After the shepherdess/s did some re-hydrating, we all headed back out the barn door, but to a new pasture.  The ewes and lambs are now in the knoll pasture.  It was very noisy for several hours as it took quite awhile for the mamas and little ones to find each other again.  But everything has quieted down and they seem quite happy, once again.
(If you're new to our blog, you may be wondering about the farming detail in some of our posts.  We began our blog as a farm journal, somewhere we can go to quickly find... when did we do that? what did we do?  We keep very detailed paper records also, but we can access this from basically anywhere... even in the field on our phones :)

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.

A single photo - no words - capturing a single moment from the week

A simple, special extraordinary moment.

A moment to pause, savor and remember.

Participating with the SouleMama blog.

Yearling HiJinks

The yearling ewes are spending their time getting fat and sassy, awaiting their new roles as breeding ewes come fall.  For now, they are carefree and full of teenage fun.   They observe all the excitement going on in the adjoining pasture, and sometimes they just can't help but join in when the lambs start their running games. 

It's very entertaining to watch them running... bucking... kicking their heels... soaring through the air.  Then, almost as quickly as it begins... there they are again standing at the fence, once again observing life in the adjoining pasture, just as if nothing had happened.  This group of young ladies are growing out very well, and are really quite beautiful.  They are the future of the flock.

Weekly Top Shot

Rosey Posey's and Petunia's little ewe lambs share a quiet moment amidst the chaos that is feeding time.
Joining The View From Right Here for Weekly Top Shot.

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.

A single photo - no words - capturing a single moment from the week

A simple, special extraordinary moment.

A moment to pause, savor and remember.

Participating with the SouleMama blog.

solstice to solstice :: light

From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

week eight of spring in the solstice to solstice project with urban.prairie.forest
please visit the flickr pool for more wonderful contributions

Lambing at Sunrise

(Traveling back in time to May 5th)  Sometimes it seems that things happen for a reason.  Had Meara not pushed out a water bag at 12:15 a.m.; had she pushed out that first lamb earlier than 5:30 a.m.; this beautiful, foggy sunrise would not have been witnessed from the pasture.

The sky looked pretty clear to the north, but the fog began to come up the hollow from Wolf Creek, enveloping the pasture and continuing to roll across the hayfield.  Light filled the sky and the air was filled with a lovely, rosey pink glow.  The misty fog remained, clinging to the ground... the color in the sky intensified and the sun rose high enough to be seen above the fog... a bright golden globe... SUNRISE!

Weekly Top Shot

We're sharing a peek at one of Juliet's twins, little Miss 1206, who along with her sister is enjoying the move to larger quarters this week.  We're not quite confident in Juliet's abilities to keep track of twins so she and her twins along with Daisy and her triplets will be building mothering skills in a separate temporary paddock.
Joining The View From Right Here for the Weekly Top Shot. Thanks for the invitation!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all of you!

Done

Our final planned lamb was born Friday evening.  He is a beauty!  A silver, black Coopworth - Border Leicester cross out of Hebe and Liam.  Weighing in at 13 lbs 1 oz, he is a whopper!  Now the wait is on to see if Blackberry, our old girl who escaped into the breeding pen, got caught.  We sure hope not, but we've got a few more weeks to find out for sure.

Many thanks to our Mom for all her help in the barn this lambing season... feeding hay, filling water buckets, feeding Robbie and much more.  This was a tough one to get through.  But we are excited to say that we didn't lose a single lamb (close a couple times), didn't have to pull a single lamb, and all the ewes came through great.  We are feeling very blessed.

Friday's Fences

This has been a busy fence-line this week, as the yearlings and their new neighbors get to know each other.  We're joining Life According to Jan and Jer for Friday's Fences.

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.

A single photo - no words - capturing a single moment from the week

A simple, special extraordinary moment.

A moment to pause, savor and remember.

Participating with the SouleMama blog.

A Glimpse of the Nursery Paddock

We thought you might enjoy this glimpse of the nursery paddock at feeding time.  While some of the lambs enjoy some play time as the ewes are eating a little grain, others are very intent on quickly reuniting with their mama.  It usually takes a little while for everyone to get sorted out.

Days Five through Eighteen

With apologies to both the reader and our wonderful breeding ewes, we are sharing these days of the lambing season in a slide show.  We still have one straggler.  Hebe has not yet lambed, but here are the rest of the 2012 lambs. Each ewe and their lambs are very different... some ewes won't eat for hours, others get up and eat between every contraction... really every birth has its own story... here are just a few...
Julie and Jill each had their second twin almost two hours after the first; Julie having her first at 10 p.m. and her second at 11:55 p.m., coming within 5 minutes of being our first ewe to have lambs born on two different days.
Rosey and Princess had their lambs right beside each other in the barn, each continuing to try to take the other's lamb because that was the first one seen after that final push.
Athena's second-born whose sack did not open at all, hit the ground fully enclosed and had to have it torn open; had taken a breath inside, had to be worked on for nearly an hour; but is doing great after spending days under the heat lamp.
Meara pushed out her first water bag at 12:30 a.m. but did not get her first twin pushed out until 5:15 a.m.; allowing the shepherdess to enjoy both the gigantic full moon and a beautiful foggy, pink dawn.  Her lambs were perhaps our most vigorous, loudly baaing before their back legs were fully pushed out.
Hera, our mother of several sets of twins and two sets of triplets, had a big, single ram this year; all the way at the bottom of the hill... again.
For the shepherdess/s, each birth is a miracle... when the lamb hits the ground, takes that first breath, lifts its little head and shakes it, then that first baa... oh my... sometimes we see it, sometimes we only hear it if the lambing field is really busy, but each time it is a tug at your heartstrings... a miracle.

Saying Goodbye

another page in our book of memories... is gently turned today



we will miss this beautiful lady...
sister-in-law, friend, aunt, hay-making farm hand...
throughout a very long, hard-fought battle with cancer
she handled everything with great strength, grace and dignity
we all still have much to learn from her example

Rest In Peace... Donna