Adapting

We have been adapting to live with a baby. Janice has been doing a great job of taking care of Hazel. I am still clunky with normal diapers and am a but intimidated by cloth diapers. With time I will get there. The timer on Janice's maternity leave is ticking away and I have one massive project to knock out by mid June when she goes back to work and that is fencing out our waterways.

Janice & Hazel Take a Nap

One the farm lambing has been progressing and we are down to one ewe left to lamb. We hit a rough patch lambing with the weather, several problem ewes, and my inexperience. We lost a handful of lambs, but today we had two sets of healthy twins and now have nine young lambs bouncing around in the pasture. There is just one more ewe expecting.

First Set of Twins (the brown lamb is female & the black lamb is a ram)

Second Set of Twins (both appear to be rams)

Despite the rough weather, the 85 chickens we put outside last Thursday are doing pretty good. We have not lost any of them. We left the other half of the first batch inside to hedge our bets against the weather. The ones inside will be moving out tomorrow.

The new cows and calfs are doing pretty good. It took them a couple of days to start eating the pasture heavily. I suspect that that delay was caused by a change over in rumen bacteria from farms and pasture types. The effects of mob grazing are much more visible when you have 1000+ pound cows as opposed to 600 pound yearlings and sheep. The two herd (new cattle and the sheep with the yearlings have not yet been combined, but it will happen within the next week or so as the herds rotate closer to each other on the farm. On another note, all of the north hill has now been grazed over once this year by the sheep and yearling cattle. It looks better, but those heavy cows on that hill will do a lot to break up the old grass thatch and bring the hill back to life. Something to look forward to. Stay tuned as we continue to adapt to farming with a child, cows, calves, and numerous lambs.