Shari's Gone Country

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

The weather has cooled... and I've been busy!

Time to get y'all caught up on the happenings around here. The weather has cooled from the 100-105 range down to the 90-95 range, so now it's more bearable to work outside an extra hour or two. Of course, by mid to late afternoon, we're getting thunderstorms that chase us inside... the lightening isn't something to mess with.

This past weekend was taken up with hay hauling on Saturday. With the help of two guys, we were able to get 50 bales (3-string about 110 pounds each) picked up and delivered, then off-loaded at our place.

For their help, we did the cookout... great burgers, macaroni salad, baked beans, and ice cream cones for desert.

Cindy had to work Sunday, so Bev and I kind of "putzed" around, not getting much of anything done.

Our hummingbirds have returned, providing us hours of enjoyment. They're really quite sociable, buzzing right up to you. Of course, they can also be a little dangerous when their on a mission.

Last night Cindy had to go into the covered chicken run to rescue one of the little hummers... he couldn't figure out how to get out from under the netting. With a six-inch overlap of netting on the poultry fence, he'd flown in from below but wanted to escape from above.

Cindy was able to gently guide him down a few inches so he could pop through the poultry wire.

Oh, we've made a deal on another horse. She will be Bev's horse, although I get to do the "ground work" with her. She's a 4-year old Paint that is already saddle broken. A guy in town bought her at the local auction last month, just because he didn't want her to get into the wrong hands. For $350 we get her... such a deal!

Now we have to add on to the horse shed, build another round pen... and well, I get to lose weight "working" her everyday. That's pretty good news!

Also, I may have found a market for our wool. The past couple of days I've been sorting through it, getting it skirted and ready to ship off some samples. If you are a spinner, or know of a spinner who likes to work from raw (greasy) fleece... be sure to let me know.

We have black Merino/Suffolk cross fleece as well as one Polypay fleece. Here's some pictures of what it looks like. This year's crop is the worst condition we'll produce. Most of the flock came to us from an outside pen and shows a lot of "vegetative matter" as well as sun-bleach.

Looks like our weekend coming up will be filled with "projects".

We have two ewes who are very pregnant... time to build the lamb jugs, and while we're at it, let's build a new feeder to keep the hay off the fleece, and then a creep feeder for the baby lambs. Oh, and let's enlarge the pen considerably.

We'll also be setting the plans to enlarge the stable by at least one if not two areas for our horses. That includes creating a "behind the manger" feeding aisle. One of our neighbors has a tractor to assist us next week.