Taking spring head on.

It finally feels a little like spring around here.  I have to rub my eyes and make sure I'm seeing things clearly, but now, when I look out the window to the pastures there is actually some green out there!  The pasture is beginning its comeback, Robins are out and about, buds on the treesp; ladies and gentlemen, we may have broken through to the other side!

The lambs all made it into the world safe and sound.  I will take the late deliveries when it means everyone is born healthy.  We didn't have one troubled delivery this year.  All the ewes and lambs are living life fat and happy in the barn.  There is quite a size difference between the lambs, mostly due to age; with our heaviest weighing in at 47 pounds and our young little triplets still in the teens.  More importantly, everyone is eating and everyone shows a great demenor while playing around the farm.

Now that lambing season has ended, it is time to move on to other spring chores which include shearing and hoof trimming.  The other day we had the shearer come out to the farm and shear the boys and a few of the girls that are off schedule.  We do two shearings a year; one spring and the other in the fall.   The freshly shorn fleeces smell so good, they glisten with the lanolin that I can feel just by touching the fleece.  A couple white fleeces, a couple grays and a moorit brown will all be available here shortly.  Send an email if you are interested and would like to know more.

The hoof trimming is where it gets interesting.  We started with the rams because 16 hooves (4x4) seems a lot less daunting than 40 (4x 10 ewes).  To trim, involves a headlock, a body check, a few wrestling suplexes and THEN you are ready to trim hooves.  In all seriousness though, it is difficult to catch these 200 or 250 pound rams and pin them again the wall, while the other one of us tries to steady their hooves in an unnatural position; steady enough to trim with sharp hoof shears.   I've definitely lost more blood than any ram has to this point.

The funny thing is the four rams all have their individual personalities, which until I raised sheep myself, never believed a sheep could have.  But they do.  Johnny is the giant that could hurt you, but is somehow laid back enough to not bother.  He intimidates you with his presence and that is enough.  George is the one of the two new adolescents.  He has a lot to prove for some reason and isn't afraid to start a tussle, be it another ram or with me.  Since he is only a year old, I can still take him.  Rutherford is also a year old, and much smaller than George.  He is the low man on the totem pole, he knows it, and is the most easy going of the four.

Then there is Ahgosa.  I have written about Ahgosa several times before.  First there was the body flip, where he left me laying on the ground staring at the sky.  Then the breakout out of the pasture, and now this.  While I was trimming Johnny, a feat in and of itself, I am basically bent over his rear, hanging my head upside down while I trim the bottom of his hoof.  While doing this, out of the corner of my eye, I see the top of a wool covered head back up, angle down and charge towards me.  I dropped Johnny's hoof, and turned to protect my head just in time to take a blow on the shoulder.  Ahgosa had reared back and took a charge to, no pun intended, ram me!  I bellowed at Dan for not giving me a heads up, which of course he has his hands full trying to steady Johnny through all of this.  I shoved back Ahogsa and stomped my foot at him to let him know I mean business.  From there on out, it was one eye on the hoof being trimmed, and one eye on any charging rams.