Catching up and staying up.

After taking a nice vacation to Tucson, Arizona, I got back to the farm earlier this week to find that my one milking doe, Mabel, had been dried up (she was only producing about 3 cups of milk per day anyways), and I had two new does to milk - a part meat bred doe and one that we bought that looks to be part nubian. Both of them are beautiful milkers and between them, produce approximately four litres of milk per day. That's definitely enough - for now. We have one lamb that we are bottle feeding and I am desperately trying to store the remainder of the milk, but am running out of containers to freeze it in! I have a line on a friend who is willing to teach me how to make goat's milk soap and as soon as I get a few spare minutes (and a candy thermometer), I plan to try to make some cheese and yogurt.

Many of our does kidded while I was gone but because of a run of bad luck, a variety of causes, we lost far too many kids for my liking. The sheep have begun to lamb, however, and as of tonight, our count is 15 lambs from 9 ewes, which is not a bad count. Everybody has been born healthy and strong and looking good - clearly, the lambs will carry the stock this year!

Dad and I are alternating night checks - the barn must be checked at midnight and then, again, at 3am. We switch off nights to do the 3am, and when I don't have to do the 3am, I have to do the midnight. Last night, I was on the 3am and because I don't trust myself to actually get out of bed when the alarm rings, I usually just stay awake (I am not working right now so there really is no reason not to) until 3am, and then sleep after I have checked the barn. Last night, I was greeted with two little Easter treasures!



A good strong ram lamb and a ewe lamb. With the current numbers of lambs born, it seems that we are going to increase our flock quite significantly. That's pretty exciting, especially since dad and I have been discussing increasing our flock of commercial ewes to 200. 200 is kind of a far-out dream, but building up to 50 ewes is a feasible option at this time - our barn and our pasture could likely handle it.

I took a couple more pictures last night while I was out there (until 4am, unfortunately!), which I'll share over the next couple of entries, but wanted to share this one of my manx cross cat, Kizmet, who followed me to the barn and then hung out in my milking stand while I was putzing around checking on stock:




Though I can't hear it anymore, tonight I heard a frog singing in the pond in front of our house! This is a definite sign that spring is here, even though there is still a bit of ice in the pond. Soon, the sound of the frogs singing will be overwhelming that it will filter into the house and become a normal noise that we just ignore - and you definitely won't be able to talk on a phone in our yard!