1st Sheep Anniversary

Hi Folks -
Time zips right along and you can keep your fingers on only so many holes in the dikes, but there is a breather now and I am playing catch-up.

Both electricity and telephone are erratic in the area of the Wallow fire, so we are going to wait a few more days before going up. I have seen photos however, and right around Alpine, things don't look too bad. The upper two-thirds of the mountain immediately east of us has burned off; some areas have fared better and some worse than that. What our immediate area looks like remains to be seen. Rumors are rife and anger, oh my goodness, the anger is palpable. Now a blame game second to none will begin.

We worked with the sheep on Saturday reconfiguring fences to be able to move Thor to a shadier, cleaner location and to be able to get Shortcake (the beef steer) out of cow jail. The teen-age boys we have been hiring as farm helpers this spring and summer are gems -- they work like troopers and never give less than their best. I don't know what we would do without them; it's a dead cert we wouldn't be nearly as far along as we are. They are all off at Boy Scout Camp this week, so everybody gets a breather.

Thor was a little confused about why he was being moved -- in his little sheepy mind that should only happen when there are ewes available, but he took it in good stride and seems much better off with shade and grass -- ya think?? Besides any other little thing, it will do wonders for keeping his fleece clean, and since I (at least so far) refuse to jacket the beasties because of the heat, this is an honorable step to that end.

Shortcake bounded around positively thrilled with being out of jail, and I don't blame him. It's a pretty tight confinement for a big animal.

Today is the one year anniversary for my sending off the first installment of the first sheep purchase!! It's amazing to think that we are closing in on a year since serious sheep-ing began. We have the calendar fixed to do CD/tet vaccinations for the lambs, and then the ram lambs will be separated out of the flock because they will be old enough to possibly produce lambs of their own. Yikes!! August 20 the local buyer will be out to collect his lambs and leave us a new ewe lamb from Idaho. Miss Idaho will be a yearling pen-mate for our beautiful CVM late lamb Velvet since neither can be bred this year. And then the out of state buyer will be here to pick up her ram lamb and leave us two ewes that *can* be bred this year.

It's been an exciting year with a very steep learning curve. I am looking forward to the second year being just a little less of a roller-coaster ride.

Thinking of ewe -
The Shepherd