Tag: Grassfed
The Chickens are OUT! But First, A Surprise!
Happy Friday! I love Fridays, don’t you?
My sister, Anna, and I made another video this week about moving our chicks from the brooder out to pasture. We also had a surprise this week, and I included that in the video.
Hope you have an amazing weekend!
Sarah
Took a Little Road Trip
So yesterday I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger. I know, I know, I’m so mean. So here is how the day unfolded…
We rushed through our chores yesterday morning and started loading up our farm truck. A large dog crate with straw in the bottom was secured in back. A cooler with bottles of water thrown in the back seat. And since farm trucks are notorious for breaking down when you least expect it, I also threw in a tarp, jumper cables, a crowbar, a bucket of water and a lot of other junk I thought we might need.
A little after noon, we three girls started off on a road trip, and a little under two hours later we ended up at a barn full of, you guessed it, SHEEP!
Seven weeks ago, I had reserved a ram lamb, sight-unseen, after finding an ad in a farm paper. Goodness sakes, I didn’t even have any pictures of this lamb! I wanted a ram that was a 50/50 Katahdin/Dorper cross, was 100% grass fed, and highly parasite resistant. Everything the farmer told me over the phone matched what I had been searching for, so I went with my gut feeling and reserved myself a ram.
Seven weeks is a long time, though, and I began to doubt my gut feeling more each week. Yeah, I’m a worrier….
At the farm, we followed the farmer over to the stall where he had separated my ram and his mother, a registered Katahdin. And here they are:
–
And here is his sire, a full blooded Dorper:
He then showed me the rest of his flock. I wish I had gotten a picture. These grass fed, organic sheep were exceptionally nice. I just wanted to take them all home. These sheep were not wormed with conventional deworming chemicals, just free choice kelp. No grain, just grass and hay. As I was standing there trying not to drool, the farmer pulled out another ram lamb from the flock for me to look at. He had told me about this lamb on the phone, but I had decided against him because he wasn’t pure white. But looking at this second handsome lamb, I made another rash, gut-driven decision: “I’ll take both, please.” I think I shocked Anna. LOL
Yes, I bought two rams. One ram lamb would have been awfully lonely all by himself…..
Here are some pictures of my two handsome boys under the crab apple tree.
And for the record, the farm truck got us there and back without a hitch. Also, it’s a good thing the truck has a cap. It took the white lamb three whole seconds to smash the front off the dog crate. Lambs are strong! So the dog crate and all my “junk” ended up on the back seat and the lambs rode loose in the enclosed truck bed.
So that is the latest farm news. I will try very hard not to buy any more sheep this year, but I don’t promise anything!
Sarah
The Evening Graze
Evening are wonderful. The heat of the day begins to relent, and the animals come out of their shade shelters, ready to graze. I love opening up a fresh paddock for the goats and sheep each evening.
Grass is the sweetest and most nutrient dense right at sunset after converting sunlight into sugars all day (and consequently is at its lowest nutrition at dawn after “starving” all night without the sun). Watching my darlings graze is like therapy; the stress of the day melts away as I watch them enjoy their solar powered meal.
The two youngest of the baby goats spend their evenings playing. Their energy releases like a spring, and these two hardly stop long enough for me to get a decent picture. Some young friends of mine named them Freddie and Nancy. Cute!
~Sarah
Never Done Homestead 