Missing Willow Farm

Aren’t we raising some adorable kids?!

Look what I found in the chicken house this morning!  We’ve been removing the chicken feeder at night and putting chicken food into the live trap.  See the boards laying around it?  Those were used to ‘disguise’ the trap.  I guess it kicked up a fuss when it was captured.  Too bad we didn’t have our stealth camera set up, I’d love to have seen a little video of that.  Is our problem over?  Hard to tell.  As my friend Helen says,’How do you know you’ve got the right one… he’s wearing a mask!’  Now what to do with him?  It’s illegal in Virginia to relocate them.  I have a call into a girlfriend who is a beginner taxidermist.  Hopefully she wants it.

Here’s one of our Katahdin rams.  Instead of wool, he’s got hair.  It feels kind of like some dog breeds.  Hair sheep are becoming more popular with shepherds.  They don’t require shearing, which if you’re a spinner, that makes no sense.  If you’re a shepherd without an easy source for getting rid of fleece, it’s a pain and an expense.  The shearers we used this year travelled all the way to Virginia from Michigan, and we were thankful to be able to use them.  Hair sheep are also more resistant to intestinal parasites, which is a difficulty in this part of the country.  Probably every part of the country.   Hair breeds supposedly make up approx. 10% of the world’s sheep population and are growing in popularity.  We’re happy to have a few in our flock.

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I spent the last few days visiting family in central Florida, where I grew up.  My parents live on the St. Johns River, here’s some typical scenery from a leisurely boat ride with my dad.   I also visited with my daughter and her husband.  They are expecting their first baby in just two months.  We had fun working in the nursery, shopping for baby stuff and eating spicy food.  I bought the ingredients to make kimchee for the first time, I’m interested in any tips you might have if you make your own.

Eugenie had her lamb the day before she was shorn.  A little ram, we named him Phillip.  Beatrice is his grandma.

Jack whizzes by on his outrun to gather sheep for their breakfast.  You’ve gotta love a dog with a job.

These little guys hang out together all the time.   Pretty soon they will be butting heads but for now it’s all ‘what trouble can we get into today?’

Jack loves to ride in the mule, it gives him a much better view of the squirrels along our driveway.

For the last few mornings during chicken chores, I’ve found their feeder has been knocked over and is completely empty.  Their barn has some holes in it, and is completely open where the rafters meet the walls so we figured something was making its way in there at night.  We put their feeder inside a lidded metal can and set a trap.  We left a bowl of food in a humane cage hoping to catch whatever is stealing food.  This morning, the cage was still ‘unsprung’ but the bowl of food was empty.  The only evidence of a thief was the mouse droppings left in the food dish.  Hmm… a mouse wouldn’t spring a trap but it also wouldn’t be able to knock a feeder over.  Luckily, our ‘trap’ was a two-parter.  We have a night vision game camera (the Truth Cam) and Brian had set that up in the barn, too.   When we downloaded the video content we got to watch our chickens running around at about 8PM but at 10PM we got some footage of THIS GUY.   Then again around midnight we saw a little army of mice stealing the food from the trap.  Luckily, we have a bigger trap.  It’s going out tonight.  We’re gonna getcha!

Hermione peers over the pasture gate looking for a treat.  This morning, it was fresh greens from our greenhouse.