Missing Willow Farm

Anderson Cooper is what we decided to call our new ram.  Andy for short.  He’s a handsome silver haired gentleman and the ladies all love him.  🙂

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Jenna gets a chance every day to move our sheep around, whether they need it or not.  She loves it and it reminds everyone who’s the boss.  She’s very very good at it.  She came to us trained, so we had to learn how to give her herding commands.  I’m positive she’s way smarter than us about it.  She’ll occasionally shoot me a look like… Really woman?  Is that what you want me to do?   Smart girl.  She’s the perfect farm dog.

Autumn leaves won’t last long this year here in SW Virginia.  I think we’ve hit our peak, a weak earlier than usual.  We’ve had a few gloomy, rainy days which I love.  This is the view from our front door.  Greenhouse, raised beds, asparagus patch, playhouse complete with flagpole, satellite dish and mailbox (aka our garden storage shed) and our rowboat sitting on top of our dock neglected.  We haven’t been for a boat ride in a while.  I think we need to go fishing!

Hermione and CoCo come out of the barn to see what’s all the commotion.  The answer is the cow is being fed.  The other goats and sheep (who have already been fed) are trying to steal the cow’s food.  She’s bigger than everyone but doesn’t challenge them.  It takes our border collie Jenna to get them off of her food.  There’s lots of snarling and nipping going on.  Why don’t I have a photo of that?  The answer is pandemonium!  We normally feed the cow remotely but the goats got into our feed room last night and made a mess so she got fed by the barn today.  Thankfully, we keep our food in metal garbage cans so they just ran amok and scattered trash and electrical components around the pasture.  No over-eating, which can be deadly.  Never a dull moment on the farm!

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Jenna looks forward to heading out to the pasture every morning but not before a few rounds of retrieving her wubba.  Our steep driveway keeps her heart healthy.  It’s also her potty (see the little stream on the right)?  That’s some good peeing, Jenna!  I guess the world is a dog’s toilet when you think about it.

Sophia’s got the most expressive face of any dog I’ve ever seen.  I think it’s because her fur is lighter around her eyes, it’s almost like sad clown makeup.  She and her brother Milos know their job and do it well.  Stray dogs steer clear of our place since they arrived.  The farm we got our ram from last weekend lost seven sheep to their neighbor’s dogs already this year.  They have no livestock guardians.  We’ve got really good goat fence which keeps most everything out….. except roosters.

Nothing escapes the scrutiny of our goats.  Any time something new comes into the pasture, they run to check it out.  That includes our Kawasaki Mule, which we have to remove the keys from if we park it for any amount of time.  We had a buck who twice removed the keys with his lips.  He could also open the pasture gate, which requires studying to figure it out.  Hardly anyone gets how to open it the first time.  It’s like a farm I.Q. test.   We got a gate lock, and he went to a new home.

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  The new stock trailer was needed because we had to go pick up a ram.  He’s a katahdin, just like our Kat Von Sheep.  A katahdin is a hair breed.  They don’t have wool so don’t need shearing.  They’re also nicely resistant to intestinal parasites.  My husband trimmed his hooves while he was still in the trailer.  When the door opened, he bolted out and tore around our pasture until he came across the rest of our flock, which brought him to a screeching halt.  He’s already making friends, the ladies seem to like him.  He hasn’t told us his name yet.

Necessity required us to finally purchase a stock trailer and we found a doozy about 90 minutes from here.  It’s gently used and considered a two horse trailer but we don’t plan to ever have horses.  We’ll use it to shuttle sheep and goats and hopefully some day pigs, too.  It’s just the right size for our operation.  I like it.  It’s fancy.  🙂

Jessica’s getting more comfortable with being at our place.  She always waits for us in the morning for her bucket of sweet feed and then hangs out most of the day with the herd.  That’s her ‘where’s my bucket?’ face.