Missing Willow 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.

Helen’s got her head between the top of our goat fencing and our electric fence wire.  Good thing it’s not energized!  We’ve got a solar energizer that we’ve never found a reason to install.  Deer can jump our fence and do sometimes.  We’ll find Fifi and Milos watching over them as they sleep with our goats, which is weird.  Otherwise, nothing’s ever gotten in or out.

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Yesterday was pick up day at our county fair, which gave us our first opportunity to figure out our results.  Once again, we took home the largest check of the fair.  Our blue ribbon percentage is almost 50% of everything we enter.  Not bad!  I included a photo of the back of some of our blue ribbon entries so you can see the care I put into each and every jar.  Oh, and I was told that if I had done more quilting on my candy jar quilt I would have done even better.  Which is a moot point because it got exactly the amount of quilting that I could tolerate.

Yesterday we finished processing our turkeys.  All ten are in the freezer.  One of them managed to sink a poop covered talon into the fleshy part of my hand on his way out of the poultry tractor.  If my doctor’s office was open on the weekend, I would have gone.  Instead, I’m toughing it out and keeping an eye on it vs. driving an hour to an urgent care facility.  He got me good but we got him back.  😉

P.S. You never have to worry about me posting disturbing images of our farm chores on here.  Unless it’s something like shoveling the barn out.  But then who wants to see that?!

Applique third place ribbon at the county fair!   Kind of amazing since while we are an hour from a Home Depot and there’s no McDonalds in the entire county, we’re in the heart of awesome quilter country.  And there are some really strict judging rules and I’m so very not a fussy person (I’m sure there were lots of imperfections).  Any way.. pretty happy with my results.  🙂  I’ll post a photo of the finished quilt and anything else that got a ribbon after we pick stuff up at the end of the fair.