A Watched Sheep...

Take a look at poor Acorn:

She is sooooo totally pregnant. I've been expecting her to lamb for five days now, checking every few hours all daylong, then twice at night and waking up extra early too.

And still, nothing. Except an uncomfortable ewe with a "What are YOU looking at?" expression on her sheepy face.

It appears that the old adage is true: A watched sheep never lambs

Acorn is our friendliest ewe. Also the ewe that has had the most "issues". We had to assist in her first lambing (two lovely twins!) and in her second (one 11 pound ram lamb with enormous horn buds) and then she was cast, developed a case of dry mastitis, a cut that happened at the peak of fly season (luckily she did NOT get flystrike). We gave her a lambing break last year but now here she is: huge and miserable all over again.

Hopefully, this will be an easy spring for the old gal.

As some of you might know, we drastically reduced our flock last year. Well, truth is, we'd planned to quit with sheep altogether. But we're just too attached to these old girls.

Here's current flock:

Matriarch Copper (she's 12 now!), young ram, Ewok, and flighty gal Penny. And of course, our dear Acorn (pictured and pictured and pictured above)

But any day now, this little flock will expand.

Sending Off the Roos

I'm all for the new, localvore, non-industrialized, back-to-the-land type of farming. Heck I AM it-- at least on a very small scale.

But it is what it is, which is to say: not pretty.

Farming (even vegetable farming) is, at its most basic level, about manipulating natural things so that they serve you. In other words "using" them. It is not really a quaint, idyllic pastime. It is messy and brutal, beautiful and hard and very, very real.

I have to re-learn this every few months here on Maggie's farm. Yesterday was a case in point.

Y'see, we had five too many roosters. They'd been part of the batches of hen-brooded chicks that blessed last spring. The ones that survived the fox attacks and hawk swoops. And they were now grown up enough to bully each other and stress out the hens and generally act like the feathered bags of testosterone they were.

We knew we should eat them. But Dan wasn't up for it after the last time, and I didn't want to try it alone. (Have I mentioned we are wimpy farmers)

So I put an add in Craigslist knowing that what I was too soft to manage, some other person could do with a quick twist of the neck.

Then I chased down those five roosters, feeling all the while so sad and sorry as only an absolute farming wimp can. In the crate, the cocky birds continued their squabbles, the weaker ones, crouching in the corners, the toughies crowing victory. "Soccerball," who'd turned out to be a beautiful feisty rooster was in there, and the soft ginormous "Mongo Rooster."

(LESSON LEARNED: Never name your rooster chicks.)

And then the guy came to get them and I felt..... awful.

I know. It makes no sense. They were making themselves (and the hens) miserable. They'd kicked our formerly-dominant rooster, Jaguar, out of the coop, they were all fight and fury, but I felt so responsible for their fate. I hoped the guy who bought them would give them a decent life/death, but I had no more control over that.

But I sold them. For $2 each. And washed my hands.

And then I moped about the way farming is not the bucolic wonderland that is sometimes portrayed.

In the Land of Poo

It's February Vacation (I believe this is a special New England Holiday, sort of a President's day/let's-not-bust-the-school-budget-on-heating-oil thing) and the kids and I have been keeping busy.

We have been to the library, done wood crafts, sand art, baking, Ice Skating and a Museum. And we have watched a few DVDs. (I try to limit the kids' "screen time", but this is increasingly like trying to hold back the ocean with a spatula.)

One of the DVDs we watched was Nanny McPhee Returns. In it, a pair of "sophisticated" city cousins are dropped off to stay with their poor, dirty, farming kin.

The cousins' car pulls into the farmyard, which is a typical, if somewhat exaggerated slop of mud and um, waste, and the boy grimaces, turns to his sister and says:

"We are in the land of poo. Duck poo, cow poo, goat poo..."

Well we here on Maggie's farm got a kick out of that.

Farming is inextricably tied to "poo". Poo in infinite variety, Poo that seems barely possible. Poo that has poo.

I often wonder what our suburban and urban visitors think of the free-ranging chicken#**&! strewn about the yard and the barn and (often) the porch

the sheep "fertilizing" away in the fields

the gummy newborn lamb butts that often need wiping (don't ask...). The three dogs alone create quite a stink (well, yes, the pun WAS intended).

I imagine we might indeed seem to be living in the Land of Poo.

But, then, poo is one of the inevitabilities of life. It happens. And on a farm, as I've said, it happens a lot.

I know from experience that you can shield yourself from from much of this poo if you live in cleaner, less animal prone places--especially if you don't have pets or young children. But perhaps moving to the country helped us come to terms with poo as much as it did with meat-eating and winter. We simply had no choice.

Whatever the case, my kids have been quoting Nanny McPhee with glee:

One will say: "Greetings, O covered-in-poo people. Do you speak English? "

And another will add "Yes, poo-man, we have come from far away, from the land of soap and indoor toilets!"

And then, stepping out into the poo-strewn snow of Maggie's farm, they will laugh and laugh and laugh.

Impending Doom in the Orchard?

This is our orchard in deep winter snow:

It breaks my heart, this orchard. It's beautiful and needy and slightly rundown. We can't take care of it the way we should. Blame a lack of equipment, know-how, and will. Yet it hasn't quit on us. Every year, the apples are a little less lovely, but they come.

It used to be that we had a bargain with a large, local orchard. They'd care for the trees and take all the apples we didn't use. But their methods were highly conventional. We here at Maggie's farm are flexible, pragmatic even, but we could not abide by herbicide. Or, frequent drenchings of pesticides. We grit our teeth and allowed the fungicide in the spring and that seemed a fair trade off.

But as our flock of Icelandic Sheep grew, we began to use the orchard as pasture. The sheep nibbled the lower branches. But they kept the grass low without herbicides. We were fine with that, but the fencing made it hard for the orchard folks to work and they got sick of all the limitations and just stopped coming.

That was two years ago. Our noble little orchard continues on, apples scabby and small, but still good.

This year, though, feels like a last gasp. How long before the trees give out altogether?

We've tried to find someone to care for the orchard. But we are just a little too remote, and the care is just a little too intensive, I guess.

Spring is coming (Hard to believe in a snowy month like this one).

Any ideas? What would you do?

Felted Penguin

I made this needle-felted penguin with our own Maggie's Farm wool. And here's the crazy thing: it was easy. Relaxing even.

Basically, you mat dyed fleece by poking it over and over with a small barbed needle until you get the shape and consistency you desire.

Here's a great little how-to video:

Maggie of Maggie's Farm

Maggie and her Sheep

Maggie is 14 now, a little tottery and hard of hearing. Her hips ache and she has trouble swallowing sometimes (due to an old stick-fetching incident) but when she is outside with her sheep, you'd never know. She bounds along before us, pacing the fence line with that infamous border collie "eye", all business as ever. Later, of course, she collapses under the coffee table, barely able to walk. But she wouldn't have it any other way.

She gets confused sometimes. Once, she wandered across the road and forgot where she was. She had such a look of relief when I came to fetch her, gave a sort of "Oh, I'm with you!" jump and ran home.

Old age, as they say,is not for sissies. But we can all learn a bit from the stoic way our Maggie faces her new challenges.

Maggie and Luka

Taking the Yellow Crocs on the Road

Pretty soon, we'll be packing up for our annual Pilgrimage to Pinellas County (Florida, that is).

The first time we did this particular drive, our adolescent was less than two months old. THAT trip involved several nights' walking the colicky babe around roadside motels hoping we weren't keeping the whole place up.

Those first few trips involved dog-friendly hotels (For Maggie of course) and many of them. Some years it felt like it took FOR-EV-ER to make it down south.

There were two-baby trips (imagine a toddle with a stomach flu and a looooong fruitless Christmas morning search for a tube of Balmex), three-baby trips with endless Raffi sing-alongs, blizzards in New Jersey, and buckets of plastic toys.

Once we wised up to the beauty of a car-full of sleeping kids, the trips evolved into all night affairs, late afternoon starts and logy 2 AM passes through Washington DC.

I guess you could say miserable-yet-oddly wonderful road trips are now a holiday tradition with us.

It just wouldn't be Christmas if I wasn't waking up in a Cracker Barrel parking lot after an all-night drive, shuttling the kids through the chachkas and into the bathroom to pee and brush their teeth and arguing over how many hot chocolate refills might make up for their hellish night in the car.

If you are traveling with kids this holiday, here are a few things we at Maggie's farm found tremendously helpful:

1. Books on tape. We are finally all old enough to enjoy the same books! Our family currently loves the Septimus Heap series!

2. Books on paper! I visit the library and take out several new books per kid and hide them away until we're on the road. Variety is key here: Guiness Book of World Records, Graphic Novels, Calvin and Hobbes, Science Encyclopedias and many, many new novels keep all three busy.

3. Whiteboards and markers. For some reason, even kids that don't get much into drawing love to doodle and play hangman on these things.

4. Flashlights, blankets and comfy clothes-- make an all-nighter a sort of slumber party.

5. Taking turns. There are five of us and each person gets to choose an auditory option (book or music or-- in case of grown-ups-- the dreaded NPR.

6. Rest areas. Take advantage of these! We play tag or catch or just run around like nutcases, anything to expend a little energy.

7. Snacks. I make gorp and other protein-rich snacks like cheese and crackers, peanut butter and carrot sticks, and also junk the kids don't often see (Bubblicious gum and Tic Tacs are favorites)

8. Board Games. these aren't for the road. But they are mighty handy to have when the kids are jumping bed-to-bed in your motel room with nothing to do. Some of our current favorites are Bananagrams, Settlers of Catan, Blokus, and Poker!

9. A plan for the day after the all-nighter. We make sure to do at least one fun, kid friendly thing on that weary second day. (Did I say we? Um, I am the all-night designated driver, so often I rest up while Dan-- who can and does sleep through anything-- takes the kids to a hotel pool or local playground.)

10. Sense of humor. If you have kids, you know this is no small thing. Dan and usually balance each other out-- we are never in a bad mood at the same time.

11. Oh, just go for it! As frequent readers may know, we at Maggie's Farm are not the look before you leap sort. We are all about jumping in with both feet ... and at the drop of a hat, too. (There-- three cliches in one paragraph. My work here is done.) But, you know, we always get a good story out of the deal, and we never-- as my Grandmother used to say-- think we "woulda shoulda coulda!"