Just in time for holiday gift giving, we have two items that we have working from our fancy new online store.

First, I put together a 2012 calendar of all the cute critters we have around here. I tried to include everyone, and I tried to make the photos somewhat match the seasons. We sure do have a lot of snowy photos! Here is the set of the photos used in the calendar so you can get an idea. It’s an 8.5 x 11 inch standard calendar that I had made at Staples this year. It’s $17.00 including shipping. [click here to order]

Next, I took three gallons of our lightest maple syrup that we made this year and turned it into maple candy. It’s so good! Addictively so, so please order it quickly so I stop eating it all! Yum. It’s 100 percent pure maple syrup. We are selling two size boxes, one pound and a half of a pound. I made an assortment of shapes, both holiday shapes and ones very New Hampshire-ish, like the Old Man of the Mountain and moose! We’ll mix up the pieces in each box and try to give a good selection. If you want a certain shape, just let me know in the comment section. We include special maple candy boxes perfect for gift giving. [Click here to buy maple sugar candy]

I met someone in the Holistic Farming class I took in Vermont earlier this year whose family has been making maple syrup and maple candy for four generations. I approached her to see if she would let me pay to use her equipment plus help me through the process, and she agreed. It’s going to take a lot of practice to get the hang of it, plus the equipment itself is about $1,400, so this was a great deal for me. Here’s a short little video of how it all works.

And in case you were hoping for a puppy this Christmas, I still have one male who is looking for a home. We’ve become the Puppy Channel here and there are tons of photos in this set on Flickr. This litter will be registered Icelandic Sheepdog puppies with the AKC, since both Reiki and Disa are registered. They are 6 weeks old today and will be ready to go home the week between Christmas and the New Year. Aptitude testing is going to happen early that week, as is their vet appointment. They are adorable, of course, and so smart! I’m really happy with how the last litter has grown up, and part of me only wants to sell puppies to someone who takes lots of photos or brings them by every now and then.

What an amazingly warm fall we’ve been having. (I mean, aside from the few times that we’ve had snow. At least it all melted. Twice.) The ground isn’t even frozen yet, which feels late for us. We’ve had enough rain that it’s like a whole extra mud season. But it still gives us extra time to catch up on stuff. We are perpetually behind.

Maggie continues to heal. She’s not staying in the house anymore. She’ll come in, wander about, and then want right back out again. It’s been so warm that I’m not really worried about the cold, and her fur is growing back at a great clip. We brought out one of the puppies to meet her yesterday and it was just hysterical to watch her. The puppy was afraid of the big wide world, of course, but Maggie was determined to make it all okay. Let’s play!

Speaking of the puppies, they are growing like weeds. Fat and sassy weeds. They’ve got the dog door figured out now and happily go in and out from the whelping box onto the back balcony all day and all night long. Every time I hear the click click noise, I smile. I’m pretty sure they’ll all be potty trained by the time they go to new homes. (There are still two looking for homes! Christmas puppy! How can you resist?!) They are also starting to get afraid of stuff, more aware of their surroundings. I was vacuuming and looked over to see these faces. I didn’t realize they could all fit there still! Poor, scared babies.

They are just starting to realize that there’s a life outside the whelping box. I think we’ve got about 24 hours to figure out a lid or we’re going to have puppies in the living room. I’d like to to that introduction a little more controlled — gradually let them have more access while they learn to find the dog door, rather than having to watch them like a hawk on the whole upstairs floor. I’m still trying to decide how to figure that out. Right now, they all look like they are doing chin-ups, or coming up to the side and jumping. (copying mama!) It won’t be long until they make it over. I’m trying to make being on the balcony fun and interesting — they have lots of food and water, toys, and plenty of space to run. I saw several of them peering over the edge and barking at the sheep this morning, and they played back up barking when the other five adult dogs were harassing a hawk that was looking for a chicken or turkey dinner.

And because we have become The Puppy Channel around here lately, here’s the latest video. Disa plays with them so cutely when she’s not staying away from them so they don’t eat her alive, and you can see several of the puppies going in and out of the dog door.

I don’t think I remember hearing that any sort of precipitation was on the forecast for today, just wind. We got wind, but we also got snow. Stupid snow. I am so not ready for snow. It’s not going to stick. That’s my mantra.

Maggie is getting better. She spent all day outside and was only willing to come in when it was getting dark. I sort of think that’s okay. The real predator risk is at night, really, and if she’s more comfortable outside during the day, I’m okay with that. I’m just not yet ready for her to go back on duty protecting the farm. Her wounds are healing well. The worst part is that front leg of hers, though, which she has access to worry the most and is looking quite grim today. ugh. Poor baby.

Frank put up some more roosting perches in the chicken coop. We really need a second coop but that hasn’t happened, so we have to figure out how to make enough room in this one to get us through the winter. More places to roost at night is the current solution. They hardly spend any time in the coop at all during the day, so as long as they have plenty of space to roost at night, I think it can last one more winter. But next year, we really need a second coop.

We are going to keep a female from this litter. Laura from Solhunder Icelandic Sheepdogs will get the first pick, and my understanding is that she is hoping to find a buyer in the Toronto area. Contact her if you are interested! None of them have opened their eyes yet, but I am starting to see some tiny little slits appear. I can’t wait to see actual eyes.

I want either the dark brown girl or the brown girl from this litter. I already have a black and white, so having another doesn’t make much sense. Bjarki doesn’t seem to carry the black and white gene, or at least he didn’t pass it along in the last litter. But that way, I’ll have two females unrelated to Bjarki. I’m so enjoying having the puppies that being able to have a litter a year sounds awesome.

If you are interested in a puppy yourself, drop me an email at lisa@mackhillfarm.com.

Having Maggie injured and a new pile of puppies has put a couple of changes into the daily routine, but we are all starting to understand how it works.

We’re keeping Maggie inside overnight, despite her very loud protests when she hears something outside. It’s been clear at night lately and the moon is huge which of course brings all the coyote howling closer to the house. Man is she loud when she barks inside. It wakes everyone up and she is very insistent, but I’m not giving in. She’s in no shape to help, sorry.

But we are letting her out for a bit in the morning. She’s even eating on her own, as long as I remember to knock it onto the ground, the big weirdo. If I don’t, she’ll just guard it forever, not eat it, but if I spill it, she’ll painstakingly clean it all up. In the house, my trick is to walk Disa and Bjarki near where I’ve fed her … just that bit of pressure will convince her to eat. She’s also drinking on her own. So we seem to have finally got that under control. We’ll let her stay outside until mid-morning and then she willingly will come back inside the house. She’ll go out a few more times the rest of the day, but comes right back on her own. She’s still got lots of healing to do.

The puppies are a week old now, and still mostly sleeping. They eat and sleep, eat and sleep, and Disa has them all well under control. Everyone is gaining nicely, all quite evenly. No runt this time. Disa still spends almost all her time with them, though will go outside for 20 minutes or so a couple of times a day. She stays upstairs with them at night and isn’t sleeping downstairs with me, though every now and then she’ll come down for a cuddle, but as soon as she hears them peep, she rushes right back. She’s such a good mama. She’ll also bring me her ball from time to time for a quick game — no keep away now. She’s become quite efficient and dropping it. She’s a working mama! No time for silly keep-away games. Throw it again, fast! (Such a change!) I love to watch her nap with the babes. She’s such a cuddly girl, and so affectionate with them.

Maggie barked barked barked barked barked all night last night, in my bedroom. She was pretty convinced that I didn’t understand that she wanted outside RIGHT NOW, so she kept coming up to the side of my bed and barking right in my face. Oh, I knew, because I could hear Buffy and Faith barking outside, and even Disa and Bjarki were calling the alarm, but no. She is in no shape to go help and I was pretty sure it was coyotes off in the distance, so they were not going outside. We didn’t get much sleep last night. (She hadn’t made much noise at all since her accident, so despite the loud noises, I was happy, just a tired happy.)

(I caught up on The Next Iron Chef on Food Network. So much fun. Insomnia can be your friend because I never watch television unless I can’t sleep. I keep thinking that there’s a show somewhere with farmers and the same concept … but I think strange things when I haven’t slept much lately.)

The weather has been fabulous this week. Mid-60s and sunny and dry. The snow has almost all melted. It’s been awesome to work outside again. I’ll take it. We weren’t ready for winter, and still aren’t, but having time to work on it in such pleasant conditions is just lovely.

We are letting Ms. Maggie spend more and more time outside during the day. Hours. But we keep bringing her back in. This morning, I watched her outside while I was making coffee, and saw her drink from a puddle. She hadn’t touched the water inside, so that was a good sign. This evening, I heard splish splash while I was undressing, and sure enough, she was drinking from the dish in my bedroom. FINALLY! No more subcutaneous fluids, finally. She’s not eating much yet, but some, but the drinking is so important.

There’s a nearly full moon out tonight and we’ve had four-wheelers on the snowmobile trail plus many airplanes, so Buffy and Faith have been barking their fool heads off all night. I bet I don’t get much sleep tonight, either. Still, Maggie is mending. Yay!

Here’s how we do Early Neurological Stimulation or as we call it, puppy torture. It’s very short. There are only four exercises. Well, first we weigh the puppy, but that’s just so we can be sure everyone is gaining and doing well. Then you put the head straight up, then straight down. You tickle between some of the toes with something soft. (I use a Q-tip.) Then I use an ice cube and touch three or four areas, and try to do the ears, nose, mouth, feet and maybe the tail. That’s it! (Here‘s the official paper on the process – it’s a PDF file.)

You can see how it’s not really that stressful on the puppy — more on Disa than the baby. It’s about 90 seconds from start to finish for each puppy. She calms down after the first puppy, as soon as I put the tortured baby on the milk bar, and both she and Bjarki get a treat when we are all done and they never let us forget it. Frank and I get a glass of wine. Or two.

The puppies are all gaining weight well, though the two black and white ones are gaining the slowest. Several of them are now just over a pound. Today is their third day of life, and we started Early Neurological Stimulation, something that we did with the last litter and we really liked the results. Disa’s breeder did it with her too, and we find her so very smart. Super Puppies on the way! We call it puppy torture though, because though it only lasts about a minute per puppy, Disa and Bjarki do not approve of it at all. Once we are done with each puppy, we put it back on the milk bar, and when we are all done, Disa and Bjarki get treats and we get a glass of wine. Last time, by about the third or fourth day, Disa and Bjarki knew the drill and stopped fretting so much, so I’m looking forward to that. Today was stressful.

Maggie is making some progress. She ate some of her breakfast voluntarily for the first time this morning. Eggs, bacon, cheese, liverwurst — hard to resist that! I hand fed her some when she stopped, but this evening, I had to hand feed her all of it. (Disa is happy to finish whatever Maggie doesn’t want. She is eating about four times what Maggie is right now. Ravenous!) Maggie still isn’t drinking anything at all, so we are still doing subcutaneous fluids. I tell myself that as long as she is better today than she was yesterday, we are going in the right direction.

It’s hard to see her in this kind of shape, though. She’s still losing weight and just looks awful. Poor girl. I gave her several times without the collar today when she was outside, and she walked around a bit, even let Buffy and Faith snuggle with her for a few minutes, which was good to see. But she wanted right back in, which is fine, and slept most of the day. She and I both slept the night through last night, and I feel like a new woman today.

We got our first delivery of wrapped bales today and the sheep would like the world to know that they’d much prefer green grass, please and thank you. When we were talking to our hay guy, he told us how they had to hunt three steer who were wandering around the woods around their farm like deer this summer, and it made me feel better about our wandering cows. It’s not just us! At least we got ours back home without needing a gun!

It was just gorgeous outside today. I heard that it might reach the mid-60s later this week. Sounds great to me! We are nowhere near ready for winter. Are we ever?

Maggie finally got to have the drains taken out of her wounds today. She was so scared on the way to the vet, shaking the whole time. She was petrified to go into the vet, had lost almost 7 pounds since Monday. Damn it. But they didn’t need to sedate her to get the drains out, which is a big deal. She’s still on super duper antibiotics for another week or so. I’m to use warm compresses on the wounds as many times a day as I can so they don’t scab over, and let the wounds heal from the inside out. She seems to like that, so far at least.

Since she still isn’t drinking, they suggested I let her out of the collar for a few minutes every day to see if that will help. I tried it on the way home which was a huge success. She was so happy! As soon as we got home, though, she started obsessively licking at the wounds, so it had to go back on. No matter what I try to get her to drink, she just won’t. It’s so frustrating! We are still doing sub-q fluids until she starts. She also wouldn’t eat for Frank all day today, so I came home with liverwurst, mixed it with eggs, and succeeded. Heal, baby, heal.

Disa and the puppies are all doing well. We weighed them all tonight and they are all gaining well, no real runt in this litter so far. Both she and I are sort of amazed at how much noisier and more expressive this litter is than the last one. They whine, they grunt, they squeal. When they nurse, they make happy happy snorting noises. They keep making these sort of loud squeals and she’ll tilt her head at them, puzzled, and then look at me. Don’t ask me, honey! It’s really too cute. Watching them is sort of like watching fish. If only I had time to do it all day!

We got a good look at all the puppies this morning — took photos, weights, checked sex and dew claw status. I’m not sure why many Icelandic Sheepdog breeders care so much about dew claws, but they do, so now we know. All but one of them had double dew claws on both back legs and singles in the front. One only had one rear double dew claw. I mean, I know my Icies are incredible climbers, diggers and walk walkers, but I don’t really know how much the dew claws help with all of that.

So we have three girls and two boys which I think is great because I want to keep a girl from this litter, since she’ll be unrelated to Bjarki. Yay. We have two black and white ones like Disa, one girl and one boy. Then the one who is a really dark brownish gray that I thought was black is a girl. The other two will be reddish brown like Bjarki and Reiki, a girl and a boy. What a nice mix of colors, and did I mention I’m psyched that there are three girls?! Yay.

Maggie is slowly getting better. I was determined to get more than eggs into her today, so filled her eggs with lots of cream and cheese and topped it off with bits of our very own bacon. Who could resist that? I got a bunch into her. For dinner tonight, I didn’t do as well, but did get her to eat about a cup of diced up chicken.

I’m letting her hang out wherever she wants, and she’s decided that watching the world from the entrance way is the best spot. It seemed to calm her down more to be able to at least see outside, which makes sense. The way our house is all of the living space is upstairs, and she’s not up to stairs yet, and I feel bad for her downstairs by herself. This seems to be a good compromise. I took down one of the puppies to her tonight for a brief meet and greet, but Disa wasn’t really happy with me so it was just for a minute or so.

She gets her drains out tomorrow afternoon, but I bet she still needs to keep the hated collar on. I bet they have to sedate her again, sadly. Still, we are making progress.

I thought Buffy, Faith and Bjarki might be feeling a little attention deprived, but they so live in the moment and are just so happy. We put the first round bale out for the sheep this morning and the dogs were so silly about being someplace new for a few minutes. Life is very exciting if you are one of our pups. Buffy and Faith are a bit more unsure about everything without Maggie around and completely confused about why she’s in the house now and have tried to come inside several times. I worry about them out by themselves every time I hear them bark now. It’s tough to know my brave defenders might get hurt so very badly.

Look at how much snow we still have. Melt, melt, melt!