It often happens this way on the farm — someone dies and someone is born, both on the same day.

Sadly, Misty died today from a ruptured spleen, delivered by a kick from our new male llama. We had let them get to know each other, and didn’t leave them alone until there was no spitting and they were familiar with each other. But he’s a kicker — both Frank and I have hoof marks on our arms from his first days here. I’m so depressed about it. Misty was so neat. Now having lost both her and her sister Mary, I’m not sure I want to have llamas anymore. So much individual personality, and yet their benefit to our farm is intangible. The horses can take the place as guard critters. No one is going to mess with Prince or Pearl. Poor Misty. I’m glad to have known her, and she’ll be greatly missed.

Right after I found Misty, I noticed that Serena had a lamb. She’s a first time mama, and did really well. Had him up and claimed in no time. I jugged them to be on the safe side, but she’s a great mama. I keep thinking we are done with lambing for the year, but because we left Spike in with his girls so long, I guess he eventually settled them after all. This little one is a moorit ram lamb. After her sister had a moorit ewe lamb earlier, I spoke to Mike Kelley to see if Spike carried moorit in his line, and he does. I’m thrilled. Moorit sheep are my very favorite. I’d love to have a whole flock this color. There’s only Lily left to lamb, if she’s going to. She doesn’t look bagged up at all, but who knows.

Flickr is now allowing short video clips. I finally figured out how to make my camera take a video and what software to use to get it to Flickr. (All by myself! Go me.)

If I can link them properly in the same fashion, here are some clips from yesterday. I still need to get several critters to perform on command, so stay tuned, and hope for better weather. It’s horribly windy and cold out there today.

Bjarki had a great time today, introducing the new pup to all of the farm animals. She is just a fearless little thing. Everyone wanted to meet her, too. Doppa and Sue were the two sheep most interested, but she went under every fence, into every pen, to at least take a look. I asked Misty if she wanted to meet the new puppy, and she walked right over to me as if she understood, and she and Deeza had a nose to nose that I wish I could have caught on film! Too cute. Deeza is a little *too* interested in chickens, and hasn’t a clue what the word “no!!” means, so we have a lot of work to do there. She cleared out the hay house of chickens while I was tying up the pig pen, and had way too much fun doing it.

The pigs are bored or something. They are messing up the heater in their water trough, so Frank had to spend a lot of time today fixing it, again. They are also determined to knock the gate down or undo all of the twine that is holding it together. I put Bjarki and a ball in with them for a while, which they all really enjoyed, and left the ball, which kept them amused for about 10 minutes when they were alone. Then they went back to trying to flip the water trough and pull out the drain-plug heater. Arg. Good thing they are so cute! Their personalities are really coming through, and I’m starting to be able to tell them apart. Ginny is trouble!

I got Ms. Misty moved one pen over today, and it wasn’t that hard. She really wants to be behind a fence right now, and when I just left the gate open and let her choose to go in with gentle pressure from behind, she walked in. Whew. Having her out the day before a major Nor’easter would NOT be fun. But now the pens are far more balanced — her plus 4 lambs in one, Sue and his four ewes in another, and Miguel has his six ewes, plus Leon (my wether). I’d like to move Leon into Sue’s pen, then we’ll be 6-7-4+llama, which is as balanced as we can be, but it’s not crucial, and he’s nowhere near as easy to move as Misty.

The only chickie news today is of the cute and interesting type. This crew spent the day hanging with the pigs, per usual. I was there when she decided it was time to come home, though. She flew to the fence and called them. They randomly either flew there (while squawking madly) or whined and cried as they tiptoed across the snow. When they’d all reached the staging area, they sat there cute as could be, all fluffed up for a while, like she was letting them catch their breath. Then she flew to the coop hatch door, waited in the door, calling them, and one by one they all made it inside. It was just kind of fun to watch her in action. I like it when she’s counting well!

After a failed attempt at lighting one of our brush piles, we mostly cut and brought in firewood for the woodstove in our bedroom. We have random piles of firewood down on the ground, not cut to length or anything like that, all over the property. We have lots of wood stacked for the big stove in the basement, but the bedroom stove takes wee little pieces, and we just haven’t had time to get to it, so we’ve been piling on extra covers instead. But with the storm coming, we really wanted to have enough wood to sleep comfortably for a few nights, so having that feels good already. We used to line the back deck with wood for the bedroom. It’d be nice to find the time to do that again. (nostalgia!)

We’re as battened down for the storm as we can be. Everyone was fed just that bit extra, all inside their sheds. The winds are supposed to get really heavy as the storm winds down tomorrow — 50 mph gusts, they say. C’mon roofs, please hold. They are forecasting about a foot for us, which doesn’t seem too bad, to be honest. A foot — that’s easy! (says the chick from West Texas) I still (mostly) think snow is fun.

When we went to town yesterday, Frank took me out to brunch at one of the new restaurants in town. It was their first day of serving brunch, and we were their first customers of the day. I saw Biscuits and Gravy on the menu, and couldn’t resist. You can’t take the Texas out of the girl!

Except I should have resisted. It was awful! Bland gravy, bad biscuit. I had to special order eggs and bacon, because they were serving it only with potatoes. (Huh?) The difference between their eggs and our eggs was huge! I have gotten so spoiled by farm fresh eggs that it turned out not to be a treat to go out to eat. They said they cured their bacon themselves, and I was less than impressed. Our bacon has so much more flavor, plus I don’t over cook it.

So today, I set out to do that meal properly. The keys to biscuits and gravy for breakfast is to have great biscuits, peppery milk sausage gravy, a grilled pork chop or chicken fried steak, and eggs.

First, biscuits. I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I experimented a bit today, and I like the results.

Two cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick of butter, chopped into small pieces, cold
3/4 cup raw milk
1/4 cup sour cream

I mixed the dry ingredients and the butter in my Kitchen aid mixer with the regular beater, then put the dough hook on when I added the sour cream and milk. Mix just until it holds together. It’s a little sticky.

Turn out onto a floured surface, roll to 1/4 of an inch, and fold the dough in half. Cut out your shapes, and place pretty close together on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. There’s something about that double piece of dough that makes them rise really nicely, and when they are placed close together, they rise up instead of out. I used a heart shape today. (see here) Let rest for about 15 minutes, then bake for 15 minutes at 450°F.

Next, gravy. I never know how to explain how I make gravy, but here is an attempt. This is an area where having pork stock just makes such a difference. Cook a few shallots, mushrooms and pork sausage just until the sausage is browned. Add 2 cups of pork stock. Add lots of freshly ground pepper and salt to taste. It should be very peppery. Make a slurry with flour and cold milk, and when the stock comes to a boil, slowly add the slurry. Reduce heat. If it’s too thick, thin with more milk. Let simmer while the biscuits bake.

I served it today with a grilled pork chop and eggs, and if I judge by how quickly Frank scarfed it down, it was a success. It doesn’t get more local than this! The pup enjoyed the bones from the chops, and I’ll take what is left over after lunch out to the chickens. They sure seem to need lots of extra kitchen scraps these days, and are especially ravenous around bits of meat.

I’m almost afraid to jinx it, but Ms. Misty is actually behind a fence, for over four hours so far today, a record! She followed me in to one of the sheep pens this morning, being her nosy Nelly self, so I shut her in, and ran some magic white tape over the gate, to see if that will keep her in. She’s not happy, poor thing, all humming and pacing, but she’s been there for a couple of hours now, which is a new record. I wish she’d gone into one of the pens with fewer sheep — she picked the most crowded one, with some of the most aggressive sheep, darn it. I’d hoped to put her in with Lily and Spike, the lambs, where there is far more room for her in the shed. I need a magic wand to move her over one pen, please! But I’m crossing my fingers that she might be contained, finally. I will feel so much better knowing exactly where she is, with all the snow we are having lately, and my garden especially will appreciate not having her wandering about, sampling everything.

We’ve been pretty lucky, in that we can leave the puppy outside to play for an hour or two without much bother. He mostly hangs out with Misty, and I have got to get a picture of the two of them playing. He will bring her his ball, and she will push it with her neck, and he goes and chases it, wash rinse repeat. It’s so cute. This morning, though, I looked out of the kitchen window, and the two of them were headed way way down the driveway, happy as can be, but, uh, no. He came back when called, and Ms. Misty took her sweet time getting back. Have I mentioned that I need to get her behind a fence? Oy.

We finally went into town, because we needed a gazillion things and it just couldn’t be put off any longer. There’s a new storm coming too, so with all of the holiday shopping, it was awful, but at least it’s now done. We got a pig trough thing that they hopefully won’t be able to flip for their water. We got floating heater thingies for all of the sheep water troughs. We got special pig grain, since we are almost out of the Allstock that we’ve been using. We only bought a couple of bags to see if they like it, and when I took it into them when we got back, they were so hungry that they knocked me over and man was that scary. Thankfully, I was wearing a leather jacket, but I thought for a moment there that I was going to be dinner. Frank got enough electrical crap to start our own store, I swear. Where I thought we could just run extension cords out to each pen, he says we have to install another breaker box out there, to the tune of nearly $500. Ouch!

I can’t tell from the weather forecasts exactly what is going to happen this week, but it looks like snow, snow, freezing rain, snow and more snow. So I’m not sure how much is going to get done outside this week. The list of crap still to be done outside is long, of course, but oh well! What happens, happens. I’m so zen about it all, at this point. Everyone is under cover, even if we are still using the livestock trailer for George and Gracie, so be it!

Walter at Sugar Mountain Farm suggested an animal roll call, which sounds like the kind of update I am capable of doing at the moment.

We’ve got Egil, our Icelandic rooster, currently lording it over his four hens, two of whom are broody, and around 30 three month old chickens. I can’t tell the sex of most of them yet, though we can hear the boys as they practice their crows (horribly). We also have one pet chickie, Peeper. She’s not sure she is a chicken, hangs out with the pup during the day on the front porch.

Speaking of which, we have Bjarki, our Icelandic sheepdog pup, six months old now. We were a bit worried that we were going to have to have him fixed and not be able to breed him because he only had one testicle, but the other has descended, let there be rejoicing. We love this guy so much we want to get two girls from Iceland to breed him to. His personality is as wonderful as he is pretty, and he’s a very pretty boy. His instincts are coming out nicely, and I’ll be looking for herding school for the two of us soon.

We have two registered Tamworth gilts (who still need names) and three feeder pigs. We had another feeder, but she’s been sent to fatten up at our neighbor’s. They are having a pig roast in August. Pigs are very different than the other critters we’ve had, and I still don’t have the hang of them. I’m getting there, but we still haven’t got them moved out of the sheep’s winter pens and to where we want them to root up stumps for us. Dang it. I’ve got the gilts set up for a visit to a registered boar this fall, at East Hill Farm in Troy, New Hampshire. That sounds much smarter than us getting a boar ourselves, at least right now.

We have two Percheron horses, Prince and Pearl. Pearl is due any second now (we have wax!), so soon we will have a foal as well. We got them to help us log and clear land. I’ve got Pearl in a friend’s foaling stall down the road from us right now, though, and will bring her and the baby home as soon as I get the baby trained to electric fence.

We have one llama, Misty, who we can’t seem to keep in a fence at all these days. Ever since we lost her sister Mary (who I still miss), she has just been impossible to fence in. She climbed a cattle panel the other day, while we watched. Arg! But being free seems to agree with her — she’s in much better condition. She hangs out with Prince during the day, and is slowly slowly slowly learning not to hate the pigs. She only gives her alarm call at them once an hour or so now. (Progress!)

We have 30 Icelandic sheep (half of which are lambs) and one Icelandic/Shetland cross wether, Leon. I’m not real happy with them at the moment, though it isn’t their fault, really. It’s the blasted electronet, which just will not keep them in. They got out AGAIN last night and ate my garden. Arg. Grrr. I’m very frustrated with sheep right now.

Last but certainly not least, we have four thriving hives of bees. They are doing fantastic. Three of them have honey supers on them, so we will get honey this year, yay. We started them from new sets this spring, but we had drawn comb and even some honey to give to all of them, so they all got off to a good start, and it is really showing. Go bees.

I almost forgot Princess kitty. She would not be amused. If I mention the dog, I must mention Her Highness. She’s really been enjoying the summer weather, and is finally resigned to having the puppy around. I caught her napping next to Peeper the other day. (If only I’d had my camera!) Shouldn’t everyone have himmies as barn cats?

Remember when I wrote that Minx had gotten out and we weren’t sure whether she’d gotten into the grain or not? We think she must have, even though we had the hay house where it is stored zippered down to just open enough for the chickens to get in, so they could blasted keep laying eggs where they shouldn’t, but at least where I knew.

I found her down the next day, and was just beside myself trying to figure out what was wrong. I posted about it on Homesteading Today (a great resource for small farmers, by the way) and on the ISBONA mailing list, plus called my vet. I got all sorts of ideas of things to try, as well as reading up in the Merck Vet Manual and Laura Dawson’s book as well.

It really couldn’t be worms, because we’d wormed everyone very aggressively when Maria went down, just a week ago. I was really afraid that she’d be gone, that she’d go downhill so fast like Maria did, but I was very aggressive in trying to get her back to good health, including drenching her with water every half hour all day when she wouldn’t get up, wouldn’t eat anything.

That first day was touch and go. Her lambs were clearly hungry, but I couldn’t get either of them to take a bottle, but they were crying, constantly. The vet said to put her on penicillin twice a day for five days. I dosed her with Pro Bios when I got some, but the first day I used homemade yogurt and buttermilk, just to keep her rumen working properly. I had tried all that with Maria, but none of it had worked. Minx did get better as the day went on, but was still mostly down the next day.

The third day was better. She clearly still wasn’t herself, but she was up. She had dark green scours, very runny, and her eyes were listless, though. We just kept up the routine — drench with iron/vitamin, probios for her rumen, penicillin twice a day. I put water down near where she was camping out, and her lambs stopped crying, so she must have been nursing them. As she got better, she started giving us a chase to catch her, which I took as a good sign.

I knew she was better when I found her out of the electric fence. Oy, this girl. She only had one lamb with her, and the other one crying early in the morning is how I knew we’d crossed over to the healthy side with her. At least I could stop worrying.

Misty has decided that she must follow Minx around when she is out, and it is all very aggravating. All of the other sheep will stay where we put them, and Misty splits her time between sitting next to the sheep in the fence down the driveway and wherever Minx is. Last night, though, I saw Minx headed into the hay house — she got in the door by pushing her head up on the zipper. Arg!

She’s now in jail, until I figure out what to do with her. She’s not very happy about being there, but I just can’t take a chance that she’ll get into the grain again. She is really trying my patience! I remember telling her that I wanted her to get out rather than be sick or die, but oy. Can’t she just be a good little sheepie please?

I worry that I will jinx it, but we may have actually gone a whole day with the pigs not getting out. Excuse me while I rejoice. We even went to town (for so much crap for the farm!), and everyone was in the right pen when we got back. Even Misty.

Pigs are really different than sheep. They react very differently than the chickens, than the llama, the horses as well. All of those are ruminants, and prey critters, herbivores. Pigs react a bit more like the dog does, like we would. Omnivores. (My puppy is an omnivore, not a carnivore. Trust me. I’m not sure there is anything in the world that he won’t eat and enjoy.)

We are having to learn different techniques to handle them. We’ve ordered some books, asking around on Homesteading Today to see which ones are worth buying. Isn’t that our normal pattern? We figure “how hard can it be?” and then get books when it is harder than we thought. That seems to be a lesson we haven’t yet learned.

We’re in a line of storms that is supposed to be pretty severe. I asked Frank which one of our structures is most likely to fail. I guessed the temporary sheep shelter in the back that we made from cattle panels. If it does, they are right near a wooded area, which will give them back up shelter. I hope it is okay, though.

The rain will be a relief. I got my raised bed planted with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cilantro, basil. Sixteen feet by four feet of yummy goodness, with soil that is just amazing. The compost we sifted for it was just amazing stuff. Black gold.

Frank got the drip irrigation working for all of the window boxes, and the raised bed.

We picked up a 100 gallon trough for water for the horses. We were filling their water sometimes five times a day, and it was just getting unbearable. (When I bring over weeds and grasses from weeding the garden, both the pigs and the horses dip the bundle in their water before eating it. If it comes straight from dirt instead of gravel, they just eat it. Interesting. SurPack must not be yummy.)

I looked around for a hard plastic wading pool to make the pigs a wallow, but didn’t find one anywhere. Maybe I will try freecycle.

Minx has woken us up two mornings in a row, baaing by the window. Yes, she comes up on the deck to wake me up. Today, to get her back in the electronet, she got no grain (as she was expecting). We weren’t sure if she’d gotten into the hay house where the grain is stored, so wanted to be extra careful she didn’t overeat grain. Instead, we trapped her, put a halter on her and had to do a bit of a drag and pull. We think we found the spot by the roses where she got out. She left her lambs in, which is interesting. When Kaytla got out (her mother), she always brought her full family with her. I don’t mind at all if her daughters stay put.

We are crossing our fingers about everyone staying put today. Here’s hoping. Maybe tomorrow we can go a whole day where *all* the critters stay in their fence? Wouldn’t that be cool?

The bleeding heart is blooming so prettily in the front garden, which is the only one I’ve done much weeding in at all. There is another variety right next to it, with a completely different leaf and flower, mostly faded. I guess I bought another plant at some point and don’t remember it.

Frank mentioned that he saw a newt over in the water that is still pooled over around the garden shed foundation. I wonder if he will name this one Gingrich too.

Here comes the rain.

Poor thing. She just hates everyone and everything right now. I’m trying to coddle her as much as I can, to not add to her stress. The current theory with what killed Mary is an overrun of a common bacteria that lives in their respiratory tract, and that can be caused by stress. The vet wants me to put Misty on two doses of penicillin every day.

That would assume I can catch her. She escaped yesterday when we were putting the sheep into the back pasture. She just jumped the fence. She’s done that before, but usually, she jumps back in when she sees where I put the sheep, but not this time. Damn it. I didn’t chase her or anything, though, figuring she would just hang out near them, as she has done before.

She did that for a little while. But then we moved the pigs out from the little enclosure where they kept escaping into the pens where the sheep had been. That seems to have been the last straw for Ms. Misty, who hates the pigs with an unholy passion. (Why?!) The chickens and the horses don’t seem to care at all, nor the sheep, but Misty gives her alarm call at them, over and over.

She disappeared all day. I periodically tried to look for her, figuring she was near the house. I heard her a couple of times in the morning, but not for the afternoon at all, so I started to worry that she’d headed back to where we found her the other day. After talking to Valerie, though, I decided to take the horses for a walk into the woods, a first for them, to see if we could see her up the trail. Sure enough, there she was. She wouldn’t let me get very close, but she saw us. I just spoke to her for a while, and then turned the horses back, making sure she saw the way home. The horses weren’t quite ready to go back, but we’ll take them for a longer walk this weekend.

This morning, she was browsing near the sheep. I got her to eat some grain from the Red Scoop of Joy, but didn’t try to catch her. I’m trying to get her calm again. She followed me around the back of the house, watched me bottle feed the baby. But then she caught sight of her reflection in the back sliding glass door, and has been sitting there, keening to it, ever since. She thinks she found her sister, poor thing.

I’m not sure what else to do for her.

Update: We let her hang out by the back door, where she could see the sheep, all day. When I went back to turn on the water to do the evening chores, there she was, in with the sheep, like nothing is the matter. Maybe I do know something about llama psychology after all. She still hates the pigs, though. We heard her danger call all afternoon.

I’m starting to agree with her, though. We moved the pigs into the old sheep pens to keep them from getting out so much, but four of them got out this evening anyway. Damn it. We have plugged holes and plugged holes … why didn’t the lambs find them? We got them all back, except one, and they had no interest in following the Red Scoop of Joy, at all. They much preferred to root around under the trailer, and all the chickens agreed — they got a crowd in nothing flat. So in an attempt to understand piggy psychology, I’m letting the last one miss his buds for a bit, and maybe catch our breath before we go out there to get him in.

In other news, we sifted the prettiest compost in all the world this afternoon, and then topped off the raised bed with it. It’s amazing what the bins did being ignored for two years. No turning, no attention, no nothing, and it is completely finished black gold. Even the worms had left. I’ve got six bins just like it, which might actually be enough for the first time in my life.

We also started another raised bed, using 6 x 6 pieces of lumber that we had laying around hither and yon. If we get it even vaguely finished and loaded up with something, I want to at least plant potatoes in it this year. Then, we have to have at least one more by next spring, because I’m putting tomatoes in my first raised bed, so with the need to not follow with the same veggies each year, we need a spare, at least.

In the wild critter department, I think I saw ten snakes at least today, and didn’t even scream like a girl, like I usually do. I even tried to take a picture of one, but it came out really blurry. I saw a painted turtle and a leopard frog, too.

Oh yeah. We found 15 eggs in the hay house, way up high, in the back. For now, I’m going to let them keep laying there, because this way at least I know where the eggs are. I’m hoping to find some apple baskets and put them in the coop. That’s what they had in their previous home, and maybe they’ll like them here. I was going to have to break down and buy eggs, which was really irritating me, so I started following chickens around like a detective for a while.