Peanut has always been one of our flightiest sheep. She’ll spook at anything and everything, and gets this insane look in her eyes all the time. The other night, as the sun was setting, I was watching all of the new mamas with their lambs, all sitting in a wooded area, off the path. Danny and Zippy were trotting up and down the path way, sort of excited about the warm weather, happy. As they passed Peanut and her lambs, she ran right in front of them, spooked, and both of her lambs got trampled and died. I watched it happen in horror. There was no reason for her to have done that except that she spooks so easily. All of the rest of the mamas were calm, chewing their cud.

In the best of worlds, I’d have another paddock with a shed to put the cows, but I don’t have one, and the weather is still bad enough that I’m not willing to put them somewhere with a shelter. Sigh.

So now I’ve got her in a separate little fenced in area, next to the rest of the sheep, but someplace I can keep her contained so I can milk her. She was starting to get engorged. I’ve never milked her before because she’s always been so flighty and I have lots more pleasant sheep who are used to being milked, but whatever. She and I will learn. It wasn’t too bad this morning, actually. She was very confused, but I still got a quart of milk. It’ll be nice to have fresh raw sheep’s milk again. I wasn’t going to milk the girls this year because I’m so busy and taking a class, but we’ll make it work.

Frank’s got the really unpleasant task of skinning two beautiful little ewe lambs so we can keep their pelts. I’d rather have the lambs, of course, but it would be a crime to waste those precious pelts.

I don’t know where I heard of lamb bacon first, but it was some late night cooking show and it might have been Alton Brown. So the next time we slaughtered lamb, I asked to keep a lamb’s belly. We froze it because I wasn’t sure how to process it yet. I was looking around online, but wasn’t finding much specific. Then when I heard about Charcutepalooza, someone said any type of belly would work.

We added a few herbs to the regular dry cure recipe. (mint, crushed bay leaf, cracked peppercorns and garlic). We let it cure a week in the icebox. We rinsed off the salt, let it come to room temperature, then cooked it for 90 minutes at 200 degrees F.

I fried some up in my cast iron skilled, then cooked some shredded purple potatoes in the fat. I served it with poached eggs and a tortilla with cream cheese and our honey. I was trying to make a special Valentine’s Day thing.

It’s so lovely to have fresh eggs in February. The Chanteclers rarely venture out of their coop but are laying better than the Icelandics, who go everywhere. We are going to need to give the Icies some remedial lessons in where eggs go. We need to add some more deep bedding. It’s going to go above freezing this week. Spring is in the air and there’s lots and lots of crowing going on.

I think that the next time we take lambs to freezer camp, I’m going to have the bellies sent up to Vermont Smokehouse. I’d like to get their opinion on my spice mix. I’m wondering how it would work with some of our maple syrup.

Seriously, nothing says love like lamb bacon.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Whole Foods announced that Icelandic lamb is the best in the world, and they are importing huge amounts from Iceland and undoubtably selling it for lots of money.

Icelandic Sheep Breeders of North American is a great place to find a farmer near you who raises Icelandic sheep.

The article didn’t use a picture of Icelandic sheep, but instead a stock photo of cute lambs. Real Icelandic sheep are much cuter, really, so I posted a shot of George, mostly because I think he’s gorgeous. What I didn’t say was that I took that picture when I found him in the front yard one morning. He’s rarely where I want him to be, but also sweet as can be. His babies are just like him. I traded some sheep for some eating lamb this year, and got one of his clones back because she just couldn’t keep him behind a fence. Oops!

Good thing they are so cute, friendly and YUMMY! I understand from my Icelandic friends that Icelandic lamb raised in actual Iceland is way better than here. Wow! Because it’s really yummy here. But terroir is something that I totally believe in.

I think I may just love mint a little too much. But I love mint.

Ever since it’s shown up in the garden, I’ve been using it. If I don’t use it, it will take over my garden. It’s a good thing I like it, but we may still have to put up stronger boundaries for it. I keep giggling at the thought of letting it go wild in a pasture, and then finishing the lambs on it next spring. (Add a little garlic to their water — a great parasite help! — preseasoned Easter lamb surely is a selling point, right?) (Note to self: you do not need help selling lamb. You need help growing your flock faster.)

Mint and runny eggs — not usually a combination that most people would think of, right? It is SO GOOD. I wander around the garden before almost every meal to see what looks good. One morning I picked mint, parsley and chives from the garden, added some parm and garlic, and baked it with my eggs on a whim. (20 minutes at 400 degrees) I usually use spinach and chives, or cilantro, but mint turned out to be awesome. I have to force myself to use other herbs in my egg now. I think Frank might be getting a wee bit tired of it.

There’s nothing I like better on a hot summer’s day than ice cold cucumber spearmint soup. It’s so easy to make. Peel and seed four long cucumbers, place in blender with any combination of white things. I like buttermilk and cream cheese. Sour cream and yogurt. Heavy cream and dill. I use handfuls of spearmint, add a little salt, then stick it in the freezer for about an hour. (Set a timer that you can hear outside!) Garnish with fresh mint and just picked chives.

I was a Girl Scout growing up, and I sold about a million boxes of Thin Mint cookies. I needed a way to make my own, and the recipe from Small Batch Baking is pretty good. I use whole wheat flour and lard in my chocolate wafer cookie, and for the glaze, I pour one cup boiling water over about three cups of chocolate mint leaves and let it cool, then cover and place in the ice box for two or three days. Add that liquid to two cups of melted chocolate, add a little butter and the glaze is the perfect consistency. I keep frozen logs of the dough in the freezer, slice a few off while it’s still frozen so I can slice really thinly, and then store the finished cookies in the freezer. I love having an ice cold cookie whenever I want, usually two or three in a week.

Whenever Frank manages to steal some nice oranges from the loot destined for the pigs, we juice them. I juiced 4 oranges, added about a cup of mint extract (just mint I’d soaked in water for a few days in the icebox), and simple sugar made with organic sugar, to make 2 cups of fluid. I added 2 ounces of dark Bermuda rum to keep it from freezing too hard. Yum! Highly recommended.

What do I do when I only have a few ripe strawberries? (I mean, besides eat them straight away.) 1 cup strawberries, 2 cups mint leaves soaked in water for two days, then drained, 1 cup simple syrup, 1 ounce lemon vodka. Yum. Adding just a little bit of alcohol (rum, vodka) keeps the sorbet from turning into a solid brick in the freezer.

Things to write up later. Potato mint garlic potato salad, perfect to use with new red potatoes. Shredded pork, mint, and ginger on Thai egg noodles. Mint jelly that turned out a weird color because I use raw sugar and mint leaves and refuse to use green food coloring, but it tastes great!

Right in the middle of the rotten weather over the weekend, when it was alternatively raining really hard then snowing really hard with lots and lots of very strong wind, we had the first lamb of the season, of course. I just knew that was going to be the case. This was a first time mama and yet she still had that baby boy up, cleaned off and nursing within minutes. I love these Icelandic sheep. She could have had him in any of three sheds, but of course chose to do it right out in the open. Oy.

Ever since, I’ve been watching the sheepies extra carefully. The ewes all look wide enough to land an airplane on. We had a visitor (and customer) here today, and she got to see our second lamb of the season, this time a girl. I’m getting good enough that I could tell it was a girl from quite a ways away, from the back! I had to go check to be sure, of course. I noticed right away that this lamb had huge ears just like the first one.

The weather yesterday and today has just been absolutely glorious. Cold nights and warm days, big blue skies. Perfect sap weather! The puppies and I have been manning the evaporator all day long. I’m having so much fun with them. They are six weeks old now. They are pretty much potty trained, which is nice because I like to have them romping around my living room. I’ve been working on getting them to come on command, and that’s going pretty well, and just yesterday I started some “sit” training. Two of them still need homes. Pass the word!

I started this week on piglet and calf watch. I was getting worried about my ability to tell a pregnant sow from one who wasn’t, because where were my piglets?! Maybe she was just fat. She kept separating herself from the herd, not showing up for breakfast, hollowing out all sorts of possible farrowing locations, but then the next day, she’d be up and about, hungry, not looking like she was going to have those piglets afterall. I was really starting to doubt my pig farmer credentials.

Ella Mae’s due date was August 24th. We know the precise date she got pregnant because we did it through Artificial Insemination, using semen from Gordon, a registered American Milking Devon bull from nearby Sullivan. Elly was loving all of the extra attention she was getting from me, but as the week went on and on, and Tropical Storm Danny was headed our way, with lots of rain forecast. I decided then that we were having a boy calf, we’d name him Danny, because he was going to be born at the most inconvenient time possible.

On Monday night, Frank and I were headed back to the house from feeding the pigs (no piglets, woe), and I noticed Gracie (an Icelandic ewe) seemed to be licking a white bucket or something. What had I forgot out there? I went over to investigate and it turned out to be two surprise lambs! A spotted ewe lamb and a black ram lamb with sugar lips, so he’ll look just like George and Gracie, that gorgeous gray pattern. So I guess when I put the rams back in with the ewes, she was still in heat. That’s crazy — we had our first lambs the first week of April, and when that happens, I’ve always assumed it’s safe to put the boys back in. Oh, well. I’ll take them! They are adorable. I’ve been spending lots of time out cuddling them this week, while still waiting for piglets and the calf.

The heavy rain started in Friday night, as forecast. Danny was no longer hurricane strength and we didn’t get any wind to speak of, but the rain was something else. Saturday morning, Elly was down in the corner of the paddock, by the swamp, having her calf in the pouring rain, just as I expected. Why stay in a shed when you can be out in the rain? We let her be until I saw she was licking off a calf, and then went down to see what she had. As expected, it’s a boy, and we will name him Danny.

We got them up into a shed, which was tricky. I pulled Elly’s halter and Frank carried the baby. Getting them both uphill in the pouring rain and slippery mud was less than fun, but it didn’t really take that long. We got him to latch to a couple of teats so that I knew he was getting a belly full of colostrum. That was pretty easy — a lot like doing it for lambs, and easier than it was with Polly when she was born. (Hell, we had to have the vet out to have her tubed, because I just couldn’t get her to latch.)

I’m really pleased with Ella Mae. All that worry about her prolapse, all that advise to cull her. I’m really glad I went up to the annual meeting of the American Milking Devon association and talked with her previous owner and other farmers who have the breed. They all told me that her prolapse was minor, vulva only, and her previous owner said she’d looked like that last time and didn’t have a problem with the delivery. That certainly was the case this time as well. Whew! I’m glad we took a chance. She’s been just a dream cow, temperament wise, and is being a good mama. Go Elly! Lots of people are assuming I’m sad we had a boy instead of girl calf, but I’m not, really. I’m happy to grow my own beef.

Then, last evening, after we got home from celebratory sushi, we were going to feed the pigs but noticed that all of that morning’s apples were still there. That’s odd. It’s not rare for there to be some food from breakfast still left at dinner time. I try to do that, actually, so I know we don’t have hungry pigs. But all of them? Hmmm. So we went to investigate.

Well hidden, we found Mina with piglets, and the rest of the herd was sort of surrounding her location. I pretty much just took the picture and left them all alone. She had them nursing, it was starting to get dark, and seemed to have it all under control. I went back this morning, all are dong fine, and I think there are eight piglets. Yay! I’m glad I was right and she was closing to farrowing. I think I get a bit of my pig farmer cred back now. The weather this week is supposed to be lovely, nevermind that she had them at the height of the rain.

What a day. What a week! It’s like spring time all over again with the sounds of babies all over the farm.

There’s quite the farming community on Twitter. There’s a perception out there that farmers aren’t smart enough or connected enough or have time enough to Twitter. It turns out that a lot of Big Ag has guys out in big tractors and combines and such driving in big circles all the live long day. Many of them have iPhones or Blackberries with GPS and camera capabilities, and are kind of bored. They use their devices sort of like CB radios and chat. Lots of stuff about sports and the weather, but lots about jobs and the media. Jokes. Music. Conservative. Oh, and the bible and God. Always that.

There’s also a whole bunch of hippie granola liberal do-gooder organic sustainable farmers, all along the spectrum. Pious. Health nuts. Defensive. Strident. Funny.

There are homesteaders of both stripes, I’ve found. It’s probably split 50/50, just like everything else in this country.

It takes a while to figure out who is who, of course. If you look at the #agchat or #followfarmer, it’s all mixed up. #ProFood is sort of where I belong, but I find them on the strident obnoxious in your face, which I really can’t stand. They interrupt interesting conversations about actual farming issues — how to irrigate, how to deal with the weather, how to handle pests, or late blight — with political and emotional issues. Sometimes you just need to get the facts and opinions about late blight and don’t want to hear about anything else at the time. That’s just irritating. Shut up!

But some of the stuff from the big ag guys astounds me. OMG the lies. Keeping pigs indoors is done for the comfort and safety of the pigs? Seriously? Bullshit. It’s done for the convenience of the farmer. I know pigs. You can NOT tell me that they’d rather be confined like sardines in your barn instead of out in a wallow. Hell, mine won’t even go into the sheds I provide them when it’s below zero, if they have hay and a pigpile. Plus, they “rearrange” the wall on the sheds so the structures are barely stable, after a while.

Safety? We’ve had a horrible predator year this year, and have lost sheep and birds in horrifying numbers. We haven’t lost a single pig, period. It’s a stupid animal who goes into the pig pen. Three strands of electric is plenty porous for a fox or coyote to get in. Probably even a big raccoon. In the winter, they are behind “hog panels” that they sort of rearrange as their mood suits. Walk right in, Mr. Bear! A neighbor said that I don’t have pigs, I have small hippos. Hungry hippos. Cute, though.

Big Ag isn’t real fond of the coverage they are getting in the press right now. They HATE the Time story. The party line is to talk about how Time just slammed farmers while they are down. Don’t you love farmers? It’s right there next to baseball and apple pie to love farmers. Boo, Time.

They tell the story of “Livestock vs. Deadstock” to combat the coverage about the overuse of antibiotics. It’s an absolute sidestep. No one is advocating not using antibiotics to heal a sick animal. That’s not the point. It’s using antibiotics on animals who would be healthy if only they were eating grass instead of grain.

Dairy farmers are going out of business all across the country. It is devastating. I don’t know what the answer is to all of these questions. Clearly the way they were operating isn’t working. The regulations and subsidies and prices of milk and the import and exports and ack. I don’t understand it all. I don’t have time to try to understand it, to be honest.

It turns out that Twitter is sort of like cable tv. Well, what I hear about cable TV. My time to fart around on the internet and/or watch TV is pretty limited. Farming, to me, takes a lot of time, and I don’t have a Smart Phone or reliable wireless. I also have a pretty limited attention span. I kind of like to dip my toe in from time to time, but really, I’d rather go cuddle a sheep.

Or pester Elly, who may never have her calf. We are supposed to get rain from Danny tomorrow. If there are high winds, I think that’s the time she’ll freshen. Her official due date was the 24th, so she is now four days over due and not really showing many signs. She’s had a bit of mucus and her udders are filling up, but she’s still eating for two and quite active. She is loving all of the extra attention. If you can believe it, I haven’t quite figured out yet whether I will bottle feed the calf or not. I’m leaning toward letting her raise it, but she’s never done that before. Her calf was always bottle raised, and she led her life tethered in a stall.

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.

I had a surprise this morning. I thought I was done with lambing, and that none of Spike’s girls caught. I figured his troubles with parasites all last summer stunted his maturity, but I’d give him another year to see if he catches up.

But I woke up this morning to a beautiful new moorit ewe lamb out of Venus. Venus was one of my lambs last year, so I wouldn’t have been heart-broken if she didn’t catch, but thought it was worth attempting. She had the baby up and cleaned, but I hadn’t seen any nursing, so I jugged them.

The curious bit is that the two days that Miguel got out and into that pen were January 13th and February 3rd. That would make due dates of May 28th or June 28, and today is June 2nd.

So now I’ve got to figure out of Spike has any moorit in his background. We know Venus does, because Miguel is her daddy, and he’s moorit.

Spike’s parentage is this, from Dancing Lamb Farm:

Sire: DL-101R

Dam: TNY-148L

This black, horned, ewe lamb is out of my milkiest pureblood Icelandic ewe. Her mom produced more milk than most of my dairy cross ewes last year. One of the Lacaune crosses is the only one to produce more. I’m keeping her twin sister. She would be an excellant choice for someone wanting a true triple purpose sheep (milk, fiber, meat). She’s being bred to DL-325S out of Brendon, an Aboti son with great fleece.

Clicking on the breed book just makes my brain bleed. I’m hoping Frank will figure it out.

I so want to keep this little girl! Moorit is my favorite of all the Icelandic sheep colors, and though I had three moorit lambs this year, all of them are boys.

Marilyn separated herself from the herd last night, and I fully expected to find lambs from her this morning. Instead, she was down, and when I went to check her out, I found she had a prolapse. I’d never actually seen one before, but it was all we could think of. It looked like a basketball coming out her back side. Since we’ve never dealt with this before, I called the vet and Jan came out in about an hour.

After she got the prolapse back inside, she found Marilyn wasn’t that dilated, but was straining and would push the prolapse back out if left alone. So she used her fingers to manually dilate the cervix, which only took a few minutes. It wasn’t too painful, I could tell, but I’m sure it wasn’t comfortable. It brought back awful memories of my own labors all those years ago. Ugh!

Soon enough, though, she was dilated enough for Jan to pull out two lambs. (I didn’t know you could sort of force dilation that way.) First was a little white ewe lamb, and I was worried when I saw it that it was dead, but she felt a heartbeat, swung her a little to clear out the lungs and sure enough, she started breathing. We put the lamb up near Marilyn’s head and she started cleaning her straight away, while Jan delivered another white lamb, this time a ram with HUGE horn buds.

Mother and babes are all doing fine. I’ve got them jugged, down near where I still have Naomi and Selina with their lambs. (Naomi didn’t have another overnight, so it looks like she just had the one single ewe lamb and the two moorit ram lambs are indeed Selina’s, like I had originally thought.) We are to give Marilyn penicillin for a couple of days, just to be on the safe side, and considering how dirty that prolapse got that makes a lot of sense to me.

Hopefully, we won’t have another prolapse, but now that we’ve seen how to handle it first hand, I guess we’ll do it on our own next time and not need to call the vet. But I’m so grateful we have a vet who makes farm calls!