Lisa and I are caught in the middle of a fight between two groups we really don’t like.

Fifteen years ago, we sold a conservation easement on the vast majority of our land to HSUS. It is now officially the Frank and Lisa Richards Wildlife Sanctuary. Even though we’re now trying to farm, there’s only relatively little I’d like to pull out. The rest of our land is too wet or too steep even for pasture. Also, all of the HSUS people I’ve actually dealt with have been honest, reasonable and well meaning. We do have quite a few acres of very nice red oak which I’m hoping will be a big part of my retirement fund. And Valerie’s. And her children’s. So far, everyone I’ve dealt with at HSUS has left me confident that as long as we log with that perspective, which will always leave plenty of acorns for the wild turkeys, there won’t be any issues.

However, since we sold the easement, we’ve received their journal, All Animals. Over the years, nothing in it has led me to believe that HSUS is wavering in its’ original mission of promoting animal welfare. No one can argue with rescuing pets after Katrina or donating dog houses on Indian Reservations. They have never approved of sport hunting, and I cannot find it in my heart to defend the trophy hunting industry. People of good will differ on what constitutes hunting for needed food.

However, there is another crew out there, epitomized by PETA, whose goal is to convert all of us to vegans. They are of course fine with wild animals in preserved wilderness, but I’m honestly not sure where domestic animals fit in their vision. They clearly don’t approve of food animals. I agree with their stand against wild caught tropical birds and fish. The capture is usually inhumane and many species are threatened in the wild, although hunting is usually well behind habitat destruction as a reason. I don’t understand the crusade against parrot breeders, and I’m suspicious of PETA’s eventual goals for dogs and cats.

Other tenets of this pravda are that all animal agriculture is feedlots, and caged hens, that the animals must be fed human edible grain and that in the unlikely event that some farmer does raise animals on pasture, that pasture could have raised grain for the starving Africans instead. Modulo the starving Africans this is the Tyson, Cargill, Monsanto line. It smells to high heaven that PETA parrots it, given that they normally would not believe the time of day if a Monsanto rep told it to them.

It is also a pack of lies. Our animals do not live that way. Lisa puts a dozen pictures a week on Flickr that prove it. We will be gardening both of our acres that are flat enough and dry enough to raise crops. We could squeeze in an orchard to feed ourselves, but after that the starving Africans get lamb, or they keep starving.

Over the last fivish years, I’ve watched this pravda sneak into All Animals, and it bothers me. I am not willing to give even the appearance of support to people that deny the existence of Albus Dumbleboar and Minx ‘Dogfood’ Kaytladottir or pretend that you can grow grain in the Rocky Mountains.

OTOH, I’m not fond of the crew mounting the counterattack. Feedlots are cruelty to animals and should be prosecuted as such. On routine antibiotic feeding, I can believe the CDC and the AMA, or I can believe the Farm Bureau and Big Pharma. I don’t find the choice hard. The USDA still claims that a carrot is a carrot, a hamburger a hamburger, no matter how it’s raised. Even if I had the bazillion bucks, the tests don’t really exist to determine if my food is more healthy than Monsanto’ best. But I eat every day. There is nothing at the supermarket to compare with my pork, my turkey, my eggs and for that matter my carrots, onions and beans. The farm bill is the US taxpayer giving big ag money to produce crap food in a environmentally destructive way, which can then be sold to feedlot operators around the world. Yup, your tax dollars are sending corn to Chinese pig farmers for less than the corn cost to grow. And don’t forget to ask the Farm Bureau and the USDA about the dead spot in the Gulf of Mexico.

PETA is quick to tell you how much water it takes to raise a pound of feedlot beef. They’re not so quick with the number for a pound of Imperial Valley carrots. You’ll die of old age before the Farm Bureau mentions the (falling) level of the Ogallalla aquifer. My plants and animals use water that falls from the sky. If they don’t transpire it back to the sky, it is filtered through the soil on its way to the river.

So here I am. I sell pork, turkey, lamb, eggs and milk. They will all cost you twice what the supermarket cheapo stuff does. So far, our problem is raising not selling. They all taste far better. All come from animals that have names not lot numbers.

Those two groups hate each other. And both would really like to see me out of business because my existence contradicts their party line. Aargh!

I tapped trees today, and Lisa planted the first seeds under lights. The 2010 farming year has begun.

It was a beautiful day and the sap was running hard. I, of course, couldn’t find the actual taps, so we had to drive to Bascom’s to buy some, with the result that I’ll be lucky to get everything tapped tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Lisa planted celery, celeriac, parsley, peas and leeks in reused plug trays from our ornamental years.

Unfortunately both the horses and pigs have turned into total brats and are busting out multiple times per day. I know what to do for the horses, but can’t get to it until Friday. The pigs, I have to figure it out before I can do anything. In both cases an easy fix without snow will be a painful kludge with the fence frozen to the ground.

Still, we’re farming again. Happy New Year.

Four days of truly miserable weather this week. Lots of time for socializing puppies. We installed a dog door into the balcony slider, and Lisa has been chucking the puppies though it as appropriate for the last week. In the last couple days they have started going out voluntarily to do their business. Not perfectly of course, but a noticeable improvement in the amount of cleaning up and chucking out that we have to do. We took the puppies outside in front for the first time Friday. Maggie thought they were great, and a good time was had by all for about ten minutes before they started to get cold. They lasted much longer Saturday. Purple started herding turkeys, until they objected and she ended up hiding under the truck.

The fence in the back paddock remains effective. Only Maggie can still get out, and she simply jumps it even with the extra wire. I was not as successful with the pigs. They continue to walk right through their fence and seem to enjoy exploring the swamp. I need to get it live, but with the incremental way it is built that will be very hard in the snow.

Today I started the annual refurbishment of the seed starting setup. So far I’ve had to replace one shoplight fixture and one tube. I can expect another couple of each by the time I get everything running. As of now it’s really only the celery and celeriac that should be started, but there will be others soon.

This week’s business has to be getting the tubing out for sugaring. People out here aren’t tapped yet, but we saw one guy down in Keene who is. If the weather was clear, the temperatures we’ve been having would be high enough to start the run. Even without sun it will start soon, it just won’t be very good.

“Great, just what the world needs, another dog breeder and hobby farmer.”

Anonymous Reader said that in response to the lovely article in The Keene Sentinel.

I keep remembering the bumper sticker that I have on my truck. No Farms, No Food.

Does focusing on heritage breeds who can thrive out on pasture make us a hobby farm? Does having a mere 150 animals to care for do it? Not having a barn? Not buying into the Monsanto way? Not using chemicals, artificial fertilizers, drugs? One of us needing a day job so we have health insurance and pay off our kids’ student loans?

We believe that we need a vibrant farming community in our food shed, and we’d like to be a part of that solution. We are find that it’s both quite rewarding and quite hard to farm, but you have to start somewhere. We should encourage anyone who wants to, to try. The average age of farmers these days is something scary like 58.

What’s a hobby farm? So few New England farms can pay a mortgage. A few tomato plants are a hobby. The King Ranch is not. But where is the line between a hobby paid for by the day job, and the business that doesn’t make quite enough, so someone needs a day job? What about the wannabee author or actor waiting tables? We all win or we all lose.

I’m not going to apologize for breeding Icelandic Sheepdogs. Our farm needs both herding dogs and guardian dogs. Many other farms do as well. All of this litter won’t make good farm dogs, but I bet three or four do. The rest will make great pets.

We are getting our second rescue dog, Buddy, in a couple of weeks. I spoke to the person who is fostering him now, and he sounds like a winner. She says he’s a lady’s man, and thinks he’ll charm Maggie and Disa. This is our second Great Pyr coming up from the south. Farm dogs without a farm to protect, a job to do. We will gladly provide for them in exchange for their help. He’ll arrive here via Rescue Road Trips on March 6th.

Of course the writer is anonymous. Aren’t they always? It lets us project our current insecurities and defensiveness onto them. I think she’s a vegan PETA-type, happily eating organic veg flown in from California and Chile. Frank thinks it’s a CAFO operator who feeds his caged chickens GMO corn. If the only choice was eggs from those cages, we’d be vegan too. It’s not a binary choice, though.

The article in the paper has brought far more good than one snarky comment, of course. There have been many phone calls, emails, and visits, and it’s helped us meet all sorts of people we have heard of but hadn’t met. We also got a lovely hand-written letter from Ann Sawyer from Jaffrey, NH, a fifth generation dairy farmer. She said “I really respond to your love of the animals and the land. Go for it!”

We’re delivering a couple of hundred pounds of our wool down to Jaffrey for The Yurt Alert, as soon as the snow stops. (Ha.) We will definitely stop by their farm to say hi. I can’t wait.

Today was beautiful. It went up only to 41, but the sun was warm and the sky was blue.

I spent the day working on fence. I moved the two strands (never got the third one up) of the house side of the pig paddock back out of the flat area they spent the winter of 08-09 in. We gave them the area so they could use the shed, but being our pigs, they built themselves a nest in the open. They had been just walking out and going for a stroll on the frozen beaver pond. Last week one of our neighbors down the road herded them back with his truck. That’s a little too much. I did discover Saturday however that they think that beaver lodges are yummy.

I used the wire I clipped off to reinforce the hinge knot fence along the swamp. In spots it was completely on the ground and both dogs and sheep were just walking out. I ran a high tensile strand above it, then used some stranded wire to pull the collapsed woven wire up toward the high tensile. I’ll have to tighten it when the snow melts, but for now everyone will have to find a new way out. Unfortunately, I’m sure that they will.

I need to do the same thing with the hinge knot fence along Mack Hill Road, which is also totally porous, and add the third strand for the pigs. Tomorrow would be nice, so I can get started on setting up for sugaring. Unfortunately it’s supposed to snow over the next four days although AccuWeather, WMUR and Weather.com are in violent disagreement about when and how much.

I fed the bees today, 2 to 1 syrup. They had scouts out, not just potty flights, so it’s time to fake them out and get the queen laying. On the downside, they were coming out between the feeder and the hive body. I knew there was a problem there, but not having it propolized after five months is bad.

We got the sheep pelts back from Stern Tanning today. At $238 for four pelts, it wasn’t cheap, and at over a year, it wasn’t quick. Still they’re gorgeous, and Lisa has them up on Etsy. We have several more pelts to send out now that we’ve seen the product. If these sell, then it’s worth it to spend the money to have the others done. Here’s hoping. (Lisa points out that she may be wrong in putting up photos of the actual lamb that the pelt came from. Again, we’ll see!)

The puppies are just over three weeks old now. They are getting so mobile! They waddle around all over the place, play with their siblings, and are starting to play with toys, too. Their tails are just starting to point upward and I’m seeing a few starting to curl. I think two of them (yellow and red) are going to have long hair like Disa. I think the purple girl is still the calmest of the bunch. Little Blue is still the smallest, but the patch on his face is just precious. Remember, if you are interested in a puppy, see the details here and contact me. If you are near me, come by to see them.

We had someone out from the USDA office to help us apply for the High Tunnel grant program. If we get it, we’ll plant peppers and tomatoes, but mostly peppers. I’m from El Paso originally, and there just aren’t good peppers grown up here. I’m determined to change that! Combined with the tomatillos and onions that grow so well here, that’s chili verde enchilada sauce right there. I love that stuff. Frank’s been looking with longing at what we’d be able to get and we are planting it up in our heads already! At our size, we’d get 48 feet by 20 feet high tunnel. That would grow a lot of peppers!

I’m itching to start seeds, but suddenly our fences are falling apart all over the place. We have got to spend some serious time fixing what’s out there really quickly, and then sugaring season feels like it could come early this year. The sheep are looking quite pregnant, as are two of the sows. I need to figure out where the ducks and geese are laying and get some hay back in the sheds so they’ll lay there. By this time last year, I was having duck eggs to bake with and goose eggs to poach.

Recreational users of federal lands in the west are beginning to object to the millennia old practice of leaving sheep on the open range under the protection of dogs. Ignorant flatlanders do things that even a human shepherd would get justifiably angry about, and then think it’s unreasonable when the guard dog tries to eat them.

In response, the American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) has come with a set of proposed guidelines for using guardian dogs.You can read them here.

Unfortunately the ASI proposes applying the same guidelines to herding dogs as to guard dogs. These breeds have completely different jobs. Attempting to apply these guidelines would produce a dog that would do neither job well.

Getting past that, the entire document postulates that the sheep owner grazing on open range with a federal grazing permit, but suggests that the guidelines are appropriate for private land as well. I cannot speak to situation of 10,000 plus acre private unfenced ranches in the west, but here in the east, on fenced, several hundred acre spreads, they cannot reasonably be followed, nor would they protect neither the sheep nor the trespassing city slickers.

Dear Ms Jensen,

I am a farm sheep producer in New Hampshire. I have several concerns with the guidelines as proposed.

First, before any specifics, it’s completely inappropriate to attempt to apply the same guidelines to herding dogs and guardian dogs. They have different jobs, which require different personalities and different physical capabilities. What’s appropriate treatment and behavior for a 40 lb Icelandic Sheepdog or Australian Shepherd whose job is to put animals where I want them is not at all appropriate for a 120 lb Great Pyrenees that I want to intimidate (or eat) “coyotes” that are actually picture perfect Red Wolves. I’m happy to expand, but I’m sure that any shepherd who uses both types of dogs will agree.

Specific issues:

Adequate food and water for LGDs will be available at all times. Should be “will be provided.” As long as the dog is adequately fed, free choice feeding not only should not be required, but may well be incorrect management practice in the instant situation.

“Shearing/clipping/grooming of LGDs should be done to prevent matted coats and to prevent overheating in the summer.” Beyond clipping out the occasional knot, the dog is much better off with its natural coat. The appropriate guidance is “Don’t use a Maine dog in Georgia.”

“LGDs must be trained to respond to basic voice commands. Dogs that cannot be controlled by voice commands will not be allowed to work on federal lands.” Guardian dogs have been bred to be autonomous. You want your herding dog to do what you tell it. You pay the guard dog to stop and decide if it agrees with you. If you train it otherwise, you are hampering its ability to handle a situation on its own.

“LGDs must be socialized to people. They need to be trained so that vehicles, ATVs, hikers (with or without a dog) and bikers do not appear in the dog’s mind to pose a threat to the sheep.” My dog understands that people outside my fence are not a threat to the sheep. People are allowed inside my fence if and only if my wife or I bring them in.

“In areas where potential exists for conflict between LGDs and the public, sheep producers should consider operating with both a day and a night herder, supported by herding dogs, in order to have someone with the sheep and with the LGDs at all times.” Earth to ASI. This is a family farm. I sleep at night. If I could be out with a gun every night I wouldn’t need the guardian dog. When she needs me, the gun and I do show up.

“Permittees and agencies should cooperate in developing routing schedules designed to ensure that flocks and associated LGDs are no closer than ¼ mile to any trailhead, significant use trail, developed or significant use dispersed recreational site, etc., during weekends, holidays or other high potential recreational use periods as specified by the agencies.” As a good neighbor, I allow a public snowmobile trail across my land. I have fence along the south side of it. My livestock, including dogs, are right across that fence. I only have half a square mile of land. I could either close the trail or give up my LGD. This is another “Earth to ASI” case.

I realize that these guidelines are nominally only for permittees on Federal lands. However there are many “suggestions” in them that they should apply to private lands as well. Aside from the herding dog/guarding dog issue I can’t address issues in the western US. I am however sure that these guidelines are seriously wrong for any place east of the Mississippi, whether north or south.

Sincerely,

Frank Richards

We’ve been picking away at the seed order since Christmas, and finally finished it tonight. There’s no doubt we’ll still end up scrambling for something we forgot, but that’s the real world.

The first order was to Miller Nurseries

That’s one more bundle of onion plants than we bought last year, but probably still not enough. Lisa brought up the last leeks today, so we’ll probably be out by March 1. We also didn’t realize that we had both leeks and onions until September. Between the two, I’m already thinking I should get another bundle. I’m heroically resisting. Last year we also bought sweet potato slips from Miller’s. I was not impressed with them, so this year we’re getting them from Jung.

We ordered three items we couldn’t find anywhere else from Hirt’s Gardens on Amazon. Hirt’s Gardens actually seems to be a mashup: two of the items are actually coming from Forestmaker. We’re getting hosed on the shipping, but when you order one pack of seeds, it just sucks.

Chires Baby Corn
Sweet Baby Broccoli
Purple Passion Spinach

The baby corn is for stir fry. The “Baby Broccoli” would be broccolini elsewhere in the world, but some California grower has trademarked the name here in the US even though it has no rights to the actual genetics. It’s also sold as ‘heirloom broccoli’ although it’s apparently a 20th century hybrid of broccoli and an Asian relative, kai-lan. The spinach is for Fisher-Price gardening.

We couldn’t find our Tomatofest catalog, so we just copied the 2008 order:

Items Ordered: Price: Status:
# 1 of : Alicante – Heirloom Tomato Seeds
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Black Crimson Heirloom Tomato
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Blondkopfchen-Heirloom Tomato Seeds
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Bulgarian Triumph
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Debarao-Tomato Seeds
$2.00 Processing
# 1 of : Earliana
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Gold Dust
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Japanese Black Trifele-Tomato Seeds
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Long Keeper-Tomato Seeds
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Paul Robeson
$3.95 Processing
# 1 of : Peche Jaune
$2.95 Processing
# 1 of : Slava-Tomato Seeds
$2.00 Processing

We never actually planted the bell pepper seeds we ordered from Johnny’s last year, so we’ll be planting them this year. Same goes for the 8000 seed minimum order of Hatch chilies from last year.

We ordered these from The Maine Potato Lady

ORDER DETAILS UNIT PRICE TOTAL
======================================================================
QTY 1
SKU 345RT
PRODUCT Red Thumb, organic – 3 Pound
PRICE $11.75 $11.75

QTY 1
SKU 466MR
PRODUCT Mountain Rose, oganic- 5 Pound
PRICE $10.50 $10.50

QTY 1
SKU 524ABC
PRODUCT All Blue, conventional – 20 Pound
PRICE $14.75 $14.75

We’re also planning to pick up 50 pounds of Green Mountain potatoes at the Keene Agway. Local Harvest pinged us about a shortage of root crops, and Green Mountain is on the Slow Food Ark of Taste. (Honestly, the Ark of Taste for veggie cultivars is a rubber duckie not an ark. There are thousands of flavor variations adapted to hundreds of microclimates.)

Tonight we ordered from R.H. Shumway

SKU Product Size Quantity Product Total
01750A Large Smooth Prague Celeriac Packet 1 $1.75
02413A Cumin Packet 1 $1.85
02437A Rue Packet 1 $1.85
06104a Antique Sunflower Mix packet 6 $11.10
06857a French Harlequin Marigold packet 2 $5.50
09050A Pyrethrum Packet 1 $1.85
12272 Madaline Hill Rosemary plants 3 $15.95

This started because Jung doesn’t carry celeriac, which Lisa wants to try. Shumway seems to be a bit cheaper than Jung, although they apparently have common ownership. I piled on the rest of the seeds largely to see if the quality is comparable, in which case we’ll move our primary order to Shumway next year. The last item is three plants of a Rosemary cultivar that they claim is good to -15F (-26C). We haven’t hit -20 F (-29C) since January of 2000, so I’m betting 15 bucks on global warming.

This is the big order to Jung

02129A Marketmore 76 Cucumber 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01675A Nantes Or Coreless Carrot 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
03290A Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
03028A Early Jalapeno Pepper 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
03580A Spineless Beauty Hybrid Squash 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
02409A Delfino Cilantro 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01120N Golden Rod Bush Bean 1 @ $6.95 $6.95
03425A Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach 1 @ $1.55 $1.55
02648A Little Sweetie Hybrid Muskmelon 1 @ $3.25 $3.25
52880 Vinyl Stretch Tie 1/2 Wide X 150 Ft Roll 1 @ $2.95
$2.95
02515a Buttercrunch Lettuce 1 @ $1.55 $1.55
00870A Toma Verde Tomatillos 1 @ $1.50 $1.50
02569a Baby Leaf Zesty Mesclun Mix 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01020N Blue Lake 274 Bush Bean 1 @ $4.95 $4.95
01697A Yellowstone Hybrid Carrot 1 @ $2.25 $2.25
03521A Celestial Scallop Mix Hyb Summer Squash 1 @ $2.25
$2.25
01625A Cosmic Purple Hybrid Carrot 1 @ $1.50 $1.50
03673A Table King Bush Acorn Squash 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02415A Florence Fennel 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02712a Cajun Delight Hybrid Okra 1 @ $2.35 $2.35
03345A Easter Egg I I Blend Radish 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
04742X Jungs Sweet Potato Sampler 1 @ $21.95 $21.95
02920A Extra Early Little Marvel Pea 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
04587 Victoria Rhubarb 3 @ $4.98 $14.95
03550A Horn Of Plenty Hybrid Squash 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
01614A Atomic Red Carrot 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
02260A Long Island Mammoth Dill 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
02385A Catnip 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02830A Moss Curled Parsley 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
01768A Autumn Explosion Hybrid Indian Corn 1 @ $2.45 $2.45
01590A Stonehead Hybrid Cabbage 1 @ $2.25 $2.25
02430A Italian Oregano 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
52886 Natural Jute Twine 1 @ $4.95 $4.95
02802A Joi Choi Hybrid Pak Choi 1 @ $2.25 $2.25
02847A Hollow Crown Parsnip 1 @ $1.65 $1.65
01755A Golden Self-Blanching Celery 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
02220A Bush Pickle Cucumber 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
01829N Trinity Hybrid Sweet Corn 1 @ $8.95 $8.95
02440A Broadleaf Sage 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
04105A Sugar Baby Watermelon 1 @ $1.95 $1.95
02460A Winter Thyme 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
02357A Pistou Basil 1 @ $1.75 $1.75
01070N Royal Burgundy Bush Bean 1 @ $5.45 $5.45

Last year we got calls from local nurseries hoping we had extra plants to sell. Neither the job market nor the quality of produce from away is any better this year. We are a licensed nursery, so we’ll be starting all the seeds we have. (Well, maybe not all the chilis) If they make it, somebody will buy them.

We’ve been keeping busy doing unexciting stuff that needs to be done.

We’re slowly drawing down the mass of pig food and yogurt that we got over the holidays. My best guess is that we’ll make it to the end of the month before we have to give the piggies bought food. That said, we’re probably spending two hours/day hauling stuff in to thaw and dumping thawed yogurt into buckets. There is so much packaging that it generates bags and bags of trash! What a mess. We’re also having trouble getting enough liquid water down to the pigs. Everyone else has heated troughs, but the pigs stand in their water and destroy the heaters.

I’ve been putting a lot of time into moving our websites onto the new server. Everything is there and visible. It will be a few more weeks before we get all the kinks out.

It looks like we’ve sold our backlog of wool (2 years) plus this year’s clip to Kate Pokorny of the Yurt Alert. Lisa found her somehow. She’s building a yurt out of felted wool down in Jaffrey, NH. She was looking for wool that felts easily, and Icelandic wool is perfect for that. (We sell most of our roving to needle felters.) So as the official fleece skirter in this household, it looks like I’ll be skirting it over the next month, while we get ready for sugaring.

We’re also planning to run high tensile across the swamp while it is frozen. Our hope is even our evil sheep will not tangle with a hot wire while they’re actually standing in water. We would then be able to keep our sheep up the road, while keeping birds behind the house.

So Disa had her puppies one week ago. She did amazing for a first time mama. She had seven puppies, five boys and two girls, we think. (We keep checking!) I was a little worried because it took her a while to push the first one out, over an hour, but after that first one, there was only a break of a few minutes between each. She ate all the placentas, broke the cords, got each one cleaned up, all by her lonesome. What a good mama she is.

So far, she seems to have enough milk for all of them. They certainly sound like happy, contented little puppies. When they all line up at the milk bar and their little tails are all wagging, it just slays me. I’ve dipped six of their tails in different food colors to help me in telling them apart. They are one week old today, and all but one are just over a pound. I’ve been watching them chub up in real time! They are really adorable. Disa’s breeder (Solhunder Icelandics tells me that the color that they are behind their ears now is the color they will be as adults.

Disa herself is quite the working mom. For the first few days, she didn’t leave them, at all. I got worried about her because she wouldn’t even go pee. (Obviously, I’m a first-timer!) But one week out, she’s following me around on chores twice a day. If the animals get out, she’s right there with me to put them back. Then she’ll take a quick potty break and want right back in. She’s really torn when I go run errands in town, because she’s usually my companion.

We are doing something called Early Neurological Stimulation, a short little program of five simple steps done every day from day 3 to 16. Disa’s breeder did it with her, and I find her an amazing dog, so I’m not arguing with success. It’s a bit stressful on all involved, except now that we’ve been doing it for several days, both Disa and Bjarki don’t seem to care anymore. They know we won’t hurt the puppies, and everyone gets tuna after. (Well, Frank and I get a glass of zin.)

I’ve got quite a number of people on a waiting list for puppies. They will be ready to go at the end of March. There are still a few who need homes. Let me know if you are interested, and please pass the word! We love this breed and want to do what we can to spread the joy. There’s a page dedicated just to selling these little guys!