Drove another batch of ‘children’ home yesterday; maybe, just maybe, after several more years with the dogs, chickens, and now lambs and a stray cat, I’ll be ready for human parenthood. Martha Pisano of Highland Dairy fed me a good breakfast and strong cup of joe before we headed out to her pasture to cull four little ones. After a quick clipping of their feet, and a longer discussion on feed, vitamins and such, my boys where whisked into the back of our Prius (tarp laid out most invitingly) and sea legs began to take hold on the drive back home. Who can beat driving livestock home to the tune of 50mpg?
A securely fenced dog yard area, with plenty of tasty lawn grass, currently houses the lambs. They are quite excited to get into a paddock full of clover and more beneficially delicious grasses. Thankfully our lamb fencing arrived from Premier One yesterday as well. But a ground rod I need to pound in to complete the electrical needs for this fence is 
currently pounded in elsewhere . . . and refusing to emerge despite my best wriggling and pulling. Hmm . . . This fence’s shock pulses will be energized by a solar charger from Premier One as well. It’s out charging on the driveway while I wrestle with the ground rod. It’ll slide easily onto a metal stake as soon as I’m ready.
The goal is to move the lambs around the paddocks. As there are only four of them, great expectations of ‘mowing’ are unrealistic. Frankly delusional. Verdant, verdant, verdant. Let me multiply that by a million. So a-mowing we will go. After three months out from under horse hooves, the paddocks are growing nicely. Soil is still quite compacted, and will remain so, but plant life is not to be deterred. For the desired fence results (i.e. strong enough current to keep the lambs inside), I’ll need a relatively clear path for the fence to sit in. Plus, to encourage fill-in of good grasses in these fields, we’ll mow to a height of four or five inches, thus creating a micro-climate just above the soil, nice and shaded and moisture retaining, yet still penetrable by light, for seeds to get going.
I’m training the lambs to follow me by carrying some sweet feed when I go give them water and check on them in general. So called sweet because of the layer of molasses covering the contents. Now on to the rapidly growing ‘to-do’ list: more lettuce planting, veggie bed weeding (see pictures of how our plants are doing in this post), more chicken purchasing (momma fox got half of them again last week when the electricity cut out – outside breaker boxes tripped and cut out the current!!!), and of course, plenty of good cooking.
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