Baby Babydolls!

I find it interesting that little things can become big problems. In this case, a little bee. While Phil was digging yesterday, he was stung three times in quick succession, most likely by a ground hive. The stings on his cheek and underarm were normal, sharp pains that quickly subsided. The sting on his wrist was stronger and hotter from the beginning. Overnight it swelled his entire forearm with such pain he got up for several hours. At one point, teething Jonadab woke me, and when I saw Phil’s light in the other room, I figured that today’s intended trip to the quarry wouldn’t happen. (Which was probably not all bad—the quarry may not have been open today anyway.)

So Phil went to the Bessettes to process his white-tailed deer meat. I weighed the results when he came home: 14 pounds of ground meat, 7 pounds of roast, and another roast that Dennis had cooked for us. Not a lot of meat, but well over $100 worth, were I to buy it.

While he did that, the children and I went to get the sheep. I have been looking forward to it all week—the excitement of new life coming here, of new woolly bodies grazing our fields. Breeder Michelle showed me how to clip the hooves and trim the wool around the eyes (and the private parts, if needed). We talked about proper emasculators and dewormers, about rumens and lambing. Then we loaded the three lambs into a tarp spread with hay in the back of the minivan, and drove away: one adult, six children, and three lambs. Not a bad load.

And I must say, I LOVE these sheep. As soon as the three little bodies were in the car, and I felt their incredible fleeces (one has the finest fleece I’ve ever seen), and I smelled their earthy smell, I was so SO thankful that we’d decided to buy them. All my doubts and concerns vanished, and I called Phil to tell him how pleased I was. On our way home, we stopped at the Bush house. Their daughter Johanna said, “They have Ewok faces!” And that is exactly the word that’s been eluding me. They look like something familiar, but not quite a teddy bear.



When he saw them for the first time, he was astonished. “They’re so much cuter than I was expecting!” he said. “Make sure everyone reading knows how incredibly cute they are!” Phil, though, hates Ewoks, so maybe they are not quite like Ewoks.

Phil carried the brown baby ewes to the pen first, then the white wether (a castrated male). The brown babies have black legs, and their fleeces will be black on the inside, but the outside has bleached in the sun. I was thrilled to see that one of my questions the first day was correct: they didn’t look small because they were all proportionally small. Next to our regular-sized sheep, they are adorably teeny, yet completely proportionate. One of the most wonderful observations: these are quality animals from a quality line. Their breeding shows in how they move.



And we got to see them move quite a bit. Our sheep and goats were completely freaked out by these little brown babies. The white wether looks like a baby regular sheep, so our two white ewes tentatively accepted him. The brown babies, though, were personae non gratae. Where they went, the larger animals fled. Here was an unexpected turn of events: two large ewes, running around the pen, pursued first by a small white wether, then two more brown ewes pursuing their flock mate. Around and around they go!



The goats watched this all carefully, and kept their distance.

Dinner was the first meat harvested from our land: the roast venison, courtesy of Phil’s rifle. After dinner, I read to the children, until their high spirits reminded me that we had been in the car the better part of six hours today. Although it was pitch dark, we all tumbled outside and did driveway laps: up and down, up and down. Jonadab held my hand and did his fair share. When we first went out, we couldn’t see a thing, but as the minutes ticked by, the stars shone brighter, the outline of the driveway faintly came into focus, and the dark shadows on the driveway became, more clearly, little children hiding for a “surprise” attack.

A happy half hour that was, full of running and shouting and laughter. At one point, I picked up Jonadab and tossed him just a bit in the air, with a backdrop of the Milky Way.

Marvelous!