Happy Palindrome Day: 01022010

The ram lamb has a palindrome birthday, and I think that’s fun: 01/02/2010. The boys didn’t like the name Palindrome (my mother suggested Pali, which is cute!). We were laughing over B names—as the second generation of animals here on the farm, we want them to be Bs. (The ewe lamb, born around Christmas, Isaiah decided should be Bethlehem.) Phil had wondered if Bob would be a good name for the ram (short for shish keBOB). But Abraham’s sometime nickname is Bob. So we named the ram Baby Bob, or B.B. for short, which the boys think is absolutely hysterical.

Phil and I talked a lot today. Since he was the main decision maker in the events of last night, I asked him if he would have done anything differently. I was relieved by his answer: not a thing. He felt like he had given Acorn every chance, and by checking on her every 30 minutes, he could visually tell when she was exhausted and incapable.

I think we learned a lot, and that is good. Incredibly enough, we still like sheep! I saw an ad for another babydoll herd for sale in Virginia. I called the woman and spoke with her at length, and I rejoiced because I knew better questions to ask than when we first moved here and just wanted a sheep to practice on. We have had practice! What kind of birthing experience do the sheep have? What living conditions do they have: pasture? (When the grass is growing.) Dry lot? (In the winter when there is no grass and we must feed hay.) What are the animals in the herd? When do you lamb? What interventions have you had to do in the lambs?

The woman’s philosophy on sheep rearing fit well with mine. In fact, every answer was exactly what I hoped to hear. We’ll talk price, and we’ll see what kind of flock increase we have. I expect that, after adding a few more animals (including a ram or two, for breeding), we will “close the flock” and build up from within the herd. Better pest resistance that way.

It was bitterly cold today. I realized I could go and try to plant trees, but the ground was frozen underfoot, and I realized I would have little success shoveling ice-solid earth. Phil put up fence until his hands and feet froze.

In the future, I don’t plan to overwinter pigs. They burn all their calories staying warm, so we feed them and they don’t grow. Now, when we bought the pigs, future food for human consumption was low on the priority list. We wanted them to plow our land and root up the poison ivy. I suppose they have done that. But as we feed them, the price input increases, and I expect that our end price for each pound of meat from these pigs will be commensurate with pork at Whole Foods: pricey. I do enjoy the squeaky, snorty kitchen-scrap consumers, overall; I just wish they lived on air.

A final note for coffee drinkers out there: sad times for Phil. Chloe knocked his French press off the coffee table in a horrific slow-motion “NOOOOO” moment. Broken glass, coffee grounds, tepid water across the floor. Worse was yet to come, however. Phil boiled water and put it in the espresso maker in the barn. Some of the internal parts had frozen, and he needed to unfreeze them. They did unfreeze, but we think the machine had a line that burst, as his dear espresso maker works no more. Sad times.

But at least he had a willing helper as he tried to fix the espresso maker!