The six piglets are bounding around their pen now. Although Buttercup did not accidentally kill any, one does limp. I was curious about whether it was hurt enough to need attention, but it zipped away, almost as fast as its companions. I might as well have tried to catch a jackrabbit.
When it came to moving the sheep, I expected a several hour ordeal. It only took about 75 minutes, all told, but it was a horrific 75 minutes, made worse by a very sour attitude on my part. After pulling 26 stakes out of extremely hard clay (with basically no rain for three weeks, and hot temperatures, even pulling posts is a matter of muscle), I then laid out the new pen, approximately, wrestling my way through mean brambles devoid of fruit. Then I pounded the 26 posts in with a rubber mallet, some more than once, since, despite my best attempts, I still managed to flip the fencing over on itself. Phil often laughs ruefully at my issues with ropes and strings: I have an incredible ability to tangle.
When I went to drive the truck up to water the sheep, filled with trepidation, I could not get forward motion, no matter what I did, but lurched backward, until I ended less than a foot from the electric fence surrounding the cows. Hyperventilating from heat, fear, and frustration, I made my way back to the house, determined that the sheep must go: today, if possible. Not another minute must be spent moving those little mammals!
Clearly, I needed some breakfast, to get out of my pajamas, and get back into the air conditioning. (And I needed Phil to drive the truck, with 4-wheel drive engaged, or something like that.)
The experience, though, did make me wonder about the sheep. They aren't expensive to keep, and the boys do love the lambs. They are definitely helping the soil in the orchard. Their manure and hooves improve the sod.
The main cost is opportunity cost. If we (mostly Phil) spends about an hour a day moving them and dealing with them, plus sometimes shearing, sometimes chasing, that could be 400 hours a year that could be spent on other things: clearing the land, spraying biodynamic preps on the trees in an orderly fashion, sawing lumber. That's a LOT of time.
But Phil loves the sheep. He loves being a shepherd.
At some point, we'll have a conversation. But Phil will need to be able to stand upright more than three minutes at a time.
We hadn't seen baby Clover since Friday night, and Catherine since Saturday night. When I first went to water the cows this morning, I had several cow heads pop out of the woods, Catherine among them. Still no sign of Clover.
When I went to milk in the evening, there was no sign of her or her baby. The rotten cow! Hiding when she knew I would come around! So I wandered the woods, picking up a good collection of seed ticks, smaller than the head of a pin, that even now are making my skin crawl. I try not to get irritated, but I always think about all the other things I could be doing, rather than playing hide and seek with a stubborn cow.
I had almost exhausted my possibilities when I looked down and saw a patch of cleared earth, very much cow sized. A few minutes later, I saw her, and her baby, both lying quite still in the thick trees along the edge of the clearing. On the far side from where we water, but within yards of the edge of their pen. Even Catherine shows how much she's a herd animal.
I tugged to get her to stand up, which didn't work at all. Then I patted her son, who stood up quickly and walked away. That got Catherine up. I tried to milk her, tied only to a tread-in post, but she was able to pull that out with ease, unless I stood on the base, which was hard to do simultaneously with milking. So I tied her to a pine tree, and milked as quickly as I could.
I hope Phil feels better tomorrow!
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