NOW it's spring on the palouse

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There are two things on our farm on the palouse that signify spring is here.  The first is the winds.  They are always blowing... hard.  they usually start in mid February and blow most of the way through March.  The upside is that it starts being sunnier here when all the clouds get blown right past you.  This morning dawned partly cloudy and surprisingly only mildly windy.  Today was the first day that the sun peeked above the hills before HannaMae's bus arrived.

The second thing that signifies spring on the palouse is restless sheep.

Makes sense, right?  No more snow covering the ground and things are starting to warm up and grow fresh green grass.  WAAAAAY better than all that dusty dry straw they've been eating all winter.  Grass, oat or alfalfa, it doesn't matter how much they've been spoiled or not because the fresh green stuff is always better than any type of hay.

The ramboulliets apparently just whine. Baa, Baa, Baa.

The Jacobs are too smart for that.  They have learned that sometimes the people hide the good grass outside the fences.  ometimes next to the red barn, sometimes over past the gardens.  Sometimes the people even hide the grass up the road by Betty's house.  The Jacobs have also learned that barbed wire, especially ancient falling down fence, doesn't hurt.  Those fences are really more of a suggestion than a rule.

The main reason those fences never have been fixed is because they are on the border with a grain field which happens to be uphill.  Those particular neighbors are better than others about plowing more soil downhill on top of the fence but there's still a nice cliff between the edge of their field and the old fence.  We are working with our landlord to be allowed to build a new fence for that section on top of the field.  We just only have room for so many projects each year.

That all aside, the Jacobs or rather a few particular escape artists, have figured out the easiest sections to climb through.  The easiest fix? grab one of our small panel sections, climb the pasture hillside, attach the panel section over the wooly area of fence.

The hard part is to then go find the adventuresome sheep and convince them they need to go home.  The first part of spring is easy: there isn't really much grass to argue over.  Give it a few weeks and the sheep probably won't believe me anymore...

Barn burned down...Hay anyone?

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Our sheep barn burned down this morning.  Pictures below plus more can be found at the Facebook Photos link above.

All the creatures got out. and are fine.  We got there early enough to shoo the piglets out and Jason had to pull Missy the goat's head out of a fence and grab her kid but everyone is out and fine.

If anyone has a little extra hay, please let us know!  We can pay for it.  Small squares are best: we don't have the equipment to move large squares or rounds.  We've been using about 4-6 bales per day.

Ginger's Memoirs - The Stinky Hay

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One summer, Dad was out in the barn, cleaning out old hay from the upper level, tossing it into the wagon below to be carted off somewhere more useful.  He’d dig his pitchfork into the hay and toss it over his shoulder and out the doors to land neatly in the wagon with the waiting horse team.  It was calm and quiet.  Just the “shick...schick...schick...” of the hay being picked up with the pitchfork.  Suddenly, his pitchfork started to jump and shake in his hands of it’s own accord!  Dad yelled and threw the fork away from himself into the piles of hay in the barn.  As the fork went flying across the barn, a skunk fell out from between the tines!  Dad wasted no time and jumped out the door and into the wagon below, startling the team who decided they were leaving too.  After dad regained control of the horses, he turned back to look at the barn where he saw the skunk peering out the barn door watching the excitement he had caused.