Shearing 2014

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As always, pictures will follow!  (This year, HannaMae took most of them so be sure to check out who took them: you may be surprised!)

Shearing!  Our annual time to catch up with our favorite shearer: Martin, and let our sheep turn on the AC!  And laugh at how silly the alpacas look without any fur anymore!  I actually mistook one for a deer yesterday…

            This year presented even more challenges than usual.  First, we had no barn.  That means, I had no way to guarantee that the sheep would be dry come shearing day.  One very good reason to wait until June to shear.  The second large challenge to having no barn is that now, we had no partially set up facilities for collecting, holding and feeding sheep into the pen with Martin to be shorn: We had to build something.  Luckily, we already have a stash of cattle panels and t-posts around for building various catch pens and loading chutes for sheep and pigs.  It took us a little while to decide on a good place that was flat, close to the house for electricity and big enough to hold everyone but once we did building something proved relatively easy.

            The fun part came when it was time in the morning to collect everyone in the chute.  While the majority of the sheep have been collected and shorn before, this particular setup was new (which equals extra skittishness) and there is always at least one extra skitter individual anyhow.  Add in younger lambs who scatter when herded like an ant nest when you stab it with a large stick as well as the alpacas who simply despise shearing day and never go the way you want anyhow and you have a recipe for sheep anywhere but where you need them to be.  Mix in one panel that wasn’t tied quite tightly enough and you get escaped unshorn sheep too.

            Stir it all together and you get lots of frustration, lots of laughs, luckily a good natured shearer, a great deal of learning and about 60 new fleeces that need new homes soon!  

Keep an eye out: we’ll post pictures soon! (Photos mostly taken by HannaMae!)

Honey Sauteed Radishes

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Honey Sautéed Radishes

Ingredients

1 Lg Bunch Radishes: topped and sliced in half

1 Tbsp Butter

½ Cup Chicken Stock

1 Tbsp Honey

¼ cup minced onions, shallots or spring onions

Salt to taste

Directions

1. Melt butter in pan. Sautee onions until soft.
2. Add radishes, stir until coated in butter.
3. Add stock and honey. Cover and simmer 10 minutes.
4. Remove cover; simmer until liquid thickens to glaze.
5. Add salt as desired and serve warm.

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...

It's like herding... pigs!

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Spring around here is probably the most exciting and busy and stressful time of the year.  Especially since we have extra projects beyond simply operating the farm because we are just starting out and growing.  There are a lot of things that we have experience that is limited to the theoretical.