Living on a farm one can never truly plan anything. Or plan ON anything. I have been trying desperately to get into my garden over the last week and with multiple days of rain, outside commitments, and now -Post- Baby Sheep drama it looks like I will have to wait ANOTHER day.
Austin, at least, has been making sure that my strawberries are picked - though none make it to the house.
I've done a bit here and there but I haven't really had a chance to get dirty in almost a week! What I had wanted to write about before (and the rain so rudely interrupted) was using newspaper as weed block/ mulch. I am going to write something on the theory of that in a moment and then when I do it- I will post pictures.
But really on this blog I just wanted to say that on a farm- Life is uncertain. It never matters to the animals that I have an appointment, or that we have something to do... they just need us when they need us. And I am ok with that. They are there for me and I am here for them... just sometimes a girl wants a little bit of time to herself.
So Baby Sheep...
the Baby Sheep drama- First, let me say that I am thankful for all that I have and that I get to experience first hand how life goes full circle.
Ok- so My "Mama" Sheep birthed today. She had a beautiful lamb and took great care of it from the beginning. However it seemed like "Mama" was still restless and the little lamb seemed chilled ( We will be naming the lamb 'Gift' in another language) So Austin and I dried and warmed the sheep (I did skin to skin to share body warmth) and moved him and "Mama" into the stall. That in itself was no easy task. We kept warming the sheep, and checking in all afternoon and then after dinner we went back to check on them again. We were concerned because we had not seen an afterbirth so we wanted to check the stall and the pasture if necessary. When we went to check the stall we found the afterbirth as well as a very underdeveloped lamb that had never even made it out of the bag. It was obviously dead before it was born and it was sad. Poor "Mama". So, of course we removed the mess and made sure that "Mama" and the little "gift" were ok, but sometimes it's just hard. There was nothing that could have been done differently, but it's still sad.
So it's a part of life on a farm, I get to experience birth- death and sometimes those 2 are too close together. All in all I still think I'm one of the luckiest girls on earth (living here on this farm) and but I can feel a little more at ease knowing that I can trust Mother Nature's judgement.
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