More work...learning so much...but pictures, too!

So, I think I've mentioned that we're working on the sheep barn...a lot (both working on it a lot AND mentioned it A LOT!). Oh my gosh. So much gunk to remove from that poor barn!!! Back in my February 9th post ("Archaeologist turned Shepherdess turned...Archaeologist?"), I described the "flooring" (a term which I use very loosely) that is being removed so that we can create a healthy space for our sheep. As we've pried layer after layer out of there, we've even found mold underneath it, and the last thing I want is to bring Black Velvet, Mikey, and Panda Bear home, only to give them a barn where they could contract some kind of respiratory disease.

This week I've worked on the barn in half-hour increments, in an effort to not hurt my back (two surgeries for herniated discs mean that I do have to be a bit careful), and...dare I say it...I'm seeing a light at the end of this particular tunnel.  I think it helps that we've gotten a bit of warmer weather because as I was prying up the particle board/straw nightmare, a HUGE chunk of it came up, in one fell swoop! It was one of the most satisfying feelings - and when my Dear Son saw it, he said, "Whoa." Now, for a not-super-talkative teenager, that was saying a great deal! The chunk was so heavy that Dear Daughter had to help me carry it out of the barn and onto one of the tarps that we're using for hauling all of this garbage to the burn pile, then both kids had to drag the tarp down the hill to said pile...it was massive!  What a wonderful feeling!

So we're nearly to the part where we can rake the last bits out. After that, my plan is to use this funky digging tool that I have (Dear Husband calls it "THE CRAW," but it's actually a Garden Weasel) to get all of the dirt loosened up and make sure any last bits of crap that I missed are torn apart:

Once this is done, I'll be able to power scrub the wooden feeder that the sheep will use for their hay, and then spray it down with a weak bleach solution. We'll then haul gravel in there to spread onto the dirt - and I'll spray THAT down with a weak bleach solution! After it has a chance to thoroughly dry, clean straw will be spread out onto the gravel and our babies will have a warm and cozy place to come in out of the weather, if they so desire!

This week I also learned from Lee that in addition to their pasture foraging, they have to have mineral feed and salt, everyday. So I'll be purchasing two feeders to hang in the barn, near their hay feeder. AND I was able to "help" (another term I'm throwing out there in the loosest possible manner) her vaccinate Black Velvet:

I held her lead and kept her head lifted up while Lee gave her two vaccinations - one that "protects against tetanus, blackleg, over-eating disease and many other clostridial-born diseases," and one that "prevents white-muscle disease and as an aid in the prevention and treatment of selenium-tocopherol deficiency."  These quotes are from an e-mail that Lee sent, explaining what the vaccines were for and how often they're administered (once per year). Her e-mail also explained a bit about worming, which is done twice per year, but is administered orally, as opposed to the injections that they got the other day. Basically, what it boils down to is that I've still got a long ways to go...a lot to learn...but I'm fortunate in having a mentor like Lee who will help me through the process of becoming a shepherdess! I feel like Fate has brought me to somebody who cares for her animals like I want to care for mine (and like I've cared for my indoor pets) - by providing a clean living environment, plenty of nourishing food, water, and minerals, and the preventative medicine to keep them healthy.

Thank you again for reading my story and sharing the excitement I'm feeling for this new adventure in my life! In my next post, I'll write about the beautiful Icelandic fleece that will be coming off of my babies, showing some that I've already skirted and scoured from another Icelandic, and demonstrating (hopefully!) how to use Viking combs to prepare the fleece for spinning!

My sweet Mikey with some of his flockmates

Panda Bear strikes a pose - she's so lovely!

My dear friend and mentor, Lee - and a few friends!

Planting Seeds

One thing that I've been the most concerned about for my sheep is their food. I'm not worried about their winter food - I plan to buy clover hay from a local dealer, and I now know, thanks to Lee, that my three sheep will require 1.5 tons of hay for the winter months. What I am concerned about are the plants growing in the pastures that they'll be using. These pastures haven't been mowed, fertilized, or cared for since we moved out here, so they are full of lots of things - but my Dear Husband assures me that there are a couple of different types of grass, so they'll be fine. Lee also reassured me that these are hardy creatures who will do just fine when they make the transition to our fledgling farm. But what do I do when I'm worried excessively about something (besides nag DH about it)? I read!

You may have noticed that I started a page here on my blog, My Sheepy Library. Here I've listed the books and periodicals that I have found helpful, and one of the best ones that I've read so far is Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep. In reading up on feeding sheep, I learned that they do best when they have a mixture of three different types of plants on which to graze - grasses, legumes, and forbs (weeds). According to Storey:

Ideal pasture is a mixture of grasses, legumes, and forbs - not a monoculture of one kind of plant. The diversity of plants provides a more balanced diet for longer periods during the growing season under a wider variety of weather conditions,...For sheep, the shorter sod-type of grasses and legumes, such as bluegrass and white clover, are ideal because they don't trample down as much.

Well, I know we have wheatgrass, and I know we have weeds galore, but the one thing I wasn't sure about was some kind of legume. So I visited our local Spence Hardware and was directed to the seeds...fortunately for me, it was Super Bowl Sunday and a very quiet day, so I was quickly helped by a gentleman who listened patiently as I tried to explain what I was looking for and why. I also mentioned the book that told me that I could "frost seed" clover to improve the foraging for my sheep. He smiled politely and found the White Clover seeds that I was looking for, then helped me figure out how much I would need (which was difficult since I have no clue how big our pasture is). I'm sure that I was just the type of customer he wanted to deal with on Super Bowl Sunday - a brand-new-to-raising-sheep-person who has learned everything from books and is trying to sound like she knows what she's talking about, even a little bit! Fortunately, he was very patient and helpful and wished me good luck with my sheep!

Today (2/12/15), I realized that our weird spring weather is going to make frost seeding a bit difficult - I checked the weather forecast and discovered it's not even supposed to get to freezing at night for the rest of the month.  Sigh...I suppose I might luck out and get one really cold night, but as it's looking a bit doubtful, I figured I'd best get those clover seeds out in the pasture now before it gets any warmer (it ended up being 60 here today...ACK...what happened to winter?!?). So my Dear Daughter and I went outside with my trusty new handseeder and clover seeds:

 

And we commenced to seeding! DD did a great job pulling back the overgrowth so that the seeds had a chance of getting into the soil, and I followed along behind, operating the handseeder. We decided to only seed one small section of the pasture because once we got out there, it appeared that I had not bought enough seed after all! But I figure this will give me a chance to see if this works on the southwestern strip of pasture. I also saved a little bit at the end to cover this mound that sits in the middle of the field:

Yep, that's me, on top of the hill, proudly clutching my handseeder. All I need now is a pitchfork...or a shepherd's crook!!! Ah, but I digress...

After using up the seed we had, we stopped for a couple of pictures - hopefully you can see the tiny little clover seeds, along with some green sprigs:

And as we made our way back to the sheep barn, I noticed all of the green grass starting to come up:

It's amazing how something as simple as grass and planting seeds can make me so happy. I think there's more to it than that - it's the idea of tending animals, of making sure they have the right food to keep them healthy and happy - it's not only planting actual seeds, but planting the seeds of love for the land and the animals that we are stewards of, and realizing that my DD understands this as well - her concern about the trees being too prickly for the sheep and asking me if they needed to be trimmed before our babies come home made my heart swell.

So we'll see how the clover seeds do in our pasture...and work will continue on the barn this weekend! We're getting closer and closer to April!

Archaeologist turned Shepherdess turned...Archaeologist?

More work has gotten done on the barn!!  It's kind of funny, though, because as we were working, I remembered my long-ago desire to be an archaeologist...it happened like this:

When I was 13, my mom took me to see Raiders of the Lost Ark...what a thrill-ride that was! I remember walking out of the theater, with a shell-shocked look on my face, and seeing a similar face on my mom! It was so exciting, and I ended up seeing it several more times (a family I babysat for actually bought it for their VCR...that was a big deal back then...and I got to watch it over and over again, every time I sat for them - fortunately, they had a very little toddler who went to bed early!). By the time I had watched it a dozen times or so, AND played the video game version on my Atari (I am SO dating myself with this post) over and over again, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up - an archaeologist! I adored history and just knew this would be the perfect fit for me...

Then I got older...thought about the heat of the deserts...the bugs...the scorpions...not getting to take a shower everyday...yeah...well, as you probably figured out, I ended up not being an archaeologist. But this now brings me to our barn work yesterday!

More wasp nests were knocked down:

And the serious work on the floor of the sheep's feeding section got started:

It's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at here, but basically, it used to be a floor made out of what we think must have been a layer of particle board - then covered with layer after layer after layer of straw, with lots of manure mixed in for good measure. So in our attempts to rake up the straw, what we found was a glued mass of the aforementioned materials, stuck to the dirt underneath. So it wasn't so much raking up straw as using digging tools to burrow underneath the particle board, then trying to rip all of that up off the ground. I had my daughter work on cleaning out the feeding trough:

This will be totally emptied, then washed down with a mild bleach/water mixture before we renovate it to make it a better sheep feeder (one that helps cut down on the VM in their fleece). And I took a quick break to admire the view to the southeast:

Then it was back to work - we loaded up a tarp with tons of the straw/manure/particle board mess and hauled it to the burn pile:

This was the first tarp-full (I loaded this one myself) - by the time the four of us were finished for the day, we had taken 4-5 tarp-fulls to the burn pile! As I was using a spade to try to pry these layers off of the floor, it occurred to me that I was looking at more than one year's worth of, for lack of a better word, crap. Lee told me that once a year, she goes in and gets all of the straw and manure out of the sheep's covered area and puts down fresh bedding - this is what I plan to do as well. I mean, good heavens...it's once a year! I don't think the people who lived here before us ever did that - so the dormant archaeologist in me got to thinking about how long this had been allowed to build up over time. Bear in mind - by this point in the day, I was getting really punchy and tired, and was actually sitting down on a bench to do the digging because my back was DONE. But I looked up at my daughter and said, "It's like being an archaeologist - we're looking at layers and layers of time and poop." Yeah, I was probably well past punchy by this point!

Indiana Jen, I definitely am not. Just a tired lady who is learning the value of hard, physical labor, and who can't wait until April, when her sheep family will arrive and get to look at this view (to the southwest):

Today it is pouring rain, and is supposed to continue for the next few days. Once it dries out again, we will finish the archaeology in the barn, then start to plan for the gravel and paving stones we're going to use for a better floor. I don't have plans to go visit our sheepies this week, but next weekend, I will get to attend my first meeting of the Wool Gatherers, an all-things fiber guild, where I'll meet a local woodworker who builds loads of awesome fiber tools! I can't wait!

If you give a mouse a cookie...

Never fear...this blog is still about sheep - not mice! But as I lay awake last night, thinking about this next post, it occurred to me that the clean-up/renovating process that we're going through on our sheep barn is a lot like that wonderful book - and if you give a mouse a cookie, it doesn't end there!

After living out here for 12 years and all but ignoring the sheep barn, I knew that cleaning it up and preparing it for our sheep wasn't going to be a picnic. But I admit that I was a bit shocked to see just how much needs to be done on it.

First of all, there were the wasp nests. Sigh...anyone who knows me knows that wasps and stinging insects have been the bane of my existence since I was very young...I don't know why, as I've never been stung, but I've always had a horrible fear of wasps and bees. As I've gotten older, it has gotten better - I still avoid wasps like the plague, but I can handle being around bees (especially the big, fat, fuzzy bumblebees that we call B-52s!). Well, the first thing that had to be done on the sheep barn was to get rid of all the wasp nests:

I have to tell you - just looking at the pictures gives me a the creeps.  And this was just in one section of the barn - the part where the sheep are going to have their feeder is much worse. Anyway, my dear husband knocked several down for me, and I gave a liberal dosing of wasp spray to the rest - then knocked them down - then gingerly picked them up and got them out of there (all the while knowing, logically, that there was nothing left in these nests that could hurt me, but still experiencing a severe cases of the willies, nonetheless).

Then it was time to clean out the section where Dear Husband has been storing lawn tools:

Doesn't look too bad, right? Well, we found lots more wasp nests in there, and different ones - I looked them up later and discovered that they were made by mud dauber wasps...oh joy of joys, we have different types of wasps out here! More wasp spray (if you have ever considered buying stock, I highly recommend you buy stock in Raid...just sayin'...). And not only that, but the flooring isn't as solid as it looks - I believe it was particle board covered with old feed sacks covered with straw that still had long bits of twine in it. So all of that had to come out. My Dear Daughter moved all of the yard tools into the far section of the barn...Dear Husband and Dear Son helped shovel out the "floor"...and myself and Dear Husband managed to get a tarp full of floor/straw waste/mess into a burn pile, far away from the barn.

By this point, my back was done for the day. So what was accomplished?  Well, about 80% of the wasp nests were dealt with...the section that was cleaned out is ready for new flooring (this will be where I store the sheep's winter hay)...and we also walked the pasture to take a look at the fence. Overall, the fence is still in really good shape and shouldn't need too much bolstering to keep our ovine friends safe and secure. Then, what is left on our to-do list before April?

• Clean out the feeder section of the barn - this is where the sheep can go to get out of the wind and weather if they want, and where their hay feeder is located - this floor is in even worse shape than the one we already removed.
• Dear Husband will be improving the feeder that is out there now - I want to feed my sheep as cleanly as possible to limit how much vegetable matter ends up in their fleece, so some renovations need to be done on the current feeder.
• Put down new flooring in the hay and feeder sections of the barn.
• Rake and remove about 1 foot of overgrown pasture grass away from the fence, all the way around the inside perimeter, to avoid having little springboards for the sheep to use to try jumping the fence.
• Scrape the old paint and repaint the barn.
• Mend any sagging sections of fence.
• Make sure light bulbs are switched out and working (making sure electrical is all safe and sound).
• Buy a water trough - there isn't one out here, and this is one thing I definitely would want to buy new anyway. Also will pick up a heater for it so that they have water, as opposed to ice, in the winter.
• Get the hand pump at the barn working so that I don't have to run hoses to the trough.
• Add an awning of some kind to the southwest side of the barn to give more shade.

And probably 10 other things that I'm not thinking of right now!

Before closing, I have to share some pictures - because ultimately, despite all of the work ahead of me, I am so excited for the next two months!  The sense of accomplishment that I'm going to feel when I look out and see these faces next to their fresh, clean barn is going to be AMAZING!!!

Dear Daughter with Panda Bear

Mikey, our wether boy