Three weeks to go!

Yes, it's confirmed - three weeks from tomorrow we will be watching our sheep get sheared...hopefully helping out a bit...and then bringing them home! In the meantime, what do we have going on? More barn work, of course! But now we're to the less-disgusting/more-fun part...renovations!

My Dear Husband, who can fix, literally, anything, has already repaired one of the gates to the sheep's pasture, so they will be safe and secure. The next chore was to fix the sliding door that separates the hay storage room from their feeding room:

That last picture shows the new track David put in for the sliding door which will keep any tricksy sheep from climbing onto their feeder to grab at the hay on the other side!

The next thing for my dear, patient husband to do is rig up a 2x4 for the sheep's salt and mineral feeders to rest on:

The sheep need to have access to livestock salt and their kelp mineral mix everyday, so these feeders have to be set up and ready to go when the sheep come home. The renovations to the hay feeder can wait until later as they won't be eating winter hay until, well, winter (or late autumn, depending on how the pastures are doing by that point).

One thing that I'm pretty excited about is that the lawn mowers have been moved out of the breezeway so that I can set up their water trough under the spigot:

I started placing the flattest rocks I could find to start forming a platform for their water trough - I'd rather it be up off the dirt for when said dirt becomes muddy. Once the trough is placed, I'll bring in several bales of new straw for their bedding and for the breezeway. And then all will be ready for their homecoming on April 15th! We are hoping to get to repaint the barn before then, but that is something that can be done this summer, if need be - I don't think Mikey, Panda Bear, and Black Velvet will mind if there isn't a fresh coat of paint on the barn!!

In other news, my dear friend, Lee, has had several lambs born at her place this month! The first were Spring and Daylight, born on March 8th - two little ewes born to mama Wanda:

The next two were March and Windy, a ram and a ewe, born to mama Shadow on March 21st:

And today, four lambs were born! Three ewes to Nina Negra, and one ram lamb to Prima Donna (I'll have pictures of them in my next post)! One more ewe, Daisy, is expecting, and then Lee's lambing will be finished for 2015! It's been such a wonderful experience for our family to get to see these newborn lambs and to learn so much from Lee - such a wonderful teacher and friend she is!

Thanks for reading! :)