Friday, August 3, 2012

Stuck sheep and a man on a hot tin roof


I was getting ready to make dinner yesterday afternoon around 4.30 pm when I heard a strange noise. Our ram lamb's voice has "dropped," and instead of a regular "baaahhhhh" he makes the same kind of low growl that the older ram makes. At a distance, it's  much less audible.

I wandered over to investigate, thinking the while that it was probably time to move the sheep back to the main pen if I wanted a nice quiet evening, and found the ram lamb caught in the hot-wire fence.

There's no power to this particular stretch of fence and the sheep have figured it out, reaching through to get at the greener grass on the other side.


The silly wee lambie was well and truly caught. A few seconds untangling freed him, and off he gallumphed to be with the others.

This was the second time in two days he'd been caught in this stretch of fence. Silly wee bugger. And we mean to breed with him next year?

Maybe that's not such a good idea.


I was hopeful of a quiet evening because the humidity had been high all day, and I'd been working outside on a new metal roof for our porch. This is green sheet metal that is shaped and cut to size by an Amish family business in Unity, and we mean to cover the whole roof with it eventually, but the porch needed done first because of the difficulty we've had with ice dams. Ice dams formed on this roof in 2011, here and here, and in 2009. The main reason was heat escaping though leaks from the porch below, which has an electrical baseboard and is heated on the coldest days for the dog's comfort -- this is where they are kept while we're at work. I had earlier filled the crawl space with cellulose, which stopped the heat escaping, and fitted heater wires to the edge of the roof to melt ice if it did ever occur, but the damage to the roof shingles was already done. Aimee planned to put new wall shingles, dipped to match the rest of the house, on the two small wall sections above the porch, and so the roof had to be done this year. But with the dew point at about 69 degrees F, this was very tiring work. Even though the morning was foggy, I still sweated buckets and my clothing was uncomfortably wet the whole time. By lunchtime I was exhausted, by two in the afternoon when I wrapped up, I was fit for nothing but a shower, a lunch, and a long nap.

Today I'll take things a little easier.

The weather is supposed to break Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it.

3 comments:

  1. Is your metal roofing on the porch by any chance green, in the sense that it absorbs solar energy? Excuse me if not for the rant I'm about to go on but I can't help it, if you're looking to redo your roof you should get solar installations decking out your home on the outside, its an investment but its a good one. Financing is available for most companies, give it a try! As for the sheep, he may not be the brightest but who's to say his chil'ren won't be? God bless, and good luck.

    -Adam Ahmed

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  2. Love the land rover in the picture. I cannot believe how quickly you got that operational. Kudos to you!

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  3. Love the Land Rover in the drive way. Cannot believe how quickly you got that working. Good job.

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Welcome to our Farm Blog.
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