Say hi to Patrick and Paddy

Here is one of Jewel's twin ram lambs. I distinctly remember Aimee saying I could pick names for them in her absence. It is St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, and I just got a card from my buddy Pat, an "Irishman of note."

So in Pat's honour we will call these guys Patrick and Paddy. I know that's redundant, but I'm thinking ahead, see: Twin lambs, nursing the same ewe, the same age?

We'll never tell them apart! It's best for all concerned if they have interchangeable names.

Off course, none of these executive decisions I'm so boldly making might survive the wifey's return. But we'll see.

In other news, I decided it was Mary's turn for a nice long walk in the snow. Mary is a Redbone Coonhound (say that with a nice fakey southern accent for the full effect -- lots of extra vowels and syllables!) and likes to run free in the woods, which is not good, and she is a fidget in vehicles, trying always to stand on the dash and flap her long ears out of the window and drool on the car behind.

As a consequence, she is not often allowed to go for walks that require the preliminary of a ride in the pick-em-up truck, so she never gets to go to Mount Harris, unless Aimee comes along. But she is allowed in the woods behind the house, where she generally runs right for home as soon as she figures out that we've reached the turn-around point in the walk.

Here she is risking her neck on the ice. And a nice shot of an old snag overhanging the beaver pond.

Lambs in the sun

Today was warm and sunny again, so I decided unilaterally that the lambs should leave their lambing pen and go out into the sun. Given a vote (with their hooves), the lambs and mother Maggie concurred.

This was also very exciting for Aunt Nellie, Maggie's sister, who is always very find of her nephews and nieces.

I tried to walk the dogs down to the beaver pond, but left it too late. Earlier, around the farm, the snow was set up and you could walk anywhere you wanted on hard "neve" snow. But by the time I went off into the woods, it was melting again. The worst feeling is the one you get when you can walk on top of the snow three steps out of four, or six out of seven, and then you fall in! Crusty snow makes for painful post-holing too, bruising your shins.

So instead we walked on the snowmobile trail. This is a cross-county trail that runs across our leased land in the back. Back when I was a more avid cross-country skier, I used to complain about snowmobilers. I hated the fumes, especially from the two-strokes, and could not for the life of me see why anyone would ever want to ride such a smelly beast when they could ski or hike.

Now my arthritis is much worse, and I don't ski much anymore, snowmobile trails are good for me because they allow me a place to hike in the woods in winter. Regular readers know I don't mind a post-holing hike, nor a snow-shoe hike, but the conditions aren't always good. If it were not for the snowmobile trails, I'd not find it so easy to stay in decent shape.

Still, you'll never get me on the machine itself, only the trail. I still can't understand why anyone would want to ride that fast through the woods. You'd never see a bird, or a track, or smell or hear a thing!

Anyway, as you can see, Mary and Haggis are good buddies on the trail.

After that, it was my job to dig out the back door to the barn, so the lambs would be safe from predators tonight. Digging out a foot of ice and snow and bedding and manure all around the door was a pretty good workout. That's two days of hard exercise in a row. Happy Mick.

Can't beet that soup; and feeding other kinds of beasts

Here's our four young ewes Molly, Maggie, Lark, and little Nellie with visiting ram-bo Snorri, eating hay. As you can see there's some kind of strange white stuff on the ground.

Hmmm. Wonder where we've seen that before? Ah. that's right. Only for about five months last winter.

It's baaa-ck!

Cold and windy with blowing spindrift out there, I spent much of the day in the shop making a new front door for the porch. I was sneezing the whole time, cold and snotty, so I finally came in to make beet soup.

That should help my cold. And I made Mick-bread.

Mick bread is any hearty bread made by a Mick, best served hot with butter. This has pinhead oatmeal and rye.