Silly little clippies

Here's our 2011 wool clip, drying a little in black bin bags in the 85 degree F sunshine this Memorial Day afternoon.

Nine fat fleeces. There's another bunch like this upstairs in the barn. We'll go to the mill soon, to exchange this for spun yarn again. We're almost out.

Down to t'mill, lad, as they say in Yorkshire.

We were pretty lucky to get our shearer to come out this morning. He was expecting that the day's work had been called off due to a heavy thundershower last night. But I heard the rain start and so wrenched myself out of bed and put the sheep in the barn within a few minutes.

They were just damp, not wet, by the morning and the last of them to be sheared weren't even that.

When the shearer comes each sheep loses about ten to fifteen pounds of weight of fleece and dung tags each, in one swell foop, and I'm sure it's a lot easier to stay cool.

I can imagine some dieters just gaga at the idea of losing fifteen pounds in a day, but the sheep don't like it much. Our shearer is an old pro, though, and knows all the right moves: the right muscle to push to make a sheep stretch out a leg or the right way to hold the head to make a nice fold-free curve of shoulder for the shears. It must take lots of practice. He's a little older than me and has been shearing since the sixth grade. That's about age twelve, for you Brits.

Forty years a shearer.

I told him if he could just keep it up until I retire, then I'd learn myself. I'd have the time to do it, at least, if not the suppleness of joints.

In other news, poor Poppy lost her twin male lambs. They went off to our buddy John Mac's place, to graze his grass and save hm from mowing lawns, and eventually become his and Nancy's winter dinners.

Such is the way of all male lambs, since like many young males of the species, they aren't good for very much else, but Poppy isn't one for tradition.

She's most upset about it, and has been bleating for them all afternoon.

I was pretty tired, though, after being up at three in the morning, so I was able to take a nap anyway, despite the bereft sheep mother bleating outside the window.

What a miserable heartless lamb-stealing bar steward I am! Napping during a mother's moment of grief. Yet the more I do this stuff, the less I think about it.

We were actually a little surprised at all the fuss, because she didn't much care for them when they first showed up, and we had to bring one of them into the house to warm up because she wouldn't lick it like a proper sheep mother.

Last bit of news is that I managed to find us a new lawn mower for five bucks at a yard sale.

Here it is. Looks brand new.

The guy said it wouldn't run, and that was why it was for sale, but I guessed it just needed a carb cleaning and some fresh gas. It looked too new to be completely out of action already.

In the end, the carb was fine, no sediment or resin, although stripping it for cleaning probably ensured a good start because all the old gas would be drained out of the float bowl as a result, allowing the new gas to flow in. I also blew out the jet with compressed air for good measure.

All I had to do then was to weld some cracks on the pressed metal blade housing near the wheel mount holes. The previous owner had tried to shore up the wonky wheel mount with a bit of license plate, but welding did the job properly.

Then I cut the front lawn with our new five-dollar mower.

It cuts just like a brand new, hundred and ninety dollar mower.

Either this mower, or the larger one I found last fall, has to go over to the Bale House for the occupant to use over there. I've been looking out for one since the grass began to grow again.

I don't care which mower goes. I just care that the grass is cut in that clearing where Aimee and I had our first "dates" all those years ago, clearing land for a house.

If you take the trouble to cut down a lot of trees like that, the last thing you want is for them to grow back.

Evening in apple blossom time

It's been nice-enough weather so far this long weekend in Maine. For the Brits reading this blog, we have a holiday Monday for Memorial Day, and so I have a nice break from summer fieldwork.

Aimee has been out in the field and in the lab, but that girl knows no rest. I may take a day off from work, including farm work every once in a while, but Aimee always seems to be doing something.

The vegetable garden is mostly planted, just the very tender-most plants to go, basil and pepper.

The onions shot up because we used mostly our own starts and they were several times larger than commercial onion starts. It's easy to see where we switched back to commercial starts, halfway through the second row.

It will also be a lot easier to weed the bigger onions than the littler ones.

The pigs are growing like weeds, already twice the size they were when they came. They've decided chasing chickens is good sport for pigs.

The southern face of the house is sadly peeling its layer of construction paper because we haven't been able to get all the shingles finished on the west side so we can move around to the south. Procrastination station. I plan to start dipping shingles tomorrow, if I can devise a sensible method that uses less of the sealant we've been using.

Notice Shenzhi-cat hovering next to the bird feeders in hopes of catching a bird, the bad cat.

The apple blossoms are quite lovely and I've just been delighted by them this year. Last year they didn't last so long and we didn't get as much benefit. Here's the Golden Delicious in the North Paddock (west). This tree hasn't been pruned yet, but it yields large, edible and worm-free apples most years. They don't keep well, but they eat well.

The stump is an elm that succumbed to the Dutch Elm infection and was made into firewood. Elm doesn't make good firewood, so I may not do that again. I'll cut them into chunks and compost them along with all my other large brush piles.

It was hard to split, too.

The lilac is almost in full bloom, and already attracting butterflies and humming birds. The baby chicks are out in their chicken tractor for the third day now. They seem to like it. They run around and jump about, getting strong and in shape.

The older hens are all cooped up now behind a new fence five feet tall. They just kept getting out, and so the fence systems needed to keep them in (and keep our neighbors happy) got more and more elaborate, as the chickens still kept getting out. One particularly scrawny Golden Comet is the ringleader. Today's evolution of the five-footer is only the most recent elaboration.

It's all been a royal pain.

Let's hope it works this time. I'm really getting tired of chasing these bloody chickens.

I suppose I could always make an example of the ringleader, the way the Gestapo handled the French Resistance.

Pour encourager les autres.

I don't think Aimee would let me do that.

We may need to have a little "accident" around here.

Aimee knows what a pain it is, though, because she managed to let three chickens out herself while she was in the barn greeting the pigs when she came home this afternoon.

They headed straight for my garage/workshop, so, thinking to trap them, she followed them in and closed the garage door behind her.

I then stood outside smiling to myself while hearing this squawking and fluttering and crashing and cursing and banging. Finally, it was just too much and I cracked up, laughing out loud enough to be heard inside the building.

At which point, poor wee Aimee lost her temper with me and the chickens, rolling up the door again to glare at me before stomping off, all the while telling me what I could do with myself, and letting me know that if I wanted the chickens in the barn, I could bloody well catch them myself.

So I did. With a lot less fuss and bother.

But I still think it was funny.

Zombie farmers and chary chicks

So I got done with the rescue course, and then there was that day I played hookey to get our garden in, which turned out to be a very good thing to do since the rain came back the very next day, and then the wind research field season started and I'm already sleep-deprived.

I ordinarily wake up with the birds, which means, this time of year in Maine at 44 degrees of latitude, that I could expect to wake about 4.45 am or so. But, my head is full of specifications, parts list, schematics, and to-do lists, and so I've been waking at 2.30 or 3 am instead. I then almost automatically begin puzzling on some anemometry problem or equipment problem, and each time I've been unable to get back to sleep.

This is not that unusual for me. I tend to run a sleep deficit during any period of higher stress, and catch up later when the stress bleeds away. In a really stressful time I also get migraines, but I haven't had one of those since I gave up my two-year interim job as Provost of Unity College, a few years back.

Each night after work this week I've fallen asleep during the BBC six o'clock news. This too shall pass, I expect. I'll get used to the new routine.

But I'm looking forward to the upcoming three day weekend so I can take a few naps.

In other news, I came home from work yesterday to find Aimee sat on the lawn, watching the chicks, now almost pullets, being placed in the chicken tractor for the first time. This device has a tiny coop, just large enough for a few pullets, and then about 20 square feet of open bottom with access to the grass underneath. (I'll take some pictures this weekend.) There's a cunning little ramp from the coop to the grass which folds up and becomes a door.

Accordingly, there's a moment each spring that the first brave chick plucks up enough courage to go down the ramp for the first time, and this is what Aimee was watching for.

Apparently, according to the head chick wrangler, the first chick was just getting ready to go when the second chick in line pushed her out and she fell to the ground in a frightened flurry.

There's a lot of stress going around, I guess.

Getting the garden in

It was a three day rescue course, but it's been raining for two weeks and my field research season starts today. We needed a dry day for tillage, to get the remainder of the cool weather garden crops in, so I played hookey.

The ancient Troy-Bilt rotor-tiller gave the normal amount of trouble starting, but after some coaxing roared into throbbing and very noisy life, and made short work of the thousands of tiny weed seeds that had sprouted.

It's gratifying that these are just the mild airborne weeds you'll always get, these days. The rank quack grass ("couch" grass in the UK) is more or less gone.

By weeding the soil, not the weeds, we managed to clear almost all the quack.

The onions and greens were already in and sprouting up. I put in cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, five varieties of potatoes, including some Blue Adirondack, a new variety (for us), leeks, and last but by no means least, carrots.

A big phew. That rain seemed incessant. But then it often does in Maine. Having the big Kubota and smaller Troy-Bilt tillers helps a good deal. This garden wouldn't be in at all if it had needed to be double-dug.

The chicks are getting big and Aimee has let them out on the lawn once already. Properly restrained, of course, not wandering free.

I didn't see this, but apparently they enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

The sheep are very loud these days. The lambs are big and still nursing, so the mothers are very hungry. They don 't have very good grass in their home paddock, the Back Forty, so they're always wanting to be moved around to the lusher pastures.

They get still grained twice a day and there remains untouched six-inch high grass in quite a few places in the home paddock, so this is just a preference they're expressing, not a necessity.

But the grass is always greener....

Please, please let us out! We're starving, honest we are.

But they've just scoffed down a big feed of sixteen-weight and oats, the bummers.

Rescue revival

I'm on a mountain rescue course, a three-day high-angle top-up training, so I won't be posting much on the farm this weekend.

Aimee is looking after the home place.

And she's not at all happy about it.

The sheep are at that difficult point in the year, before they're shorn, but after the green grass is growing. This means they aren't afraid of the electrical fence, and they're very motivated not to stick to the limited rotational paddocks we confine them to to better manage the grass.

Which means they need to be shepherded a lot.

Apparently the sheep got out NINE times yesterday afternoon.

I'm using capitals because that's how Aimee said it: "They got out NINE times." And then she said it again: "NINE times." And again.

So I drove back from my rescue course way across the other side of the state late on the first day. I passed up the chance for free housing and a beer with "the guys" because, well, I like my sheep AND my wife and I don't want to lose either.

I noticed the symptoms immediately:

1) Sheep at the fence line of the Back Forty bellowing "We haven't had enough grass."

(Sheep protest movement: "What do we want?" "GRASS!" BAAAAA "When do we want it?" "NOW." BAAAAA)

2) Strange ad-hoc arrangement of benches on the lawn propping up the Premier electro-net fencing. That gets tangled very easily in use. That Aimee hates, because she has no patience for fence tangles. So rather than fix it, she'd rather prop it up.

3) Filthy white socks in the laundry basket, probably ruined, from likely very angry wifey running out to stop escaping sheep from eating tulips, or from taking off for points west.

Hmmmm

This doesn't look good.

So, after taking note of the fact that Aimee would almost certainly quite furious, and resolving therefore to tread very carefully, I put the sheep out on the Island Paddock, taking care to properly and fully electrify the fence.

That stopped the bellowing.

Then I toured the other animals, looking for additional difficulties. All seemed fine.

Small mercies.

Then I took my shower.

Then and only then did I tiptoe upstairs to the bedroom, where my emotionally exhausted wifey was napping away.

But my rummaging for clean socks woke her up:

"Those sheep got out NINE times!"

"NINE times!"

And so the sheep didn't get enough to eat because they kept getting out and had to be locked back up in the main paddock where the grass is thin.

The moral of this story is not that I am the very soul of husbandly patience with wife and sheep. I'm not. I've run out in my socks too, to save the tulips. And when I do, I turn the air blue with language I shouldn't use.

(I'm a former British serviceman, so therefore expert in bad language.)

The moral is, bad timing for rescue course. After the sheep are sheared, the electric fence will work just fine. But the shearing was postponed because of the terrible weather.

Can't shear wet sheep.

Actually, you can, but moldy fleece doesn't sell well.

So I arranged my approach to the rescue course so I could come home to the farm every night, because the sheep don't understand why they haven't had enough grass.

With only a mild sense that I was missing out on some fun.

I realized long ago that, although mountaineering was part of the pathway I took to farm life, it isn't "real" in the sense that farming is.

I think that's why I'm no longer much of a recreational mountaineer. Long ago, it stopped seeming as real as farming or building or even fixing a car. Or teaching, for that matter, which if done well is inherently real. So I spend my time teaching, farming, building or fixing cars. I still enjoy mountain scenery, and I still love to hike mountains, or even just to hike. Scrambling on rock is still fun for me. I truly enjoy my work teaching map reading to the new intake of future game wardens and park rangers we get every fall at Unity College. But I'm not in a big hurry to go to the alps or Norway or even Katahdin the way I used to be.

I'd rather stay home and look after the farm.

I think I still do search and rescue because that seems real to me.

I've been enough of a part of enough searches and rescues now to realize that when someone is lost or hurt in the woods or hills, it's very good that there are trained personnel to go find them and recover them and take them to hospital.

But I'm much more of a sheep farmer and husband than I am a mountaineer.

I'd rather hang out with the sheep and the wife than "the guys."

Although it would be nice if they would get along in my absence.

Piglets after all

I spoke too soon. I was able to resurrect the camera. I decided to give the battery a charge just in case, and it now takes pictures, and may even have stopped the on-again, off-again business.

Maybe I should drop it more often.

(Or charge it more often.)

Here are the piglets.

I managed to finish their new outside pen before the rain came, so they could explore the Great Outdoors for the first time if they felt like it, but they didn't feel like going out.

I can't say I blame them. That's a whole piglets-length of drop down off the sheep's winter bedding to the dirt level in the pigpen.

Maybe tomorrow we'll move some of that hay to make a ramp.

Serial [camera] killer

There won't be any pictures for a while. I broke another digital camera yesterday. Intending to take a picture of the new piglets, I dropped it onto the concrete floor of my workshop.

This is the third one I've owned since I started writing this blog in 2007, and I've managed to break each one of them. The latest one lasted only a few months, so I must be "escalating" like a troubled teenager, or one of the serial killers on "Criminal Minds." My next camera will no doubt last for only a few days at most.

If it wasn't for our policy that I'm only allowed to buy the cheapest second-hand digital cameras, I'd be upset about this. But I'm not. I have however, realized how easy it is to forget hard-earned lessons.

Before I dropped this camera, it had become balky, for some reason, only working properly after you turned it on and off multiple times.

As a result I had thought to myself , "wouldn't it be nice to have a new one?" and "Maybe I'll get a new one."

Now we see what a foolish idea that was.

I'll get another $25 second-hand one from eBay.

In the meantime, if I want to post you a picture of the new piglets, I'll either have to use my cellphone, or get Aimee to take them with her [nice, new, never-been dropped] digital camera.

I want you all to know, this does not mean that I am never allowed to have nice things and that Aimee looks after her stuff, while I don't.

If it wasn't for me, her car would never get an oil change, and it would still be covered with the winter's salt.

I take good care of big things that don't get hurt if you drop them. And my last serious car accident was nearly twenty years ago now.

I'm just really bad with digital cameras.

Really, really bad.