Selfies with Goat

"You guys are beyond ridiculous...and I would never tolerate such nonsense."

See that shoddily barricaded barn behind Zoey? That's the rapidly dwindling hay supply. As soon as we let the sheep out for a wander when we're down there, they head straight to the hay and pretend to be goats; they hop right over and in to eat hay. Luckily, Zoey was a good sheep/hay guarding dog. When one of the mama ewes gets fresh with her, she has no problem leaping back and forth at the ewe until the ewe backs down (Ryan tucks tail and runs in that situation, and Abby would never let herself get into that situation in the first place). 

Zoey, stick-y in mouth, carefully watching her sheepies. 

Our farm might be entirely underwater soon. Ducks are happy.

That bench? That's the now underwater dock.

Recycled window seedling house is nearing completion!

Collies in love

Three dog beds and a big couch and they choose to lie like this...

Empty nest

The chicks moved out of the house and into the coop (in an xpen) today! Here they are in their dirty transport bucket.

In a few months they'll contribute to the work force...

Oh Pinterest, you inspire me ;)

Updates

I haven't had a chance to take any photos in this rainy muck, but hopefully we'll see the sun again sometime soon! I went out to do the chores on Friday morning and I was half paying attention while feeding the sheep...and suddenly I noticed that there was a brand new lamb there! One of the ewes that we got from my friend (the ones that rode back here in my car) had her lamb! We were told she was due in February, but she had sure been looking close to lambing - and yup, one super cute ram lamb! This is good news, because if we're organized we can split the sheep into two groups and have this ram breed with Oprah and Amelia, and Amelia's ram can breed with the two new girls. That will get us through another year of lambing without a permanent ram.

The one little mink-surviving chick has turned out to be a rooster - of course - just our luck! Luckily, 11 eggs hatched healthy chicks in the incubator and they're now 2 weeks old. I've got another batch in there that will hatch in 2 weeks. We'd like to have another 10 hens or so. If we end up with too many, it should be easy to sell point of lay pullets (people are always looking for those). Any extra roosters will go in our freezer. They don't get as big or as meaty as purpose bred meat birds, but they work well for 2 person meals...especially if you don't mind less breast meat and big free-range meaty drumsticks!

Pippa didn't seem to go into heat last week, so that hopefully means that she is indeed pregnant! Little Pippa(s) in 4 months.... can't wait! Our neighbours probably want one mini-mower, and I should get a list of some other interested people. I have no idea how many kids she'll have (first time pregnancy means usually only 1-2, but her mom had 4 last year and then 4 again this year).

The two pigs are growing quickly! Having them over the winter has been fine so far - they were comfy in their fort in the barn and now that they're much bigger, they spend most of the day out in the open. I'm sure they grow a bit slower in the cold since more energy goes into keeping warm, but we'll see how long it takes them to get to bacon size...