Jet Lagged

Last week Adam, Morwin and I all traveled to Carlsbad, California, for my yearly physical therapy update.  While the trip itself was awesome, being away mostly serves as a reminder of how much we'd rather just be at the farm.  Particularly when the return trip involves a two hour holding pattern in turbulence over Chicago, a canceled flight, a rebooked flight that doesn't leave for two days, screaming children, rescheduled flights that don't leave on time, a whole new airport not on the itinerary, lost luggage and a best friend willing to drive us three hours home after getting off work at 10pm.  We may never leave home again. 

We did finally make it back late last night and today are recovering from traveling for 24 hours straight with brief periods of productivity (do the dishes!  wash all the clothes!) and long naps.  Adam's trying to get caught up on mowing the lawn, which is now high enough to lose Thora in- and that was with Adam's dad being awesome and mowing for us while we were away.  We still don't have baby chicks, but someone has been keeping the nest warm so we have hope.  Adam's mom and dad were nice enough to keep Charlie and Ed on their farm for the week, and even weaned them off the bottles for us! 

However, the strangest part of the homecoming was this morning when Adam, a little bleary and not nearly caffeinated enough (no milk for coffee, ugh) peered out the window to find one of our roosters was loose and riding a turtle across our driveway. 

We may need some more sleep.

I would have taken a picture, but the camera is still in the suitcase that has not yet made its way home. 

Broody

It would appear that one (or two) of our hens have gone broody. 

Apparently Chaparone Thora needs to step up her game. 

We may have baby chicks soon...

In Bloom

When we bought the farm, we discovered that there's a very old apple orchard on the farm that was left to go wild.  Adam and his dad have been doing some pruning this spring to try and bring it back.  This week, it went into full bloom and has been absolutely gorgeous.

Lambs gone wild

It's kind of hard to explain the crazy that is lambs.  Out of nowhere, with no warning, seemingly normal lambs appear to lose their minds and run amok.  Perhaps pictures will help.

See, normal lambs. Nice and calm.

Crazy lambs

See the difference?

Normal

Crazy.

I blame spring.

Also, obligatory picture of Charlie, looking very handsome with his horns coming in.

 

Blown Away

Yesterday, around 6 in the morning, Adam and I woke up to a huge thunderstorm outside.  Around 6:15, we heard a terrifying noise and discovered this outside:

One of the huge pine trees in the swamp across the street, waterlogged from all the rain we've been getting, came crashing down in the high winds.  It fell across the road and landed about five feet from our front porch.  These are the great PennDot guys who came out to get it off the road (they did, however, leave the bulk of it in our front yard.)

After a bit without power or phone lines, things got sorted out and the sun came out and the rest of the day was pretty decent- a good thing since a lot of it was spent cleaning up the mess left from the storm.

Some pictures:

Nova (Fluffy Nimblekins, Destroyer of Worlds)

Sweet Pea grazing down the front yard (who needs lawn mowers?!)

Hover Lambs!  Charlie and Ed love running mad circles around everything!

Hennypenny

Gaia and the gang grazing on grass, finally!

Edmund, with milk on his face

finally, some signs of spring

Charlie's horn buds are coming in

buds on the fruit trees

Adam can't go anywhere with some of his flock underfoot!

No Reservations

Edmund and Charlie, our two bottle babies, have been outside in the barn for awhile now, which seems to be going pretty well.  They're starting to nibble at hay with the other sheep and love to run amok with their fellow lambs.  The only difference comes when the other lambs go to nurse off their mothers and suddenly the bottle babies realize that they, too, are hungry.

And like most kids too busy playing to stop, they wait until they're starving.  Or at least, what they believe is starving.  And then it's not just a matter of needing a bottle, but they need a bottle right NOW.  This very instant, if not sooner. 

And if they decide that the silly bottle-bearing humans aren't moving fast enough, or maybe haven't been as instantly receptive to their pathetic wails as they had hoped, they have devised a solution.

Simply wiggle under the gate and come bleat at the kitchen door.  That'll get some attention.

And I have to say, it pretty much works. 

Thank goodness they don't have thumbs to undo the door latch, or we'd really be in trouble.

Make hay while the sun shines

Saturday we *finally* had blue skies over Skirted Fleece, so everyone on the farm took the opportunity to do some sunny day activities.

Adam and I planted some fruit trees for the new orchard by the driveway.

Charlie and Edmund took a break from running amok.

Adam got started on the chicken's new area

while Sweet Pea napped in the sunshine:

(we've noticed something of a division of labor here on the farm during sunny days.  There seem to be a lot of humans working and animals sleeping...)

While the yaks were stuffing their faces,

Adam and I got to give a mini impromptu farm tour to a neighbor who was driving by and stopped to ask "What kind of cows are those?"  She was very nice and very excited about our farm and the animals that we have here.  Which is the best kind of neighbor to have!

The exception to the animals sleeping/ people working rule seems to have been chickens, who were very, very busy.