If any of you have ever held a garage sale, you know this is a time of madness. If you haven’t, I would love to talk to you about your life and strategies about the collecting and dispersing of stuff. I have much to learn. 

This is not only a Garage Sale, it is a Moving Sale.  

As long-time readers may remember, we relocated several months ago from our family-sized home in a city to a very small house in a very small town about 80 minutes away. Due to the mind-boggling machinations of the housing market, it took roughly 40 years for our house to sell. Now that it’s sold (Hallelujah!), we have stuff in the old house, in the new house, and in storage near the old house that we need to unload quickly. 

And so we find ourselves in mid-October, the very not-peak of garage sale season. Temps for our three city-permitted sale days are chilly, windy, and on the first day, wet. Just what you want when luring spontaneous shoppers to your sale! 

I’m taking a few moments from the madness to share with you my tried-and-true, counterintuitive, no-fail open secret method for a successful garage sale.  

Only price things that are high value (I’m talking about fewer than 5% of the items you put out for sale). My fancy method involves masking tape and a Sharpie. Anything not high value does not get a price put on it. It’s worth a quarter. When people come up to the sale, I greet them and tell them “Anything not marked is worth a quarter.” 

Why would I do something like this? 

First, it saves so much time by not pricing everything. I know some folks like a sticker method (green stickers are $1, red are $2), but you still have to price every item. Some people like tables (this table all items are $1, that table all are $5) but who can remember by the time people are ready to pay? This method lets me mostly count and divide by four. Then I add on anything that has a price on it. 

Second, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard some variation of “Well, I don’t know if I need this, but for a quarter, I’ll try it.” My favorite was when I was helping with a garage sale that had a lot of old electronics in it. We had no idea if they worked, and no opportunity to test them. Several tinkerers picked up armfuls of items saying “Well, I may be able to make it work, and if not, it’s just a quarter.” 

I love that they may have found some entertainment, but honestly, one way to look at it is that they just paid me to take away my trash. Is this not a brilliant plan? 

Third, I have felt the benefit of a really good deal more than once. Garage sales helped clothe me as a kid and helped clothe my kids when they were young. It feels really good to see things go where they will be useful and helpful and know someone is excited about not having to pay much for them. 

Fourth, it is worth the entertainment factor to see folks’ surprise when you greet them and tell them anything not marked is a quarter. Trust me on this one. 

Finally, I can’t prove this definitively, because there’s no way to do a perfect comparative test, but I think I make significantly more money on these than I did when I tried to price more items. I know I get rid of a ton of stuff.  

The biggest objection I have heard is something like, “But I paid $15 for that! Are you telling me to sell it for a quarter?!” 

Yes. Yes, I am. It’s in the sale because you’re not using it, and if it doesn’t sell, you’re likely going to donate it or throw it away, and then you’ll get nothing for it. This way, you get a quarter and you don’t have to deal with it anymore. Furthermore, your buyer is happy, and what if they found three more things to take off your hands to fill out that dollar? 

This is my strategy.  

Let’s hope it works.  

Greg’s questions from last week will be tackled next week. I need to practice dividing by four. 

Greg Sneaks in Questions

(One of which will also be answered next week.)

Question 1: But what about sharing the incredibly impressive and equally mysterious magic of your “Bermuda Triangle” technique? 

Question 2: Have you ever had someone pay you more than a quarter for things using this technique? (He asks her knowingly…) 

Question 3: Can we please, for the love of all things priced at a quarter, never ever have another garage sale so long as we both shall live?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Everything Please Go appeared first on Kiersten J.

It wasn’t handed to me or delivered in the mail. It didn’t have a card attached with precious or timely words.  

It was, in reality, just a few moments. But I’d like to preserve them somehow, to bring out again when needed. I’m sure that I will. 

All of us have those times where the road is more speedbump and pothole than smooth pavement.  The weight of the world is a bit much. Worries seem to multiply, and energy slips away as burdens mount. 

I remember being a younger, more naive woman, trying to out-cheerful myself out of the funks. I had strategies.  

I could plan myself out of them. Lists would help. Plans, charts, schedules. If I could see the path to getting everything accomplished, I could logistically prove to myself that everything would be fine. Sometimes it helped. 

Often, I’d come up with something to look forward to. What bright spot might be ahead on the calendar? I could focus on a holiday, a celebration, a sports event, a visit, and maybe ignore the low rumblings going on in the background. 

My best trick was to give myself a good talking-to. I have so much to be thankful for. Truly. Focus on that, young lady. Never mind whatever’s tugging at your mind or heart at the moment. 

I don’t know if you can relate to any of those, or if they worked better for you than they did for me, but I can only report mild success. Call it temperament, personality, or something else, sometimes the speedbumps and potholes get the upper hand.   

I’m finding myself noticing these periods creeping up like dusk. Rather than fussing about it for another hour of daylight to play in like I might have as a child, I’m learning to read the change in light as a sign of change.  

I don’t have to like it. I also don’t have to fight it. It is. It comes to everyone. And it won’t last forever. 

This morning I spent time at the farm, in the sunlight, watching the baby chicks. They did nothing more than exist, oblivious to anything more troublesome than how full their feeder looks. It never ceases to amaze me how animals’ obliviousness to human concerns can be so comforting. If you ever needed an object lesson that “life goes on,” watch a bunch of three-week-old chicks putter around a brooder for a while.  

Yet that time, comforting as it was, wasn’t the gift I mentioned before. That came when I left. 

As I was going home, I drove past the north paddock where the Valais ewes and the Hooligans (the lambs) have been grazing. I needed to check carefully because yesterday Frederick had gotten himself on the wrong side of the fence. The day before, his partner in crime Lucas had shown him how it was done. 

I didn’t see any brown lambs on the wrong side of the fence, but I did see one lying down on the ground, absolutely still. Experienced sheep people know there’s a game that sheep like to play with their keepers called “Am I Sleeping or Am I Dead?” (Seriously. You can google this and there are videos.) 

Let’s just say my mental state was such that I wasn’t necessarily expecting a happy video ending to the pasture walk I found myself making.  

However, it only took a few yards in for all the sheep to pop to attention and face me. There was this ridiculous band of mixed sheep, all looking at me like “What?! We’re grazing here.”  

I squatted down to sheep-height and just appreciated the moment. They’re fine. Everyone’s as fine as they can be for the moment. And really, that’s all I can ask for. 

And then came the gift.  

First Betsy and Eliza, and then the whole crew walked forward. All the lambs, even the slightly skittish Harriet, Lucas, and Frederick, gathered around for pets, nudges, and scritches. The Valais ewes formed up behind them, and we all huddled up together, in close contact, for a few moments in the shade. 

If a prey animal (horse, rabbit, sheep, etc.) chooses to be near you, it is often because you have something it very much wants (food!) or because it has determined you are safe. And there is something incredibly validating to a human to be designated as “safe” by an animal who is essentially defenseless. (If you’re curious, there’s fascinating work being done with animals in therapeutic settings.) 

Did my little flock make all my worries and troubles disappear? Nope. But for a few priceless moments, they made me know that all was right in this little piece of the world.  

What a gift.  

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week. 

Last week’s winning question was: Supposing we did want to have “name badges” for each member of The Regiment, how might we go about doing that? How does an aspiring Chicken Shepherd mark these ridiculously interesting egg factories? 

Have no fear, Aspiring Chicken Shepherd! The marketplace has us covered. It looks like most poultry keepers use leg bands. They come in different colors, in plastics and some metals, and are often numbered. So just like our sheep were given ear tags, we can give The Regiment ID tags and assign them each an official number. We can even color code them if we like.  

I don’t know yet if chickens are as adept or as committed as sheep at removing their tags.  

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1. How would you explain the transition you made from your younger self who felt like you needed to force yourself out of “the funks” to the mindset you have now? What encouragement would you give to readers who also want to make changes in this area?  

Question 2. What have you done to create the environment in which our sheep feel safe around you and how can we apply those techniques to better serve the people in our lives? 

Question 3. This one is for those who haven’t met you in real life and aren’t aware of your height, or lack thereof. In inches, what is the change in elevation for you when you “squat down to sheep-height?” 

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

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By the way, have you seen the containers most farm stores use to send home baby chickens? They are a flimsy sort of fold-up box that looks awfully similar to what you might find containing other chickens (of the breaded and fried variety). Can you imagine the thoughts of a tiny chicken being put into one of those? “Is it free ranging for me or am I a chicken nugget?”  

No judgment here on the multiple purposes of chickens. I’m fond of a chicken nugget. I just have the same thought every time. And this is why philosophy degrees should come with warning labels. Baby chicks are not having soul-paralyzing existential crises when The Hand selects them from the Tractor Supply Bin. 

My six little chicks came from nicely labeled bins. Four of the six girls developed exactly as those labels suggested they would. Two did not.  

Now, I should say at this point that the primary purpose of these birds, often referred to around here as Seal Team Six, is to eat bugs and disturb parasite cycles as much as possible in the high traffic sheep areas. They are awesome at it. I didn’t really care a lot about their breeds except that they be good foragers, and all the labels at the store on all the tubs I was considering met that basic requirement.  

I did not anticipate how focused I was going to become on the identity of these two mystery birds.  

I “picked” an Easter Egger and an English Orpington. Chicken people will probably recognize that the Orpington should have become easy to recognize from size and the Easter Egger is a sort of wild card hybrid achieved by mixing other breeds to get some pretty varied results. I was looking for cheek puffs to figure out which was the Egger and mass for the Orpington.  

I took pictures. A lot of pictures. I compared these pictures to websites. I uploaded them to ChatGPT. I repeated this process anytime there was any observable change in appearance. It became ridiculous. I knew it, didn’t care, and kept on taking my photos.  

Folks, Seal Team Six is about 24 weeks old now, and it’s only in the last couple that I’ve determined (well, I’m pretty sure) that these girls are both Orpingtons, one Blue and one Splash. That sounds simple, but I’m telling you, each girl had a list of potential identities going for some time.  

I loved watching them develop. I learned so much about what features help distinguish one breed from another, found helpful websites, became acquainted with chicken breeds I’d never heard of before, and fell down lots of entertaining rabbit holes. 

All well and good, right? 

You’d think so. But friends, I’m afraid I have uncovered a teeny tiny wee little hint of a possible obsessive behavior.  

Because we ordered over 20 chicks a couple weeks ago. I didn’t see my friendly neighborhood Tractor Supply friend pick them out of a bin. They didn’t come with name badges.  

I have the list of what I ordered, and I have an armful of fuzzballs, and that should be good enough. It really should.  

Except that within my order, I took the super fun and exciting (and it really is!) option of choosing a “Ten Brown Egg Layer” pack. So, I have ten Pullets of Mystery. Four of the other girls are sort of like the Easter Eggers in that they’re hybrids derived from other breeds and have inconsistent results when it comes to appearances. So that makes 14 Pullets of Questionable Identity.  

There are eight birds in this group of 22 that I can ID visually. The entire group is trying to figure out if the phone that appears in the brooder on a semi-regular basis is another chick, something to peck, or something that threatens their existence. 

My iCloud storage is crying.  

This week it became clear, in the best possible way, that the Pemberley Regiment would need even more reinforcements in their production.

Another Brown Layer Pack arrived in the mail Wednesday. 

This time, I thought I would be efficient about my photos during intake. I would take photos of each chick, from views that would be most helpful in identification. I would get leg color, the number of toes, coloration, special markings, any feathers starting to poke through, etc. Mercy, did we get photos.  

I have strong suspicions about six of them. But that’s a bit of a cheat, because they’re two groups of three. They have other possible IDs, and the other five (the hatchery kindly includes an extra in a neat program), have many possibilities. More mysteries to solve. 

I love all of this, and at the same time, it drives me nuts. I love noticing slow changes, seeing new feathers pop out, observing different rates of growth, and watching coloring patterns emerge. I don’t want to rush that or miss any of the stages of it. 

At the same time, I want the certainty of knowing who I’m looking at. I like names and organization and being able to categorize and mentally sort and label. I want to be able to watch and learn about a bird’s behavior and compare it to another of the same breed and see what’s individual and what’s common. I’d like to know when to start anticipating laying. 

My knowledge is incomplete. There’s a possibility it may always be so with some of these girls. I think that will always drive me a little crazy. 

But I also think that I’ll probably order the mystery pack again. 

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week. 

This week’s winning question: Is the gestation period for all our sheep breeds the same?

Yup. 

The general standard gestation period for sheep is 147 days. Most lambings happen within 144 to 152 days.  

I’ve read that sometimes fine wool breeds tend to lamb a little on the later side than those bred primarily for meat, but the averages are still true. Best practices are to be on high alert starting Day 140 to be ready for especially early deliveries, which can happen with multiples. That’s January 25 for us, buddy.

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1. Fell down? As in you “fell down lots of entertaining rabbit holes.” Is that really the most accurate representation of what actually occurred? “Willingly dived into” perhaps? Or maybe “sat down, crossed my arms, squeezed my nose shut, and skooched myself forward inch by inch until gravity sucked me down like I was on the steepest, fastest water slide at Oceans of Fun”? Come on now. Whatever happened to integrity in reporting? 

Question 2. Supposing we did want to have “name badges” for each member of The Regiment, how might we go about doing that? How does an aspiring Chicken Shepherd mark these ridiculously interesting egg factories? 

Question 3. You said you can visually ID 8 of the 22? What breed are they? I can ID our 3 breeds of sheep, but I’m totally lost on which is which when it comes to these hens.  

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Who’s There? appeared first on Kiersten J.

Some of you might wonder about the idea of sheep even having opinions. I assure you, they do.  

Exhibit A: Martin 

Martin is generally a calm, quiet fellow. He rarely speaks, but he observes. Intently.  

He recently watched a couple of his Merino ewe friends leave the flock for alternate lodgings. This week he first witnessed Wrestlemania, Ewe Stall Edition, while some hooves were trimmed. Then he watched all the Babydoll ewes trot out for their “personal growth” retreat with Mr. Bingley. (We have to be careful how we talk in front of the little ones.) 

He has questions. 

Exhibit B: The young lads 

Greg has been working on Barracks 3 (the old/new chicken house) when he can squeeze out a few minutes. The first order of business was to stabilize the structure and frame the inside. (I think. I’m no structural engineer, and I think my sons would give me a C+ in Lego. Maybe out of pity and affection.) 

I swear I am not making this up, but the wethers are obsessed with this project. Do they think they’re helping? Advising?  

Or maybe inspecting. 

Exhibit C: Mr. Darcy 

Mr. Darcy has registered a polite but pointed protest.  

He would like us to note that he is, as of yet, the only ram still without the present company of ladies. He would most respectfully request that we alter the proposed arrangements to remedy this untenable circumstance at our earliest convenience. At present, he is enduring the sufferings only a bachelor surrounded by happily engaged couples can know. The only consolation he can find is the company of chickens.  

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week. 

This week’s winning question: How does your call from the “US GOV’T” experience compare to that time you were called by the “Federal Marshal” who demanded that you come to the courthouse on a Saturday to do whatever he was trying to convince you to do and was playing every card he had to convince a “slightly neurotic, people-pleasing, rule-following first-born daughter” that you were in BIG trouble if you didn’t? 

Well, the first difference is that I was expecting the chick call. I was not expecting a call from a “Federal Marshal”.  

Here’s what happened.  

Saturday morning (Clue #1), I got a phone call. Caller ID said “Federal Marshal”.  

Well, good grief. I’m hard wired to answer that. It’s Someone In Charge. 

This person gives me some sort of identification and then tells me (if I’m remembering this correctly), that I was supposed to testify as a witness and that now there’s a warrant (or something like that) out for me. I need to get down to the courthouse downtown by noon or I risk being arrested and fined.  

Greg was out of the house at that moment or I’d have put the call on speaker so he could have heard this, but the panic started to recede as I started realizing 1. It’s Saturday…there’s no court on Saturday in the judicial system I’m familiar with, 2. I haven’t been a witness to anything more serious than general rudeness in the last several months, and 3. I know for a fact The Government has my address and could have reached me by mail if they needed me to appear somewhere. 

But MAN, this dude was persistent. I should have hung up. I really should have. But I think we ended up where he said his supervisor would call me. I was mostly sure this was nonsense, but still just a little afraid I was going to end up in the Big House. 

Greg got home and took the call from “the supervisor” and started entertaining me with the best questions. He asked questions only someone local to the area could answer. BRILLIANT. It quickly became clear this was a scam. We never got far enough to learn what the actual scam was. They were still insisting I needed to show up downtown when the whole thing fell apart, but they sure went to a lot of trouble. 

Honestly, the whole experience was a good lesson for me. I’ve heard so many phone scams that I think are so obvious and ridiculous, and I’m tempted to think I’d never fall for one. But this one happened to poke a sensitive spot and that’s all it takes to let fear overcome sense and make you think you should do something unwise.  

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1. Speaking of registering a protest with management, who authorized public distribution of a photo of my hindquarters? I don’t have a good side, but that’s definitely not it.

Question 2. Regarding Mr. Darcy’s formal complaint, what is the plan for starting his companionship period so we can have more construction project helpers like Fitz, Betsy, and Eliza?

Question 3. Is the gestation period for all our sheep breeds the same?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Who’s in Charge? appeared first on Kiersten J.

That’ll get your blood pumping first thing in the morning.

Especially if you’re a slightly neurotic, people-pleasing, rule-following first-born daughter.

Never mind the fact that I’d gone to bed the night before expecting the call. You could honestly say I was eagerly expecting it. My brain had spent at least part of the night processing my expectations via dreams that might make an interesting, but trippy, children’s feature film…more on that later.

I answered the phone, spoke to a man who was much less scary than his phone ID might have suggested, and assured him I’d be right down to pick up my special delivery that had arrived at the Post Office.

“Looking for your babies?” He asked when we arrived and handed us a chirruping box of chicks.

It was Christmas in September.

Back at the barn we opened our package to start welcoming the tiny little fuzzballs to Pemberley Farm and get them settled into their temporary nursery.

This was considerably less complicated than the version my sleeping brain had rehearsed the night before, in which hummingbirds arrived instead of chickens, escaped from the brooder, and some of them turned into blue fish that swam through the air.

Anyway…

Long-time readers may remember that The Regiment has taken losses in the last few months. Additionally, we are discovering some opportunities to share our farm eggs with local friends and acquaintances and thought it would be a good idea to expand operations at the same time we replaced our missing ladies.

With that in mind, I eagerly placed an order with an online hatchery I’ve been browsing for several months.

Let me tell you, friends. Selection was a process. I’m not going to say it was quite as rigorous as the NCAA Basketball Tournament selection process, but I will say that I almost broke out an Excel chart for this. And I don’t do Excel charts.

The trick was that there were several criteria to be considered. The perfect group of chicks would be:

1. Visually varied and interesting. No offense to folks who love a particular breed or who are loyal to a certain look, but I adore the motley crew. (Not the band. Not anymore.)
2. Capable of producing the right balance of brown and colored eggs. This is super picky, and I completely acknowledge it. But I have fallen in love with the palette we have with our daily egg collections. We have a spectrum of browns, and then a couple pops of cool colors in the blue/green family and a few BOOMs of those dark brown eggs. I wanted to keep that look as much as I possibly could. No guarantees, of course, and the practical 85% of me knows perfectly well that an egg is an egg is an egg. But good golly, I like the pretty.
3. Weather hardy and good foragers. I want to let these girls free range and we live in Kansas. Enough said.
4. Populated with a few more chicks of the breeds I already know I love, in different varieties if possible.
5. A reasonable number. I am not allowed to own 800 chickens. I’m pretty sure.

We installed 24 chicks into the brooder box this week. I chose thirteen of them specifically, and I’m very excited to see them grow, develop, and lay. All but two of them are new breeds or new varieties of breeds we currently love.

Ten of them came in a “Brown Egg Layer Assortment,” and one is a mystery freebie, and that group is going to be the gift that keeps on giving for the next several weeks. The hatchery promised at least three different varieties in the brown layer group, and so I’ll get to try and determine their identities as they go from down-covered nuggets to speed demons with baby feathers to juvenile chickens to adults.

The hatchery doesn’t know it, but they’ve given me the gift of an irresistible puzzle that will force me to spend a lot of time paying attention.

And I can certainly use that gift right now, and the reminder that this is part of what I want to spend my time doing.

We have come upon a season where the list of things to be done at the farm is getting longer and the hours of daylight are getting shorter. I’m feeling the pressure to hurry up and knock things off my task list.

The sheep have started breeding season, which involves a lot of population shuffling and organizing and reorganizing of the areas where the sheep are and will be spending their time. We are due for a massive barn clean out, which means I really need to get the compost situation organized and ready because we are about to make a massive deposit into it.

We just shifted Seal Team Six out of their wee house and into Barracks One and need to get Barracks Three ready for when the new recruits outgrow the nursery brooder and the wee house. I have a feeling that time will come faster than we think it will.

There are repairs and other odds and ends that need to be done. Straw needs to be fetched, hooves need to be trimmed, and there’s always a minor emergency lurking around the corner, right, Frederick?

And so even though I adore every single part and piece of this, it is still easy to shift my focus from experiencing it all to just knocking out the tasks.

So this morning, as I was examining the chicks, looking at new feathers popping out, trying to see if one chick might have four or five toes, wondering if those are cheek muffs or just baby down, delighting in the absolute absurdity of their sheer existence, I took a huge breath.

This is what I want.

I want to pause for an undefined “while” and watch these ridiculous baby chickens.

I want to watch Mr. Knightley hang out with Emma and Lizzy in his enclosure and enjoy seeing them together again, all grown so much bigger than the last time they were together.

I want to spend time scratching Mr. Darcy’s cheeks and telling him how handsome he is, and that he’ll get to spend time with his ladies in just a few weeks.

I want to pay attention.

There is so much around me to be fascinated by, and yet it’s so easy for me to forget to do the one thing that pretty much guarantees I’ll be sucked in by the wonder of it all.

Pause. Just for a bit. I may not have hours in this busy season, but I bet I can find a moment.

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week.

The winning question: How are you feeling about Samson’s interaction with the sheep so far? Is it going as you expected? Have you been surprised by anything?

Samson is crushing all expectations. I am floored by this dog.

I know you asked about the sheep, and I’ll get there in a minute, but I have to mention the chickens first. Samson is so calm around these chaos monkeys that I would be worried he has no “guardian” in him at all if I hadn’t seen his turbo drive kick in when he spots a cat. He lets the birds commit highway robbery of his own kibble right in front of his face. No reaction. None. It’s amazing.

I have loved watching him with the sheep. He has been calm and curious from the beginning, but with no chasing or even a hint of aggression. I think the only things we’ve worked on have been discouraging the “want to play?” stance he has taken a few times and initially, giving Mr. Bingley a decent bubble of space to prevent him from losing his tiny pink brain and blindly crashing himself into his furniture.

The biggest surprise to me happened last night when we watched Samson and Mr. Bingley share a relatively calm nose boop at Bingley’s enclosure, near his food container, with no brain evaporation or furniture crashing involved at all. That was amazing to see.

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1. How does your call from the “US GOV’T” experience compare to that time you were called by the “Federal Marshal” who demanded that you come to the courthouse on a Saturday to do whatever he was trying to convince you to do and was playing every card he had to convince a “slightly neurotic, people-pleasing, rule-following first-born daughter” that you were in BIG trouble if you didn’t?

Question 2. I know you couldn’t get your first choice of the chicks because some were out of stock when we finally decided to add new recruits to The Regiment. How many of which breeds did we end up with and how does that compare to what you originally selected?

Question 3. What’s the plan for that compost we’re going to be creating once we get to that delightful task of cleaning out the barn?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Attention appeared first on Kiersten J.

Some of you may be shaking your head after reading those sentences. Who buys paper planners these days? Does the woman not have a phone? Does she not realize it does more than send texts and take pictures? 

The rest of you either know me or understand me.  

Yes. I have a phone. I have a calendar on my phone. It is positively bursting with appointments, reminders, holidays, birthdays, and “maybe” dates I’m holding for possible whatnots that may or may not materialize. 

I am perfectly aware that my phone and the bazillion and one apps available on it are likely capable of organizing me within an inch of my life. I am willing to admit there may even be a more efficient, more wonderful, more in-tune-with-my-brain system.  

The problem, friends, is twofold. One, I would never trust that the darn thing won’t poof into the netherworld right when I most need it to guide me. It genuinely feels like using an e-brain is an invitation to any ill-meaning force in the universe to please choose the most inconvenient time and place to mess with me.  

The other issue is that in order for any calendar/planner combo to help me, it needs to be the size of a Buick. I need to see all the things at the same time. Month, week, and day all at once, with room for lists upon lists as well as random scribbles. This is difficult to do on a screen smaller than an index card.  

This planner is actually an upgrade for me from a previous version. The earlier one was terrific, and I loved her. She did good work. But this week is a good example of why I need a little more muscle to work out the weeks and months ahead. 

Shearing 

The Valais were shorn this week.  

They were last shorn May 2, and it’s amazing how much wool these sheep can grow in four months. The poor dears were absolutely sweltering in our record heat wave. Typically, it’s best to wait until temps have cooled a bit to shear them, as their wool provides some protection from the heat as well as the cold, but no one told me when I scheduled in June that we’d be having 107-degree heat indexes in September.  

They’ve made it through the worst of the heat and are dealing with the destruction of their dignity.  

Georgiana’s coping mechanism seems to be using her forehead as a Rorschach test.  

The next shearing will be for the whole flock in the spring.  

Pasture Rotation 

This week, we moved the sheep off their third pasture since starting the rotation system, just as planned. Yay. 

No rain for the past thousand years meant there was no good grass to put them on next, so we built our first sacrifice area.  

This is not as terrifying as it sounds. I know “sheep” and “sacrifice” start the alarm bells ringing for some of us, but this is something different. The only blood spilled was human, from scraping against baling wire. Everyone is whole and hearty. 

We now have an area right by the barn that is designated as this sacrifice area. The ground is going to be hammered, and the sheep will not be doing any sort of grazing there. It’ll be all hay all the time until one of the paddocks is recovered enough for grazing.  

It’s part of this dance between pasture and parasite management, and we’re still learning the steps. But I’m very thankful for the rain we had this week, and I’m counting the days and watching the grass to see when we can restart the rotation plan. 

Until then, Samson and the sheep are enjoying getting better acquainted at close quarters. 

Breeding Season 

The other major months-spanning event that kicked off this week is breeding season.  

This year is the first year we’re actually choosing when we’d ideally like our lambing season to start and end. We researched the seasonal breeding patterns for the three breeds we raise, considered our layout and weather patterns, and thought about how the past lambings went to come up with a general plan.  

We’re staggering each breed by two weeks and giving each breeding group two months to get their business accomplished. Is it a perfect plan? Nope. Could we still end up with five ewes lambing in two days? Theoretically, yes. Prayers and positive thoughts are appreciated.  

This week Lizzy and Emma were escorted to Mr. Knightley’s enclosure for the official beginning of Pemberley Breeding Season 2026.  

Reintroductions went well, and Mr. Knightley is reminding himself how to be a gentleman at table and share his feed nicely with his ladies.  

I had a nostalgic moment when the three Merinos and Mr. Darcy were close enough to give each other a good study. They were our first four sheep. It’s very sweet to reflect on what has grown from those early days. 

If all goes well, the flock will have additions in the spring. I have a sticky note in the new planner noting that Pemberley Lamb Watch officially begins January 29, 2027. 

Miscellaneous Entries 

Seal Team Six is starting to make contributions toward the Great Egg Endeavors, and, true to Regimental form, is choosing non-regulation locations for their deliveries.  

We’re looking forward to the new class of recruits that will be arriving soon. The number of recruits is still undetermined, but the selection process is going well.  

Samson is spending more time off lead as he becomes more familiar with the farm, and the residents become more familiar with him. We have learned he doesn’t care for loud noises, thunderstorms, or cats. He is still extremely fond of pats. 

I’m enjoying the finishing touches of the first edition of Pemberley Correspondence, and am eager to send them out.  

What’s on your calendar this week? 

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week. 

The winning question: Since you’ve identified Samson as one of our Pemberley Woolworks team members and we use the Six Types of Working Genius model in our business, what are Samson’s two Working Geniuses based on what you know of him so far? You know I caution my coaching clients not to guess without doing the assessment, but I think we need to make an exception for Samson since he doesn’t have a PWW company phone or laptop yet. 

Greg, did you actually ask me to guess when you explicitly tell people not to guess?! Did you forget the RULE FOLLOWER tattoo? In the bones? 

Well, after way too long of angsting over this one, I came up with half. I think Samson’s highest Working Genius is Wonder. He’s seeing the big picture and always seems to be taking in more of the farm and how everything fits together. I suspect his brain is always working. 

As for the rest of it? I think that’s your business, Coach!

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: Given your general lack of interest in anything related to automobiles, I’m more than a little surprised by and curious about your Buick reference. I expected a call out of one of our massive ewes who can’t seem to stop eating and expanding. Did you have a specific big Buick in mind? Was it the 1975 Electra which was over 19 feet long? The early 70’s Boat Tail Riviera? Or the Roadmaster Estate Wagon with the fancy wood paneling? 

Question 2: What was different for you in this second shearing compared to our first? I’m sure you noticed new things or experienced things differently this time. 

Question 3: How are you feeling about Samson’s interaction with the sheep so far? Is it going as you expected? Have you been surprised by anything? 

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Buick Brain appeared first on Kiersten J.

Sheep rotate paddocks.

Chickens establish new laying locations.

Infirmary residents are discharged.

New (to us) structures appear.

This week Human Resources created a new position: Security Intern.

This handsome gentleman is Samson.

He’s a nine-year-old Great Pyrenees/Anatolian Shepherd mix. I know current regulations frown upon asking and disclosing these sorts of information about employees, but we make some exceptions here. And for us, these exceptions were important!

As long-term readers may remember, we have been dealing with pasture pests over the past few months. We started with skunks, raccoons, and opossums, who filled the live traps with startling regularity.

But when the Regiment started taking casualties from regular coyote patrols and the industrial-sized live trap wasn’t doing the job, we wondered if another solution might be available.

Some of you might say, “close up the chickens!” and in theory, that’s a good idea. In fact, we did for the group that overnights in Barracks 1. Their run has a solid perimeter, and they’ve never decided to take the flying part of bird existence very seriously.

The other chickens are less disciplined. The Barracks 2 chicken run is more of a suggestion. You have a better chance of finding those girls anywhere else on the property rather than in their run or house during daylight hours.

And as for Seal Team Six? No run even exists. Their entire mission is to roam the property, like the little unit they are, seeking out and destroying bugs, feed, and any sense of order in the main sheep stall. They are very, very good at their job.

Chicken containment was not a workable solution. And so, when an ad was placed in a local paper asking if there might be a position for an older gentleman who was used to open spaces and had livestock guardian in his DNA, the stakeholders had a meeting.

Samson’s family recently moved from the country to the city but realized their beloved boy might be missing the open spaces he was used to having in his former home. After lots of texts, questions, and photo exchanges, we all thought we should see if Pemberley Farm might be a good fit for him.

Here are the things we know so far about Samson:

He is one of the calmest canines I have ever met in my life.

Chickens fly over his head, invade his space, commit larceny of his kibble, and the gentleman is utterly unmoved. Strangers walk up and he is alert, but his tail is slowly wagging, and he would very much appreciate some scritches, please. Lambs in a stall are worth a sniff, but not much more, even when they tear about like we just caught them in the middle of reading the Hound of the Baskervilles.

He is a quick learner.

We’ve been taking him on walks around the property to teach him what’s “ours.” We go along the interior of the fences, and we use a long lead so he can explore to his heart and nose’s content.

To me, this has to be confusing. There are a million fences. There’s the perimeter fence, of course, but there’s the inner barnyard fence, the ram pens have fences, there are portable electric fences, and several other fences that separate out different paddocks and areas. How’s a dog supposed to map all that out and know what fences he can get to the other side of and which fences are hard stops?

Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a dog, and I have minimized the Power of The Gate. There must be something about the scents and traffic patterns and what all that’s helping Samson get this sorted, because he has quickly learned to wait patiently at the correct gates when he’d like access to another area on his patrols.

He’s also figured out, in about 3 days, what “go home” means. He turns his nose back to his home base at the barn and heads toward it, waiting patiently at any closed gates as necessary.

He has also learned exactly where his favorite snack is on the property, and makes it an early stop on each patrol.

He has an interesting relationship with the sheep.

This is going to be a story worth watching.

We’d already seen that Samson wasn’t chasing when sheep (or anything else) ran, and that he wasn’t showing any signs of stalking or being concerningly obsessed with prey animals, so I took him (on a lead) in with the main flock the other day.

As I got closer, the sheep gathered tightly in another odd class portrait formation. All eyes were on Samson as we approached. My eyes were on Georgiana. She honestly looked like she had something to say.

And then, to my surprise, Fitz the Brave came out to investigate.

There was a tentative mutual nose boop, a startled WOAH jump back, and then…nothing.

I was expecting a sheep explosion. Wool to the four winds, hooves flying in every direction, WE MUST FLEE baas bouncing off the barn wall.

Instead, when I called Samson to continue his Official Inspection of the area, the whole flock started following him. In formation. I don’t know what was going through their sheepy brains, but at least they weren’t terrified of him.

His interactions with the rams are also interesting. There’ve been two mutual nose boops and WOAH jumps with Mr. Darcy, followed by some restrained dog sniffing and ovine indifference. There have been barky invitations issued to play with Mr. Knightly that we’ve discouraged (and Samson has easily abandoned), and one calm mutual sniff.

Mr. Bingley is excused his reaction of panic due to The Previous Dog Incident. We hope he’ll realize his enclosure is the equivalent of Fort Knox and Samson has no intention of adding to his scar count.

He is a very sweet boy.

Samson is very people-oriented and seems to be motivated by pats and praise more than anything else. He’s not at all picky about who gives them to him.

We know these are early days, but we’re very hopeful that Samson will continue to be safe and happy at Pemberley Farm. We’re not exactly sure what he’d do if a coyote walked up to him, but we’re hoping he’s making the place look and smell a little more like “no, thank you” to anything looking for a snack.

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week.

The winning question: You mentioned the necessity of rotating pastures and I know we’re doing that. But are we concerned only about barber-pole worms or are we fighting other foes who seek to destroy the citizens of Pemberley? Shall we deploy The Regiment as our protection against these adversaries?

Barber pole worms are the Big Baddie for us right now, as Fitz and Eliza can attest. And from what I read from other shepherds and ranchers in the U.S., it’s been a rough summer for barber pole all around. But there are other parasites and buggies that can affect sheep, and rotating pastures is one way to reduce exposure to all pasture-based parasites.

Depending on the size and purpose of individual operations, some shepherds make choices about keeping only those sheep who prove to be more resistant to parasites to reduce the amount of vigilance needed to be sure sheep are staying healthy.

I’ve got two really good links for more information about sheep parasites. This first one is mostly words, and it’s very thorough.

This second one is also very good, but be forewarned, there are pictures of things that might turn your stomach. Especially if the interior of stomachs isn’t something you’d like to see.

As for The Regiment, while they’re good about being disruptive to the general order of things, I don’t believe we can count on them to make a meaningful contribution to the War on Ovine Gastrointestinal Parasites. However, our retired vet friend told me that one reason she has her goats and cattle grazing together was because the sheep/goat-affecting parasites they swallowed couldn’t survive in the cows, helping break the parasite life cycle.

What do you think about getting a Pemberley cow?

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: Of Samson’s two breeds, which do you think he has more of and why?

Question 2: Since you’ve identified Samson as one of our Pemberley Woolworks team members and we use the Six Types of Working Genius model in our business, what are Samson’s two Working Geniuses based on what you know of him so far? You know I caution my coaching clients not to guess without doing the assessment, but I think we need to make an exception for Samson since he doesn’t have a PWW company phone or laptop yet.

Question 3: What’s the process we’ll use to develop Samson from a Security Intern to a permanent employee and how will we know he’s a good fit long term? And, you mentioned HR, did they confirm his employee eligibility using the standard I-9 form or since he’s a dog, did they choose to use the…   (You can see where I’m going there.)

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post The Intern appeared first on Kiersten J.

This is not news to anyone currently living in these times with me. We’re all in the strange soup together.

This may be one reason why I tend to check out when Greg turns on the news at night. I don’t really require more evidence to build my case for The Oddness in How Things Are Right Now.

I’m sure all of you have some spectacular examples of your own. Rather than watch the news, which tends toward the dreariest examples of strange, I’d love to swap stories with you all. I’m sure that would be much more entertaining.

Here’s my latest entry:

As many of you know from previous writings, we are pretty new to this whole agricultural scene. I grew up in a university town that houses an exceptionally fine College of Agriculture. Both Greg and I got our degrees at that university, but in non-agricultural colleges.

These days, I find myself wishing that agricultural knowledge spread as freely and easily as the scents that wafted from the barns surrounding campus and permeated classrooms. There is nothing like trying to ignore the smell of cow manure during a discussion on aesthetics in a philosophy class.

In any case, I lived and studied for approximately 18 years in a location full of knowledge that I would find extremely helpful today and acquired exactly none of it. Well done, me.

So, we have, essentially, started from square one. This is fine. In one sense, we all do. We just don’t all do it in our mid-fifties in a crash course. But that’s okay. Lots do this, too. We are all capable of learning, and there are more resources available and accessible to us than you could shake a stick at.

UNLESS, of course, you want to buy a laminated card with five particular shades of pink on it.

Here’s the situation:

It is legal for me to buy sheep, breed sheep, vaccinate sheep (with NEEDLES!), castrate male sheep, treat various illnesses with medications and procedures, and graphically and memory-searingly internally assist with birthing during lambing with sheep with no education, certification, or board supervision of any kind. Whatsoever.

However, if I want to buy a FAMACHA card, I must go through a certification process.

What is this guarded resource? How is it used? Well, I’ll tell you.

FAMACHA stands for FAffa MAlan CHArt (which sounds a little like a sheep named it, doesn’t it?). It’s a small card with five rectangles, with different shades of a salmony pink ranging from dark to very pale, and corresponding numbers (or “scores”) from 1-5, with 1 being the darkest and 5 being the palest.

The chart is used by comparing the shades to the color of the inner lower eyelid of a sheep or goat. If the eyelid is very pale, the score suggests significant anemia and may indicate that treatment for barber-pole worms is needed. If the eyelid color matches the lower numbers, the animal is not showing signs of anemia by this test.

Helpful, right? You’d think we’d want one of these in the hands of everyone who cares for sheep, wouldn’t you? Like it should be present at birth, hung around each lamb’s neck by a pretty ribbon with instructions “Use this to keep me healthy! Also, apologies in advance for the dumb stuff I’ll do!”

But no. No, indeed. These are not free for the asking. These are not even for the buying! In order for me to acquire one of these laminated cards with pink rectangles, I am required to either attend an in-person training course (wanna guess how many of those are available in rural SE Kansas?) or go through an online training course.

The online training courses consist of watching a series of videos about the evils of parasites, the necessities of rotating pastures, and many other good and lovely pieces of information. I have to pass a test on all this information. And then I must make my own video to demonstrate that I can perform the technique of checking eyelids. I send all that in and if it’s approved, then and only then do I get the privilege of paying $20 for my precious card with 5 pink rectangles.

I’m a first-born daughter. I have RULE FOLLOWER tattooed in my bones in all caps. In bold. I had a nervous breakdown the first time I accidentally went the wrong way on a one-way street.

But I’m telling you, folks. I would like to talk to the manager on this one. And when I do, I would like to plunk Fitz down on the counter as exhibit A and say “This one’s coming back from anemia, and please have a seat while I tell you all the things I’ve learned and done since we encountered anemia and why would you make it cumbersome for me to get a tool that would help me do this better and prevent it more effectively for the rest of my flock?”

Then I’d plunk Lucy down as Exhibit B and have her explain the absurdity of restricting laminated reference material from people who are expected to make internal rearrangements as necessary during lambing.

Then maybe Frederick can explain the sharp shiny things. Or maybe it’d be best to keep him out of it.

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week.

The winning question: Regarding that Odyssey marathon movie that I was able to watch without having to take a bathroom break (that’s a humble brag in case you have any other guys in their mid-50s reading your newsletter) and the sheep scene. How in the world did they get those sheep trained to do what they did? Based on what you told me, there was no CGI and that flock behaved nothing like ours would have, even on their best day. If you want to explain why that one guy was banging that thing on the table as he chanted phrases, that would be great too. I have no clue what that was all about.

This called for research, pal, and oh, boy, were we rewarded.

It turns out that all the animals for the movie were trained to perform as they did, including the sheep. I know that sounds absurd, but it’s true. And it took about two months for the 40 Italian sheep who were part of the Cyclops’s Cave scene to learn how to do their dance. You have to scroll down a bit to get to the sheep parts, but there’s a transcript of a great interview with Christopher Nolan about the making of the movie that covers some of this, and you can see some behind-the-scene photos on this blog article.

From what I can gather, it’s similar in principle to some of what we’ve done with our sheep. It’s just that we’ve done it accidentally, and these trainers do it intentionally. When we rattle the paddock gate at the end of the day, our sheep come to it. When we open a latch, Fitz hollers (almost) on cue. If we budge the wooden door to the big stall, everybody stands up and faces the door.

These trainers figured out a way to cue the sheep to follow a prescribed path and perform certain actions on cue. But as we know very well, sheep are still sheep and will do their own thing. Apparently, this was exactly what Nolan wanted: authentic sheepiness contained within a rough choreography.

I imagine if they’d tried it with Georgiana and Kitty, they’d have had a mutiny within 2 weeks. Georgiana would have commandeered the IMAX camera and Kitty would have hijacked craft services for the duration.

As far as the banging, I like the thought that the movie The Odyssey is still functioning as a living thing in the oral storytelling tradition, and that Nolan is the bard for today, shaping the message and the medium to fit his audience. We know there must have been variations through time in what was actually told as “The Odyssey” and so it’s not too much of a departure from that oral tradition to make modifications for today’s audience. Personally, I loved Nolan’s interpretation.

I don’t know, but the banging could be a signal of the communication style of the time the events take place. The Bard telling the story for the suitors uses it as percussion to call for attention and set the rhythm for his poem. Later, when Odysseus is victorious against the suitors, there’s a similar banging that communicates unity and submission. The two occurrences are bookends to the story, as if one were, “Once Upon a Time” and the other were, “The End.”

Or perhaps that banging also echoes something more of our own time, something loud and percussive in our public forums, suggesting that this story is for us, too.

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: You mentioned the necessity of rotating pastures and I know we’re doing that. But are we concerned only about barber-pole worms or are we fighting other foes who seek to destroy the citizens of Pemberley? Shall we deploy The Regiment as our protection against these adversaries?

Question 2: 2. I’m not sure I really want to know, but how did the barber-pole worms get their name?

Question 3: Could you explain the procedure you went through to get RULE FOLLOWER tattooed in your bones? Does that require a radiologist? This caused me to wonder if I had misunderstood what a tattoo is and, as a result, severely underestimated the scope to which they can be applied to the human body. I see a lot of tattoos these days but I’m realizing people may have more of them than I realize.

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Training appeared first on Kiersten J.

And yesterday, I finished listening to Theo from Golden. I’d had it recommended to me by several people, and I have to tell you, it exceeded expectations. It’s one of the most beautifully accessible stories about the value of seeing, listening to, honoring, and caring for other people I’ve ever experienced.

Both storytellers did an incredible job with details. From Ludwig Goransson’s meticulous work with authentic sounds to David Morse’s impeccably polite but worn accent for Theo in the audiobook, each element gives another anchor to inhabit the world created by the author or director.

But like the individual pencil strokes in the portraits Theo admires, they’re not always obvious at a quick glance. In the story, Theo spends countless minutes examining them, one by one, saying something like it’s better to see one well than to see many poorly.

I love that idea and would love to have that philosophy permanently affixed to my vision in some way. But reality moves at a different pace.

In the mornings, after the sheep and I stroll to the paddock, I try and take a few moments to observe. Most of the time I’m checking to make sure everyone’s walking normally, staying roughly together with no outliers, and generally acting like sheep are supposed to act. (Of course, Georgiana is a slight exception, as she pauses with me for the morning briefing, scritches, and nose bumps before rejoining the flock.)

But once in a while I take some extra time to try to notice, appreciate, and capture some details around the farm.

I have no aspirations to be a professional photographer. I think my perfectionistic tendencies and current choices of how I’m spending my time combined with a lack of natural talent make that a good call.

It’s also true that while we are rich in subjects for photos, we do not live in a studio with clean backdrops, clear skylines, and pristine ground.

Our life’s details include hay, dirt, fencing, wire, and poop. Lots of poop.

In any case, on my way back from the barn one afternoon this week, I noticed that one of our little details happened to be located somewhere I did not expect him to be.

We’re still not sure how he got there, but Frederick migrated to the north side of the fence from the paddock where the sheep are currently grazing. He was safe, in that it was fenced in, and where he’d been grazing before being rotated to the current paddock, but still. Unauthorized access, friend.

Some of you may remember the previous discussion about flocking behavior from an earlier newsletter. Frederick was still flocking, in that he was gathered under the line of shade trees with the rest of his flock (just on the wrong side of the fence). This would be a good thing, except that the shade was not near the gate I needed to convince Frederick to go through to get to the right paddock.

I called to Frederick like he was a puppy. “Come on, Frederick! Leave the cool shade! Come out into the blazing sun, away from all your friends, and we’ll go through the gate!” It didn’t work.

I tried the old “follow the shepherd” trick, by going near him and then walking purposefully toward the gate, just like I do when I lead them out of the paddock to the barn at night, or out from the barn to the paddock in the morning. Nothing doing.

I tried to shoo him from behind like a chicken.

I attempted to lure him with feed.

He gave me the look.

I have to explain this look to newer readers. Frederick and I have had some incidents, and I am pretty sure he remembers them.

Those of you who have seen The Sheep Detectives may remember that cute little trick the movie invented where sheep decide they can count to three and forget everything that ever happened. Frederick would never count to three.

First, he’s a wether. There was an act (banding) that made him so, and I was part of it.

Second, the healing from that act got complicated by flystrike. If you’ve been near a barn in the summer, you know what flies can get like. If you haven’t, imagine a summer picnic with all the food left uncovered for about 3 days in sweltering heat. You might get close.

When flies see a wound (and there’s a small area around the banding that qualifies), they think “Nursery!” And so a few days later, we discovered Mr. and Mrs. Fly’s pride and joy on Frederick. In a fair quantity.

To keep this situation from becoming a serious problem, we had to evict the tenants. I’ll spare you the details, and just tell you that from Frederick’s perspective, there was a lot of hose spraying, applications of shiny sharp things, and bottle sprayings for days, concurrent with confinement in a clean stall with severe anti-fly protocols.

I don’t think he’d rank it as a top-five experience.

I know he hasn’t forgotten the shiny sharp things. Just look at him.

I’ve been working hard to rehabilitate my standing with Frederick. You’d think several weeks of hay, feed, pasture, shelter, and complete absence of uncredentialed veterinary procedures would help, but he’s still got that look. I imagine he’s got a mental board in his sheepy brain with a counter and a header that says “Number of Days Since Last Traumatic Incident”.

And there we were, getting ready to put that counter number back to zero, because he was not interested in doing this the easy way.

I don’t know how I feel about the whole idea of guardian angels, but if I have one, she must have been bored senseless while I took approximately three weeks to incrementally sidle up to Frederick as he snuggled up to the fence and his flock and that tree.

I faced away from him so he wouldn’t think I had him targeted. I scooched nearer by inches. Centimeters. When I finally thought he was in arms’ reach, I turned around and scooped him up.

*Counter reset*

I hauled his resigned self over to the gate and through, released him once we reached authorized grazing territory, and he trotted off to rejoin the group in the shade like we hadn’t just spent an hour in the worst pasture dance ever choreographed.

He didn’t even look back. But I know I’m back to square one with that sheep.

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week. We had a three-way tie, which Greg will celebrate.

Question 1: (edited) “What vegetables are you planning to not poison us with next?”

We’re still at a zero-body count with my fermentation experiment, so we’re trying an Onion Relish and a Gingery Apple Cabbage Sauerkraut. I’m pretty excited.

Question 2: I’ve been wondering about the behavior of the sheep around the water tank. What do you think’s going on there? Is it just guarding and maybe even a little bullying by the bigger girls? Or do you think there are other dynamics involved?

My best guess is that it’s guarding, but not necessarily of the water. I’m amazed at how cool the water in that tank is staying in this horrible heat. Seeing Charlotte and Jane pressing their woolly bodies against it makes me think they’ve discovered the pasture’s version of an air conditioner and grabbed the prime spots, not unlike how Maewyn (our dog) used to lie on the vents in the house.

Is it Fall yet?

Question 3: Does each chicken keep the same laying spot or do they move around? And how long do they keep the same spot if they do? Until death do us part or just for a while?

This is a complex question with multilayered answers. (Well done, Greg.) I researched a lot of sites for this one, and here’s the best answer I’ve got at the moment.

Once chickens establish a laying spot, they tend to like to keep it. But they will lay somewhere else for a variety of reasons, including overcrowding of their laying spot, discomfort in their nesting spot, unexpected stress at the time of laying, changes in social or environmental dynamics, and chickens being fundamentally agents of chaos.

Lt. Lefty had to change because she couldn’t fly up to her Hay Cave anymore. I hope she changes again, because I’m not loving crawling back behind that bucket in the barn to reach her new spot. The Hay Cave layers are going to be forced to find a new spot when we feed the Cave to the sheep.

The Veterans in the Regiment seem to have a favored box for a few days, and then it shifts to a different box. They still restrict themselves to only four or so of the ten available boxes, but one is definitely the Chosen Box on any given day.

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: Regarding that Odyssey marathon movie that I was able to watch without having to take a bathroom break (that’s a humble brag in case you have any other guys in their mid-50s reading your newsletter) and the sheep scene. How in the world did they get those sheep trained to do what they did? Based on what you told me, there was no CGI and that flock behaved nothing like ours would have, even on their best day. If you want to explain why that one guy was banging that thing on the table as he chanted phrases, that would be great too. I have no clue what that was all about.

Question 2: What are you enjoying most as you sharpen your photography skills?

Question 3: Is “flystrike” an actual thing (a disease, a condition, etc.) or does it simply refer to the fact that the flies have struck the sheep, and it can lead to a variety of bad conditions, one of which we had the displeasure of gagging over?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Details appeared first on Kiersten J.

But at the moment, there are simply too many Fahrenheits running loose around these parts.

We’ve been under heat warnings and heat advisories and heat whinings for days (okay, the last part is just me). I sent this screenshot to my son the other day:

His reply? “Gross.”

The weather people tell me it is very important to stay inside and limit any outdoor activities.

I sure would like to.

I’m working on a lovely commissioned knit cardigan (Magnolia Cardigan), the first elements of the first Pemberley Correspondence, and doing more researching about fermenting vegetables now that I’ve successfully made sauerkraut.

Seriously, I can’t believe I did this. I left cabbage on the counter for weeks and then ate it. And nobody died.

Anyway, my point is that I could hunker down for weeks like it’s the deep dark of winter and hibernate happily in my air-conditioned cave just like the screaming red weather banners advise, but…

Yeah. Complaints would be registered.

In fact, it seems the more extreme the heat gets, the more we find ourselves down at the barn.

We do water checks at least three times a day. We top off depleted containers and cool off the ones that have warmed to uncomfortable levels. We set out extra ones so there’s plenty of access even when certain sheep (Georgiana, Kitty, Jane, Charlotte) decide to guard the biggest and coolest water tank, and other sheep (I’m looking at you, Lizzy) decide to topple one over for no good reason whatsoever.

I’m also making a point to go down at random times during the day to disrupt our resident stalker. Wyle E. took another chicken. And that stinker is gutsy. I was actually there when it happened, but out of sight, on the other side of the barn, up north in the new paddock where we’d just rotated the sheep. I was watching to make sure the Three Amigos (babydoll lambs Martin, Lucas, and Frederick) didn’t discover any fence gaps we’d missed and that coyote snuck into the front barnyard in broad daylight and nabbed one of the hens.

The audacity.

So now I show up and stomp around loudly at odd times, splashing water into containers I willfully clank against each other, waving mulberry branches defiantly at the villain I imagine is hunched in the cover of the trees, stalking my chickens. I’m sure I’m a terrifying sight.

Mostly I just want him to think, “Yikes…that’s weird. Maybe I’ll go for a rabbit instead.”

We’re trying a live trap, too. Coyote-sized, to go along with the proven skunk, possum, raccoon, barn cat, and chicken catching live traps we’ve already put into use. Last night was our first catch with the coyote live trap. We caught a possum. Ah, well.

I’ve learned that extremely hot days can affect chickens’ laying behavior. Apparently 70 degrees F is the ideal temperature for laying hens. Sorry, girls. You’re not going to see that for a long time.

I don’t know if the heat affects brain function for chickens like it does for me, but it may have been a factor in this incident:

I was stomping about in defiance of hen-nabbing predators when I caught sight of a chicken where a chicken usually is not. It took me a minute to figure out what was actually going on here, and I’m still not sure exactly how she got into this predicament. My best guess is she decided to burrow down from the Hay Cave (she lays there) and got herself in a certifiable fix.

One wing was outside the goat fencing, she’s mostly inverted, she wasn’t breathing especially well, it’s eleventy million degrees, and she’s looking at me as if to say, “Can we please just not talk about this?”

I found some wire cutters and started cutting the fencing because there was no pulling her through or pushing her back. After a few snips, I realized we had an additional dynamic.

This is not a svelte hen. This girl has some heft and every snip that released pressure on her body and let her slip down was putting more pressure on the wing still awkwardly positioned on the other side of the fencing.

A few more snips released the wing and I ended up lifting her up and rolling her out in a confusion of feathers and indignation.

It’s harder for me to distinguish chickens of the same breed from one another than it is for me to do with sheep. But I can now tell this Cuckoo Marans from her sisters because her souvenir from The Battle in the Barn is a bummy right wing.

She spent quite a while looking longingly up at the Hay Cave before eventually deciding, the next day, to lay her egg in the Wood Scrap Pile. (Of course, she wouldn’t even consider a nesting box.) She’s found ways to get to her roosting spot to sleep, she moves around well, and she’s foraging like a champ. She just carries that right wing a little low and loose.

I’ve named her Lieutenant Lefty.

I’m now ridiculously fond of her. Which means I’m more motivated to engage in ridiculous stomping and clattering and branch-waving behavior in an attempt to discourage hungry predators from looking at her and seeing an easy snack.

I don’t think the weather folks would approve.

Greg’s Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the last poll!

We had a tie this week.

The winning questions were: What practical (and impractical?) steps are we taking to deal with Wyle E? and What learning from Clarkson’s Farm has been most helpful or applicable to what we’re doing at Pemberley Farm?

I think I mostly covered the Wyle E. question above. It’s not pretty or dignified, but we’re trying to increase the obnoxiousness and frequency of human presence, adding more live traps, and confining the chickens who have a secure run within that space during the day. Most of the chickens free-range during the day, however, and are only locked up securely at night, so they’re still at risk from especially bold predators.

We spoke to our friend, Danielle (you really should see her chickens’ Instagram account) about our varmint woes. (Danielle is the lady Greg mentioned swapping chicken stories with when he guest wrote a few weeks ago.) She recommended a trail cam so we can actually see what’s coming and when. That may be a next step. She also told us she’s using a toy endoscope to look for hidden egg caches around her farm. Brilliant!!!

As for Clarkson’s Farm, I think the most helpful, or at least the most encouraging thing I’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter how many resources you have to invest into any aspect of farming. Some things will always be beyond our control. All we can ever do is the best we can, with what we know at the time, with the resources and knowledge available to us. But many outcomes and events are simply out of our hands.

Their positioning allows them to try all sorts of fun technological advances and animal breeds and barn setups, and any number of things that are well beyond what is accessible for many folks. But they still have to face weather, disease, bad births, and predators just like everyone else.

That may be part of the appeal of the show for me. Yes, you can play with all those expensive toys and plans, but at the heart of it, it’s still animals, plants, soil, and weather. And humans trying to make it all work together well.

This Week’s Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: Yeah. Um. About the sauerkraut and “nobody died” comment. Since I did survive, just how much risk was involved last night as I was snarfing down my third incredibly delicious beer brat with that potentially poison fermented cabbage slathered all over them? I was more afraid of overeating than food poisoning but were my fears misdirected? And, to keep this a “real” question as you lovingly remind me to do occasionally, “What vegetables are you planning to not poison us with next?”

Question 2: I’ve been wondering about the behavior of the sheep around the water tank. What do you think’s going on there? Is it just guarding and maybe even a little bullying by the bigger girls? Or do you think there are other dynamics involved?

Question 3: Does each chicken keep the same laying spot or do they move around? And how long do they keep the same spot if they do? Until death do us part or just for a while?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

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