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

The post Let it Snow appeared first on Kiersten J.

Lettuce.

Now eggs.

I even saw a shocking recall announcement about a coffee product in New York and New Jersey the other day. Talk about a nightmare.

It makes the rebellious teenager corner of my heart think that hyper processed food might not be the worst thing I could eat at the moment. Then the mid-fifties reality-based body points out that the rebellious teenager is in the corner for a reason.

Producing food is not easy.

We’ve been enjoying Clarkson’s Farm the last several weeks. Amid all the hilarity, the relatable goof ups, and the interesting level of profanity that is part of everyday speech in their world, the show does a remarkable job of demonstrating how very difficult it is for farmers and ranchers to make a living. In actuality, I think their point is that it is becoming more and more difficult for folks to stay in the farming business at all.

It’s eye-opening, for certain. I often think about how much I have to learn when it comes to taking care of our little flock of sheep, and how I might creatively find ways to make this adventure self-sustaining. But for the families whose farms are their livelihoods, the stakes are much higher.

In addition to continually educating themselves on better ways to care for their animals and land, they must also constantly adjust to changing markets and legal requirements. It’s a lot, and it seems to make every crop and every season a gamble.

I’m learning a deeper gratitude toward the people who grow and raise our food. If you’re one of them, thank you. Sincerely.

My mother-in-law asked if I’d seen the story about the recall of the eggs. She asked me this during our daily discussion of how our girls had done that day in the egg-laying department.

We’re in a fun season now with these girls. The old guard is continuing to be productive while last March’s recruits are starting to join the laying ranks. I think we’ve got about eight of the twelve newer girls laying now.

But there’s a hitch. The youngsters simply refuse to use their nesting boxes. The eight of them are using at least five locations.

You might remember from an earlier letter that the first new girls to lay decided to use a hole in the hay pile in the barn, now referred to as the Hay Cave. Over the last couple of weeks, two more hens have deemed this location acceptable.

One hen periodically lays in the scrap wood pile in another section of the barn. An upturned bucket in the far recesses of the barn has also been recognized as an acceptable receptacle. As has an increasingly deteriorating indention between two bales of hay in the barn hallway near the sheep stalls.

And get this: At least one of the March girls has been sneaking into the older hens’ chicken house to make use of THEIR nesting boxes. Like she doesn’t have five pristine nesting boxes in her own house. I don’t get it.

In any case, egg-gathering is a highlight of my day. I love seeing where they appear and trying to figure out exactly who is laying where.

What I didn’t love was arriving at the barn to an obvious crime scene. Feathers everywhere. White feathers in the yard, black feathers in the barn hallway, and the only visible chickens were tucked up tight into hiding places.

We’ve been using live traps in the last several weeks to catch possums, skunks, and many, many raccoons that might harass chickens and steal eggs. This looked different. After some feather tracking, head counting, and some amateur CSI crime scene reconstructing, we think we may have had a coyote visit.

A bunch of free-ranging chickens are a tempting sight, and we’re guessing Mr. Wyle. E. Coyote started chasing a black-feathered chicken into the barn, missed grabbing her, and then was successful with a white and brown hen.  

I know this is part of keeping chickens. Especially if we want to let them free-range. It’s not unlike knowing sheep carry parasites and may sometimes get overloaded and fight anemia. There are costs and losses and unpleasant surprises.

I imagine the lettuce farmers and layer farms and distributors dealing with all the recalls know this feeling on a much larger scale.

The more I learn about raising animals, the harder it is to look at any finished product the same way again.

One of the reasons I love teaching the Beast to Blanket class is helping students see the entire process of wool production, starting with the sheep. Appreciating the beginning, and all it takes to make sure that beginning can actually happen, changes how we value the end product.

This week I’m feeling that lesson sink in more deeply about our food. I’m looking at the contents of my fridge a little differently, thinking of who and what it takes to produce it and get it to my kitchen.

Even chickens who refuse to use perfectly good nesting boxes.

Greg’s Got Questions

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

The winning question was: What benefits do mulberry leaves and branches have for the sheep?

Mulberry leaves and branches are considered “browse,” which are part of what makes a good sheep diet. Sheep out on a pasture don’t just eat grass, but other forms of forage. Here’s a great site that goes into more detail about different kinds of forage livestock eat.

One of the major benefits of mulberry is the protein content. The feed we typically give the sheep is 15-16% protein. This study found the protein content of mulberry branches to range from 15-28% crude protein, which is at least as good as the feed, if not better. For growing lambs, gestating ewes, and wool producers, protein is important. There are other trace minerals that are good for them, too, and because it’s easy for them to digest, all that goodness is readily available for their sheepy systems.

Also, the sheep love it. They go nutso when they see it coming, and it feels like we’re giving them a treat.

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 mad would you be if you were to find out that your husband is now tempted to start relocating eggs while you’re not at the barn?

Question 2: Have you researched crossbreeding our hens with a roadrunner? I wonder what sound that creature would make. And do you have the contact information for Acme? I think I’m going to need an anvil or two and some TNT and maybe a few of those stick-anywhere holes.

Question 3: What learning from Clarkson’s Farm has been most helpful or applicable to what we’re doing at Pemberley Farm?

Question 4: What aspect of nesting boxes do chickens typically find attractive? In other words, why don’t all chickens just deposit their eggs in seemingly random places like ours do?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Food Security appeared first on Kiersten J.

It turns out that stick-tights may have also been slightly symbolic for the week ahead.

Flocking

Let me share with you the wonderful weirdness I witnessed this week about the flocking instinct in the sheep here at Pemberley Farm.

A group of sheep is called a flock, but “flocking” is also the word used to describe the behavior sheep and other animals use to move together as a group. Sheep are happiest as one of many. If you watch them for a while (and nothing startles them) you’ll notice that even if they spread out in a field, they’ll drift as a unit. If one startles and bolts in one direction, the rest will follow and the group will tighten up, though most of the sheep may have no idea why the first sheep was startled.

Shepherds use this instinct to their advantage when moving sheep around, and if you’ve never had the opportunity to see sheep dogs in action, please consider taking a moment to watch a drone video like this one. The combination of herding instinct in the dogs and flocking instinct in the sheep is simply breathtaking.

I am the dog on our farm.

I do not have awesome herding instincts. No breaths are taken from anyone’s lungs but mine on our roundups.

What I am learning is that the two journeys the wee flock and I make every day are very different in nature and leadership requirements.

The trek from the pasture to the barn at the end of the day is child’s play. A chicken could do it, if it could only open the gate. I am thoroughly qualified for this task. Once the gate is open, Kitty makes a break for the barn and the feed she knows is waiting for her inside. The rest of the flock, true to form, follows the movement, charges along the lane into the barn and starts chowing. My job is to catch up and close the barn door behind them.

The morning walk to the pasture is a different story.

I tried opening the barn door and letting them walk up the lane to the open gate and wide-open pasture. Surely, they’d be enthusiastic about all the delicious green forage and fresh air and happily galumph away with good cheer, right?

Wrong.

They made it about 25 yards, someone got spooked, and they all then chose the “tighten up” portion of the flocking instinct.

The little annoying stick-tight seeds that the sheep collected in their wool have done some interesting things in the last week. It’s not universally true, but for many of the sheep, those seeds have migrated into tightly packed clusters on the outer part of the wool. While some will need to be combed out (as one kind reader helpfully suggested), these thicker wadded masses of seeds will need to be clipped out.

What I had at this moment of the morning walk was a wadded mass of sheep blocking the lane. They were packed tightly and not particularly interested in being removed from their present location. At all. No amount of gentle nudging was going to help us make any further progress.

After squeezing through the sheep equivalent of NYC’s 5th Avenue, I started walking towards our goal.

And this is part of shepherding that feels magical to me: The sheep followed.

I know this is part of the flocking instinct. It only takes movement from one sheep, and the rest of the flock is likely to follow. But you still have to get one sheep to walk away from the group and follow, and that’s where the magic lives.

I think I called to Georgiana. I figured I had the best chance of attracting the attention of the Queen, who is almost always amenable to attention. But it wasn’t Georgie who first stepped out of the sheep congestion to walk toward me. It was Lizzy.

Grumpy, skittish, Babydoll-thumping Lizzy. And one by one, the rest of the sheep unpacked themselves from their sheep scrum like nothing traumatic had happened at all and calmly walked to their morning feast.

From that day on, I determined I’d be leading the sheep out along the lane in the mornings. I marched in front of our daily morning parade and enjoyed seeing the flock follow calmly behind and then spread out to enjoy the grass when we arrived at the pasture.

Someone suggested I might like one of those huge whirleybobs that drum majors hold at the front of marching bands. I wonder if I could learn to twirl a baton?

Anyway, all went according to plan until this morning, when I discovered the flaw in my “open the barn door and lead them out” plan. Sometimes, certain Babydolls get very insistent that they need to leave the barn at the very same time. Sometimes this results in getting stuck at the barn door and the door eventually getting shoved closed.

I learned this had happened when a riot of insulted-sounding MAAAAAAAAs came from far behind me and I turned to see only about eight sheep in our parade.

Drat.

I went back and released the squawkers and then realized that the spooking and flocking in the lane instinct was still working at full capacity. More squeezing through the mass of sheep, a few steps down the lane, a call, and then…

Magic.

Resting

Regular readers may remember we’re working our way through severe anemia with a couple of our lambs, Fitz and Eliza. We’ve been warned it’s a long recovery process with ups and downs, and we’re finding that to be true.

We think we may have been asking too much of their systems to be making the walk to the pasture and back each day in the heat while they were trying to rebuild their red blood supply. Eliza let us know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t doing well after one of those walks, and so she and Fitz are now in temporary luxury accommodations.

Special treatment includes private facilities, personal fans, individual mulberry branch delivery, extra fresh water, an abundance of hay, private access to the sheep candy tub (nutritional supplement & minerals), and any petting requested.

While Fitz is also recovering from anemia and will benefit from the rest, this is the first time he is performing his official flock function as a companion wether.

Sheep are highly social animals and become stressed if they’re alone. Wethers make wonderful companions for sheep that need to be isolated.

It’s a different facet of flocking; Fitz is helping keep Eliza calm and comfortable just by being near her and acting like a normal sheep.

Stick tight, friend. We’re going to be okay.

The Literal Poll Questions

Last week’s winning questions, bundled Greg-style were: About those stick-tights and your “This is going to be an issue with the wool.” comment. How big of an issue is that going to be exactly? Based on the condition of your fancy, flowery overhauls if we have to pick out all of those things before we send the wool to the mill to be processed, we’d better get busy. Do you think you can train The Regiment to peck up stick-tights from wool like they do bugs from the straw?

As I mentioned above, one helpful reader suggested we might start combing out the seeds now, and by shearing time, the burden will be markedly less. I think this is the route we may try.

It will be interesting to see the difference between the upcoming second shearing for the Valais in late summer and the first shearing of next year. How many stick tights will we remove before the first? Will we get a clean “reset” after the summer shearing? And how many of the remaining stick-tights will be located in parts of the fleece that we’d skirt and not process anyway? We have so much more discovering to do!

Sadly, I doubt the sheep will allow the chickens to peck out the offensive seeds. However, I have noticed Frederick nibble at his own side. Maybe he’s tidying himself up a bit? Maybe they’ll do some of that for each other, as well?

Greg’s Questions for Next Week

(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: About the baton twirling. Would you be willing try those on-fire batons? I’m pretty sure that’s a thing and we need to deal with that brush pile east of the barn anyway.

Question 2: Since this is the first time we’ve used a wether, I’m curious about what’s going like you expected and what’s surprising you. (Please note, for the record, I have implied a question without actually asking a question thus reducing my questions per question average that you are obviously tracking.)

Question 3: What benefits do mulberry leaves and branches have for the sheep?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Sticking Tight appeared first on Kiersten J.

As we progress, the scenarios get more complex. We add people and variables and operations, and before you know it, we’ve got multiple trains leaving stations at different times heading different directions at varying speeds and we are instructed to calculate arrival times, distances traveled, and engineers’ first names.

As we were working out how to divide the pasture into segments and use fixed lengths of existing fencing and calculating perimeters and corridors, it hit me. We are living in Story Problem Land.

If you have four paddocks and each one needs to rest for 45-60 days to let parasites die and forage to regrow, how long may the sheep graze in each paddock? What if Paddock 1 is 25% larger than the other three paddocks? How should the timing goals change?

What is the probability of moving 18 sheep from the barn to the far north of the enclosure with no enclosed lane to keep them from wandering off to graze on whatever catches their fancy? (This one’s a freebie. The answer is zilch.)

Which arrangement of existing perimeter fence plus portable electric fencing plus other existing materials allows us to create a lane to the farthest north section of the pasture without purchasing more expensive fencing?

I abjectly apologize to all my past Math teachers for every word and thought I ever uttered or entertained that sounded anything like “Why do I have to do all these story problems? I will never do any of this in real life!”

You were right. I was wrong. Mea culpa.

After several days of my “broad strokes” brain saying, “this should work,” and Greg’s engineer brain calculating, “this might work,” and several sweaty days of, “we are GOING to make this work,” we have established the all-important Step One in our rotational grazing objective.

As regular readers may remember from last week, we found ourselves in a state of urgency to get the sheep onto clean pasture after evidence of parasite overload. Vague “this would be good to do sometime soon” plans became “we’ve got to make this happen ASAP” plans.

It’s happened. The sheep are on new pasture, and we are all adjusting to some new aspects of this arrangement.

The Commute

We live in an area with predators, and so we lock the sheep up at night. That means that each morning and evening, we have a little stroll with the sheep between the pasture and the barn. We put the portable electric fence parallel to the perimeter fence along one side of the pasture to create a lane to contain the sheep as they make their way from barn to pasture and back again.

I was so curious to see how the sheep would handle both the lane and the walk to the new pasture. What is the probability that 18 sheep will walk over 300 feet in one direction without coercion in under 3 hours?

The first morning, as I slowly walked ahead of the flock, Georgiana took the lead and followed. She looked like she had questions and concerns about the new arrangements, and why had she not been consulted?

The first walk home looked like this:

The humans didn’t quite have all their ducks in a row, did they?

We are all getting better at this. Last night the babydolls took the lead back to the barn and the entire flock raced down the lane ahead of us. This morning they all walked up to the pasture on their own. They knew exactly where to go and broke into a run when the lane opened up into the wide green space.

The Stick-Tights

There’s a real name for these. Something like bur ragweed. The important thing to know about them is that there are a whole bunch of a lot of them on the edges of this pasture, and they are at nose height for lambs. And they want to stay attached forever and ever, amen.

One sheep walks 100 feet. He collects stick-tights at a rate of 1 million stick-tights per yard. How many stick-tights will he accumulate?

This is going to be an issue with the wool. This is not a problem for today. That’s what I’m telling myself right now, when the parasite issue is more important. I’ll deal with pernicious overly attached seeds later.

Environmental Controls

The Babydoll lambs have finished weaning, so we’ve combined the wee Hooligans flock with the larger ewe flock. Everyone except the rams is together again, and it’s been fascinating to watch moms and lambs reunite and renegotiate terms.

At night, though, we now have all 18 in one large stall. I don’t know how closely you all have been following Southeast Kansas weather lately, but it’s hot. Horrendously hot.

A nice benefit of having the sheep out on the pasture is that they have a nice large shady area and access to the breeze. Previously, they hid out in the barn when it got hot. It’s much cooler out under the trees, so their daytime conditions have improved. But at night, increasing occupancy isn’t the best way to lower temperatures.

We’re doing our best with box fans. Last night we moved them around to try and avoid having one “sweet spot” that would inspire competition.

I’m sure there’s a Story Problem that involves air speed and temperature and evaporation and comfort levels. The truth is, I’d tapped out by that point. College Engineering Physics ate me up and spit me out at the front door of the Philosophy Department.

So, I’ll retire my calculator for the moment and practice loving what I’m seeing in front of me.

Greg’s Got Questions

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

We had a tie last week.

The first winning question was: Does a sheep’s body work the same as a human body to make red blood cells?

Yes. Humans and sheep both produce red blood cells the same way, through a process that occurs mainly in bone marrow.

The second winning question was: What‘s the deal with the golf balls in the nesting boxes? How does that work?

In theory, chickens that see a golf ball or two in the nesting boxes think “AHA! That’s where eggs go!” I’ve seen this advice all over the internet. People swear by it.

In practice, our chickens are laughing into their feathers.

We have five lovely, freshly prepared nesting boxes for the chickens who either have just started or soon will be starting to lay. Four of those ladies have started laying. We are 0 for 4 on nesting box usage. Nary a one has deigned to bestow a single egg in any one of those prime egg receptacles. Instead, we have the Hay Cave, the Scrap Wood Pile, and the Center of the Barn Floor, for the love of Foghorn Leghorn.

But it’s hard to be upset, because the discovery is pretty fun. And the latest two eggs have been awfully pretty.

Greg’s Questions for Next Week

(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: Mea Culpa?

Question 2: About those stick-tights and your “This is going to be an issue with the wool.” comment. How big of an issue is that going to be exactly? Based on the condition of your fancy, flowery overhauls if we have to pick out all of those things before we send the wool to the mill to be processed, we’d better get busy. Do you think you can train The Regiment to peck up stick-tights from wool like they do bugs from the straw?

Question 3: How did the moms and lambs reunions compare to your expectations based on the research you’d done?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Story Problem appeared first on Kiersten J.

I think I hit my peak with Mario Kart when my kids were little, and I managed to win a race once every dozen or so tries. I was seriously hindered by my tendency to physically lean my body in the direction I wanted my little vehicle to go and distracted by the hysterical laughter that behavior inspired in my fellow racers.

Because of my relative ignorance, I had to ask one of the aforementioned chucklers what the term is for when a gamer’s skill set gets boosted for one reason or another. He told me “Leveling Up” works.

Well, there’s been some upward leveling this week.

Exhibit A: The Regiment

Two of our March 3rd pullets have started laying. They’ve graduated from full-time feed consumers to egg producers.

This is very exciting news that we did not discover by finding eggs in the nesting boxes in their chicken house.

I had noticed that two of these hens had developed very red combs and wattles. I had heard new and different clucky noises when I was refilling water containers in the middle of the recent hot summer days. I had been somewhat obsessively counting days and consulting Google about when this particular breed of chicken should start laying.

They were late.

Greg had leveled up his Easter Egg hunting skills a little earlier, a few weeks after the older hens started free ranging during the day. We’d noticed a drop in production and he put his talents to work and discovered a trove in the barn.

These beauties were hidden in a bucket with some hay in the back of the barn.

But even Greg’s increased skills could not find any eggs from the new girls.

Then Greg’s mother, the Resident Chicken Expert, spotted the missing clue.

Yup. This is what she saw. Way up there, singing the “I’M DOING AN IMPORTANT CHICKEN THING” song, was one of our girls. Not only that, but the other girl was nearby, waiting her turn to do an important chicken thing.

BINGO.

Never mind that these chickens have five lovely nesting boxes in their chicken house, three of which have been helpfully seeded with golf balls to prompt them into proper laying behavior. They chose the hay tower. And have continued to do so.

I have my eye on another chicken I expect to start laying any day now. Who knows where she’s going to decide to do her important chicken things.

Exhibit B: The Valais lambs

This leveling up is not as fun as finding hidden egg troves.

Several days ago, while giving Fitz his customary scritches, I noticed that the skin under his jaw felt a little…thick. Weird, I thought, and went on my merry way.

The next day, I noticed it again, but the shape of it had shifted a bit, and it actually felt like it was a bit smaller in total size. Ok, I thought. Weird sheepness, I guess. I’ve never been close to a maturing male Valais cross ram. I actually wondered if it was some sort of fatty pad or something he was growing.

The next day, Eliza presented with what was clearly and obviously bottle jaw, and Fitz had deteriorated.

As a quick summary, bottle jaw is a secondary symptom of severe anemia caused by parasitic worm overload. Parasites are something every sheep carries to some degree, and parasite management is part of good shepherding. I had on my radar to take samples to our vet the next week to see if it was time for deworming, as I’m not very good yet at another visual exam (FAMACHA scoring) to look for anemia.

The blunt truth is that I waited too long to submit the samples and relied too little on FAMACHA. Eliza and Fitz were gravely ill.

With the helpful advice of vet friends, we treated Fitz and Eliza along with the rest of the flock.

And waited.

There’s no magic sheep pill for this.

The medicine we gave the sheep killed off the parasites, but their bodies need time to make more red blood cells. And we needed to wait and see if they had enough reserves to make it to the point where they can heal themselves.

So far, we are hopeful. As a dear friend reminded me, every day with four feet still on the ground is a blessing even if there’s no other improvement. I’m thankful for every glimpse of their unique personalities. Yesterday, Fitz hollered at me when supper didn’t come quickly enough, and I about laughed in relief.

But our little friends have a long road of recovery in front of them as they build back their blood supply.

Their shepherd is reminded of how much more she has to learn to care for them well. I know I’ll never look at those daily chin scritches quite the same way.

Greg’s Got Questions

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

The winning question was: How much of Harriet’s behavior do you attribute to her unique personality and how much is because she’s a Merino?

I love that this is the question for this week.

The simple answer is that I think Harriet is a fascinating mix of neurotic Merino ewe and her own funny individual self.

Her mother, Emma, and Aunt Lizzy are crazy. There’s just no getting around it. They’re easily spooked, they have strict “no touching” policies, and Lizzy has a serious issue with Babydolls. I don’t know what a Babydoll did to her in some former chapter of her life, but she is not over it.

Harriet has a touch of that, in that she prefers to maintain a rather large bubble of space about her at all times and might snap at any moment and plow a Babydoll lamb into next Tuesday for no apparent reason.

Harriet often presents as a cranky older sister who would really prefer to be left to her solitary occupations (I can say that because I relate, girlfriend). And yet, when our anemic Fitz has run out of gas and sought out a companion to rest beside, it is Harriet he most often chooses.

The first couple times I saw this, I silently begged Harriet not to freak and yeet the poor guy to the moon while he was feeling so poorly. She didn’t.

Apparently, this fellow cranky older sister doesn’t mind having company under certain circumstances.

Perhaps she’s a softie, after all.

Greg’s Questions for Next Week

(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: What ‘s the deal with the golf balls in the nesting boxes? How does that work?

Question 2: What exactly is FAMACHA scoring? Does it have anything to do with that green stuff I was eating when I was in Singapore?

Question 3: Does a sheep’s body work the same as a human body to make red blood cells?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Leveling Up appeared first on Kiersten J.

I’m not sure that’s an actual term. I’m morphing it from a title lovingly given to me by one of my siblings years ago. I was thoughtfully and generously flooding this sibling’s phone with texts of daily photos of garden plants I was attempting to not kill.

I was convinced they would be as fascinated with every millimeter of growth and possible evidence of health as I was. I don’t think the patient reception of the photos and kind encouragement ever stopped, but I do know that “Helicopter Gardener” came out of those exchanges.

Oh, friends. I have upped my game since then.

Thanks to Greg’s problem-solving skills, willingness to scale heights, and kind-hearted nature to do his darndest to make my weird ideas work, I can helicopter shepherd from the comfort of my air-conditioned home. And I do.

It turns out that two inexpensive security cameras stuck on the rafters of the barn work out amazingly well as the official Pemberley Farm Barn Cams. Greg got this all set up during lambing season, saving us several “just checking” trips to the barn during the middle of the night.

Lambing season is finished for 2026, but I’m finding the Barn Cams extremely helpful as I Helicopter Shepherd the last portion of weaning season.

If you take a moment to think about it, weaning is a really weird time for sheep. With the exception of our rams, who are housed a small distance away from the ewes and lambs, every sheep is affected by this social and biological upheaval.

Before removing the Three Amigos from the big ewe group, there were three ewe/lamb pairs as part of that flock’s social registry. Moms had at least part of their focus on their lambs and honorary aunties had to do their part to teach little upstarts to mind their elders. Lambs’ priorities were first to keep track of mom, second to see if milk could be acquired from other sources (I’m looking at you, Lucas), and third to test their elders’ patience.

Taking the boys out of that equation had several interesting effects.

While the lambs were hollering, Maryanne and Louisa spent about a day looking like they were trying to figure out which other ewe had babysitting duties that day. Lucy spent the day nose deep in grass in a temporary state of profound hearing loss.

At evening feed, the adults all enjoyed a little extra space around the hay and feed and a little less energy inside the stall. Lucy appeared to finally notice the absence of her sidekick. She called, heard his response (muffled due to his mouth being full of feed), and carried on.

Meanwhile, in the smaller flock that (for want of a better term) I’ve been referring to as the Hooligans, the Three Amigos appeared to have merged into one being. Martin, Frederick, and Lucas might as well have been velcroed together as they first navigated their new social sphere.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not the slightest bit embarrassed by my helicopter habits. Watching the Hooligans sort themselves out has been fascinating.

Part of it is because this little group has the potential to play an important role in the flock. These are all youngsters, with the oldest, Harriet, only eight months old. Four of them are wethers, and the three ewe lambs cannot be bred to our rams (their sires), so for now they’re a non-breeding group.

In the Fall, this group will be the group that stays in the main barn and paddock during breeding season. The mature ewes will go, by breed, for two-month visits to their ram. We’ll stagger the breeding visits so lambing is (theoretically) manageable, which will mean a lot of shuffling about in the barn population.

The Hooligans will be the stable group that stays throughout all the changes. That makes me very interested to see how this sub flock navigates the changes and establishes its own bonds.

Daytime and nighttime observations showed three initially separate groups: The three-headed Mardercas, the Valais lambs (Eliza, Betsy, and Fitz), and Harriet.

Slowly, these groupings started to shift. Fitz broke out from the Valais group and started occupying middle spaces. Then Martin followed suit. Within a week, all seven seemed to feel comfortable enough to mix during day and night.

It’s fascinating to watch the individual personalities continue to reveal themselves as these creatures find their place in the flock.

Eliza and Betsy have always preferred one another’s company, with Eliza slightly more outgoing and Betsy more food-focused. I watched Betsy gently establish herself in the pecking order with the young lads near the hay feeder on the first evening. These twins almost always choose to snooze bunched up together at night.

Harriet is the slightly frazzled older sister that occasionally snaps. Eighty percent of the time, she is perfectly pleasant as long as you give her enough space. The other twenty percent of the time she acts like she’s perfecting an NHL-level body checking technique. Anyone is subject to being plowed at any time. Everyone understands and accepts this about her.

Fitz is the floating friend. He’s happy to spend time with anyone, is a little wary of Harriet, and I don’t think the idea of butting someone out of his way has ever crossed his mind.

Martin is Mr. Chill. He is not fazed by Harriet one iota. He goes to eat hay right next to Harriet every single night with no fear in his pure heart. Most nights, all is well in the kingdom. Some nights he gets plastered into the corner. Some nights he gets plastered more than once. He simply comes right back to the exact same spot. Munch much munch.

Lucas is the adventurer. Where he once used to check every living (and some not-living) thing as a potential source of milk, he now has assigned himself the role of Official Explorer. This role includes fence-hole revealing, empty stall exploring, and the claiming of Harriet’s Bathtub. She tolerates it. Mostly.

Frederick has also acquired a title. He is the Official Chairwether of the Clean Your Plate Club. Every other sheep in the barn likes to sample feed from different parts of the trough during evening feed. Not Frederick. He has assigned himself an area. He does not leave the area until the area is sparkling. Even when Harriet plows him into the wall, he calmly directs himself back to his Exact Area like his nose has a homing device. When he has completed his job, he works on the nearby areas, calmly and methodically. I’m thinking about mounting an Award above his spot.

We’ll probably turn off the Barn Cams soon. There’s really no need for them until lambing season starts up again. But I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching these little creatures develop and interact with each other.

We finally watched The Sheep Detectives last week. I enjoyed seeing someone else’s version of sheep thoughts. Have you seen it yet?

Greg’s Got Questions

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

The winning question was:  How old does a lamb have to be to be weaned from its mom? Does it vary by breed?

There’s no official correct answer to this question. There are lots of reasons to wean earlier or later, and no shortage of opinions on the subject.

The factors that are in play include: the lamb’s ability to get nutrition from non-milk sources (feed, forage), the lamb’s weight and general health, the ewe’s condition, the condition and amount of pasture available, the timing of the next breeding cycle, and other stressors to ewes and lambs.

It is possible to let a ewe/lamb pair work out weaning all by themselves. Sometimes this works out well, and the ewe basically manages the lamb and tells it when enough is enough. We saw the downside of this method with Emma and Harriet. Emma was not putting her hoof down, and Harriet was quite demanding. This resulted in Emma melting away into a shadow, while Harriet was still nursing like a champ at five months and contorting herself to fit under her mother. We chose to wean Harriet because Emma’s health was deteriorating.

We learned from Emma’s weaning that the separation is very stressful for both ewe and lamb. With the Valais and Babydoll trios, we wanted to try to mitigate that a little bit by weaning the lambs in groups. That way, they’d at least have known companions with them in the new environment.

We hoped to make it to at least eight weeks for the youngest lambs in the groups. That’s technically considered early weaning. The biggest reason we weaned early was ewe condition. Lactation takes so much energy from the ewes and most of them came to us underconditioned.

We manage early weaning by making sure the lambs have plenty of feed, hay, and pasture, and we watch them carefully to make sure they are not losing condition. We also made sure they were consuming feed, hay, and grass very well before starting weaning.

My hope is that by intentionally managing breeding and lambing windows this year, and by carefully watching the body condition of the ewes before breeding, we will be able to extend the time the ewes and lambs can be together next year while keeping everyone healthy.

Greg’s Questions for Next Week

(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: If we were to invest in more barn cams, what would part of Pemberley Farm would you Helicopter Shepherd over next? Which leads me to sneak in a bonus question: If you’re next surveillance target is The Regiment, what do you call one who helicopters over chickens?

Question 2: Before you landed on “Mardercas” as the smooshed together term for the 3 boys, what options didn’t make the cut? And how do you pronounce “Mardercas”. (Again with a snuck-in bonus question.)

Question 3: How much of Harriet’s behavior do you attribute to her unique personality and how much is because she’s a Merino?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

The post Eye in the Sky appeared first on Kiersten J.

I should say first that Greg did a wonderful job of holding down the fort while I was gone. I loved my time with family, and I loved coming home, and no mass casualty events occurred on any front. Hooray!

Part of my trip involved some time in New York City.

If my recollections are correct, we arrived a couple days after the Knicks’ victory parade and we left the day of the first World Cup match being played in Rutherford, just on the other side of the Hudson River from where we were staying. I’m sure there are busier times in Manhattan. I’m just saying it wasn’t a sleepy summer interlude.

I grew up in Manhattan. Manhattan, Kansas. (Yes, that’s a real town, home of Kansas State University. Go ‘Cats!).

I’ve spent some time living in larger cities, but I wouldn’t call myself a city girl. So, spending time in The Big Apple is an opportunity to experience a different kind of life than I am used to.

Everything is closer, faster, and louder than my norm.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I enjoyed sitting outside on a hotel patio watching the world walk by only a few feet away. As an English-only-speaking white woman, I was a minority. I couldn’t tell you how many languages I heard in a half hour as people walked by. I was the most boringly dressed human in the area. It was fascinating.

I also experienced driving through the Lincoln Tunnel into Midtown Manhattan. At one point I muttered “I’m driving on 5th Avenue in New York City. This is insane.”

I didn’t have that on my 2026 Bingo card. Nor did I have “master how to use the Uber app,” but I can check that off, too. Yay!

It was a great experience all around, and yet, by the time I’d clocked over 3000 miles of driving, I was ready to be at home in the calm and the quiet of our little town and the farm.

Isn’t that a sweet thought?

Here’s what actually happened.

I knew that when I got home, I’d need to fix a date to wean the Babydoll wethers, the trio I’ve been referring to as the Three Amigos: Martin, Lucas, and Frederick. Martin was past the age he could wean, and Lucas and Frederick were quickly approaching it.

We’ve learned that nursing is the greatest energy expenditure in a ewe’s life, even more than pregnancy. So, when a lamb starts showing that he’s developmentally able to wean, we need to also be watching the condition of the mom. If she looks like she may be struggling to keep up nutritionally, we might wean a little earlier. If she’s holding condition fine, we can wait a little bit.

Thankfully, Martin’s mom Lucy held condition like a champ so we could wait to wean him until Lucas and Frederick were ready. They were operating as a little unit of pals, and I thought that might make weaning an easier transition for them if they could keep their buddies with them.

When I returned from my trip, Frederick’s mom Louisa showed signs of losing condition. It was go time.

And because weaning meant a swapping of sleeping arrangements, Lydia and her Not Pregnant After All companion Margaret got evicted from their posh quarters and returned to the big ewe stall. I’m sure Margaret entertained them all with her stories of how she kept the humans guessing for weeks on end.

And so, the Three Amigos began weaning.

At first, it’s all fun and games. New grass, new paddock to explore, new stalls to poke into, Harriet’s bathtub to claim.

And then, suddenly, the lambs realized they’re not where their moms are.

Deep confusion sets in.

At Pemberley Farm, we have a designated place for this.

Here they are, in a perfect little chain of comfort, staring at the passageway and paddock they used to use.

I’m not kidding. We apparently have a spot for this. We first noticed it on Weaning Day for the Valais lambs.

They look so confused and forlorn. It twists the heart.

And then they start filing formal complaints.

The lungs are in working order.

I think Frederick is still working on the final edits of his essay A Logical Response to the Evils of Involuntary Restrictions to Necessary Resources.

Greg’s Got Questions

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

The winning question was:  Since you know the unique personalities of Jane and Emma so well, what do you think was going on in their sheep brains during their up-close-and-personal incident? What’s the dialogue they’d be having if they could speak human?

Jane and Emma are interesting girls. Neither is what you’d call outgoing or outspoken.

Jane was positively skittish before lambing Fitz, though that experience (and having us be all up in her business for a while getting him to learn how to nurse) has made her more willing to be around humans and occasionally allow for some petting and scritching.

Emma is a slightly neurotic Merino with a personality that tends toward accepting some things as inevitable. Exhibit A: Allowing Harriet to still nurse at five months old even though Harriet was almost the same size as Emma, Harriet clearly did not require milk for nourishment, and Emma was dwindling away to a shadow.

I imagine Jane was a bit annoyed through the entire event, and Emma had a few moments of freaking out before submitting to yet another dictate from the Universe that she shall be saddled with another enormous dependent of some sort for the foreseeable future.

Jane probably decided to wait for further developments in the shade by the gate where I found them, and Emma conceded to be dragged along because what else was she going to do?

Then I popped up in concern, and their individual sheepy brains screamed “RUN! RUN THAT WAY!” which of course was not the same way.

This sort of panic, thankfully, can be overridden by the promise of food. Since both Emma and Jane are fond of it, and they both recognized the direction from which it was being offered, they could unintentionally cooperate in arriving at the location where I could get them unattached.

After that? I bet they forgot all about it.

Greg’s Questions for Next Week

(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: Who do you think the loudest of the loud is in the world of Pemberley? Of course, the engineer in me wants to buy microphones, sound meters, and set up an anechoic chamber in the barn so we have real data, but until we do that, guessing will have to do.

Question 2: How old does a lamb have to be to be weaned from its mom? Does it vary by breed?

Question 3: How can you tell if a sheep is holding or losing condition?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J

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