Volume Adjustment

Things have gotten loud.

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