Gravel Pit

When I was growing up, I was blessed with having many trails to ride my fourwheeler on. I was able to go around a lot of the fields that we own and my dad's gravel pit. When I rode, it was a way to get away from the drama and just to think about life. I got my first fourwheeler when I was in kindergarten, and my dad started to let me ride alone in 3rd grade. It was the best to just get home, fill up the tank with gas, listen to my cd player/ipod and just ride. It was relaxing and I would be able to do it for hours. I actually rode wheeler until I was a sophomore in college. I would drive back to my parents house every weekend and that was the first thing I would do. I then made myself stay at college and finally get the experience, so I do not ride as much as I used to. I have lived with my boyfriend now for almost two years, and whenever I get the chance to go home, I will ride. In the picture below is two spots that I would stop and look at for awhile.

Baby Karma

So Karma and I went to the farm yesterday to go take a look at what my boyfriend was up to. Most Sundays I will go out to the farm and help around with as much as I can. I just enjoy being outside when it is nice out and it gives Karma time to run around and be a crazy lady before bedtime. Karma and I went around to check fences for the sheep and cows. Like I have said in past posts, the sheep love Karma, and the cows do not know what to think about her. I have a couple pictures below of Karma and the cows and sheep. The sheep usually let Karma lick their faces, but sometimes they do not like it and they will headbutt her. The cows go crazy and will start jumping around and try to headbutt her too if she gets near.

A Shepherd's Gift

I want to tell you a little about "A Shepherd's Gift" this week. When we started to get into the sheep business a year ago, it was not just because we wanted to raise sheep. Our seed salesman was talking to us one night about how he recently got sheep. We listened to him tell his story, and we really did not know what to think about it. The reason why we started to raise the sheep is because of the "A Shepherd's Gift" foundation. Our sheep have a molecule called GM1 which would help cure Huntington's Disease (HD). Not very many people know about this organization, but I have been to a couple meetings and have tried to get the word out further! I will include a link in the blog that has a short three minute video of a brief description about the organization. We have not had the best news about the organization in the past year, but we got a call about it this weekend and it sounds like they are saving enough money in the lab to start doing test trials. We will be breeding our sheep to get more GM1 molecules, so if the government allows the lab trials to be used in hospitals, they will have enough sheep to keep curing patients!  

http://www.theshepherdsgift.org/

Silage

Yesterday, I went out to the farm for the day to finish up our silage mound. The way we run our silage is one of them is out in the filled with the tractor chopping the corn stocks, then after the wagon is full, the next person in the dump truck will take it off back to the farm. That is where I was with my boyfriend driving the tractor to pack the feed together. All we did was drive back and forth on top of the chopped feed, making it air tight. We had to shape the pile like a dome, so when it rains, the water will just fall right off of it. We did that for about four hours, then We took the tarp, covered up the pile, then we threw tires on top of it. This is to try and get most of the air out from underneath so the food does not get moldy. We need the silage so we are able to feed the cattle all through the winter. We also will get loads of carrots and corn that the canning company do not use from Mankato. While I was up in the tractor, Karma wanted to come with us too. She jumped up into the tractor and road with us for a little while. Then, she saw her sheep friends running in the pasture, so she got excited to go see them.

Lambing

Okay, like I said in the previous post about my lamb, Daisy, I am doing this kind of backwards. So, last spring was our first time trying out our sheep farm. We purchased 40 ewes last September, and they had their lambs in the spring. It was probably one of the cutest, best springs I have every experienced. I loved the adrenaline rush of all the babies coming! We would go from one or two ewes having babies a day to seven or eight ewes having babies a day! There was a lot of preparation before the lambs arrived and we needed to make sure that we were organized. We needed to mark all the lambs with numbers, so if they were to escape from the pen where their mother is located, it would be simple to put them back together. We also need to ear tag all the girls. The boys are about to go off to the market, while we are keeping all the girls. I loved every second of this moment in the picture below. This was our first lamb of the year, Lucky. (Trust me, I do not name every single lamb. Just the ones I will remember.)

Daisy

Welcome back to my page! Okay, I am going to kind of do this in a backwards/out of place order, but I cannot resist to tell you about my baby, Daisy! In the picture below, that is Daisy. Daisy was born from a mother of three. It was her and her two brothers. Daisy's little brother was taken from his mother, because there was not enough milk for Daisy's mother to feed three lambs, so he was adopted by another mother ewe. Unfortunately, Daisy's mother had died the next day from internal bleeding from the triplets and her brother was not able to stay either. Daisy then was taken into the arms of me and my boyfriends wonderful mother. We bottle fed her for 35 days. Every morning, evening, and night. My boyfriends mother let her sleep in the front porch with Yogi (the sheep dog I posted about) so she was able to keep a close eye on her and get her food when she needed it. Daisy was the most house trained lamb I have ever seen. Daisy will continue to live at our farm, and hopefully be a great mother to her future lambs!

Farm Dog #3

This is my last farm dog for right now. We never know when someone in the family will bring home another one ;) This is Yogi. Yogi is a pest. Mainly because he is just a little puppy still, but he gets into everything. We bought Yogi, because we thought he would make a good sheep/cattle dog. Well, we were not lucky with that. We should have kept a closer eye on him, but when he was just getting used to the farm, his paw was stepped on by a cow. He did not break any bones, but it did scare him and he was not happy with the cow. So, he is now afraid of the cows and the sheep. When we would all go down to the sheep barn or walk around to check the cattle, he will not come with us. Yogi like to sleep and eat (what puppy doesn't?) He has his own chair in the shop where he spends most hours of the day just hanging out. He loves to play. He has a "brother" named Clyde. Clyde (a Yorkie) and Yogi will run around after each other, stealing each others toys.

One funny event (not so funny to the neighbors) was that Yogi went to the neighbors house and took all of their clean clothes off the clothes line. Their clothes were located all over the yard. We felt bad at the time, and were mad at Yogi, but honestly I thought it was really funny :)

Farm Dog #2

Alrighty, I have a few more of our farm dogs to share with you :) This next one is Dora. Dora is the farm dog that is located at my parent's farm. I bought Dora when I was in 7th grade! She turned 12 in April. I posted a "funny" picture of her, because as you see, she only has three legs. Well, she has four if you count the one that I drew in for her ;)

Dora was actually born with four legs. She was a great swimmer, and she could run so fast that she used to be able to keep up with us on the golf cart. Dora used to be great at catching rodents, birds, and she kept any kind of stray animal off of our property. When I moved away for college my freshman year, I received a phone call from my brother that Dora had gotten ran over. The first thing I thought was, great, my dog is dead on my first day away from the farm. But, Dora was lucky. She had NO broken bones and NO torn muscles. She was just sore. She babied her leg for so long that she lost all her muscles in her leg. So, she just hopped around and drug her gimped leg everywhere. THEN, I moved again. Of course, after a month of being settled in, the vet calls me. She says," Hi, is this Abbey?" I was kind of curious to why they were calling me, so I went with it. Her next sentence, "Dora is all out of surgery now. You can come get her tomorrow morning. She is going to be doing a lot better now with that leg off..." WHAT?! I hung up and called my dad, because nobody wanted to inform me that they were amputating my dogs leg. Let's just say, I am happy she was out of pain by getting it taken off, but man, someone could have at least gave me a heads up that it was going to happen!