All of a sudden there are plenty of chores, along with short days with plenty of sunshine. Bring the lambs and Martha to the barn yard where they’ll wait out the mating season, split the breeding ewes into two groups, one for Nash and one for our new ram, Eros. Move Nash and his ladies to the East field and move Eros and his harem to the West field. The grass is shot in both fields so the sheep are officially on hay now until the spring. East and West fields have two round bales, 500 pounds apiece. Martha and the five big and lovely female lambs, while nibbling on old stalks and grass in the barn yard, have square bales to sample in the hay feeders. Heated water troughs have been in place for over a week, but the bubbler in the barn is filthy and needs to be cleaned out. More water buckets for the East field. The set of garden hoses that run down each set of fields need to be pulled up, in some cases set in the sun to thaw, coiled and tied up. Since we can’t rely on garden hoses, we’re back to filling up five gallon Home Depot buckets and carting them to the East and West fields. I’ve gone soft since this chore was suspended last spring. Lifting and tilting the buckets wake up muscles that I thought were strong. A trip down to the neighbor’s barn to load 23 square bales in the back of the truck is further reminder that I’m out of shape.
Run out the gas in the push lawn mower, load the tractor bucket and rear cart with split dry wood and begin stacking it against the front door stoop. Todd takes the truck down the driveway and up along the neighbor’s, parks and pulls out the chain saw. A tree service was here about a week ago bringing down dead trees that threatened to fall on the fencing. Todd begins to carve them up, fill the truck with one load and together we empty it into a pile that will grow quickly. “We’ll never have to buy wood again”, says Todd. Before the snow flies we’ll borrow Marty’s log splitter that attaches to the back of the tractor, split and stack the wood.
I put the garden to bed a few weeks ago, stunned at the insane number of butternut squash I grew. Clearly I got carried away if I still have over twenty and have been dolling them out as fast as I can to neighbors and friends. The election news threw me. My first thought was to double the size of the garden next year and preserve as much as possible. Can one hide on a hill for four years or more living on what the dirt and rain will support?
Veteran’s Day Chet and Kenny came early and once again did a clean, humane job of slaughtering our male lambs. In the late afternoon I delivered over 560 pounds of carcasses wrapped in plastic to Green Mountain Smokehouse and hope to pick up cut, labeled and frozen meat in about a week. The pelts have been laid out on pallets, salted down and are now drying fast along the top of the driveway thanks to very low humidity. By Tuesday I think I’ll be able to roll them up, pack them in plastic bags and ship them via UPS to Stern’s Tannery in Milwaukee.
With outdoor chores behind us, Todd’s resting on the couch with the newspaper and a can of Heady Topper, an artisanal beer he paid way too much for at a recent auction. Football plays on TV and I finish up some paperwork that will enable me to head up to a fiber mill in Waistfield, VT to pick up yarn spun from the fleece of our sheep. It should be a lovely light grey and come the next weekend I’ll begin overdyeing it with a host of fun colors.
More chores lay ahead and frankly, that’s a good thing.
Peggy