Scottish Blackface Ram and Ramblings

Say Hello to " Black Beard ". That's him IN the hay feeder, and Uvi, our ewe below him. Osoka the ewe lamb from this year, is wedged between a couple bovine on the other side of the feeder.The kids named him. He is our Scottish Blackface Ram on loan from The Craven Family. Wonderful people that they are, very supportive of my dreams for a farmstead sheep dairy, to go along with my farmstead Jersey Cow dairy. They picked out a milky ewe from their flock of " island sheep " last May and she came with what I thought was a wether lamb, but just recently discovered is a ewe lamb! I'm not working with dairy sheep genetics, yet, but what I've got is a couple of sheep very hardy to our environment, with a higher proclivity to milkiness, and the the goal is just to get the ewe bred and in milk again. I will probably try to get a ram with dairy genetics for breeding next year. " Uvi " is completely tame, and I did milk her for a bit this year. That's half the battle right there! I've been dreaming of real sheeps milk feta, romano, and some combination milk cheeses of cow/sheep.

My mind never rests. This can be a blessing and torture at times when the thoughts are less than pleasant. It's just how I am. I am always planning for tommorrow, I need to be thinking ahead. These days my thoughts focus on the children first, Ayla's diabetes, Veda's Apraxia of Speech, Ida May growing before my eyes, Zoie and Jude homeschooling and becoming involved with girl scouts and boy scouts. My relationship with Dante. My business, which is hibernating a bit with this slow time of year, but my FAVORITE cow, Gale, is due to calve February 2nd. That's gonna mean a LOT more milk and a return to twice a day milking. I've enjoyed my sabbatical to once-a-day, but will enjoy having more milk to work with too. Right now, I don't have enough of an abundance to make hard cheese like I'd like to. I'm hoping to get some plans for a larger hardwood cheese press to my Grandfather, which would allow me to get a bigger cheese mold and then use an entire milking for a batch of hard cheese.

I'm scouring the seed catalogs and looking for flower seed in particular. Trying to plan my market cut flower garden, which then also brings me to bees. I've been wanting a couple hives for a couple years now, it seems to be a good time for it, so I check a couple books out of the library on bees and beekeeping.

I know that these things will cause some people to say, " You are doing too much! " Whats funny is that they are mostly seasonal, each taking their turn, and peaking during the season of peak daylight. That makes sense to me. I like to be doing something, and if it involves raising food for our kids and can be done with our kids than I don't see the harm. Sometimes I feel like some people would find it more acceptable to be working away from our home all day with the kids in school or daycare instead of homeschooling and homesteading and having my own business. What hurts the most is when the people closest to me feel that way.

It was our 13th wedding anniversary yesterday, and no one acknowledged it. Granted, Dante and I are having some serious issues right now, I'm not one to pretend everythings okay when it isn't, but I'm also not gonna act like the past 13 years never existed either.

Kind of a weird, scattered post, eh? It reflects how my thoughts are arranged in my head right now.