death and life

Oftentimes we will have people comment on how cool it would be living on a farm….well not to piss on your parade but here is a glimpse of what is involved in the enchanted world of farm-life…
Yesterday morning as we were feeding animals Christy noticed one of the ewes was laboring and actually had something distended from her hindquarters (best way to say it) she thought the ewe was aborting her pregnancy because it is very early for them to lamb…but alas a few hours later finds a little black lamb sucking at momma’s teat. The ewe, “Blue,” looked like she maybe had another in there so we left them alone. When we came back in a bit blue was on the ground with what appeared to be another lamb coming out but what turned out being a prolapsed uterus (look it up if you want the gory details, it is not pretty). We have some books that help with this stuff and with blue being very old we didn’t want to spend a small fortune on getting a vet down our three miles of dirt road. We worked on her for a while and tried to get the uterus back in place, but to no avail.
This is where it gets hard. We realized that blue is failing rapidly and have to make the decision to put her down…which is my job…I hate it! I do it in the least painful, quickest way possible. She is a 200+lb sheep and with only one good hand and Christy pregnant there isn’t any way in anywhere that we are moving her…so I fire up the tractor and take her out back where she is now giving back to the earth.
So…now we have this little girl living in our kitchen and making my daughter laugh, but actually needs to be fed more often than K1. Life is a give and take…and it is never easy.

So if you ever have a twisted notion that life out here is grand come on up and help us out anytime…we will be glad for the company, the help and we will let you walk through some shit…