farm beginnings in PA – Morning Star Meadows Farm

April 19, 2020

Maternity wing

For the next few weeks we will be spending a lot of time with this mob! We are pretty certain that at least 11 of the 12 are pregnant! Now we wait for the “when” and “how many!”

Today, after a crazy spring blustery snow squall, we finished preparations for our maternity wing and labor and delivery ward.

This is a relatively small area where we can keep close tabs on the girls as they approach their due dates. Tomorrow marks the first potential due date, counting from the time the rams were introduced to the ewes back in November. The girls are close to the barn where we have set up lambing jugs, as we mentioned in our last post. When we see signs of impending labor, we will bring that ewe in to the barn and isolate her in a quiet stall so that we can keep an even closer eye one her, and where she will be on camera for us to watch from the house on our wireless barn camera set up.

As for now, all had health checks today. Some udders are much larger than others, and some ewes are waddling a bit slower than others, but none are showing any signs of labor. They are happily chowing down on hay and minerals, and getting used to their new location.

This week we also started to learn the process of examining their manure for evidence of harmful parasites. Generally we check each animal’s mucous membranes for evidence of anemia using a color chart. This is a quick and easy way to assess parasitic disease when we bring them through the chute . But some sheep actually have more parasites than their membranes reveal. When we do a fecal exam for parasite eggs, it takes a lot longer and requires a microscope and a special slide that allows you to count the number of eggs per gram of feces, but this added procedure gives us a much better picture of how big a worm burden the animal has. More eggs shed by the animal does not necessarily mean an animal that is sicker. It can mean an animal that has a high resistance to the worms which can be an asset passed on to their offspring. Of course some will show extremely high numbers of eggs, and sometimes a shepherd will cull (remove) that animal from the flock because they are source of parasite exposure to the rest of the flock. Our counts today were low, which we expected for this time of year. The parasite we worry about most, the barberpole worm (named for it’s barberpole appearance due to the sheep’s blood in its alimentary canal), goes into a sort of winter dormancy, but will soon be making it’s presence known as the days get longer, warmer and more humid, and especially in the ewes after lambing when their systems are more stressed.

Well I won’t bore you any further with manure and worms! Time to get some rest before our days and nights start to blur into one when those lambs begin arriving! I’m hoping to get some great photos and videos to share with you all! If we had better internet (which I was able to actually get set up in the barn today using our wireless camera system!), I would definitely do a Facebook live for you! Sadly, the quarantine will keep us from having guests here for lambing this year. I love sharing the moment of birth of an animal – it never fails to amaze me!

March 26, 2020

Amidst a pandemic, the world seems to stop, except on the farm

As much of the world hunkers down in fear, isolation and quarantine in the midst of a global pandemic, we feel so blessed to be (mostly) together as a family on our 35 acres.

We have been home here for over a week, with only the occasional venture over the ridge and through the woods to Grammy’s house to exchange food and hijack her more reliable internet. If we weren’t watching the news, we would have no idea about the pandemic affecting the world, except that our mailman is delivering packages with gloves on today!

The animals continue their daily routines, the chickens are giving us more eggs as the days lengthen, the spring flowers are opening, seeds and onion sets are waiting to be planted, the rhubarb and garlic is sprouting, and soon we’ll see asparagus break ground. We must continually remind ourselves that outside of our little haven, the stores are empty, many businesses are closed, thousands of people are laid off and struggling each day, and more people are getting sick from COVID-19.

We are trying to stay healthy and keep ourselves ready for caring for newborn lambs and their moms in about a month!

Today we rounded up the ewes for the first time since late December when we separated them from the rams after breeding season. They have survived a very mild winter. Most of the time, when they weren’t gorging on round bales of second cut hay or ruminating near their shed, they were taking themselves out to enjoy the stockpiled pasture. Sometimes it’s difficult to say what they enjoy more, but it is safe to say that grazing is a strong instinct, and they will keep grazing even when presented with an abundance of hay.

Roy has been setting up the barn with lambing jugs to contain a ewe as she approaches her time. These will be bedded with straw. There she can be separate from the flock, undisturbed as she labors and delivers and cares for her new lambs. She will remain there for a day or two after giving birth, and then another ewe will take her place.

Four lambing jugs made with recycled pallets and hog panels.

And no, I didn’t climb up in the rafters to take that picture! I took that picture as a screenshot on our IPad which now bears a program that communicates with a camera in the barn! Yes, we are going high tech with our new farm (or lazy, you might call it) and instead of wandering down to the barn many times through the night, we will be watching our sheep from the house! I know – some shepherds WE are! Imagine that Bible story retold, “While shepherds watched their sheep at night, remotely from their tent on their IPhone 11, an angel appeared to them!” Yeah – just doesn’t seem right, does it?

So our goal today was most importantly to vaccinate the ewes prior to the birth of their lambs. The ewes were due for their annual booster vaccine against clostridial diseases, including tetanus and a few others that are dangerous to sheep, and this vaccine will carry immunity into the colostrum that their lambs will drink and thereby receive what is called passive immunity for their first weeks of life. The lambs will then need a vaccination when they are ready to produce their own immunity at about 4-6 weeks of age.

Also, to prepare these girls for the big day, we trimmed hooves and gave them a dose of a vitamin/mineral paste which includes Vitamin E and selenium, which is very scarce in the soils of our area, and therefore in the food that they are eating. Deficiencies in these can cause problems for the ewe and for her newborn lamb.

Bessie was very patient for her hoof trimming. We rated her with early development for her udder.

We also weighed them all, checked their eyelid color for signs of parasite caused anemia, and checked their udders for signs of development indicating possible pregnancy.

Faith isn’t too sure about Roy’s ballottement procedure!

As you can see above, Roy also tried ballottement of their abdomens to try to feel lambs in the uterus. He holds his hand firm on the animal’s left over their rumen, and then bounces his hand over the right side in an attempt to rock the uterus in the fluid of the abdomen in hopes that a lamb in the uterus would bounce off the inner wall of the abdomen under his hand. One day I hope we will have an ultrasound machine so this all becomes a lot more definite and scientific!

The ewes have returned to their winter pastures, and in a few weeks we will move them closer to the barn. At that time we will bring the rams in for vaccinations, hoof trimming, weighing and physicals.

While we continue to quarantine and wonder what the future holds for our country and for this hidden enemy virus, we wait not with fear but with hope – and with joyous expectation for the new life that will hopefully grace our farm in a month’s time! We ask that God protect you all — that you stay safely away from ALL illnesses – and that you stay tuned for many photos and hopefully videos of the miracle of life on the farm!

November 26, 2019

The Nuptuals!

Well, you can see from the photo above that the weather was absolutely perfect for today’s nuptuals! Above you can see Romeo pursuing one of his harem. She looks totally unimpressed! Everything went fairly well. We did have one “runaway bride”, but I think she’s learned now to stand by her man and hopefully won’t stray again!

In the video below you’ll see us bringing the rams over to the “meet up” venue first. It’s only right that they be waiting for their ladies, and not the other way around.

We set up temporary fencing to help guide them across the driveway, then pushed them right up into the handling yards.

After getting them into the race, we marked them each with a homemade version of a raddle marker. This will serve to mark the ewe when she is served by the ram. That helps us when we can’t keep eyes on them all the time so that we can try to establish breeding dates. In the past I’ve made this by mixing powdered tempra paint with vegetable shortening, but this time the store didn’t have the paint, so I went with the next best thing – Koolaid! Just a note, though — Koolaid powder does not readily dissolve in Crisco, so I had to wet it first! At least this smells more interesting – cherry and raspberry!

We then put each ram in their own pen using the sorting gates as they come out of the chute. They really didn’t like being separated, but they soon won’t mind one bit!

Here come the brides!

Waiting patiently to meet Cyrano! Someone is looking at us, and she doesn’t look too sure about this! I think she was actually our “runaway bride!”

And, keeping it friendly for all audiences, here’s Romeo with his girls in their new pasture. There is so much lovely stockpiled pasture there for them to eat that he’s torn between chowing down and making himself better known to his brides!

And now we will watch and wait. Hopefully the girls will take a shine to the boys and all will be over quickly and without a hitch!

November 24, 2019

Health Check before the Wedding Vows!

The girls are about to meet their “husbands” in a couple of days, and while they won’t be getting blood tests like we do, they do get a quick “once over” health check before tying the knot, so to speak.

This will be the first time we have tried the new weighing facilities and yards, so we were as anxious as the ladies for this to work out well!

We were pleased at how easily they complied with entering the yards, and now that they were contained, we needed to see them enter and pass through the race.

The first attempt yielded 6 of them easily pushing into the race. Maybe they already know that they will be divided into 2 groups for the 2 rams, who are eagerly awaiting the nuptuals!

OK! Piece of cake! These girls went through their paces with ease! I guess that although one is not supposed to discuss a ladies weight, in this case we will make an exception. We were very pleased to see that these yearling ewes had gained from 30-50 lb since June on a diet of pasture alone. Now they are ready to meet Cyrano and Romeo (yes, really!) in the next day or two.

We will try to video the meeting and post it, while making sure that we keep this blog for “general audiences”, if you get our drift!

July 11, 2019

IBC Rain barrel 2.0

For those who follow this blog, you may remember an ill-fated attempt to capture water from the roof of the house to water the garden. Below is the photograph of the IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container), which collapsed under the weight of the water we collected (an IBC can hold 275 gallons which at 8 lb a gallon for water is over a ton!). Apparently the metal frame surrounding an IBC (absent from this one which we found laying around on the property) is more than just decoration and is critical to maintain structural integrity!

Below is the finalized construction of our latest attempt to collect water from the metal roof of the barn for the sheep. It looks complicated, but the concept is quite simple and I will describe the reason for each component. Note the metal framed IBC which we bought to replace the collapsed one with no frame!

Firstly, we had to position the IBC around the corner from the downspout because that side of the barn has quite a steep slope on which it would be very difficult to position the container without digging a significant foundation. This apparently small concession to gravity necessitated using expandable, flexible pipe to pass around the corner. The next issue was that the downspout measured 2×3 inches, which is smaller than most house gutter downspouts which measure 3×4 inches. The importance of this will become clear with the next photo. But suffice it to say that we had to pass from a smaller to a larger opening. Also, we wanted to install an easily cleanable filter at a couple of points and this created an opportunity to place one between the white and brown components. The joint is supported by a metal brace, and there are wires holding it together that are loose enough to easily remove to access the filter. But why have that smaller 1 inch pipe from the side of the brown downspout?

The image below shows the reason for this interesting structure. At the opening of the 3×5 inch brown pipe is a close-fitting rubber trough with a hole through the middle. Water passing through the downspout fills the trough and exits into the small round flexible pipe that we plumbed into the center of the green lid on the IBC. The reason for the central hole is that if the IBC is filled or there is a blockage of the pipe, the water can pass through the hole and not back-up onto the roof causing leaks. The block of wood is the same thickness as the metal frame, ensuring that the trough remains horizontal and the hole stays open underneath. The slight lack of efficiency of water collection (with some water falling through the hole missing the trough) is outweighed by the peace of mind resulting from knowing that the aparatus will not cause problems upstream! This very useful aparatus (including the pipes and drill jigs to place the rubber insert into downspouts) is available from stores such as Home Depot, or can be obtained on-line. Note that this is made only for a 3×4 inch downspout, thus creating our need to expand our fitting from the original 2×3 inch downspout. Dontcha just love plumbing incompatibility issues!?

Another view from a different angle below. Note the frayed white edges of a second filter we inserted at the beginning of the flexible black pipe. The two filters are cleaned by simply removing them and shaking them out whenever we use the water to fill secondary containers to transport water to the sheep or chickens.

Finally, after a good rain, we have collected about 100 gallons of water! All we do now is attach a hose to the IBC outlet at the bottom and let gravity fill a 55 gallon drum, plumbed with a faucet and hose that we strapped into the back of the Kawasaki mule side-by-side that we can drive into the fields to fill water troughs and buckets! Note that this is from just one corner of the barn We can do the same thing to each corner downspout, potentially quadrupling our capture of life-giving water!

As we increase our flock this will become really important, since sheep will drink up to 2-3 gallons of water a day in the summer. For 150 sheep (including lambs) that adds up to almost 500 gallons a day, an amount that our house well may not be able to produce.

June 16, 2019

Spring sheep maintenance

Today was the day to try out equipment Roy has been busy making over the fall and winter. He has built a set of yards to work the sheep, including a capture chute that has a scale built into it. Many thanks to Gibraltar Farm for the great advice on building all of this! Purchasing this equipment would cost many thousands of dollars, and this homemade version, while a little “clunky,” is perfectly adequate.

It’s time to see how much weight these girls have gained since joining us at Morning Star Meadows. Also time to boost their vaccinations, check feet and overall health.

This is the basic set up with the chute and a number of simple panels made from 2x4s that connect either with rebar or good ‘ol baling twine!

Bringing the sheep up from their pasture was easy, as the girls are quite used to us and to being moved. In fact, they will call to us when they want to go to the next pasture!

Getting them to move into the chute was quite simple. In fact we had more trouble stopping their friends from trying to double up!

Once in the chute it was simple to record their weight, give them a quick health check and administer their yearly vaccination.

A home made sheep chute is both effective and relatively inexpensive to make

Everyone gets a turn to inject a vaccine. This is the multivalent vaccine covering Clostridium perfringens types C & D and tetanus.

And finally we noticed that with all the rain we’ve been having, some of their hooves had overgrown (walking on the soft ground, not wearing them down), and they needed a bit of a pedicure before letting them back on to the pasture. It was relatively simple to catch them as they exited the chute and tip them onto their rear for a few seconds of toenail sculpting.

November 11, 2018November 11, 2018

Catching up!

Well, its been a while since we have blogged. When you combine the escapades of 8 children and each of their developing lives, and add in the building of an infrastructure of a farm, it can’t help but be a really busy summer and fall! But we still try to enjoy ourselves and relax on occasion. The picture below was taken during such a rare moment; hopefully you can feel at least a modicum of the peace and tranquility of a summer afternoon in the country.

One of the things that has been consuming us this year is fencing and gates. There are creative solutions to both of these, and we have been discovering many alternatives.

Below you see a gate along our boundary fence where we expect challenges from predators; especially coyotes, but also possibly bears. The gap is about 20 feet, so standard gates are a fairly expensive option. This alternative is both cheap and effective, and very easy to make.

We took two 6 foot lengths of 2x4s and screwed in insulators along the length at an appropriate gap to insure contact with any decent sized predator. Spanning the gap with 1/2 inch electrical fencing tape completes the gate, and attachment to the adjacent electrified fence completes a pretty secure structure. The bottom of the 2x4s slide into a wire sleeve, and tension is gained by pulling the top part tight with a piece of baling twine (after duct tape, the most essential farm material for fixing things!) around the post. This gate is easily opened and closed after removing the electrical contact, and is a great and really affordable solution for any farm with electric fences.

Our sheep are going to be entirely grass fed and grass finished. So during spring, summer, and most of fall, it is fairly simple to rotationally graze the flock through a series of permanant and temporary fencing. But during winter, there are a number of challenges to overcome, such as how to provide shelter. Although our sheep will be nomads most of the year, providing them a more permanent shelter and a heated water source to prevent freezing, means that we will need to locate them closer to the house for much of the winter.

Below is a small shelter of around 80 square feet we constructed mostly of free wooden pallets (slid down over T-posts to provide a sturdy foundation) obtained from a local recycler. This simple construction only takes about half a day to put together and is completed with cheap corrugated plastic sheets for the roof and Tyvek sheathing around the outside! This is perhaps not the most aesthetically pleasing structure to grace a farm, but is is easy, cheap and fiunctional!

Finally our starter sheep flock arrived in August! We were really impressed with the folks from whom we bought these sheep. Gibraltar Farm in New York is managed by extremely professional, caring, and giving shepherds, who taught us a lot during the time we visited their farm, and personally delivered a group of 12 ewes to us as our foundation flock.

The girls (12 ewe lambs born this past spring) can be seen below enjoying the pasture on Morning Star Meadows in the late afternoon. Lying beneath those amber waves is a large amount of feed that we have stockpiled for them to consume during the winter.

Our pasture is definitely not an herbicide-sprayed monoculture of one type of pasture grass devoid of weeds, but instead consists of Orchard grass, Blue stem (a warm season grass) and Timothy, combined with clover and a variety of “weeds”, which are mostly devoured by the sheep. The brown stemmy grass seeming to dominate this field in the photograph is the previously mentioned Blue stem, and can provide a good protein source, although is not as palatable once it goes to seed and browns off in the fall.

During the winter months, we hope to be able to continue allowing the ewes to graze this stockpiled pasture and so we have constructed a “corridor” (below) bordered by electric twine from the shelter area (note the Tyvek sheathing) and the unfrozen water source, to the field of stockpiled grass shown above.

Now we just have to run them up and down between them for a few days to help them remember the route, which is only about 80 yards away.

And finally, on a different note, our other work this summer and fall has been in the garden. We obtained a wonderful yield of vegetables, as demonstrated by this truckload of butternut squash! About 25 plants yielded almost 250 lb of sweet orange deliciousness! We hope it stores well in our cool, dry basement and we will use it during the winter months for all sorts of soups and stews!

Hopefully it won’t be as long before our next blog, and we can update you about our continuing adventures as we prepare for our first winter with the sheep!

June 17, 2018

Hey — Hay!

Ever thought about what you can do with old moldy hay smelling of cat urine and and laced with raccoon poop, apart from condemming it to a compost pile or bonfire, that is? If so, then read on. If not, read on anyway. The information may come in handy some time in the future! The story unfolds oddly and interestingly, as stories from real life often do, which is why fake stories from Hollywood or books have to revert to shallow and fetid tales of imorality to hold viewers attention.

Our cousins from New Jersey recently bought the abandoned farm across the road. On the property is a large barn built in the mid 1800s. Part of the detritus of 150 years of living scattered throughout the structure includes a few hundred bales of very old hay–at least 8 years old, as that is the last anyone lived there. But it is likely that it is much older than that, although it must have been collected since automated, machine baling started using sissal twine to hold the bales together.

We were pondering the very significant effort needed to control weed growth at the same time as we were lamenting the clay content of the soil here and how hard the soil compacts when it is walked on. Somehow weeds can grow in this soil, but weeding implements have a really hard time penetrating the baked pottery passing for soil in much of the garden. We had additionally decided that we needed to significantly increase the organic matter in the soil. Previously, we had used the composted manure and hay from our winter sheep feeding, as well as broiler chicken offal and anything else that acumulates on a farm. But since we are just beginning here, we don’t have anything accumulated for such a purpose.

We had used some of this hay to cover the grass seed we spread after the earth moving had denuded a large area around the new barn. Robin made the creative leap to using this hay to mulch the garden, and at the same time helping to clear out the old barn for our cousins. So we piled up 10 bales in the back of the UTV and trucked it across the road to our farm. Now to properly mulch, you have to use a very thick layer of hay, and we had no idea how much we would need until we started. Some 40 bales later we were done — exhausted, but done. Now, in addition to helping with weed control, a thick cover of organic material will importantly promote retention of moisture, while slowly composting into the soil. We are using water accumulated from our roof in a large plastic cistern (see previous blog entry) for the garden and it is both time intensive and physically demanding to apply it to the large garden, so reducing the amount of time and effort spent watering is another great advantage of mulching.

Below you can see the piles around the blueberry plants.

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Below is the view of about half the garden giving an impression of the thick coating of old hay with the plants peeping up from their cozy beds. The strawberry plants are in the foreground.

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This is the view facing the other direction from the center. In the foreground you can see the buternut squash, then cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes (adjacent to the cattle panels), and potatoes with white flowers on top in the background, maybe 75 feet back.

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A close up of the butternut squash ensconced snugly in about 3-4 inches of compacted hay (we layed down the hay in flakes from each bale that you can almost visualize in this photo.) Any weeds poking up from this probably deserve to live!

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So with all this old and apparently worthless hay, we have: increased our organic matter in the garden, as this composting hay will be tilled in next year; conserved moisture and thereby our precious water resource, as well as our backs; and finally, hopefully reduced our weeding to almost zero (of course that’s not saying a hay seed or two might resurrect after all these years and sprout, but then we’ll just cover it with more hay!) Isn’t nature (by which I mean God!) wonderful when you decide to work with it rather than try to beat it!

April 20, 2018

Deer-proof Fence for the Garden

Now that this garden is getting going it’s time to protect its precious contents!

We are putting up the same sort of fencing we had at our previous farm, hopefully with some improvements to make it more durable.

We first purchased 10 ft sections of 3/4 inch and 1 inch electrical metal tubing. The 1 inch conduit is cut into 2 ft lengths with an angle grinder with a thin cutting wheel. The wood shown above will be used for construction of the gate.

Below you can see a useful tool we purchased for installation of some of the posts for our sheep fencing. It has helped make this garden fence project much easier compared to our last attempt in CT! It works like a T post driver, but instead creates a hole. Beside it is the 1 inch diameter piece that will serve as a sleeve to accept and hold the 10 ft 3/4 inch post.

Here We have the posts and sleeves in their approximate position along the back of the garden, waiting to be installed. The large post in the grass will be part of the sheep fencing – no space wasted! High tensile wire will be brought to that post from the system in the background at the far end of the garden where you can see the gate. We need the deer fencing to supplement this electric fence, as the deer would still be able to jump over the electric fencing from the sheep side.

Here Roy is ready to start digging the hole to accept the 1 inch diameter sleeve.

The sleeve will accumulate a core of dirt inside. Use a piece of wood so that your hammer doesn’t damage the top of the sleeve when you pound. You will then have to pull the sleeve back out and remove the dirt core. This may need to be done a couple of times before you can finally position the sleeve.

Below shows the dirt core that must be removed to create the hole.

The sleeve is pounded down into place, and the 10 ft post is easily slid into the sleeve.

An improvement this time around is that corners will have 2 adjacent posts for added strength when the fence is connected to the posts.

Here it is! One side is complete! A gate will be installed close to the center of this side. We will also have a place where we can easily open up the fence large enough for the tractor to get back in for rototilling next year.

Lastly will come the actual deer netting. We will install 7 ft deer netting with cable ties on these posts. Just a note – there are different qualities of this netting. Buy the cheap stuff, and you’ll be replacing it more frequently. We have found that bunnies still find their way through the deer netting, so we will probably put chicken wire on the outside of that at the base for added protection. The blueberries will be within this fencing, but I somehow think it will NOT be enough protection should the local bears discover them some day! But that will be another story!

January 27, 2018January 27, 2018

Build it and they will come!

The title, as some of you might recognize, is a misquote from the famous 1989 Movie Field of Dreams where the lead charater, played by Kevin Costner, hears a voice say, as he stares off into his cornfield, “If you build it, he will come.” In our case, we are gazing into our meadows and referring to our future flock of sheep, not any ghosts from the past!

Barn building, as you see, is proceeding rapidly, despite sub-zero temperatures, snow, and now, as the ground warms up, a bountious and incredibly tacky layer of mud and boot-clinging clay. Much kudos is due to our tireless builders who persevere despite all of the above that Old Man Winter has been hurling at them. I am NOT a cold weather person, having been brought up in the tropics of Australia, and am in awe of those who shrug off frozen extremities and potential frostbite without complaining!

Below you can see our intrepid building team installing the metal roof. We hope to harvest rainwater from this in the future to supply the barn with water. According to data from the internet, we can collect many tens of thousands of gallons from a roof of this size should we have sufficient storage capacity.

As well as three large doors for vehicle and stock use, we also have a smaller “people door” installed so that we can access or egress easily. Behind this door we will build a heatable office/sleeping quarters/storage room/sheep NICU!

Well, roof installed, large doors in and now they are making a platform for the cupola that the builder has fabricated, that will transform this large shed into a bona fide barn! Apart from aesthetics, a cupola actually has a function, working as a large roof vent, keeping the barn well ventilated. This will be important when we have a lot of animals inside, such as during lambing season, though this may require supplemental fans at some point. Note also the tranlucent sheets spaced evenly across the roof to allow natural light into the barn and decrease the need for electric illumination.

Something that we did not have in our previous barn was electric power. We dealt with this in a variety of ways, using gas generators and bringing power by heavy extension cords from almost 200 yards away. But this time we promised ourselves that we would have power installed, as you see below.

And although we will have the power company and local electrician install the major facets of the system in the barn, we are intending to have a very good friend and retired electrician (also a Deacon, ex-submarine commander, builder, and overall nice guy!) help us to plan the majority of lighting and electrical outlet placement within the structure.

This inside view gives a nice impression of how well the roof and window lighting works. There is lots of space now, but I imagine this will fill up rapidly!

Here is a time-lapse of the installation of the cupola today!

Cupola installed! As you can see, it gives a nice agrarian feel to the structure. Zooming in, the second picture shows the weathervane adorned with a ewe and her lamb!

And until our flock of sheep arrives, our adopted herd of deer (viewed indistinctly below from our front door) continue to enjoy the pastures, even under quite a few inches of snow. In fact this model of ruminants grazing pastures in the snow will be a model to emulate as we attempt to continue to pasture sheep on the fields for as much of the winter as we can.

And finally, I leave you with a distant view of the house at the top of our hill in the midst of our pastures, taken from an adjacent property on an even higher hill! We thought that we had a good view of the adjacent Laurel Ridge and Ligonier Valley, but this view really “takes the cake”!

	morningstarmeadows on Spring sheep maintenance
	Fabienne on Spring sheep maintenance
	Linda Hayes on Grandpa’s little helper!
	morningstarmeadows on Getting ready!
	Linda Hayes on Getting ready!