What happened on the farm in 2017 while I wasn't posting?

Too much to post now, but here's a 30 second update: I love this shot with the little puffy white clouds in the blue sky over the bright green paddock filled with little puffy white sheep.

Lots of calves born.

Some really good storms, but damage limited to things like trees and branches falling on fence lines.

Living in the countryside and watching big storms blow through has some up sides - great rainbows! Just wish I had a better camera. 

Our experiment with pilgrim geese came to an end. They were beautiful, but too messy - pooping all around the house - and too aggressive against small ducks, small dogs and small children, so they went to live on another farm.

Our daughter K5 and her husband Jeremiah moved into Grandma's house next door, so with them here and K9 growing a little bigger, we have more ranch hands to help out with chores.

This was cool looking - someone ripped the clouds in half?

I now fertilize our pastures with Redmon salt, which I buy from a friend. Unfortunately our tractor does not have a front loader on it, so we always have to borrow a neighbor's tractor to unload the one ton bags. But another great thing about living in rural America is the fact we do have awesome neighbors, so they loan us the tractor.

Gained a new barn cat. Meet Jonesy, who has six claws on his front paws. He showed up during a storm. Not sure if he came out of the woods or someone from town dropped him off. He was starving - his sibling died on the outside of our fence, and Jonesy almost died when our shepherd dog Dandy got a hold of him, but the big boys rescued him. It is a double miracle because our old barn cat Jimmy actually likes Jonesy. 

Another form of wildlife living in our woods. Long black snake. No, I did not shoot this one - not poisonous, therefore a "friendly" (as long as it stays out of our chicken coop!).

Remember those one ton bags of sea salt? I have tried various ways of getting it out of bags and spread it some what evenly across our pastures. Last time, the boys and I had to laboriously shovel it into buckets and then lift it up to pour into a funnel spreader on back of a tractor. This time I thought it would be easy and quick to borrow our neighbor Sarah and her red tractor to lift bag up above fertilizer spreading truck, so K8 (in truck bed) could cut bottom of sack. Would have worked except the red tractor could not lift bag that high and extend out without back tires coming off the ground. Exciting, but dangerous. So I called a second neighbor, Thomas, who has a much bigger tractor. He fortunately was home, so he came and rescued us. To avoid wasting both neighbor's time and tractors in the future, I am now working on plan #3 which I will unveil in March or April. Stay tuned for another episode of "Trying to work smarter, not harder, on the farm".

K9 loved Thomas's giant tractor.

After long neglect, we turned our attention back to the greenhouse. After some online research, I found this wiggle wire stuff which Jeremiah is using to attach the plastic roof, which will allow us to roll up the sides in warmer weather.

Our crew: John, K6 (who always likes to "pose" for a camera shot), and K8.

It was John's idea to build these raised garden beds. They contain stacks of old used tires which hold the weight of the dirt beds. Great way to re-cycle, and make it easy to garden without having to bend down or too far over.

We are in the middle of winter now. Normally I would start feeding hay to the cattle and sheep at the end of December, but I have been doing it since early September due to a drought here in southern Missouri - no rain equalled no grass growing, so we had to buy triple the amount of hay compared to a normal autumn/winter. Has only happened twice in past several years, and it really hurts the budget! 

Two more recent additions to the farm - Bill and Betty. Their momma was an Anatolian shepherd and poppa was a Great Pyrenees. They are big and smart. Were supposed to be large guard dogs for the sheep, but it looks like they are now pets living in the barn and yard with other dogs. I am okay with this, since my big guard dog is getting older, I have been thinking of getting two large breed pups. I will get two more LGD's to live with the flock.  

It has been our worse lambing season ever. This is "Hope", a little girl who needed bottle feeding. She is the 2nd lamb this winter to need bottle feeding. We also lost one ewe who had a lamb stuck, and later her first lamb died from bloat because he got into our alfalfa hay storage and ate too much. I am pulling our 2 year old ram out of flock to give the ewes a break until fall, and will be replacing him with a new guy later this year. 

In spite of various ups and downs, I love life on the farm.