19 Aug 2010
Back Home Again

from Minnesota, where we were visiting a daughter and the grandkids. It was quite a trip, and included a couple of side adventures to other sheep producers, so I'll be blogging more about it. After I've slept for awhile ...

20:21 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

09 Aug 2010
Gathering Tools
Sickle Bar Mower

Well, we started buying tools for haymaking on our own this weekend - the photo above shows a 1910 McCormick-Deering No. 7 Sickle Bar Mower. It was originally designed to be pulled by horses, but somebody has put a tongue for a tractor on it - and painted it as a yard ornament. But it's still in fine mechanical condition, and should do quite nicely across our more or less level pastures. Believe it or not, parts are still made for this mower - it's quite popular with our Amish friends.

Next step is a tractor - we'll also need a rake and a baler. It's the latter that actually concerns me most - they're notoriously twitchy and tough to keep running, so we'll have to be very careful there.

We've been way too dependent on friends and neighbors to cut our hay - this has got to stop. Our pasture still isn't cut this year, and there's a lot of waste out there! Can't stand it! Freeman Dyson (the physicist) was right:

The most important invention of the last two thousand years was hay. In the classical world of Greece and Rome and in all earlier times, there was no hay. Civilization could exist only in warm climates where horses could stay alive through the winter by grazing. Without grass in winter you could not have horses, and without horses you could not have urban civilization. Some time during the so-called dark ages, some unknown genius invented hay, forests were turned into meadows, hay was reaped and stored, and civilization moved north over the Alps. So hay gave birth to Vienna and Paris and London and Berlin, and later to Moscow and New York.

Update: I (and Mr. Dyson) stand corrected.

06:54 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

03 Aug 2010
Comfy Kitty

Moonbeam

 

18:47 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

25 Jul 2010
America's god is dying

Very thought provoking article, covering much more than simple religious predilections.

America is the first great experiment in Protestant social formation. Protestantism in Europe always assumed and depended on the cultural habits that had been created by Catholic Christianity. America is the first place Protestantism did not have to define itself over against a previous Catholic culture. So America is the exemplification of constructive Protestant social thought.

(link) [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]

11:39 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

24 Jul 2010
The Revamped Hen House

New Henhouse Roof
A new roof and a new coat of paint, too!

16:19 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

22 Jul 2010
New Hen House Roof

Took a vacation day today and installed a new hen house roof. The existing roof was over 50 years old as far as we could tell, and was starting to seep pretty badly. It needed done.

I used Ondura panels - and am very pleased with the result. They went right on over the old roof, even though it was slightly out of square and badly worn. And it only took me about 8 hours and less than $200 for materials - no tools needed other than a circular saw, chalk line, tape, knife and hammer. Easy as could be.

20:55 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

17 Jul 2010
Insane Weather

Right now, the outside air temperature is 94°F. The humidity is 65%. That puts the heat index at 114°F.

Even though there's tons of stuff we need to do, there's no working outside in this weather. Not unless we want to roast ourselves.

17:16 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

10 Jul 2010
Dave and Surprises

Dave and the Shetland Surprise lambs, July 2010

13:10 /Home | 1 comment | permanent link

03 Jul 2010
A Picture as Promised

New LambOnly one of the little buggers would hold still long enough, but since they're virtually identical I figured it wouldn't make much difference. Haven't named them yet, but note the black strip on this one's head. They both have it, and it's a stain, not a coat color. You see, they haven't quite figured out that the most efficient way to nurse is from the side, not the back. And the back end of a sheep very often has material that'll mark you... but at least it doesn't smell too bad. Yet.

I've seen plenty of lambs out here, but these two take the cuteness cake. One curled up in the feed bowl we had set out for her momma and went sound asleep. Neither seems to have any fear of the farmer or the farmeress - they'll just trot right up, curious as to what you're doing. They bleated in unison at Lorraine when she was feeding the cats tonight - and watched practically our every move all day. When they weren't sleeping, anyway.

I have a feeling that these two are gonna be a trip - surprise, indeed.

20:44 /Home | 1 comment | permanent link

01 Jul 2010
Still Surprising

This has been a year of surprises, and today we got another - our seven year old Shetland ewe dropped twins! Once again, we hadn't even known she was in a family way. There's only one active ram in the flock, and he's not yet a year old, and has been segregated since March from all the ewes we don't want bred (including Meliah, the Shetland, who, incidentally, was not named by us, and was born well before anybody outside of Illinois had heard of Barak Obama).

But these lambs are pretty obviously his - white, curly fleece, pink noses and no googley Shetland eyes. Given the gestation period for sheep of ~155 days, that would put the breeding right around February 2nd.

In other words, right about the time we did our landnama, and our luck completely changed.

When the clue phone rings, I always try to answer.

21:11 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Jun 2010
The Anosognosic’s Dilemma

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know ...

There are a zillion things I don’t know. And I know that I don’t know them. But what about the unknown unknowns? Are they like a scotoma, a blind spot in our field of vision that we are unaware of? I kept wondering if Rumsfeld’s real problem was with the unknown unknowns; or was it instead some variant of self-deception, thinking that you know something that you don’t know. A problem of hubris, not epistemology.

(link) [New York Times: Opinionator]

21:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

26 Jun 2010
On the Home Front

One thing a news strike does: it cuts down on material to comment on in blog posts! But it also seems to result in a calmer overall disposition, and that's a Good Thing™.

Trying to keep up with the lawn and general garden work this year has been a real chore - we've had a tremendous amount of rainfall, and the heat and humidity make it feel more like late July than late June. The garden's been too soggy to work in much, and weeds have gone rife where some of our planned plantings have simply drowned in the muck. The tomatoes, peppers, cukes and pumpkins seem OK, but most everything else has been a wash - literally. I did manage to get the woodpile on the west side of the barn cleaned up (and partially burned) today. That task has been planned for, oh, six years, at least!. And I got a chunk of mucking done in the big stall Friday evening. Lorraine got the yard mowed yesterday, and I got the ditch and the ve this morning, but other than that, it's been too hot to work outside for long.

I do have some opinion pieces I saw in the Times to opine on, and a few other tidbits that I've gleaned from blogs and other non-news sources, but that's about it. Maybe I'll start working my way back through my "to be posted" pile again...

We'll see.

22:37 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

23 Jun 2010
Stoicism Is Just So Yesterday

I have an old Harvard Classics edition of Meditations on my bedside table - it's been there for nearly 30 years. And will continue to be there, gods willing, another 30.

Ours is not a philosophical age, much less an age of Stoicism. As Frank McLynn explains in his new biography of Marcus Aurelius, the last of Rome's "five good emperors," commander of Rome's prolonged campaigns against the invasions of barbarian German tribes, and the last important Stoic philosopher of ancient days, our philosophers (academics) no longer profess to help the average person answer life's great metaphysical questions. Contemporary philosophers might contemplate such abstruse problems as whether mental properties can be said to emerge from the physical processes of the universe; what the necessary and sufficient conditions are for self-interest; where the mind stops and the rest of the world begins-not, perhaps, the pressing existential questions presented by the normal course of a human life.

(link) [In Character]

via MyAppleMenu:Reader

06:35 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

17 Jun 2010
Cleaning Up

Took advantage of a break in the rain to snag a couple of vacation days and get some work done around here. Shoveled a lot of shit today - got one stall clean and another about halfway done. The folks who sold us Bill the Llama are coming over tomorrow morning at 9 to give us a hand (and hopefully some tips) shearing him.

Looking back over the blog, I've not mentioned that we're having an open faining on Midsummer's Eve. Kinda of payback to the Powers (especially Thor) and the wights for their assistance in our recent refinancing. If you're in the area and want to drop by, drop me a line first and I'll get you directions.

Neither of us has had any news today - it feels good. I think we're addicted, and "news junkie" may be a more literal term than most folks realize.

20:02 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

15 Jun 2010
News Strike, Round 2

You may recall our news strike from last year - it's come to it again. I guess we just need a respite from the doom and gloom that seems to constantly bombard us, from the 'Net, from radio, from TV, from everywhere. So, taking up once again the motto "no news is good news" we're off the dole for at least a month.

I feel better already.

19:16 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Next 15 entries