I can't help it. I feel as though it is all my fault that the Nubian babies died. Well, not all of them, but too many. The ones I sold that are not in my care have lived and are fine, so it cannot be said it was the group, because it wasn't. Yet why this last baby is dying, I do not know. I followed the worming instructions that the vet prescribed, plus gave the goats herbs and garlic weekly. They are on a decent goat hay and have free minerals and salt and the two adults and the buckling seem to be fine. 

The vet said that the goats were wormer resistant and the types of wormers were likely not used properly or in large enough doses. Again, this does not make sense because the babies I sold and the ones living on another farm are not sick and dying. I honestly thought this little one would make it. 

She was spunky and noisy and called for me whenever she heard my voice or saw me. That is what bottle fed babies do though. I was annoyed with her and did not like the constant bawling from her. Maybe she felt my distaste and since she had no mom, felt rejected. I don't know. 

I went out to feed the goats this afternoon and she was down and crying. I picked her up, though she could not stand, so I carried her in to the porch and gave her some Jersey milk. She drank about 2 ounces only and a bit later drank the rest. I gave her some rolled oats and some fresh hay. She ate a mouthful of oats and no hay and did not drink any water. She is so weak she cannot hold her head up. I gave her vitamins and minerals, a shot of penicillin in case she has an infection and also another shot of chemical wormer. There is little else I can do for her. She is in the porch on some blankets. Robbie the border collie is keeping her clean and she is occasionally whimpering. She will not last until morning though, I am quite sure of it. So sad. 

I am so deeply sorry little one. I have failed you somehow. I ask your forgiveness for not seeing you were sick and finding a way to help you. I don't know what else I can do for you now and ask the Creator to give you peace as you cross the rainbow bridge. 

The next year, 2015 will be an ear mark year for me. It is the beginning of two major changes in my life. One is to liquidate everything I own, slowly, about 10% or a little more each year. I plan to do this through my farm store, starting with small antiques and clothing. I have no idea if people will come to the farm store. I can only believe they will. I also will sell some farm meat and eggs, and occasional produce, depending on how the garden fares and if there is plenty. 

The other major change is to become self sustainable. I have everything I need. Technically, I should not have to purchase much in the next 10 years, other than dog and animal feed and medicines, some groceries and the odd pair of boots or jeans. 

I plan to make the soap I use both for personal washing and for laundry. I already make soap, so it is a matter of tweaking some recipes to fulfill the farm needs. I am learning to process the wool and will either felt clothing or spin the yarn and knit or crochet things. I have lots of fabric as well, so I can sew everything or anything I need. I should not need to shop much at all with the exception of items for the Inn. 

The farm produces eggs, and now with Elsie, the cow, I can try to do cheese, butter, yogurt, kefir and cream. Most of the farm is as set up as it is going to be. I have enough seeds to plant a large garden, a skid steer to ready the plots, and plenty of time. 

This winter's project is to begin to sort through the boxes from the move three years ago and ready them in lots for sale. Each month some new items from the next lot will arrive in the store. There will be essential oils, essential oil blends, soap, body butters, and skin care products, maybe even lipstick or lip gloss. 

So, on to the next part of this venture - to work towards owning nothing. I will try to keep smaller numbers of sheep and goats too, so the feed and care bill is less. Right now it costs 100 dollars a week to feed the dogs, seven dogs, 5 of them the size of small ponies. I will have to be careful if I want to reach that goal of sustainability. I was thinking, rather than sell the sheep to others for food, One sheep should feed the dogs for two weeks or longer at only $75 per week, so a little could be saved there. I do need help with the slaughter and cutting of the animals. All meat for  the dogs that is sheep or goat must be cooked well so the spread of tapeworms is not rampant. 

And so, let the journey begin.

Audrey is a very sweet, gentle baby girl llama, a cria. She has big brown eyes with long lashes and the beautiful little face of an angel. Audrey means noble and strength, but she is actually named after my cousin, Audrey, as many of my animals bear the names of family. That way they are always with me. 
Karin, her aunt, is now the low llama on the totem pole. Lucy Llama, Audrey's mother, protects her and still nurses her. I do not wean the crias, unless there is a problem with the mother showing signs of stress or fatigue, but Lucy seems just fine. 
Audrey comes to be loved, caressed and she talks the whole while. Llamas are browsers, like deer, and prefer to eat above their heads. Feeding them is a bit challenging. They will bend down to eat if they are hungry enough, though they far prefer food at their head height at least. Hay with weeds and leaves and many grasses is best for them. They need minerals and salt, too, and to have their toenails clipped occasionally. The llamas are dewormed along with the rest of the farm, with herbs and garlic, which they seem to enjoy. 

Audrey will stay on the farm with her aunt and mother, but the father is no longer living here, so there will be no more babies. Llamas live  to around the twenty year mark, with some lasting until they are thirty, while a few die at fifteen. I do not plan to be here to see the llamas to their old age and can only hope that they will have a great home when they leave the Fat Ewe Farm. I certainly enjoy Miss Audrey and I love my cousin Audrey just as well!

This is a bit of a rant, sorry in advance. 

People do not want to raise chickens to the point of adulthood, nor do they want to hatch chicks and brood them to the point where they no longer need a heat source and brood housing. There is a lot of work and if one major thing goes wrong, such as a power outage, the whole lot could die of hypothermia. There are perils in the raising of the chicks to adults as well, with a multitude of variables that could happen. Most don't. 

But the people want to buy laying hens, only they do not want to pay very much. If I had to buy chicks, they usually cost around 4 dollars each newly hatched. The electric bill for heat lamps and the feed bill for the special chick starter without medication is high. There is some mortality as the weak ones do not survive for unknown reasons. In four months or so, the birds are at the point of lay, but there are roosters as well as hens, normally half and half. Yet, the people want to buy the hens only and expect to pay $20 dollars or so or LESS for a young hen ready to lay eggs. They do not want the roosters, but the roosters have cost the same as the hens for the farmer to produce. Yes, the farmer can butcher the roosters and eat them, but that does not help recoup the costs of rearing chicks. 

So, I am not going to do that anymore. My hens hatch enough babies to make this flock sustainable now. The extra birds I have will be for my own freezer only and I am not going to sell chicks or chickens anymore. What is the point? People are not willing to pay a fair price. I say $25 each for a pair of birds, one hen and one rooster or $50 for the hen. Then the folks get angry, but they, too, could buy the rooster and butcher him themselves for their own freezers. People want the benefits and not the work and do not understand or care about the farmer. So be it. 

This is another lesson. This spring I vowed I would not sell chicks and I have no plans to do so, unless the hens naturally hatch too many and I catch them and sell them. No more incubator hatching, is what I mean. And now, no more chickens for sale. They will be in my freezer before I give them away at $25 for a hen only!

A couple of days ago, the Fat Ewe Farm acquired a small standard jack donkey. He is an intact male, in other words and was previously named Jack Ass. I think Jack is fine. Jack is a very attractive, fine animal. His feet appear sound and he allows me to pet him and hug him. He is spending a week or two in the corral, getting used to the dogs and other farm animals. Then I will perhaps introduce him to the sheep. Apparently, he has been introduced to goats where he is from and did not care for them one bit. He would bite them and throw them. Hmm. I do not want that to happen to the sheep, but he is a protector for the sheep or goats, so he needs to get along with them. 
Donkey have a very loud bray. He let out a yell early this morning, and I swear my bed shook. The dogs came running and barking, not having a clue what that horrible sound was or where it came from exactly. Jack must have been smiling to himself. 

The only bad thing is that Jack wore his halter for too long without it ever being removed and it cut into his face leaving terrible indentations. I am hoping the bones are not altered and that his skin will grow out healthy again. Poor Jack. If he is a good donkey, he might just get a girlfriend for his birthday this summer. I sure do like him. 

Earlier this week, I loaded 4 Angora goats in the truck and drove them to Vegreville for butchering. Two were males in rutt, which is when they urinate on themselves to attract the females and they are producing more male hormones. Most people would not want to eat a goat in rutt, but there are a few who prefer it. I have never tried goat, period, so it will be a new experience. In the Middle East, the preferred goat for meat is Angora, which has a finer texture and is considered sweeter than other goat meats. I am sure it all depends on what the goat has been fed and what time of year it is slaughtered. I did not buy these goats for meat. As a matter of fact, one of the females cost $450 and the other $350, the buck was $250 and the younger buck was born here. His mother is the Angora that I am keeping, the only one who still had the mother instinct. Being bred exclusively for heavy fibre has left the American goats without the basic instincts of mothering and even survival. I did see great improvement on my farm, with the goats being able to eat only hay rather than pellets or grain. They were not worm resistant as some other breeds, and need more protection from the cold, despite heavy mohair coats. These coats part down the centre of the back exposing delicate skin, so the goats need rain and wind protection much more than other breeds. 

The two year old male was 66 pounds on the rail. That is a big goat, and the butcher said he was the largest he has processed. The size is one of the reasons they are a meat and fibre goat in the Middle East. The year old buck was 44 pounds. One female was 56 pounds and the other right behind her. These are large goats. I sheared them as well as I could prior to butchering so I could at least harvest the mohair, but I don't know if the smell of the buck will be easy to clean and deodorize. 

Tomorrow, I will try a rack of goat roast, this one from one of the females. I am a little scared to try the buck in rutt, but will give it a go, too. The meat, if I find it tasty, will be sold to any buyers who are willing to pay $11 per pound. The cost to process the goats was $475, four hours driving, and the original cost of the goats. I will never recoup the loss, but at $11 per pound, it will help offset the expense of owning these goats. I will have the mohair as well and it does sell washed and clean for $10 per pound. That is not very much actually, being so light and fluffy. I think a whole goat does not have more than 2 or 3 pounds of fibre. The reason one of the females was $100 more initially is that she was a high fibre producer. 

The female that I kept had a buckling and was a good mother and raised him. I have kept him and his fate will be meat next year, but after he breeds the Nigerian Dwarf goats for Nygoras. The plan then is to breed this year's Nygoras to those Nygoras and see what the second generation produces. I kept one Nygora doeling and one buckling this year and will keep one of each next year too, provided the doe has the right sex of kids. 

So, tomorrow, the taste will tell the rest of the tale. Stay tuned. 

Audrey Llama, this year's beautiful young female cria, is an absolute delight. She is friendly and loves hugs and rubs. She still chortles, a sound that the babies make, which sounds like bubbling humming at the same time. When she sees me, she tends to come over for a snuggle and a chat. Her mother, Lucy, to the right of her, has regained her health, after a long fight with mineral deficiency, worms and mites over the winter. Karin, with her butt to the camera, is a friendly girl too, and the under dog of the trio. Lucy is the boss and when they are feeding, sends Karin away. Llamas like to have their own places to feed and do not like to share. Whereas sheep will tend to stick their heads into a bale of hay and crowd one another, llamas want to be separate, as you can see by the way they are feeding in the picture. Even the baby will now feed away from her mother. 

Llamas can be raised with sheep, but do not avail themselves of minerals as much as they should. I have begun to add a little salt and some dried molasses to the mineral mix for the llamas. I need to make some feed baskets that are high enough so the sheep cannot reach them so the llamas are happy. Right now, they will wait until the sheep are done eating before they feed, but by then, the tasty morsels are all but gone. Llamas can do well on poor forage, as long as it has a variety of weeds and leaves and not just grass, which is not their first choice, being browsers, like deer. 

They have been a wonderful addition to the farm. I would recommend llamas for anyone looking to add a quiet, pretty animal. Their fibre can be shorn and spun or felted too, so they do provide some value and llama meat, though a bit bland, is very fine eating, not that I am eating my girls. Llamas breed once a year because gestation is nearly a year. The females do not go into heat, but rather the act of breeding stimulates ovulation. Once bred they will fight a male off. There is no longer a male on the farm, but they can interbreed with Alpacas, and there are two males here. They are kept a long distance from the llamas in the hopes that they do not jump the fence and breed my girls. The resulting animal is a hurarizio, a small version with a cute face, but they are frowned on by alpaca and llama breeders, both.

Hay in fleece is a pain. It gets right down in the fleece and stays there, at least in some fleece. I try to explain to others about the vegetative matter in long wooled sheep in my region, north eastern Alberta. We feed hay seven months a year, more than the sheep are on pasture. Ideally, if the sheep could be shorn when they come off pasture, the wool is relatively lovely and clean, but when they come in, it is because there is no more pasture and winter is setting in, so they need their fleece to stay warm. All that lovely fleece then is sacrificed to the winter feeding. 

It helps to take the small sheep out away from the large sheep, who tend to pull hay out and the hay then falls on the backs of the sheep. Each of the three years I have been here, I have tried different feeders. None have really worked. This year the feeder is vertical and the sheep can barely put their heads inside it to grab hay. The wool around their necks will be ruined by the end of winter and full of hay. It will be discarded for sure. This vertical sheep feeder makes it difficult for sheep with horns to eat well, since they cannot stick their heads in and after a few hours, most of the good hay is inaccessible to them. Fortunately, they are hardy sheep that will do well anyhow. 

I removed four tiny lambs to a new pen, but they already had hay pulled down on them. The Babydoll sheep have tight wool and the hay really does not penetrate it. But the Icelandics have loose long wool and it is a magnet for the hay. These lambs are so small that the only real option would be to feed them on the ground, but they waste half of the hay then. As it is they waste a whole lot. 

There are some other options. Coating the sheep is possible, but with the longwooled breeds like the Icelandics, the coats would need to be changed every month. Their wool grows quickly and felts easily so a tight coat would mean felted wool. I still want to try it for a few of the other breeds, like the Cotswolds. 

So, when the hand spinners turn their noses up at the vegetative matter in the fleece, it is because of where the sheep come from and the breeds more than poor management. I keep trying for a solution. Maybe next year I will find it. 

It was a beautiful fall last year, 2013. There was no snow and the days were warm and sunny, just like this year. I actually grew up in Alberta, in Redwater, which is about 2 hours from here to the west and a little south. As a kid, we prayed not to have snow on Halloween and many years we didn't. I do not think the weather has changed that much. What seems to be drastically, cold winters like the last two we had, are just winters that were the same as when I was kid. I do not recall it being much different. I remember 40 degrees below, but that was Farenheit. Well guess what? It is the same as Celsius. That is where the temperatures meet. 

Last winter we had forty below for a few days here and there. That was pretty darn cold, but I walked to school in that temperature, not far, maybe 10 blocks in total, but still, I walked. We did not get rides in those days. All  the kids dressed up and walked to and from school. 

The farm last year was pretty in October, just like this year. The grass is starting to get green here again. Now I don't recall that last year, but when I check the photos from October, there is green in the grass too. I looked at the temperature graphs for the years I went to school and the past few here and they very close to the same. I do believe in global, rather universal warming. It is not just this planet that is increasing in temperature at an exponential rate, but even the most distant planets are changing. The universe it getting warm. But winter is still the same. I am sticking to that.