We have all been very ill for over a week now. Some sort of nasty flu virus. It has put us way behind on the homestead. Spring is not a time when there is wiggle room for being sick for days on end. We will be scrambling to catch up the next few weeks.
But despite our illness, basic life goes on around the farm.
Sheep
The lambs are doing very well. Lily’s tail fell off, exactly 21 days after being banded.
The elastrator band worked great, we will continue to use that method in the future.
Stella continues to be an amazing milking sheep for us. She is now standing still for milking without even having a halter on. She is just loose in the stall and stands for milking. Such an unexpected blessing!
With our illness I haven’t been able to work with the sheep milk, so we are freezing it so I can make stuff with it when I have more time.
Chickens
Eve and Lacy and their chicks are doing very well. All ten survived their first week of life, so that is great.
After much discussion and thought, we have decided to end our chicken breeding season this year without an additional incubation. We are in the thick of several huge life changes outside of our little homestead and really don’t have time to juggle raising a brood of chicks at this point. So we are finishing the year with only 17 chicks hatched for the breeding program. Not ideal, but it is what it is. We plan to hit the breeding program hard again in 2016 and catch up from this slower year.
We decided that the rooster that will be kept for next season is Frodo, so Rusty will be headed to the stew pot in the next few weeks.
He is a beautiful bird, but Frodo out-scores him in many of the things we are selecting for in our breeding birds.
Garden
The garden has been put way behind schedule because of the spring blizzard two weeks ago, and then our illness this last week. We are working hard to catch it up and I will do a garden update post later this week.
We are hopeful that by next week’s update we will be back on our feet again and enjoying all the fun that there is during spring on a farm!
Willow Creek Farm 