March 6, 2006
As you other shepherds know, this is the hardest time of the year with the labors of shearing and lambing. We are in the final stages of preparation for both. We have our birthing jugs all set up in the barn which is not too hard, just time-consuming and hauling the fencing around does wear down the back muscles a bit. One of my favorite moments was using an old Porsche car cover to haul straw from one end of the barn to the other to add bedding to the jugs! Zoom, zoom!

Yesterday my husband spent most of the afternoon arguing with fencing that wanted to stay frozen to the ground, herding the ewes together in one side of the feedlot and then going in with the skidsteerer to remove this winter's worth of straw and droppings - most of which were donated by our lovely Llama, HotRod. What a mountain of fertilizer it created! HotRod gave us plenty of stern looks of disapproval at being removed from his winter boudoir, but the shearer will be pleased and the fleeces will stay clean throughout the process.

This morning I did another round of cleaning in the barn getting it as spotless as possible before Tuesday's shearing. I love my Power-Vac! Although I am glad no one saw me. I look like a storm-trooper vacuuming the barn. We have 40 in our flock and I need a large and very clean space to lay down all those fleeces - even with tarps. We have some lovely horse stalls with rubber matting and fairly new pine walls, so this is my annual excuse to clean the stalls to within an inch of their life. Spiders beware, your webs are gone! On shearing day, I lay down tarps, then bring in fleeces as they come off the sheep and they are safe and sound in these immaculate stalls while we get through all the skirting. Even with help we can't skirt as fast as Tim can shear. Just writing about it gets my blood up. I better go check on tarps.