A diary of the projects, hurdles, rewards and family life at we recorded at Wise Acres, our former homestead in Horsefly, BC. (Careers and teenagers have forced us back into the city, at least for a little while.)

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Lambs, pigs, turkeys, chickens and calves...oh my!?

The spring-like weather and our first 4-H meeting, has got us going on our plans for Spring 2010.  My little ram Hvitkarr, has been doing his best to get the girls bred but since it is January and he is still working on at least one of my ewes, I'm not sure if he has been successful.  We shall see.

Speaking of lambs...today we were over at my friend Sara's visiting Millie (our Dexter cow who she is boarding for us) and we got to see a little orphan lamb she just got.  How cute is this?

That's Mimi  and Sara feeding Rosie...

We have had so much fun getting to know Sara and Matt and their little girls...

Sara has a similar interest in raising her own food and is continually adding livestock to her homestead.  We spend a lot of time sharing lessons learned and making plans for the next animals we want to raise.

She has inspired me to add a few feeder pigs and some turkeys to our list this year.  Today Erich and I did a walk around the property, identifying where we are going to put everyone and figuring out what needs to be built.  It's all very exciting!  

It seems that Gwenna has caught the bug too, she joined 4-H this year and is planning to do a ewe lamb project, which means she gets to keep the ewe and next year will take the ewe's lamb to market.  Since I'm not sure if our ewes are going to lamb and because they are on the smaller side when it comes to meat/carcass I think we will get a suffolk cross ewe lamb from a woman who raises them for 4-H 'ers.

Now that we've got that sorted...time to move on to my seed catalogues and the garden!