Old Fox Family had a farm, e-i-e-i-o...

And on their farm they had some sheep, e-i-e-i-o...

The fence wasn’t done when it was supposed to be done due to weather, again. But they did finally finish it just over a week ago. Hooray! That Wednesday our sheep came. Double hooray! We ended up with two extra momma sheep as well. So now we have 8. We named them after moons… Leda, Europa, Callisto, Luna, Elara, Thebe, Io, and our ram is Deimos. He is way too interested in the mommas. I can tell they are in heat. He follows them around smelling their bottoms. He just hasn’t figured out how to do the rest. We need to separate them before he does figure it out since we don’t want them getting pregnant until fall.

Louie has loved being able to roam the entire pasture. He seems much happier, although he still spends the hot portion of the day in the overhang so he must not have minded being stuck in there too much. He was afraid of the sheep at first. Not anymore. Now they’ve all accepted each other. We just started keeping them together day and night yesterday. This morning one of the neighbor's dogs came around and Louie herded all of the sheep into the lean-to and wouldn't let them out as he barked at the other dog warning it to stay away. I was very proud of him. Unfortunately, when I was weeding the garden later I noticed that every time a nearby tractor would start up or a car would go past, he did the same thing. Hum. Maybe he is too protective. The poor sheep didn't seem to have much time to graze before being sent back to the lean-to.

Our garden is coming along nicely, but weeding is an ongoing battle.

We had an upset on the cow front. We had put a deposit on two heifers and as part of the deal they had promised to wait to deliver the cows until the fence was in. They had said it was no problem because the cows were just out on pasture not costing them anything. Well apparently they changed their mind, without telling us. We called back to give them an update on the fencing and they said they decided to sell to someone else because the other person would only take their bull if he got the heifers too. And then they tried to keep the deposit saying that we had wasted their time and cost them money feeding the cows for the extra couple of weeks. Oh, and that it was our fault that they had problems selling the bull. What??!!! Obviously we pushed back and eventually they did return the deposit. I was pretty upset though. So now we have been searching for cows/heifers for a couple of weeks and we can’t find the breed we wanted. There just aren’t any available. It’s too late in the season. So I’m not sure what will happen there.

Old Fox Family had a farm e-i-e-i-o,

And on their farm they had a tractor e-i-e-i-o...

We bought a tractor! I like it. A lot. I look for excuses to use it. :) We bought the TYM 353HST. We got a great deal on it. We debated an old Ford 3000 and we drove a Mahindra, but it was a gear shift and not hydrostatic. I discovered that while I may be able to drive a stick shift just fine, apparently a tractor is much more difficult for me. I’m sure I could have figured it out eventually, but we didn’t have time for the learning curve since I need to be using it now. And I already have used it several times. I feel like a real woman when I’m on my tractor. :)