Quick farm update ...

Spencer has moved on to greener pastures in search of more beautiful, woolly women. He has been purchased by a Shetland farm north of Guelph. My ewes are very happy he is gone. All is now peaceful. I'm positive he covered Latifah; she did the whole mellow-kick back-smoke a cigarette-thing after the fact ;-). The two 2007 lambs? Your guess is as good as mine. I think he covered Jasmine. Maybe. And I'm not sure Kivu ever let him anywhere near her. Weirdly enough though, she was the only one that looked sad when he left. Too little, too late, Kivu :-).

The girls are in their small winter pen now. The big snow the other day resulted in some serious shoveling; Alison and I had to shovel the pen out 'cause the snow was getting too high. One more snowfall like that and the girls could have walked out over the top rail! I strategically situated their hobbit house sheds to open to the north-east; the majority of the winds on our property come from the south, south-west, or east. Once a year we get a good nor'easter that blows snow inside. In theory. However this is the second nor'easter we've had this winter so far (and it's not even officially winter!!!!).

My awesome neighbour and hay supplier gave me some bad news. Beef prices crashed in the fall, so he's overwintering more cattle than usual. Which means, of course, he'll need more hay than usual. This is an industry-wide issue in this area, combined with a lackluster (if any) second cut due to the drought. Hay might be quite dear by the spring.

So all is peaceful and quiet, and the girls will spend the winter quietly eating and ruminating and hopefully growing babies due some time after March 27, 2008.