Useful piece of advice for the day..

If you are going to leave your 'barn shoes' out on the porch overnight........

Just make sure you take a quick peek inside before you put them on.

Just sayin'.

Just stuffs!

OK, I guess it's time for a new post. I received a  message from my friend Angie, in which she was harassing me for slacking on my blog duties....which I find just a liiiiiittle bit humorous, because her blog has not been updated since December....of  2008.
Spring is finally trying to arrive. The mercury climbed to almost SEVENTY degrees today! The grass is beginning to grow, the wild birds are fighting over nesting spots, and there's this------------------------->
Yes, the lamb countdown gadget is down to 22 days, twenty-two! How did that happen?
The ewes are growing larger every day.....some more so than others.

Remember this picture of Willow from the end of January?

This is what she looks like today-with at least three weeks left to go!

I will admit that some of that gargantuan size is due to her fleece; Willow has the longest fleece of all my ewes, but there is still a whole lotta baby belly there too! She has only had twins once, and she typically is a pretty big girl-even when she has single lambs, but, seriously, what has she got in there?
Speaking of fleece, I have an appointment with my shearer on Saturday afternoon....that is...I have an appointment-as long as the weather cooperates and we don't get more rain.

I am so tired of wet weather and mud. I am waiting for the day when I don't have to wear these anymore....not the chickens, the boots..although I usually do end up wearing a few chickens most days...the boots are infinitely more annoying.

Oh, I'm sorry, I digress, we were talking about shearing, weren't we?

I am excited to get shearing done because the naked sheep bellies will give me a better idea of what to expect for lambies next month. Also, some of the sheep have started to roo (shedding off last year's fleece)  and I don't want to lose any more fleece before the shearer gets here, so I hope we can stick to the scheduled date.
Ande is shedding his fiber as well; which is OK because my shearer refuses to shear llamas. I can't blame him...this is the face I see when I try to pull the loose fiber off of Ande. Despite the fact that he appears to be smiling, this is not a happy llama face!

He is harmless though, I still get little bits of fiber off of him until he grows impatient with the process.

The coming weeks will be a flurry of activity: shearing, lambing, gardening....oh, and look! My rhubarb is coming up!

Sorry, I got distracted again.....I was saying that this will be a busy time here in our little corner of Iowa. In addition to the aforementioned activities.......I am thinking about some Chicken Math......just sayin'...you need to be prepared for that.

I will just leave you with this~

"O.M.G!! I can't believe she still thinks this is funny!"

"She knows we hate her, right?"

"The old woman has finally lost it!"

 "You think this is funny?"

"Go ahead and laugh mom, I'm totally pooping on you next time you walk under my perch!"

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Well, of course I did! Because I 'felt' like it.

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you spend it with someone...errr....if you are Emma, spend it with something you love.

"Mwaahhh!"

Well, it's finally getting warmer out, and the mountains of snow have turned into rivers of sludge. I fought a losing battle yesterday trying to clean out the barns, and decided to wait until more of the snow has melted, or until it gets cold enough for the ground to refreeze so that I am not slip-slidin' away on the slimy mud. Frustrated that I couldn't get things done outside as I had planned, I decided to spend the afternoon doing something completely different. I have seen needle-felted figurines on many of the fibery websites and at crafty shows and often thought that I would like to try making one. I make stuff out of clay all the time, so clay to fiber didn't seem like a huge leap... sculpting is sculpting....sort of.

I should have taken pictures all the way along, but since I kind of threw myself into this project I didn't have that forethought.

If you are not familiar with the process, you basically take a ball of roving or fiber, roll it up tight, stab it, a lot, with incredibly sharp needles, and keep stabbing it until you make it into something. Someone more adept at the process would probably argue that there is much more to it, and I am sure that there is, but I didn't have any patterns or anything so I just kind of winged it. Oh, also, it helps to avoid stabbing yourself with said incredibly sharp needles...it happens...a lot...OK, maybe it just happens to me.

So, I decided that I wanted to make a sheep...I KNOW...I am so imaginative! I started with a gob of britch wool from last year's shearing (always wondered what I was going to do with that stuff), made it into a ball, and went to town stabbing the bejeezers out of it; which I found to be an excellent form of stress relief, until I stabbed through the fiber, and into my finger....repeatedly. I would like to note that it really slows down the process when you have to stop every few minutes to wait for your fingers to stop bleeding. 

After a few hours, I ended up with this-

As I mentioned, she isn't finished,  I know it's kind of wonky at this point, but that's what is nice about needle-felting; you can add more fiber and reshape it as you go. When I brought the little sheepie out to show my husband, I promptly told him that it wasn't finished and I started to go through a laundry list of conformation flaws as if I were looking at a sheep in the show ring: "It's head is too big, the topline isn't level, the back is too short, the tail is too low-set..." When I finally stopped with my dissertation he stared blankly at me for a moment and put it all in perspective, "You do know that this isn't a real sheep....aaaand it's made out of a ball of fiber, right?"

Why does he always have to be so practical?

Animals with antlers-you should have seen this one coming.

I know, I do this every year and I am sorry about that, but somehow this just never gets old.....for me anyway....I think my animals may disagree.

" Oh. My. Gosh. Here she goes again. Somebody call the Humane Society pleeeeease!"

"Don't worry, Jolly Ball, I know where she sleeps!"

"Really? Do we have to do this every year? Really? Really?"

"Why can't we just go to the dog park like normal families?"



"Seriously mom, this is asking a lot, even for an  easy-going Golden Retriever."

"Don't be so grouchy, you guys, I think this is kind of fun!"

" FUN? You WOULD think this is fun, you big dorky llama! This is NOT fun! Look at me! I am a chicken with antlers for sheep's sake! A chicken with antlers!"

Happy Holidays from the critters at Crosswinds Farm.

10 reasons why I need to stay busy

You might wonder, now that my fall craft show season is over and the next show isn't until February, whether or not I am taking some time off and relaxing a bit. In answer to that question-yes, I have taken a bit of time to get many of the projects completed around the house that were put on the back burner while I was running back and forth to craft shows over the past few months. I have painted nearly every room in our house and am now in the process of rehanging pictures, rearranging furniture and generally putting the house back in order. Whether or not that sounds relaxing, I don't know, but it is for me.
Now that my inside projects are nearing completion, I took some time today to give the animals some attention. I thought that it might be nice to take some holiday photos while I was out with my little friends. They were all so happy that I was spending time with them. I was very busy with the animals today...very busy indeed.

First I spent some quality time with the kitties. They were so excited.

Then I went out to give my sheepies some much-needed attention.

Can't you see the happiness on their little faces?

Of course the dogs really wanted to spend some time with me as well. They weren't wagging their tails or anything, but I could tell how thrilled they were that I was with them.

"Please mom, go back to work...pleeease?"
I couldn't tell for sure what the chickens were thinking, but I bet they had a good time as well.

"Somebody, make it stop!"
"Here, Mira, let me get this ridiculous thing off of you.....what is that crazy woman thinking???"

Hmmm, maybe it's a good thing that I don't normally have a lot of free time.

I smell a rat...or something.

You all know by now about my love of Barn Swallows. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that a very young pair of Swallows was building a nest inside of my smaller chicken coop. To me, this did not seem like the best choice of nesting sites; inside of a coop full of cackling chickens, only 6 1/2 feet off the floor of the coop, with me passing in and out right under the nest all day....but then, I am not a Barn Swallow, so what do I know?

Since we have had problems with foxes in the past, I am usually quite vigilant making sure that the barn doors are closed up at night. We have also added electric fence a few inches off the ground around the outside of the chicken run to deter any predators that might try to dig under the fence. With the new development of the swallows taking up residence in the coop, I was faced with a dilemma; do I assume that the electric fence and other measures that we have taken will be enough to keep the chickens safe if I leave the door open for the Swallows to get in and out, or do I close the door and leave the Swallows unable to tend their nest. I opted to leave the door open until we could make a small opening high enough for the Swallows to get in and out without inviting predators.

Yesterday was the first morning since I had let the Leghorn chicks and their adoptive mamas out with the rest of the big girls, so when I went out to do chores at 5:30 in the morning, I was anxious to see if everyone had done OK overnight, especially since I had left the barn door opened all night.
As soon as I headed out the door of the house, all I could hear was loud, cackling coming from the chicken barns. "Oh crap!" (or something along those lines). I hurried to the barns. Some of the hens were outside 'bawking' angrily, and more noise was coming from inside. I peeked in the first barn-there were angry hens, but no mama's with chicks. I looked in the second barn, frantically scanning the room to see where the chicks were, then, in the back corner, I spotted them. Both mamas, each with their respective chicks gathered protectively under their wings, sitting in the back of the barn..........well, I wondered, what is the problem then? I walked around checking for the source of the disturbance, finding nothing. Then on one last check of the first barn, I found two of my Rhode Island Red hens glaring behind a nest box and protesting loudly, refusing to move even as I pushed them aside. When I was finally able to see what all the chatter was about....I wished that I hadn't.

THIS was the reason for all the discord!

OK, so now what do I do? This was quite a predicament!

After considering the delicate nature of this situation, the first thing I did was to herd all of the hens out of the coop. As good as they were cornering this guy, I just didn't think that I was in need of further assistance from my fowl friends. Then of course, following the most logical thought process, my next thought was-I need my camera! What kind of an idiot says, "Hey, there is a skunk 3 feet from me...I think I will go get my camera". I think the answer to that is quite clear.I took these pictures and then considered the conundrum that was facing me-how am I going to get this little 'stinker' out of here without any malodorous consequences? Normally a wild creature that has overstepped his boundaries so flagrantly, and has had the audacity to enter one of the barns, putting my animals at risk, is shortening it's own lifespan considerably. But what does one do with this sort of fellow? If I put out a live trap and catch him, at some point I will have to retrieve said trap.....and I'm just sayin', I don't want to walk over and pick up a trap full of skunk perfume. If someone were to shoot the varmint (not Gary or I......both of us are completely incapable) he would release the offensive odor all over my chicken barns and my eggs would never be the same again. I needed a plan. I carefully moved the nest box. My thinking was that this would give him plenty of room to get out and, just this once, he would be given a pardon.

Hmmmm, he doesn't seem to be moving.
Now he has done it! I was getting a little angry. It was time to take some serious measures.

My weapon of choice? A broom.What!? It was the longest handled thing I could find!
I gingerly poked at my rival, urging him to get on his merry way....and poked again. Apparently skunks have very poor vision and can only see 2-3 feet in front of them so this was going to take some time. I poked, he moved a few feet...tail came up...I moved a few feet....quickly.

This picture is kind of blurry, because, as I mentioned earlier, I was the idiot holding a broom and a camera whilst chasing a skunk.After several minutes of this awkward dance, he finally got moving in the appropriate direction- OUT. I hurried after him as he dashed towards freedom. I think, at that point he and I shared the same aspiration-that he would get out and never return. Unfortunately, my hens had other ideas. As he ran out and tried to make his way to the fence line, my hens came running toward the evil perpetrator like a band of savage warriors, and thwarted his escape.........sadly, his only option was to run UNDER the barn where I, or my broom, could no longer reach. Thanks for your help, girls! Now what? My only hope now was that he would come out of hiding after dark and vacate the premises.
Late in the evening after the Barn Swallows had returned to their nest for the evening, I closed everyone up tight. I got out a flashlight, and while crawling around on all fours, I shined the light, peering into the dark crawlspace under the barn searching for my nemesis......yeah, that was yet another brilliant idea. Since there were a couple of corners not visible, I could not confirm whether or not the critter had found his way out. Even though he never sprayed, this morning there was still a small odor emanating from under the barn.....I am really hoping that he is gone and it is just his cologne that lingers......for his sake...'cause I have a broom and some bad-ass chickens.

I want to poke 2008 with a stick to make sure it's dead.

Here I am. I am sorry that I have been so neglectful of my blogging duties as of late. Not only have I not been updating my blog, but I haven't been reading the works of my fellow bloggers. It is winter, and frankly, I have been in a poopy mood, which needs to come abruptly to an end (winter and poopy mood). Right. Now. I will leave out all the details of the poopiness provoking events that have been happening, because I know that 2008 was less than stellar for most of us, soooo....

Okay, let's see....just to catch you up to date...it's been cold here. More specifically, cold, ice, snow, ice, freezing rain, snow, cold...and repeat...again.

This ice covered branch, which I thought looked like an ice covered skeletal hand reaching out from under the snow, is kind of representative of how I have been feeling this winter...ooops, there's that poopiness again. Okay, done and done.The horses never seem to be bothered by the cold weather, in fact, Morgan especially seems to relish the brisk temperatures.

As does Jasmine.

Wide load pony, Morgan, covered in snow.

Sheepy news~ The rams were introduced to the girls in their separate breeding groups in the beginning of November and spent a romantic month and a half frolicking about, spreading the love. The girls initially were quite pleased to have the attention of their handsome suitors, but after a few weeks, they were equally happy to have the boys removed from their pens and to be reunited with their girl friends.
I was just as thrilled to have everyone back in their rightful places.
This is what happens when love is in the air and there are girls on the other side of the fence that a rammy thinks he needs to meet. These are 2x8 inch boards that were securely screwed in, plus a hog panel for an added barrier....all I have to say is that I am glad we added the hog panel 'cause there were 4 girls on the other side that have no business reproducing.
Oh, something else fun I did on my winter 'vacation'....
I took a ram lamb in to the vet about a month ago to be castrated. It was a frigid day and when I arrived at the clinic they were finishing up with some cattle, so I waited outside in the cold for several minutes until they were ready for my little guy. The livestock surgery area at the clinic is a large room behind the main clinic with a concrete floor, because, well, they run livestock in there and it can get a bit messy. When the cattle were finished and loaded into their trailer, I brought my little rammy inside for his procedure.

As the vet and his assistant readied the table and equipment, they asked if I was cold, and kindly offered to kick on the big propane heater to thaw me out. We got rammy on the table, and after removing the offending body parts, we were having a bit of difficulty with one of the cords bleeding and it was taking a bit longer than usual to "tie things up", so to speak. While I stood there holding on to poor rammy, the heater that felt so toasty in the beginning was now making me feel rather overheated. I asked if anyone else was hot, and started to take off my coat. Suddenly, I started feeling a little woozy and my ears began to ring, so I stepped off to the side to get away from the heat. For a moment I thought about sitting down on the floor to try to regain my composure, but I looked down and saw that there was cow manure on the concrete from the previous clients, so I stupidly thought, boy I really don't want to sit in that! Stupidly, I say, because the next thing I remember was hearing a loud crack and opening my eyes to find that I had passed out and I was now face down in the very same cow manure that I didn't want to put my behind on. When I awoke from my beauty sleep, and took inventory of my ouchies, it took me a bit to convince the guys that I was alright. After they were sure that I was fine, one of the guys commented on the lovely 'natural makeup' that I was wearing...A.K.A. cow shtuff. I love it when people know me well enough to not take me too seriously.

Other than the bruises and the fact that I put my teeth nearly through my bottom lip (those of you who have seen my teeth understand this), oh, yes and being completely embarrassed, I really was fine.

So, the moral of the story is; if you feel like you are going to pass out, don't think that you are too good to sit in cow crap 'cause it's better to sit in it than eat it.

Here is the resulting prettiness (ignore the overgrowth of eyebrow, it hurts to pluck when your face is purple and green).