Busy Day with an extra surprise!

Backwards order on the photos, darn blogger.

Johanna, first lamb of 2010.

Kelly, Kohen, and Lily supervising Brian Fitzpatrick's work.

Fleecy girls, before.

Poor Jacobs, look at that swollen belly and growing bag. It will be less than a week for those babies!

Setting the last beam on the barn.

So, in the past 15 hours we have been busy. The garage has been converted to a lambing barn, complete with four jugs, and the ewes have been moved on in. All 17 sheep have been sheared and given CD&T vaccinations. The barn now has beams on top of the posts. With some nice handworked mortise and tenons. I also squeaked in time for a batch of yogurt, 2 loaves of bread, and lamb stew. Add that on top of the regular chores of milking the goat, feeding the chickens and turkeys, and you can understand why this is the first moment I've had to sit for more than ten minutes today.

Add in one brand new lamb as a surprise to this eventful day! Earlier this morning I had noticed that Plum was down at the bottom of the pasture alone, I thought it a bit odd, and even said something to Nate, but when she saw me approach the fence she quickly came back up to join the others. I moved the ewe flock to the garage (thank goodness for portable fencing and a husband and dad assisting!) and then went into the house to make lunch for the guys who were busy placing beams on the barn. We ate, and headed back out to work on the barn. You can imagine my shock when I check on the ewes and there was a brand new, wet lamb in the middle of the flock! She was walking around trying to figure out which of these wooly critters was her mom. I quickly realized Plum was her mom and we moved them into a jug. Nate and I were gasping in shock and shaking our heads the whole time. Plum came to our flock 1 1/2 years ago along with her mom Kizzy, and twin sister Sugar, from Rayna at Northstar Shetlands . She was not bred last year so this was her first lambing and she was a trooper! The ewe lamb is a bit early, the rams weren't put in until the last week in October. (Of course I can't remember the exact date unless I looked back on the blog.) I've checked bags on my usual early lambers- Jacobs and Kizzy and was expecting either of them to be first this year.

Well, after shearing it was obvious that we have a number of very pregnant girls! Jacobs and Kizzy are both much bigger than last year, as is Scar. Fiona looks smaller, but is bagging up nicely so it is anybody's guess. I was most excited to see Anna's rounded belly and growing bag. Our little girl is finally going to have a baby! It feels much longer than two years since we were coaxing her through life in the mudroom.

Back to the baby! Nate's buddy Johann brought his mini excavator over today to help set the beams on the posts for the barn. He also cleaned up what will be the inside floor of the barn, did some ditch work and scraped up all the excess hay that was left in the field from feeding round bales this winter. That was disheartening, well over $200 worth of hay wasted by my picky sheep. Not sure it was worth it to feed lower grade large bales, even though it was much more convenient for us. They just wasted so much. I know that they were able to get enough good feed out of it because they all look to be in great condition, but what a mess to clean up.

Ok, I have a lot of barn and sheep pictures to post, but they'll have to wait till tomorrow, even my fingers are slowing down now!