This spring sheep joined our farm. Avril has been wanting sheep for awhile and I have wanted a fiber animal as well. Years ago we went to the Shepherd’s Harvest Festival and the Lincoln Longwool sheep caught my eye. So when we were ready to add sheep to our farm we searched high and low for our preferred sheep and 4 little (not so little) ewe lambs joined our farm. They are all January or early February lambs and when the weather started turning really warm they already had quite a coat on them.

We knew it was time to shear them, though finding someone to come out for 4 sheep proved a little difficult. We also enjoy doing things ourselves and so ordered a shearer and planned to do the job ourselves.

We were warned that the hardest part was not learning the proper strokes to produce a high quality fleece in one piece but the hardest part was controlling the sheep. We were not warned about how sharp even the electronic clippers were. I have wounds to match the sheep but I am actually glad to have such a ready reminder to be careful. I also have a great gauge as to how they should be healing up.

After fumbling through 2 sheep we asked a friend from 4H to come out and help. Jane does her own sheep though she does them standing up which is decidedly safer and more comfortable for everyone but doesn’t give the preferred one piece fleece. Oh well, we will learn. And the sheep are much more comfortable.

Bringing the sheep home. We thought they would be much smaller and since we were going a long distance we did not bring the trailer. So it was pretty crowded in our suburban. 4 sheep, 6 children and 2 adults. The sheep were the quietest.

Jane shearing. Notice how beautiful the under fleece is.

All done. Some of the shearing jobs were rougher then others. The sheep are not used to the process either.

I have sent the fleeces off the the mill. I wasn’t sure how usable they would be but they think we can at least get a sport weight yarn out of it. At the very least we should get some roving. I am very excited to see the finished product.

I love history. It was my love of history that brought me to my first job at www.historicfortsnelling.org. It was here that I learned to love natural fibers, wooden toys, and creating things. I am not survivalist by any stretch of the imagination, but I love challenging myself and I love creating things from home cooked meals to hand knit sweaters and hopefully soon furniture and other wooden items.

Camping and being outdoors is a bit of a new experience for me. I am still not completely sold on the whole experience but I do love the peace and quiet.

Recently an experience popped up. Rush City has been put on the map. Larry Roberts, a local man is currently on the History Channel’s reality TV show “Alone.” We watched the show and it is so cool to see the name of our city on the screen.

He is home now and wanted to share his love of the outdoors with his community and taught a basic survival skills class at the local High School. Originally Proeun and Two were going to go, but it was hay making time this weekend and Proeun needed to get the baling done, so I went with Two. It was such a cool experience!

We learned about the 5 C’s of Survival
1. Container
2. Cutting Tool
3. Cover
4. Cordage
5. Combustion Tool

He shared his favorites in each of these categories and showed how to combine cordage and cover to make a simple shelter.

One tip was to carve little toggles out of wood to more evenly spread out the pressure on the grommets from your cover.

Here Roberts shows a safer way to chop kindling–by keeping your hands away from the ax.

He demonstrated how to make char cloth to use with a flint and steel.

It was so fun to spend the afternoon learning with my boy. We are all excited to try some of this at home and continue learning. Many of the things that Larry taught in the class he demonstrates on youtube.

This weekend we had another first here at Crazy Boy Farm. I have said before while I much prefer eating vegetables I get much more enjoyment and personal fulfillment from caring for the animals and so we have seen the number and variety of our animals grow over the years. We started with chickens while living in our little city lot. After moving to our farm we added fainting goats, then nigerian dwarf goats. We have had a few ponies. Then two years ago we added berkshire hogs and last year we add galloway cattle.

We purchased a 3 year old cow that had been bred and was pregnant and a spring heifer. This last Friday our cow, Zelen gave us a beautiful little baby.

Zelen is a great mother. She not so subtly puts herself between us and her baby every time we try to get a close look at it. So it took us awhile to figure out exactly what we had. That was until we saw this little girl pee. Then we knew for sure that we had our own spring heifer.

Every year the galloway association assigns a letter to the year and all animals born in that year have the letter in the identification number. This year the letter is D. So you can figure out when Zelen and Claire were born. It works out well since our boy really wanted to have a Daisy on the farm. So meet Daisy.

Early this spring I was at the parent’s group for our homeschool co-op. We are talking about weekends and schedules and Mondays, etc. I realized then how vastly different my life is from the one I expected to live. I wistfully told Proeun that evening, “I remember when we used to think, ‘What should be do this weekend?'” We don’t think that anymore. Honestly I don’t think I would want to go back to that all the time, maybe just once a year or something.

Anyway, even though we had plenty to do this weekend we had a pretty awesome weekend and we get to do it together so that makes it even more fun. Here is a quite snap shot of the fun we are having around here.

Saturday morning we woke up to these cuties. They were still wet at the time and we had the opportunity to dry them off and get them under a heat lamp. They are twin does, such cuties. Their mother is Miracle, the goat that survived being born on the coldest night of the year and later lived in our house for awhile.

The weather is wonderful and it is actually fun to be outside. Avril made her little sister a crown to celebrate spring.

We were blessed beyond belief to be one of the recipients of the Lakewinds Organic Field Fund grants this year. This grant will allow us to set up permanent, high quality fencing for our animals. It will give them much more space and allow us to utilize our land for rotational grazing and hay production. So nearly every morning and weekend we are working on fencing. Here is the main corral for the cattle.

Me and Lith relaxing while we wait for the men to bring back another load of wood.

Crazy Boy himself all grown up and proud of his work. He is really loving the farm and taking ownership of it.

Crazy Boy Part 2 aka Pray helping clear trash out of the woods. Unfortunately we had a few unpleasant discoveries but it wasn’t too bad. Lucky to have such a big helper.

This spring these little ladies joined the farm. They are Lincoln Longwool sheep. Avril will take a couple of them to the fair this year and she hopes to have a sheep business one day. This week we will be working on fencing for them. The main area is already finished for the hogs and cattle.

Proeun working hard with the auger setting posts. The children making the trees wave.

The highlight of the weekend was the Shepherd’s Harvest Festival in Lake Elmo. This is the first place we found out about Lincoln Longwools. We went probably 6 years ago, when farming was just a dream. We have been trying to get back there ever since but it seems like every year something happens. This year was no different, but we weren’t going to let a dead battery stop us. Here Pray holds a little Lincoln/leicester mix lamb.

Avril was in awe of the whole experience. The first time around she wasn’t really interested in it, but now she wanted to see and try everything and learn more about her own sheep. Here she learns how to use a drop spindle.

So even though our weekends are full, they are also full of joy and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Oh my, it has been a long time since I have written. But I read an interested post on facebook lately about, “the myth of self care” by Bruce Thao. It was geared towards those working in non-profits but totally applies to moms and farmers and mom/farmers. It talked about working 12 hour days (as a mom more like 24 hours) and then going home cooking dinner and taking care of everyone else before you feel like you can take care of yourself. Thao went on to say that this idea of everyone first produces some harmful “self help strategies,” like binge eating late at night and drinking a bottle of wine all by yourself. While I don’t drink, hello, binge eating, yep been there.

It has been a super busy month with the weather warming, the projects have been increasing. We have all those babies to take care of, planting for our CSA, and replacing a roof, not to mention finishing up a school year, household chores, etc.

I have been dragging alot lately, my hair is more gray and I am feeling the extra baby weight. But I realized these are all signs I am not taking care of myself. So I have been working on that. This afternoon we had a girls day in the kitchen,  beauty treatments were our projects.

For some reason my pictures are not working but we used this book. It is my absolute favorite. Most of the ingredients are easy to find, most are real food items. I get alot of my other items at brambleberry. Of course my interests have changed with my age. Projects I wanted to work on were, greek cold cream, super eye cream, gentle eye makeup remover and jojoba cuticle oil.

The girls had their own ideas. Avril wanted the Olive oil shampoo. Mavis wanted the beauty queen face mask: that was a cool recipe based on her grandmother from the 1920s. Effie wanted to make lip gloss.

I have plans for a facial and mini manicure but that will have to wait till after a meeting tonight. Still working at the schedule a bit, but now I realize that if I am able to make time for myself throughout our busiest part of the year then I will be much happier. It might also give me the energy I need to work on my book. Yep I said book. More details coming soon.

One of the hardest things about farming with animals is the death you encounter on a regular basis. I have been sheltered from death really. Most of us don’t experience it regularly, if you are my age perhaps your grandparents, pets every once in awhile, the person at church or friend. But on a farm it is constant. There are the relatively easy loses, the cats that disappear overnight, or the chickens that get carried away by a fox or hawk.

But there are more difficult ones. The pony that miscarried in a cold spell, the goat buckling that we weren’t able to keep hydrated after a bout of illness.

Then there are the animals that we depend on for income, for the ability to make this farm sustainable. In some ways those loses are the hardest, not only is it the animal you lost but precious time and money also. I try to focus on the positive in this blog and don’t often talk about death. There were are jerseys. We bought 5 in September 2014 thinking we would have plenty of time before the cold weather came. But even though they were in our existing barn 3 of the 5 died before the end of the winter.

Welcome Jerseys

There was also our Berkshire hogs. We bought the parents that same summer as the cows. They were babies back then. So after waiting for them to become an adult and give us the first babies we were so excited for that first batch. But they were born a bit early and during a thunderstorm. We had built a specially designed house for the mothers and had them in separate pens. But while the mother was inside she didn’t enter the house all the way and birthed her babies into a storm. We lost 80% of the babies. That was a tough pill.

We have been wracking our brain to try and come up with a solution to our baby animal problems. We want to raise the babies from birth because in order to be organic you have to ensure their feed and treatment from birth. But at this rate waiting for the animals to pay for themselves is like running in quick sand while we are dealing with this kind of loss. Plus we have the start up loan for the farm and a tractor loan–all necessary equipment but really tying our hands.

Then we found out about this amazing organization called barnraiser. They have backing from some amazing organizations and help organizing crowdfunding campaigns for companies and organizations that promote “good food and healthy living.” Through them we have launched a campaign to help us build a birth barn for our animals.

Here is our information from their website. If you would like to support us go to birth barn.

We are a diverse, family run farm. All our animals have names and we love giving them hands on care and attention. We really want to be able to give our pigs, goats, and cows a warm, dry, safe and comfortable place to give birth. In Rush City, Minnesota the weather can get pretty intense at all times of the year and we really want to be able to protect our mamas and babies from the elements.

We grow all our own hay and have vegetables and fruit from our CSA. The animals love to get the scraps. We discovered our hogs love the left over watermelon and pumpkins are great natural dewormers for the chickens and goats.

We never planned on being farmers but love the connection it gives us to the land. Even more fun is caring for the animals. Before moving to our permanent home we rented crop land and couldn’t wait to find the property that would allow us to add animals. However winter cold and summer storms have been really hard on our animals.

Our dream is to be able to offer them an insulated building, one with heat and electricity and running water. A barn where they is no mud, all the food and water dishes are clean and they can just worry about caring for their babies and the babies can just enjoy life, mama’s attention and growing.

Our initial goal of $5000 would allow us to purchase a pole building kit. If we reach this goal we would like to stretch to

$7000–we could put a heated concrete floor in. It would be easy to clean and WARM.
$9000–we would be able to put a water pump, and septic in.
$11000–we could insulate the building and purchase a heater
$15000–we would be birth ready with adjustable stalls, bedding, lamps, vents to control condensation and so much more.

This project would greatly increase the health and productivity of our animals and decrease our mortality rate. Our animals would be much more vigorous and much less stressed.

Raising animals that are happy, safe and comfortable is one of the best way to encourage a healthy food system. Food from these animals is much more nutritious the waste is managed much more effectively and there is much less negative impact on the environment.

Small scale farms that produce much of their own feed, care for their own animals and strive to grow their food in the most humane way possible bring farming to another level. Instead of focusing on top dollar it is about what is best for the people, animals and environment involved.

The children had so much fun last week at the 4H project day. Really the county has gotten so good at throwing these, Mavis said, “I wish we could do this every week.” The day is designed to introduce young people to a variety of topics and 4H projects.

Mavis makes her own placemat and napkin while learning about food presentation and home environment.

Effie learns about livestock basics with a fun and educational game.

Avril learns about lego robotics.

And photography.

Effie’s favorite project was this pillow she made herself. She has been carrying it around ever since, even insisting on taking it to church!

Other topics were rabbits, finances (Avril learned how to budget, she picked the topic), making log furniture, or stomp rockets, and much more. It was a great day.

There is an ongoing joke in Minnesota that our 4 seasons are winter, winter, winter, road construction. Here on Crazy Boy Farm there are also 4 seasons, farming, farming, farming, basketball (and still farming). We are in the heart of basketball season. Our 3 oldest children are in local basketball traveling teams and Proeun and I coach the girls (mostly Proeun, I handle communication).

Basketball was never my thing, actually competitive sports really aren’t my thing. I was that girl that was always picked last and the team would complain if I was on their team. So I have had alot of growing to do to prepare myself for children in competitive sports. But I still watch closely to make sure everyone is having fun and no one is feeling left out. Anyway.

I have mentioned before my fondness for The Yummy Mummy. In her book she writes

“To raise physically and emotionally healthy kids, require them to play sports. My grandmother competed in field hockey and swim meets and believes sports are key in building character. My parents followed suit and made sports compulsory in my life and I’m so glad they did. Sports are very important not only to ingrain a healthy active lifestyle, but to teach life lessons about how to interact with others, work as a team, and even deal with losing. Participating in after school sports means that kids are busy with healthy activities instead of getting into trouble.” ~ Marina Delio (The Yummy Mummy)

As a team we had our share of losing but when I was ready to quite, Proeun reminded me that the children need some adversity and the victory will be sweeter after a struggle.

The did come in 2nd on their 2nd tournament. And last night the girls got to go to Junior Tiger Night at the high school and hang out with the varsity team before, during and after the game. They had their names announced with the starting line up, got to sit on the bench and go to the locker room with the girls. They are very excited to be Tigers.

Warming up.

During the National Anthem.

The girls both agreed that when they announced their names that was the best part and they got to run through the “tunnel” giving and getting high fives.

The Rush City Tigers.

We have been so spoiled around here. We have had such a mild winter. But now we are in the mild of a deep freeze. Yesterday when we went out to do chores it was a balmly -10. Yes that was the actual temperature. By the time we finished chores it was up to -5. But still not fun.

Luckily the animals all have nice full coats. They actually do better when the temperature is consistent. So huge swings are harder on them then deep cold. But still we are all looking forward to Thursday when the temperatures begin climbing above zero.

In the mean time we have been sticking very close to home and checking the animals often. Many we can see from the windows of our house. They all have a really nice layer of dry bedding to lie down in and are getting extra feed to make sure they have the energy they need to maintain body temperature.

And it has been a great lesson for all of us. When we would rather stay inside we have to force ourselves out there to care for the animals that depend on us. I think the children are finally figuring out that feed=heat and when it has been a long cold night the animals need feed to get heated up and they need it right away even if you don’t feel like it.

The first sign of trouble–frost on the window.

2nd sign of trouble.

I have frost on my hair too!

The pigs coming out of their burrow in the hay. I would say I can’t wait till spring but then mud season begins. I guess there is no pleasing me.