the first day of their new life

the little ones are here...after much to do.
they had a bad day yesterday...tattooed, tagged, crammed into a station wagon and driven 70 miles to end up in a pen w/ some ornery gigantic ewes that arent too thriled with their arrival.
i'm exhausted too. integration is always stressfull....i've still got the dogs to introduce once they've settled a bit...eeee.
the bigger slighty older one, i haven't been able to get a face shot yet...but i've named her ida after my great great grandma. now, i don't know if my great great grandma was a loud, demanding matriarch type...but this little one will not stop baaaaaaaing. its a little nutty making.i'm hoping she'll chill w/ time and familiarity . she seems to be a natural leader when we go down to pasture which is funny....she's focused.


and this little gem i've named june.... she's more the contemplative quiet poet type....every once in a while will say "maaaaa". she's really little. like a fluffy football to hold.

now its time for me to have a bath...i've been sitting in the dusty, wind blown sheep pen all day, getting aquainted.

bits and pieces make the whole

"Flush with cash, Obama reported spending $11.2 million on television in the state, more than any place else. That compared with $4.8 million for Clinton.

Clinton scored her victory by winning the votes of blue-collar workers, women and white men in an election where the economy was the dominant concern.

She showed her blue collar bona fides one night by knocking down a shot of whiskey, then taking a mug of beer as a chaser. Obama went bowling in his attempt to win over working-class voters." -AP



"Thousands of indigenous activists are gathering in New York for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. This year’s forum focuses on the global impact of climate change on indigenous peoples.
On Monday, Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the conference.
He said, “If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.”
- democracy now!

farm photos i was wishin i had in the last post...

as i said earlier, today is our day for irrigating the fields....and here is the beloved acequia madre from which all flows.
this is one of the floodgates...i put this heavy cast iron wheel thingy on there and crank it open and the roar of the water entering the pipeway is really something....that says friends farm in th cement there.
its then funneled from the gate into a series of underground pipes that lead to water mains that connect to these long pipelines that are all over the fields.

while i was down below with the camera, these 2 were begging for attention...so i attempted to take photos of them but as usual only got a lot of this...camera sniffing is popular.

and last but not least, take a gander at this here most gorgeous wellsummer egg...i hate to eat it! but i did...

food riots, wind and sheep bloat....oh my!

i wish i had some charming farm photos to share but honestly the thought of trekking out with the camera these past days is just out of the question thanks to the all mighty, wreck the day wind.

everything is in super flux here. some dudes are here doing all this fencing and building the new barn and workshop, ye ol' butchy dyke is still here working on what will be my tiny little caretaker house...then theres the plumber and the electrician and then i've got to paint the place, try and tie up any loose ends and then actually move me and all my crap over there as well as set up my looms and such in the hopefully by then finished workshop....phew.

meanwhile i'm trying to sort the sheep routine....not an easy task. theres some forty acres down below growing alfalfa...of which i am not a fan.....and as was confirmed a few days ago, it can be deadly to sheep. The pasture i had sectioned off for them still had too much demon alfalfa growing in it apparently and i went down to round them up the other day and lupe looked like she had a football on her left side of her abdomen....seriously. and the others looked a little distended as well. so after jumping on line and reading frantically as much crap about bloat as i could....and it was all to the tune of "EMERGENCY" and "DEATH"....i found a baking soda remedy that i threw together and crammed down all of their throats. and what do ya know but a half hour later lupe and the others looked fine. esp. amazing is lupes recovery since she was beginning to pant and stagger.

so thank fuck for the internet...and even more for high speed internet...if i had still been using dial up, chances are lupe would be dead as a bloated doornail.

and i'm sure you all have been hearing about the food riots breaking out all over the world...well, predominatly the global south....africa, south america, haiti is sounding pretty bad.....and even here in the crumbling empire the cost has risen. but we're not yet to the point of starvation that leads us to take to the streets and riot.
folks in the know blame the rising cost of petrol, the production of goddam ethanol, and climate change....

talk of this global food crisis sends my little brain into a survival spin....i think, more chickens! i need more chickens! and dairy goats and a green house quick quick quick....ahhh, if only the solution were so simple... as though more chickens will keep the water from drying up and the ecosystems from unravelling.

speaking of climate change and food, the winds here have been relentless, so much so that i didn't manage to get the next round of seeds in the ground. the garden just sits empty for the most part. there just hasn't been a day thats been friendly enough....who wants to garden in high winds wih grit hitting you in the face? I'm not totally out of time, but i like to plant with the new moon, and that window has passed til next month which is when the hot crops go in...i've kinda missed the chance for cooler stuff...til fall anyway. its already 80 degrees here...in april!

really, if anything is gonna drive me from this otherwise sweet situation i have here on this farm....its the winds.

so cheery...this post....but hey! at least the sheep survived certain bloaty death!

and today is the first day of our alloted irrigation off of the acequia madre...its my job to turn the wheels and open the floodgates.
if the weather is kind i'll take along the camera and show y'all what its lookin' like....

Seven Things You Don’t Need to Know About Me

rosie over at smokey mt. breakdown tagged anyone that wanted to be tagged with this meme so i figured i'd give it a go since i haven't done a meme in a long while....

1. I was crowned miss preteen syracuse n.y. @ 12 yrs. old....thats right, read it and weep suckas.

2.i put ketchup on everything...well, maybe not everything ...but its a white trash, raised on foodstamps habit thats stuck with me.

3.i wish i didn't have breasts. they're a pain, they make my clothes hang funny, they get all owey once a month, they flop around when i run, and they are some sort of instant gender identifier that then causes people to make all kinds of assumptions about me...but i know i'm too poor to have them removed.....and its not THAT big a deal for me...i guess...oh, i don't know.

4.i think a lot about death....well, not like all the time but its interesting to me. all the things that kill us, what death is like
and how to make peace with the inevitable and be present for whatever amount of aging i get to do.

5.i think daniel radcliffe is really fucking hot. i'm a letchy old fag, i know...but he is.

6.the state of the world scares the crap outta me.

7.i do not own a single pair of underwear....i'd actually like to have some but i just never seem to get around to getting any.



and i'm gonna do what rosie did and tag anyone out there thats wants to give it a whirl...but i do have to tag jbeeky...i just have to! cheers

shearing 2008

ok....i hang my head with shame that i didn't do this myself, but it was stressing the crap outta me that i wasn't getting around to it and the sheep were so wooly and hot so for the most part i'm just thrilled that its done AND i got some great video of sharon, my sheep mentor, shearing one of them. this will be super handy when next spring comes. she also gave me lots of usefull tips and tricks. i'm a lucky student.

so here's sharon, a bit of a legend 'round these parts. one of the few that still shears with hand shears. she's something like 70....maybe 72 by now? and still does all of her sheep, and she has a lot of them. and proper shearing is hard work, esp. hard on ones back and legs. a full grown ewe can weigh up to 130 to 150 lbs. sharon mentioned that she only weighs 120....and during shearing she's basically got to flip them on their side then sit them up and lean them against her legs, roll them over, sit them back up and roll the over again. it takes about an hour. i helped her out with the handling this time...apparently i have frighteningly giant, ridiculously well fed sheep....sigh.

she's got this bottle baby right now thats just to die for....seriously...
and heres one of her many super vicious guard dogs

so i went and picked the giant girls up yesterday. they're getting pretty good at the mini-van thing...and lo and behold the bounty of fleece i got this year,a good 10-13 pounds from each of them!

oh....the lambs will be here in a couple of weeks...eeee!