A DECISION

I couldn't find one of my roosters this Morning. I have two roosters and twenty-one hens. Normally that ratio works out fine and the roosters get along okay, but not for these two. One of the roosters sleeps by himself in the old chicken coop. He is generally underneath our window at five in the Morning serenading us. I get used to it and don't hear him. The only time a rooster crowing would keep me from sleeping, is if something else, was bothering me.
This Morning I didn't see him when I went out to open the chicken door. I looked around and didn't see him anywhere. I thought perhaps one of the dawn prowlers got him. A little while later I heard him crowing and went out looking for him. I discovered him hiding under a lilac bush that is situated a few feet from the chicken coop. Something scared him. Jamie said she heard commotion outside during the night and again in the morning. She said it sounded like a large animal. Raccoons can make a huge noise, like you have bears rampaging in your yard. Usually, hiding under a bush, indicates a hawk or owl, but that doesn't take in to account the noise. We may never know. I love the mysteries of Nature. We do have bears in the neighborhood, but they are usually quiet, and chickens aren't usually afraid of them.

We started getting our milk from the Amish so our milk goats were redundant. We kept them for awhile, just because we love goats, and then last fall, we gave away the last of them. We have two pastures, a sheep pasture and a goat pasture. They are both about seven acres, but the goat pasture is divided in two sections. We did this so we could separate the buck from the does in late Summer, before the breeding season started, at the end of August or early September. We didn't rejoin them until middle October. The does have a five month gestation and it is not convenient to have kids born in January. That was the reason for two separate sections of pasture; however, in our almost forty years of raising goats we often didn't separate the bucks and we had many kids born in January. If the doe is an attentive mother and the kids get milk right away, they do fine even if it is twenty below.

We have four sheep, that is not enough to keep up with the grass in that pasture. It is an excellent old, quite nutritious, pasture of a hundred years. Pastures get better with age when they are grazed properly. It could easily handle fifteen sheep. The goat pasture is newer, part of it, was a planted field twenty years ago. I am sure it could handle ten sheep.

We need more animals, sheep or goats, to keep the pastures from becoming forest. When I first raised sheep, the shearer came in the Spring, sheared the sheep and gave us a nice check. Now the shearer shears the sheep, and we need to pay him a setup fee, plus a per animal amount. The wool market collapsed, sometime in the early eighties, [I think]. So I have been thinking of raising hair sheep.

What does an eighty year old man do? Do I pretend like I am going to be young forever and buy ten more sheep? I won't have any trouble caring for them. It is light work. For the Winter I have large bales of hay placed in the pasture; hopefully enough to last the Winter. I always have few small bales in case of emergency. For instance, when the snow is too deep for them to wend there way to the hay lot. So far they have always made their way through the snow in a couple days. So it is just a matter of keeping them watered. We have a hose permanently laid out to the barn area for watering them, when it is not freezing. In the Winter I carry water in seven gallon containers by toboggan. None of it is work I can't handle, and I enjoy doing it.

But I am eighty! I have to admit I feel myself slowing down. So do I want to take on the care of ten more sheep? I have an opportunity to buy the sheep I want. I would like to make a decision today.

My intuition tells me to go ahead. There is the matter of getting them here. We have a carrier, I can put on the back of my little truck, that can carry two or three sheep at a time. Actually getting them here is a much more daunting task than the thought of caring for them.

I hope you don't mind this variance from my usual blog. Spelling it out helps me come to a decision.

Have an excellent Friday on this most beautiful of days. We live in Paradise. It is easy to see, today. I hope wherever you are, you can see Paradise, too.

Live in the moment. Love in the moment. Forgive continuously and celebrate. I have made that decision!

Love and Peace,  Gregg