Shearing Date for Schoonover Farm

We have our shearing date scheduled for March 11th, a Wednesday.  Tom is insisting that I not shear all 30 of our sheep alone this year.  Last year I injured my back in the process and missed several weeks of paying work.  So this year we are hiring Zander Woofenden.  He is young, well trained, and recommended by local Shetland shepherds.  So anyone who lives in the area (Skagit County) and would like to visit are welcome.  I am offering a 20% discount and first choice on fleeces to those how help with the process.  (I get the CVM fleece this year though).  Let me know via comment or email (donnawh@earthlink.net).

Inauguration Day

We woke up and watched the inauguration of our new president this morning.  While they went to their "luncheon", we fed our animals and then planted our Christmas tree on the border of our orchard.  We buried the birds that died with the bad weather next to the tree as a memorial and as nutrients for the tree.

Then I tagged the tree.  I am hoping that as years go by, we can reflect on this day and on the positive changes that occurred since today.
Now we will watch some of the parade before we do some orchard pruning- life will go on.

Drying out and goat hoof trimming

I found these photos on my digital camera- leftover from the flooding.  We are drying out now thankfully, but in driving around we are seeing all the damage that was done.  This is our front field where the barns are located:

This is the field where the rams are kept- you can see their tarp shelter completely surrounded by water:

Today the goats were due for their hoof trimming.  Their feet have been wet and muddy with all of the weather we have been having so we cleaned them up as well as trimmed them.  I am imagining their feet feel better now.  This is Brown Sugar, our Nigora wether- don't you just love his fiber!

The end of breeding sheep and flooding

I was going to blog about my least favorite time of the year- removing the ewes from the rams and putting the rams back together again.  We put the two rams into a pen with tires to minimize the velocity.  It seems to be working fairly well.  Jocko, our older ram, seems to be holding his own, and the bleeding is less this year.

We had to remove the ewes first though.  We had three visiting ewes still here because of the snow.  They were not too cooperative when we caught them and "lead" them to the truck for transport back home.  This ewe has perfected the "flop in the mud" technique of sheep resistance.
But now it has rained and rained and rained, and we have flooding!  This is a photo of our front fields:
The water is 10 feet from our hay barn (with 8 tons inside) and 25 feet from the animal barn.  We walked out back to check out the back ditch.  It is overflowing its banks onto the back fields as well.  We moved the cows closer to the barn and gates in case we need to evacuate them and tried to fill the breaches as best we could.  This is a photo from the back of the fields toward the front:
Here's the water flowing out of the ditch toward our field.

Then we dropped off my car to get tires that won't hydroplane as much.  While we were waiting for the tires we found a local church in Allen with sand and bags and filled about 20 of them for the hay barn.  The streets of Allen were covered in water.  There was a rubber duck floating down the middle of the road- Chuckanut Drive- and the local espresso stand had a sign "No Wake Zone".  At least they have  a sense of humor in Allen while they are sandbagging! 

End of sheep breeding and flooding