Riversdell

The views are splendid along the river.

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The barn is well-populated these days. The two bottle lambs are doing well, as are all the goats. Unfortunately, though, we lost a nine day old lamb Tuesday. At feeding time on Monday he stayed curled up in the shed; we brought him into the house to warm him up and try to bottle feed him, but he only hung on for one day.

Well, the snow finally ended here around noon, leaving us with 24 inches on the ground. Among other things, it has turned the duck house into a duck igloo! Now for the digging out … sigh. At least the temperature has finally gotten out of the teens.

We’re in the midst of a major snowstorm, so this morning we moved our sheep up from the pasture to a temporary pen with access to a shed. We raise our sheep au naturel and so they aren’t used to enclosed spaces. They were a bit hinky about going in the shed but luckily their lambs didn’t share that sentiment. Since another foot of snow is expected on top of the foot and a half we already have, we are happy that the sheep have this shelter and are closer for feeding and keeping an eye on.

The view from the veranda, looking out at our majestic hickory tree at 5 p.m. today.

In the midst of a major Mid-Atlantic snowstorm the birdfeeder outside our kitchen window is a very busy place! Here a redheaded woodpecker just arrived and a cardinal is taking off.

We had four more lambs yesterday — Tawny had two, one brown (on the left), and Dot also had twins (on the right). We saw each lamb nurse from its mom, but the brown male unfortunately did not make it through the night. The other three are fine, though, so that gives us eight lambs so far this season. No goat kids yet, though some of our does are mighty wide. Stay tuned!

The twins that were ignored by their mama are doing fine, knock wood. We have moved from six bottles a day to four which is a bit easier for us. And, of course, these two cuties now have names: the girl is Fleeca and the boy is Spotswood.

Our first lambs look over to Happy and her new single lamb, born this morning. We moved the sheep to another pasture on Groundhog Day — in the background you can see the new bales of hay we had waiting for them, plus our stockpile of locust posts for this year's fencing project which will allow us to stop moving our electric net fencing around so much.