Dear Curiosity Journal,
This week, Rufus and I tackled the lambing pen building project. On Monday, we spent the first workday cleaning and organizing the location for the future pens, which included a much-needed full reset on the fencing storage area – out with the wicked barbed wire and in with the neatly rolled electronet! The back of the barn is a busy space, used for many ongoing projects, so it gets wild back there, but we beat back a corner of the chaos, and redefined the space again. On Tuesday, we began building the 4’X6’ pens, using pallets as the framing for the walls. Call it resourceful, or call it the farmer reality, but we used all repurposed materials for this build. On Wednesday, we added the wood paneling to the walls and put some hinges on a pallet to create the gates. With frozen fingers, we called it a day before we put caps on the walls or added latches to the gates. Sometimes you just hit a temperature wall and must resign to finish another day. Either way, we’re happy to have a bit of a jump on our new maternity ward before lambs start arriving at the end of March. The new mamas will go into the lambing pens with their babies for the first 24-48 hours after birth so that they can bond and focus on tending the lambs without interference from the other nosy flock members. Once the little family is bonded and nursing successfully, they can rejoin the flock. We’re about 6 weeks out now and both sheep and shepherdess are nesting.
~Joy