Waiting to exhale

Our last lambs are on their way RIGHT now. This is live reporting from the farm house. I was just down to check on Claire - the hugest sheep I have ever seen & the last to pop. Lucky thing I checked when I did because her first water bag was beginning to come out! How exciting. I shuffled her into the birthing suite after I spread out plenty of fresh straw & a bucket of cool water. If only it was that simple for women! (maybe it could be).

I am so thrilled but also a bit anxious. Lambing season is about to finish & the anxiety of lambs at ANY time of day will disappear with the sunrise tomorrow. However in this moment I was planning on going to bed so now I frantically type & am probably using too many exclamation points in my emails and texts of the evening.

The thing is that Claire was always our indicator of "twins or triplets" because of her ginormous size and because she ran away about 6 times per day for most of the winter, in search of greener pasture. She was very hard to please. Well, since the other 4 gals had twins then we have to wonder what Claire will do? This could be a late night for me. They usually lamb in 1-3 hours. I am not sure how that could change if there is a third baby..

The photo in this post is of Claire & some others, she is huge & lying down in the front.. taken last Thursday afternoon while Elsa was laboring.

Our first lambs!

In the morning of April 19th Minikin gave birth to twins, fathered by Mister Chocolate. Since they are both rams we're thinking of naming them Mister ______ after their father & since it begins with the letter M if follows their mama's nameline. Or whatever happens, we may think of a way better name than Mister anything at all.

They weighed 9 pounds & 9.5 pounds, are nursing fine & so so friendly with people. This is so amazing!

Memories, speaking of NAFTA

In November of 2003 I traveled for 24 hours on a bus full of other philadelphians to miami florida so that we could try to put an end to the Free Trade Area of the America's meetings & agenda-along with several tens of thousands of other citizens. I had a lot of amazing moments, scary ones, gut wrenching ones, and joyously informatively inspiring times!
My memory in this moment is about some of the brightly inspiring experiences I had. One day my new best pal, Jade & I walked pretty far around miami to get to a community garden for a work-day that also included workshops & meals & networking & fun in the sun!

We weeded. We dug. We got dirty. We drank a lot of water.

We learned about the history of this abundant community garden, next to a highway overpass, and we learned techniques of urban permaculture - things that we could bring home to our lives. We met really cool folks and ran into a few old ones.

When lunch hour rolled around two different food not bombs groups collaborated and fed us foods that all of them had grown in other states. They had driven across the whole darn country in veggie fueled buses to bring is their pride & love in the body of food! How sweet to stand in this garden after working in the hot sun and get to talk to someone about the roots of all of the yumminess in my enamelware camping bowl. They served fresh corn from wisconsin & even made healing tea with cornsilk & nettles & other helpful herbs. They made bread from grains and seeds that they grew AND they brought it to us!

What did we do to deserve food like this? We stood in solidarity with each other in resistance of greed and intolerance. We all thought that people and everything on the earth should come before profits.

and we still do.

and this is what led me to start volunteering with the philly food not bombs when I returned home.. and shortly thereafter my new best friend & I helped to start a second fnb in philly-which is still working to offer free healthy vegan foods to folks who don't have enough access to good foods. Because healthy food has become a privelge much like healthcare.

Because we will never be able to close our eyes again now that they are open wide - exposing the truths about food security & the effects of bad nutrition on society.

find what opens your eyes because we don't have time to waste before the earth wastes away.

Tea time

My evening tea blend tonite consists of: blackberry leaves, cornsilk, rose blossoms & petals, lemon verbana infused in a giant white mug with a bag of green tea. I added a little bit of local raw clover honey after it steeped.

Which reminds me of this great tea combo I enjoy that may sound unusual. Try it out & then say you don't like it. Find a nice big mug - make enough hot cocoa to fill it. You can make instant, vegan, syrup based - whatever kind of hot cocoa you can or want. While you are making the cocoa place your favorite green tea bag in the mug, pour hot cocoa over tea bag. Yes, it is awesome! I recommend decaf green tea, regular, jasmine!, and any flavor added green tea. For some reason I don't recommend trying this recipe with black tea; I cannot explain it, just believe me!

This is my weird slow foods tea of the evening.
happy hearts everywhere day,
lala

Hey! don't Forget..

..to check out our Internet Shop on Etsy.
Please tell your friends that are looking for handmade wares & wool to spin or felt their own projects.
And always check back because there are piles of wares that haven't gotten up, as well as NEW items being created, with love & understanding, all of the time!
Support the people not the boxstore CEOs!

click here:
www.lilliansfarm.etsy.com

or click on my cute widget at the bottom of the page while you count the days till Bush is in office (and who knows who replaces him??)!!

stay warm folx,
the crew at the farm

ba-bye birdie, part 3

sadly - this past week another one of our original birds died. Her name was Jwalker; she was named after her real parent, Jade Walker (my best pal) of Mill Creek Urban Farm (click on link at bottom of blog!). Jwalker was a RedStar sexlinked chicken from Charlestown CSA Farm in the Phoenixville area (support organics!)

A few weeks ago I noticed another chick missing. For several days I counted the birds when they walked out of the coop after laying eggs in the morn'. I kept getting 13 (that includes our two roosters). Then as soon as I could refill my 5 gallon water bucket & get down to the sheep I would find one of our younger RedStars, which led to some confusion as to wether this bird was living with the sheep over night. I think she was just racing me down there to munch up leftover grain & hay from the loving sheep.

Confused no more - we have ten hens and two roosters..way too many roosters however I am having difficulty taking away life these days (any helpers??!!). Having too many roosters actually affects egg production & hen happiness. In our case these two roosters get along amazingly well; they do not fight. In fact, one morning last week I looked out the window to see them both on my patio, together, alone with no other hens. Only at our place; our peaceable kingdom.

Newsflash! Sheep highly adept at memorizing faces!

Sometimes folks comment on how unsmart sheep are. Often folks compare them to goats, claiming that goats are somehow smarter. Not true! goats are different and have a much more outgoing attitude with humans (they also stink). Sheep are often shy or "skittish". They are just wary & protective. I am sort of a hybrid sheep/goat (geep) as I am friendly and outgoing but also reserved & I wait for my intuitions to spell safety.
My dairy farmer always says that sheep have a low will to live -unlike his 1400 pound cows! Not true! They have an amazing will to live as I have observed with Blink, our wethered north country cheviot, who has been stricken with dermotitis, external parasites & now some infection that is making him have flesh open/scab things all over him! He has an incredible will to survive & to beat this beast of an infection.

An interesting study was done earlier in this century (2000) showing that sheep are highly adept at memorizing faces. A sheep can memorize 50 faces for up to 2 years. One can imagine how this would help identify the flock, since to some eyes "all sheep look the same". Here is an article about this study:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1107_TVsheep.html

Also here is a link to read more on "sheep smarts".
http://www.sheep101.info/stupidsheep.html

And by the way not all sheep look the same at all. Same with cows and all animals I spose. After milking for a year and a half I can attest to that. I am one of those assholes who says, "look at the black cow" while gazing upon a field of 50 black & white cows. Most folks would think I was nuts but some folks would say, "oh yea, she's a beaute!"

We are so proud!

we are so proud to add this little clock at the bottom of this blogg page that counts the days until Bush is out of office! At Lillian's Farm we support life. We love life! Therefore we do not support folks (the Bush Administration) who enjoy killing, putting profit over life, health & happiness, AND those whom live in hypocrisy of all this (oppose women's right to make free & informed decisions about their bodies YET support genocide & encourage poverty on other people's bodies).
ugh, can we rush to election day already??

The one flaw with this clock is that we have NO idea who will be sworn in on january 20th 2009.. we just know that bush is out. out-flat on his GMO eating ass.

so think about adding this clock to your website or blog (they are working on making it myspace compatible-i love myspace).

First Asked Question FAQ

FAQ: Why Sheep? Asked by flederhaus this past month. Sorry for delay in answering.

My earliest memory of a life vision was when I was about 3ish so so. I was in sweden frolicking with cousins and sheep. I remember feeling I needed to be with sheep in my life; to life among sheep. There is a photo of me on my fridge at age five of me trying to chase sheepies to ride them like cozy short horses. I was wearing one of my outfits that my mamma made for me - a cute purple jumpsuit reminiscent of the middle ages (or I guess the 80's?).
Its a vague vision/memory. It did not include farm business plans or ideas for fiber arts projects. But I felt sheep. I have always been drawn to them, to wool, and to sheep iconography (and sheep jokes too).
I love sheep so that's why sheep, sister.
sweet dreams yall, in wooliness, L

Don't fence me in...

...breeding sheep is fun but has it's problems. Since we have a ram on site (versus artificial insemination) our girls initially were pepped up on hormones & were acting a little naughty. Like they were escaping through the barbed wire fence nearly every day for a few weeks. They were on some hunt for the most freshest & greenest grasses I spose, as their bodies encourage them to be at optimal health to bear twins. Unfortuanatly the fields had fresh sprouts of winter wheat that is valuable to the farmer who planted it. So we were determined to be good neighbors by keeping our sheep in their field.
we became adept at herding OR luring the girls and Mr. Chocolate down from the mountain. We learned a lot about our flock. Cool!

Things were not ideal & levels of sheep stress were high (for me or sheep??)

So I ordered some excellent electric netting for sheep from Premier Fencing of Iowa (they are like the rodale institute of fencing & farm equipment - they have large research facilities).

After not too much confusion we got it set up & the wires hottt! Within a few moments the flock learned the netting!

Buffalo, Blink & Wink did not have such a desire to escape so they are still grazing in the "free" part of the pasture. They have learned that the netting is hottt from the other-side. The icelandics are in the netted area that is super simple to move around. Rotating your animals is the way to go for parasite safety & so the grasses grow back healthy.

So all is well except that I need to save up for more sections of netting now that I know it works so well.

The Dub Shepherd & the Pirate Shepherdess shared a big high five, sat back to watch the kids learn the fence! What a day that was! What a sense of accomplishment to set up something with wires, alligator clips, a battery, an energizer, grounding rod and all..oh my!