Ellen's Farm Life

Spring came early this year. That means we have already completed a lot of our annual farm-related chores by now. Usually, we're still waiting for winter to leave and can't really get anything done until the end of April or the beginning of May. There are a couple of things that we have to do every spring such as clean out all the manure from the barn, vaccinate the sheep before they start pasturing, rake up all the dead leaves from the yard, and make the vegetable beds ready. This spring also saw a whole bunch of spring lambs being born (a ewe just lambed yesterday and there are a couple more still pregnant), and we collected some fallen trees for next winter. The first weekend of March Break was spent cleaning out the barns. We got the skid steer on Saturday afternoon, worked until after 10 p.m. that night and continued the next morning until 1 p.m. in the afternoon. While the skid steer is used to clean out the bigger pens, there are a couple of small pens that need to b

Joey Joey was our first dog. We got him during our first year as farmers, but we didn't exactly know what to do with him. Joey is quite large, weighs over a hundred pounds, and is a crossbreed. To our knowledge, he is a mix of Great Pyrenees, Labrador, and Hound. We see traits of all three breeds in him, but the hound in him is the strongest. Before we really understood him, we thought Joey could be our sheepdog; he ended up chasing the sheep until they collapsed out of exhaustion. We thought he could run free around the property, be a normal farm dog like you see in movies and cartoons, but he disappeared into neighbouring woods to chase deer. We thought he could sleep in the barn and get used to the farm animals; he killed some chickens instead. Joey can't help it. His instincts are too hound-like. We got him a big do house and let him live outside the barn. We also got some extended leash-like things that allow him to run around within a fixed perimeter. Joey is our