Another Whirlwind Weekend

We don't leave the farm much.  While a nice long relaxing vacation would be fun, it's stressful to leave animals behind and honestly, I'm probably a hard core homebody anyway.  When I do leave, it's usually just for a day or so and when we get home, we just look at each other and say, whew, another crazy trip ;-).

This past weekend we trekked out to New York.  One of the highlights of almost every trip out that way is stopping at Skoog Farm to visit with Gary and Lori and their crew.  For those of you who read Lori's blog and think "How does she do all that?" and "Is it really that awesome there?" I can happily report that first,  I have no clue, and second, yes, it most definitely is :-).  

From there we headed to Nistock Farms to visit our other New York family...and add to our Kentucky family.  Meet Burr-nie (name probably to be changed so he can completely escape his awful start in life).  You can read his story on their blog.  

Robin and Andy have done a fantastic job bringing him back to health, but as he's so much smaller than any of their sheep that they didn't have anyone to buddy him up with, we decided to bring him here so he could buddy up with our "lambs" (Chocula, Daniel, Hershey and Maisie) and begin to build the family he needs so much.

Sheep are flock animals.  How he survived his deplorable situation in the first place and all alone and only a few months old on top of it, I just don't know.  I hate to think, as he fought and scavenged for food, somehow dodged coyotes and probably hawks who were plucking chickens from the air (he's horribly scared of stuff moving over his head), how much he missed his family.  He is the most scared/jumpy sheep I've ever been around.

"I'm doing okay now though.  Those nice people rescued me and gave me lots of food and taught me to eat cookies and then I went on a long car ride and now I'm in a new barn with lots of food and this new lady says I'm going to have lots of brothers and sisters and I can learn not to be so scared anymore and pretty soon it's going to be warm enough they can shave off all my burr filled wool.  I think that sounds pretty good."

"Hey, what's over there?"

"Holy moly!  There's a whole room here filled just with food!  And that bag has some of the food from my old farm in it.  I love that food and I'm glad I still get to eat it for awhile longer!"

"I guess I'll go over and meet my new family."

"Yeah, I came from Nistock Farms.  How do you know them?  Oh, you came from there too?  Wow!"

"My name's Maisie.  When are you going to get to come out and play with us?"

He'll have to stay separated from the girls for a few more weeks since he just got 'tutered a couple weeks ago.  I've explained to Chocula and Daniel that they are going to be in charge of taking him under their wings and making him feel welcome.  The three boys are going to move back into their lamb stall and side field until everything settles down.  We feel comfortable doing that right away and letting everyone sniff noses because he's already quarantined at Nistock's and received a clean bill of heath :-).