Graduation

Big Moose has been trying to break into the boys club for almost three years.  Well, I'm not sure it he wanted in the boys club or just the Jared club.  He has idolized him since he was just a young lamb.  Jared has zero tolerance for pip squeaks though and has been pretty hard on him.  

Big Moose took his licks and didn't give up.  He continued to shadow Jared and Jared continued to knock him back.  Usually he actually punched him.  Sometimes he just gave him the "Ya botherin' me, boy!" and Big Moose would scatter. 

I haven't seen any serious punching lately and I'm seeing a lot more of this. I think he's apparently paid his dues. 

Every. Morning.

Make coffee.  Feed dogs.  Check horses.  Check sheep.  Help Spud get up.  Sit on porch.  Wait for Archie to fall asleep.  Rinse and repeat.

Mad Dogs And Englishmen...And Jared

Today is hopefully the last brutally hot day for a bit.  We supposedly have rain and some cooler (mid 80s) temps coming for the next several days.  Yesterday was miserably hot and humid.  The sheep hunkered down in the barn in front of the fans for most of the day...well, all except Jared.

When the vet was here the other day to take Maisie's stitches out and check on old Clover Belly, she noticed a sheep out grazing by himself in the middle of the afternoon.  "Who's that?" she asked.  "Big J.  He does this all the time." 

Usually you'd be watching for a sheep who stayed back at the barn by himself while everyone else was out grazing.  We like to keep 'em guessing here at Equinox Farm ;-).

"Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."  Rudyard Kipling via The Free Dictionary

Ca[t]ouflage

Do you see her?

Tour de Sheep

 

My Tour de Fleece is more of a Tour de Sheep this year.  So far I've spun 10 sample skeins.  Let's see if I can remember them all...PPPP, Henri, Petunia, Boudreaux, Woody, Buddy, Rebecca Boone, Count Chocula, Miss Ewenice and Hershey :-).

I have really enjoyed pulling out these old friends.  I'd forgotten how soft Boudreaux was, how luxurious Hershey was, how...everything Miss Ewenice was.  She's been gone 10 years now.  I have some Renny set aside for tomorrow.  I can't spin Ewenice without spinning some Renny :-).  

Good Morning!

Beautiful foggy morning.  Fog this time of the year means it got cool enough during the night that it was a comfortable sleeping temperature and that at least for a little while in the morning you won't feel like crying ;-).  My view as I left the house this morning.

Sometimes as the sun rises, the fog thickens.  I love how it reflects all the sunbeams.  It doesn't last long and then, poof, the fog is gone too.

We haven't had a good puzzle in awhile.  Here are two new ones :-).

Only Maisie Could Out-Maisie Maisie

"Yeah, well you should see the other guy!"

I posted a picture this morning of all the sheep out grazing with the horses in the foreground.  A lovely, peaceful farm sunrise scene.  I captioned it "The peaceable kingdom."  And then added the laughing emoji. I was a little surprised no one asked me about that.

It's been a few "days".  Maybe the heat is getting to us all.  I've had dogs chasing chickens and dogs chasing cats (well, one dog), cats chasing (and torturing) mice and moles, chickens chasing chickens, flies biting horses, sheep fighting over choice sleeping spots in front of the fans...and somebody boxed one of Maisie's ears.

It was probably the golden boy.

"She had it coming."

I doubt that, really.  She's half your size, big guy.  I doubt she was going to fight you for your food (she would totally fight him for food (insert eye roll emoji)).  Nice hair by the way, Big J. Do you feel better after fighting that disrespectful bale of straw (insert another eye roll)?

I'm not sure if her ear got a direct hit or she banged it on the gate as she was trying to extract herself from where she likes to poke her head through trying to push her way into the old guys feeding pen or if something completely different happened.  

I'm just guessing, knowing who was involved...  Jared has zero patience for...pretty much anything involving minions and she's been extra cautious blatantly afraid of him ever since.  It's good to be king (another eye roll).

When these things happen, the ear droops down (maybe the cartilage that holds it up breaks?) and fills with fluid and fat blood clots.  Sometimes they go down (somewhat) on their own.  Her's was a one of the worst "fat ears" I've seen.  I was crushed.  Those cute perky pink ears.

Her ear got so filled that I ended up having the vet out to drain and stitch it flat so it wouldn't be able to refill.  That won't fix it.  It will never be good as new, but at least it won't be so bothersome to her, flopping around like a balloon.  You might think this is the end of the story...but it never is with Maisie.

To have this procedure done Maisie had to be sedated and then her ear numbed.  Everything went fine and while she wasn't completely knocked out, she was pretty drunk for a bit.  When we thought we had her propped up and well secured we went to look at something with another sheep.  

We glanced back and Maisie had tried to get herself up, had fallen over and rolled completely on her back, legs flailing in the air (insert the oh $#!% emoji).  Remember we never turn Maisie upside down because of the hay string eating incident from her youth.  Luckily she was far enough away from the short inside water tank that she didn't fall in and drown.  It's a miracle really...if you think about it... (insert the face palm emoji).

We'd been told by Ohio State (nine years ago) that the knotted up hay string she'd gobbled down would probably just float around in her rumen and stay there as long as she didn't get twisted around and it might never cause her any trouble...and it hasn't.  

We are almost 36 hours into the 48 hours close watch on her and so far she seems fine.  I won't rest easy until...well, probably long past the close watch I've had on her for the last almost ten years.  

A Tour Of The B Garden

I've tried to take pictures of the B Garden this summer and I'm not getting anything that's making me say wow, but I took a short live video tour of it on Instagram last night that's pretty fun :-).  

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June

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Not half bad :-).

The Right Words

I'd been thinking about my Tour de Fleece for several weeks and was not getting super excited about any of my possible plans.  I knew Pinto was going to be the captain, but had a ton of trouble coming up with his graphic.  The weather is miserable.  There will be no peaceful porch spinning around here this year.  Honestly, I was feeling a bit of dread thinking about putting it all together.

Tim and I like to play a few of the currently popular word games each morning.  I play Wordle, both Word Hurdle games and the Quordle, which is trying to guess four words at one time.  It took a good while to talk me into trying them, but now I'm hooked.  I sit on the Wool House porch with a big cup of coffee and start guessing. 

The Wordle for July 1, the first day of the Tour de Fleece was...

Can you even believe it? :-o

It gets better.

The TdF plan I was most leaning towards was doing a deep dive into some of my most treasured fleeces.  I'd just finished spinning a bit of PPPP and was feeling sentimental.  I have Woody's lamb fleece, Daniel's lamb fleece, some special Ford, Henri, Petunia and for a really deep dive, some young(ish) Miss Ewenice.  

I was still not completely convinced...but I couldn't come up with any better ideas.  I really needed to find some inspiration or it was going to be hard to cheer lead the other members of my team when I couldn't even cheer myself along.  

I started working on the day's Quordle.  

As you can see from the PINTO graphic above, as you guess words, you almost always get some correct letters and sometimes even get them in the right locations.  Yellow means the letter is in the mix, but in the wrong position.  Green means it's the right letter in the correct location.

Three of the four words in the Quordle game behaved accordingly and I ended up figuring out each of those three words.  The fourth word...

The first guess yielded me no correct letters.  Neither did the second guess.  I did finally get one letter, but in the wrong position on the third and fourth guesses, but back to zero correct on the fifth.  In case you are wondering about my word choices, remember I'm trying to guess three other words at the same time.  STAID, BASTE and RAMEN were the correct words in the other quadrants.

You get nine chances to guess the four words.  I'd used up eight chances and only had two letters and both in the wrong positions.  I had one chance left, but I knew it was hopeless.  Still, a game is a game and I decided to make a wild guess and see how close I could get.

With only one vowel possibility, the O, I knew there might be a chance they were going to use it twice.  Y hadn't been used, so I tossed that in there as well.  Two Os and D and a Y...I had to go with WOODY.

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And I won!

How's that for some inspiration :-D.

It was pretty crazy just to get PINTO, but also WOODY on the same day?!?

 So I started my Tour spinning some Woody :-).