On Deck...

So much to do before I can settle down to work, which is hardly work for me since I like it so much.  Have to run to the bank in New Berlin, and would like to go to Tractor Supply in Hamilton,  but both stops are forty miles apart.  Life in bucolic upstate New York.   Two bags on the machine - Standing Stones - which makes me happy to look at it.  Can't get any more of this fabric.  Found it on the red tag rack at Joann's a year ago.  So many of my totes are "limited editions" but that's okay.  Makes them even more special.  I have two big pots of dyed wool on the stove in the milk room that have to be washed and set out to dry.  I don't have a drop of soap left to wash with - except for my goat milk bars and they don't exactly do well in the washing machine, unless I melted them and that's a big deal.  Will have to go to the market.  Slim pickins this time of year.  I paid property taxes and extra land lease with my summer pay so it's living off the farmer's market.  That's why I smile so pretty at the customers.   It's off to the feed store to buy some sweet feed for Miss Mamie.  Rodolpho and Marcello are doing well.  I thought this morning that they are beginning to look like normal healthy newborn lambs.  Miss Mamie had no pre-lambing treatment and was not shorn this spring, therefore she was not wormed or vaccinated this year.  She grew these lambs on green grass only.  Rambouillets need grain and extra TLC when they are pregnant - not like Bluefaced Leicesters who pop ten pound lambs on grass only.  I'm amazed and grateful the boys are okay.  Mom's one teat seems to be holding them but I'm giving tiny little Rodolpho a bottle four times a day.  I found a nice sweet bale of second cut in the mow for Miss Mamie, who is perking up day by day.  She is as big as a pony and so gentle with her little ones.  Will need to shear her soon.  It takes a couple of years for Rambos and Merinos to grow a decent staple length of wool.  I have one other Rambo left, a wether, from the rescue I did several years back in a very impulsive gesture.  A teacher in the Fort Plain area sold her farm, bought a Winnebago and took off, leaving her sheep fostered locally.  I have no idea how old Miss Mamie is, but she's aged.   Sheep can give birth until they die, but they need lots of nurturing and extra TLC.  Miss Mamie is getting all that right now.  Off to buy her some delicious, molasses laden sweet feed.