The new flock Arrived!

Here are a couple pics of our flock of sheep that arrived today. These are the traditional "Jacob Sheep" supposedly decended from the same sheep that Jacob of the bible raised. Genetically they are unaltered for thousands of years. How much more traditional can you get than that!

In the background you can see "peep" the last of our modern sheep. Note the differences in body size, shape, etc.

These guys seem to be adjusting well, today we can walk much closer to them without scaring them. In another day or two we will try our hand at milking the two Ewes. If it works out, we will have enough fresh milk for our needs and perhaps next year we can have some to sell also (within the legal limits of this heavily controlled substance --- raw milk)

The trio

Finally the trio is together again and happy!

Cozy bed!

With a warm cozy shelter awaiting the first night back on pasture

Sheep Shelter

We wanted to provide a place for the sheep to get out of bad weather or too much sun, and a place to give birth next year. Instead of building from scratch, we partially closed in the old horse lean to that was in this pasture. While not really a "barn" it does seem to provide protection from the weather. We will fill the interior with straw thick enough to be a nice soft bed.  The overall size if about 10x16ft, the size of a small bedroom.

Here's the kids checking it out before we cleaned up the tools.

Worm Fence?

Ever hear of a Worm Fence? I hadn't until recently but apparently at one time this was the most popular american fence in existance. During the early settler days there were thousands to millions of miles of this type of fencing snaking across the country. The pros of this fence are: easy to build, no postholes necessary, and reasonably strong yet see through. The cons are: a large supply of material needed. It is basically just logs of any type stacked on each other and laid in a zig zag pattern across the area.

We needed this fence becasue of two reasons.

1. On the east side of the orchard the ground is very shallow. Hardpan is often only a couple of inches under the surface. That makes for a very difficult time installing TPosts! This fence seemed a natural fit since it requires no posts!
2. With a traditional TPosts and wire fence, the turkeys housed in the orchard area would have a difficult time getting to the open pasture. I have leanred from experience that adult turkeys can fly, but prefer not to cross woven wire fences unless necessary. We want the turkeys to have free range of the pasture so we wanted an easier way to let turkeys pass but block sheep.  This seemed ideal since the top of the fence is natrually a "perch" in their eyes.

First step was acquiring material at a reasonable price. Unlike early settlers I was not prepared to go into the forest to find, cut, and split 12 trees.  Call me lazy but I much preferred the lumber store. But this much normal lumber is costly! Fortunately we discovered one lumber yard with "seconds" of 4x6 pine posts that were inteded to be treated but didnt pass inspection. We swung a deal on 100 of these that was too good to pass up. As the forklift dropped the two full pallets of these on our flatbed I began to wonder... never had I seen the tires quite so flat! The owner did some quick calcualtions and happily stated "It should'nt be over 4500 lbs." Well, the bad news was my trailer is rated for only 2080 lbs cargo weight! It was a VERY slow ride home at 20mph :)

Building the fence was actually quite easy. Here's some pics:

Unloading the trailer to set the pieces

Cutting some end pieces

The Job Inspector Arrives - How am I doing?

Almost Done!

Checking for Strength

And here is the finished product. In the foreground you can see the woven wire fence that makes up the south end of the orchard.

Sheep arriving early!

Due to scheduling conflicts with my day job... we have made arrangements to receive our flock of sheep early. Instead of arriving on the 15th this month they will be here saturday. This has created a bit of extra work to accomodate them.

Last night we started on the orchard fencing, to keep the sheep seperate from the fruit trees. This fence will be creative, with one side being 8ft woven wire on the garden side. 2 sides being 4 ft woven wire and tposts, and the fourth side being a good old fashioned "worm" fence. These are self standing wooden fences without posts. I chose this to prevent the problems trying to sink tposts into this hardpan on the low area. The top soil for about 50 ft is 1-2 inches deep in this area.

We also started on the sheep shelter, closing in one of the old horse sehlters partly to give them a warm, dry place to escape the weather and sunshine. This will be used mostly for birthing next year.

Another project is to use some 18" rebar stakes to stake down the oldest part of the pasture perimeter fence. It is pretty loose and instead of rehanging the whole thing we are going to try to save time by driving these stakes in the hol dhte wire to the ground. That should lessen the chances of predators (stray dogs and coyotes) sneaking in under the fence to attack the young lambs.

Hopefully a few hours each night after work will be enough to finish before saturday!