Miracle of life - breathe

Life.  We all have it for a time,  but what is it?  How does a collection of raw materials become "alive"?  This is perhaps the greatest mystery of...  Life.

A recent experience brings me to wonder at the miracle and mystery of life.  I was feeding the sheep,  two bales of alfalfa.  These bands are heavy,  about 150 lbs each.  I had them on the tractor forks one a top the other.  To get these heavy bales into the sheep pen,  I lowered the forks over the fence as far as they would go and let them slide off the forks.

Now,  usually I arrange them one in front of the other,  so they can slide off one at a time....  But this time I forgot and placed them one on top of another.  This is a drastic and almost deadly mistake! But I realized it too soon.  As I tilted the forks forward the top bale leaned over,  but so did the one underneath.  They both slipped enough to start falling the three or so feet to the ground.

Yes,  I had made sure that the sheep and lambs were moved back before starting. But now the bales blocked my view from the tractor seat.  When the bales hit the ground,  I noticed they did not fall flat,  but sat at a weird angle.

Oh no!  Panic time...  I could think of only one reason for this,....  A lamb underneath!  I jumped off the tractor, ran around to where I could climb the fence,  and pulled the bales back from all the feeding sheep.  Sure enough...  A lamb was trapped underneath. He was laid at an odd angle,  between both bales,  crushed under 250 lbs of alfalfa and several full grown sheep standing on top.

My heart sank.  As I pulled his still body out,  he wasn't breathing.  His body was already cool from the wet ground he had been mashed against.  It was an awful moment of realization.  I watched,  no breath.  No movement.  No signs of life.  His eyes were rolled back. 

Heartbroken that I cause this....  I started vigorously rubbing his chest.  Hard enough to shake his entire body.  One way,  then the other.  Watched...  Nothing. Then I prayed to the creator of life itself....  Saying,  "Lord,  please don't let this little one die from my mistake".   Let me be specific here..  I didnt "say a prayer",  but I prayed.  It was from the heart. 

And....  The little ram gasped!  He started choking,  coughing,  breathing hard.  After 20 or 30 seconds he started moving.  His eyes rolled straight.  Slowly,  ever so slowly,  he woke up.   Eventually he weakly pulled his legs under himself and stood up.  Then,  as if that wasn't miracle enough....  He looked around and walked stiffly between my kneeling knees and rubbed my leg,  looked up at me. 

That, my friends, will make a grown man cry.  Period.

I watched him for maybe a half hour and he seemed to make a full recovery.  His Mom,  Dusty,  accepted him back,  all is good.  Life continues.

What is life?  It is breath.  The breath of life that our creator breathed into us to kick start these bodies we live within.  Breath,  the sign we look for to know.  Breath is life.  Something so simple but so profound.

There is a little lamb alive right outside tonight,  because the creator breathed into him once again.  A second chance.  Some might say "geez, it's only a sheep"  but no...  It is life.  Every life is precious.  Every life is special.   This little lamb,  breathes. 

The breath of life....

Birds eye view of milking

These three little kids just couldn't resist...  They had to peak in and see what was happening in the mysterious "milking room".  Of course...  They needed a lift to see.

First bottle lamb

Kaelyn is very happy to adopt this year's first bottle lamb!  This cute little ram was one of two born yesterday and unfortunately the mom choose the other. This happens occasionally in sheep for various reasons and in the wild,  the rejected lamb would die within a day or two. Historically we have given away rejected lambs to save them.  This year we decided to raise the rejected lambs instead of giving them away.

Kaelyn is loving her new job as you can see!

Pigs moving to foothill

We are in the process of moving the growing pigs over to the foothill property.  Last year we tried the sheep and goats,  but it was a frustrating experience with containment.  Neither would respect the electric enough to stay put.  So we decided to change approaches,  and move the pigs over instead.

This week we got the infrastructure ready.  There is a test pen,  about 180 feet on each side,  with 3 strands of heavy electric rope.  The corners are heavy wooden corners with rolling insulators.  We wired each side as a seperate run,  connected across at the corners.  The remaining corner is a double wide (2 pallets)  wooden door.  The whole setup is powered by a 15k solar electric charger.

In theory,  we can keep the growing pigs contained,  and rotate the whole setup around the pasture.  This keeps consistent fresh ground under them,  and limits the over dug damage of constant rooting.   They have a barrel waterer and a new sprouted feed setup. (more on the details later)

So the plan is to move all the growers over at weaning time,  and keep the breeders at the main farm on dodge rd. A much better arrangement for the land available.

More details to follow on the new sprouting / feeding system. 

And a new years lamb arrives

Seems we are blossoming with holiday births this year!  First Christmas lambs,  now a new years lamb.  Fortunately they all look healthy and are handling the sub zero weather just fine.  Love Jacob sheep!  We hardy!