Herding sheep - Thanks Smokey!!!

The Winter wear got used this morning that's for sure. Temps in the teens, ice everywhere still but the deed was done. Luckily I only had to serve a support roll which included airing up a tire on the stock trailer. Not an easy task when you can't really touch the metal with bare hands for long. OK that and the fact that the air compressor in the barn (the big one) never wants to run right in low temps so I had to use my smaller compressor from the shop and a portable tank.

Still it was an acid test for some of the things I worked on this Summer. One thing was my portable gate storage idea. The barn had huge amounts of wasted space used to store gates that my mother and step father used when they were herding these sheep. Nothing is ever simple with my mother, she always has some reason no set up will work for her other than using massive amounts of space so a permanent gate system is out of the question for the time being.

Also she will not put anything away or where it is suppose to go.

I have learned over the years the best way to combat this is to design things in a way that works towards her need for "Options" (sound familiar?). I got lucky that the light aluminum gates she uses fit perfectly in between a pair of wall studs next to the large back door. I simply stacked them up in this area and then made a cross bar like barring up a door to hold them all in place. Worked perfectly and the gates are light enough that even my 5' mother was able to hold them in place why I removed the bar. We then set up the maze of gates and separated the flock as they came out of the lot they were held in.

So the first lot is off to the processing plant. I think we are going to need some more freezers especially since lamb prices are waaaaay down right now. Not sure if a trip to the sale lot would even net enough to pay the gas bill at the moment to be honest. Of course the lessening of the feed costs is good but pound for pound right now I figure we get a much better payout by consuming them ourselves.

I asked the Mrs. if we could get a flock of sheep like the ones in the video below. She said NO :(



So the sheep our moved and my part of the process is done. The gates are all stored back where they belong and all I need to do is be sure my portable air tank gets back to it's proper home this afternoon.

Oh and I need to start making room in the freezers.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!