Ah the Joys of Farm Life

Sorry if I have not been as quick with the replies and/or gotten to comment on each of your blogs like I try to do every day. The past few days have been hectic for me.

It seems everyone around me is either sick, injured or hobbled in some way right now. The Mrs. still has not gotten her car back even though they promised it would be done a week ago so I am driving her back and forth to work. That is killing about 3 hours a day right now. My Dad is recovering and finally got back at it this morning so I don't have to go check on him every morning any more.

My Mother and Step Father were told they were required to get a Flu shot at each of their respective places of employment and then both went down sick yesterday so guess who has been doing all the feeding and such. Both the ones currently penned here and the flock of ewes on their pasturage.

While giving Ram number one and his paddock bitch their hay this afternoon I got a whiff of something bad and noticed a dead possum in their pen. I have no clue how or why or where but it was a good sized one, only the dog could have done it in. My best guess is the dog got it and critically wounded it and it crawled into the pen trying to escape and died.

So my duties now included getting rid of a dead possum.... Yummy.

I burned it in the concrete block burn pile I constructed this Summer. The dog was much too interested in it for me to do anything else with it. Luckily I had enough old boards and small limbs already loaded up for burning that it was enough to do the deed.

Random dead animals is just a part of living out here. Most times you just don't really know how the local wildlife ends up where it got you just remove it and carry on.

While attempting to maneuver the gate with a dead possum on my bedding fork the paddock bitch made a run for it. He went straight for the feed barrels and threw the top off with such grace that I knew he had practice at it. Of course he is used to ignoring my mother when he gets his head into the feed barrel and was not prepared for me when I came back. That wether may weigh more than a small steer but I can still get him man handled in a way he just has never had to deal with. He was so surprised I managed to pull his head out of that barrel and push him sideways he turned and ran right back into his paddock with his pretend tail between his legs.

One of these days when I get the barn cleaned out completely I am going to deal with food storage needs and make them escaped animal proof.

Anyway I did manage to take a picture of one of my girls (Barb #56,732 to be exact) working a bitterweed bloom. One of these days I am going to have to do something about all the bitterweed in the pasture as well.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!