Sweet Stem Farm’s rapping lamb Japhy has a message for all you meat lovers:
‘Eat local, humane and eat cheek-to-cheek, fool!’
Locavore 4 Life (The Happy Meat Rap)
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Category Archives: Lambs
What happens on the weekend
What a busy week! We got our sheep shorn, our last cutting of hay made and most of the winter cover crops planted. We had our first killing frost of the season last night. I had covered my pepper plants, but the cold got the tops of them anyway.
I started my day out with my new, favorite morning food–a pumpkin spice breakfast shake. It is delicious, doesn’t sit like a rock in my stomach, and keeps me from feeling faint halfway through chores.
Chihiro is my chore chum. She follows me out to check on the animals on pasture and pops up in various different places in the barn.
I haven’t found any eggs this week in my chickens’ nests, so I had to do something a bit special with the last three. Philip got his sunny-side-up. I scrambled my egg, added one of the last tomatoes, some dandelion and chives, with a bit of garlic and raw milk feta to top it off.
A grainy photo of the bald eagle that visited our farm this afternoon.
Then I went out to help Philip finish planting barley.
I rode on the planter and made sure the seed didn’t run out.
This is Bambi–she is 12 years old, retired, and has the run of the place. She is a bit arthritic, so she doesn’t wander too far, but she loves to graze the cover crop in the garden and soak up the sun on the south side of the house.
Our sparkling white flock. They are the best.
What happens on the weekend
Autumn is here! The crops are turning brown and the hum of harvesting is in the air.
Morning chores are wrapping up. Philip watching the lambs busily devouring their hay.
Sunny morning dog.
My dear little chickens are still laying eggs! Each morning that I find an egg in their nest box, I feel a little surprised. One of these days, they’ll have decided the days are too short and that they’re done laying until next spring.
What happens on the weekend
These mornings I start out with feeding the lambs their hay for the day and making sure they’re feeling good. They are often out on pasture soaking up the coolness. Here is one fancy lamb at the start of a hot and muggy day.
Although most of my days are filled with animal chores and keeping up with the farm work, I do stop now and then to enjoy my flowers and veggie/herb gardens, too.
There have been a lot of praying mantises in the gardens the past 2 years. There is one little trooper who must have lost his 2 right legs in a fight, but I see him every day, sitting on the dill, waiting for his next meal. Once we woke up one morning to hundreds of teeny, tiny mantises on the bedroom curtains, walls and ceiling (the egg sac was right outside and the window was left open a crack). It is very hard to “shoo” baby mantises!
And like everyone else I’m sure, we are enjoying and indulging in all the abundant produce around here. My tomatoes are a bit late and just starting to ripen. My folks have been loading us up with sweet corn from their garden (we don’t mind!) and I have been giving away bags of kale from my kale forest.
My niece gave me a chamomile plant last year. It reseeded itself and this summer I’ve been harvesting the flowers almost every day and drying them–some are nice and big like these guys, and others are much smaller and a good bit more fragrant. All too soon it will be winter and time for making steaming mugs of chamomile tea.
What happens on the weekend
It was a beautiful thing to be awakened in the early hours of the morning by the sound of rain pelting our plastic roof–a wonderful thing. I lay in bed and held my breath for a bit, hoping it would keep on. It must have. I found myself waking up again at 5:30am and hearing more rain on the roof.
We got almost 1/2 an inch of rain. Now our crops can uncurl their shriveled leaves…
…and maybe the rest of our soybean crop will emerge, if it’s not too late for those little seeds.
On Thursday we weaned all 208 of our lambs–the first year that we managed to wean every lamb that was born alive. A bit of a celebration for us, but a sad time for all of them. By this evening though, the lambs were jumping and running around with only an occasional cry for mom.
Our beef cattle peering out of their shady summer quarters, happy to be out of the sun and away from the flies.
I do hope that the rain is far-reaching. I know there are many areas that could use a good soaking. Then maybe the grain prices would come down and we all could sleep easier at night knowing that there will be affordable grain to feed our pigs. I hope.
–Dee
What happens on the weekends
Summer is really here and we are enjoying it. The weather has been mostly beautiful with a few hot days thrown in now and then. The winter annual grasses are done for the year…
…and have made way for the summer ones. This is a grazing-type sorghum sudangrass, a close relative of corn. 
The pastures with perennial grasses have gone to seed. Some have been mowed for hay and some are being grazed by our sheep. The lambs are growing well and all 208 of them have gotten their first vaccinations.
We are not typically early risers, Philip and I, but the summer heat has started pushing us to drag ourselves out of bed a good bit earlier–like at 5am.
Usually by 7:30am, the sheep were already getting hot and even though they love their breakfast dessert of corn and oats, the heat was slowing them down a good bit. So we try to get out there instead by 5:30am. And we really do enjoy it once we’re out there.
The gardens are overflowing with fresh vegetables and we have been up to our eyebrows in work, but find most of it quite likable and satisfying.
The pigs have been loving their sprinklers and fans these days. This morning was cool enough that they got the “happys” and were running around, rolling in the straw and trying to see who could knock me down by running full speed into me or between my legs!
It had warmed up a good bit by 11am though, and they got the “grumpys”, so I turned on their sprinklers and they soon quieted down.
The cats, on the other hand, have been taking it quite easy, the warm summer days making them lazy. They leave their lounging spots to prowl around at night when it’s cooler.
The evenings have been pleasant, especially when most of the work is done and we get to spend a few quiet moments with our sweetest sheep.
–Dee
What happens on the weekends
There have been a lot of sweaty brows and some large glasses of cold mint tea lately.
And bottles for the lambs that need a little boost.
Lots of looking at poop and saying, “Ohh, those are some very fine poobles you made”, and “Oh no, that is very runny poop. Why?” And scratching our heads, then collecting samples to send to the lab to hopefully figure out what’s going on. 
Checking our cattle while our cattle are checking us.
My shadow next to my calico cat, Chihiro’s.
Cecilie’s strawberry shortcake with homemade yogurt and maple syrup.
Yesterday we watched the thunderstorms gathering, thankful for the inch and two tenths of rain it brought, but we held our breaths as the wind whipped things around. We checked our livestock after the storm, and other than one lamb getting stuck in a feeder, things were fine.
To quote Frank Kleinheinz, “Our happiest hours are spent among our flock, watching the young lambs grow and the old ones do well.”
Pasture Life
Pasture Life from Sweet Stem Farm on Vimeo.
Our lambs spend roughly the first week of their lives in our barn because it’s easier to for us to provide our “high touch” care, such as making sure that the ewe has enough milk to support her lambs and that they both have a handle on the milking process. When that period is over, we turn the ewes and lambs loose into the pasture to graze and socialize.
What happens on the weekends
Lambing is officially over! It went very well this year and we had the shortest and, in some ways, the best lambing season ever. We had a total of 103 ewes give birth to 213 lambs (5 of those were stillbirths) in 21 days, so there are 208 of the finest lambs on our farm.
Friska’s favorite spot during lambing season is right next to the bucket where we collect the fresh afterbirths to compost. She guards that bucket from the cats, and stuffs herself with as many placentas as she can eat, generally leaving half of her “real” breakfast and dinner in her bowl. What seems disgusting to us is dessert for her!
Philip and I could spend hours sitting in the barn and on pasture watching our beloved sheep, but that won’t get our hay made.
Today we were trying to decide whether or not we should mow our forage spelt crop. The crop is at the right stage of maturity, but the weather was not looking entirely favorable.
We’re already too late for this 20 acre crop that we had planned to harvest for feeding our lambs this summer and fall. We got so much rain in the last week that we couldn’t mow it at the right stage. You can see all the seed heads here, which means the quality is poor enough that it will only be good for feeding mature animals. It looks pretty, but I’m really bummed and not sure what we’re going to feed our lambs after weaning. Hopefully we can get the spelt crop in on time, but that is only a 10.5 acre field.
In the end, we decided not to mow the spelt field, but to take a chance on getting the mature crop cut and hopefully baled on Monday before it rains again. Here Philip and Jeremiah are cutting it down in 12 foot swaths.
I stopped in to see Grandma Cow again today. She was lying in her pasture in the middle of a big, sunny patch of buttercups. They are some of my favorite wildflowers along with dandelions and chicory.
This evening I went down to the lower meadow to bring the ewes and lambs in for the night. There is a fox around so we bring them into a pasture nearer the barn. The ewes quickly grabbed a few more bites before I shooed them through the gate.
–Dee
What happens on the weekends
The lambs are arriving! So far 15 ewes have given birth. Five ewes gave birth to triplets, nine had twins and one ewe had a single lamb.
Two of the nine sets of twins were born prematurely. The two tiny lambs on the right were born 4-6 days early, weighing 3.75 and 4.25 lbs. They are next to two average size (8-9 lbs) lambs who really make them look itty-bitty.
This is the one of the preemie lambs that weighed 3.75 lbs. The other two premature lambs were 10-12 days early and were so small that even mouth-to-mouth couldn’t save them.
Claire is a fantastic mother and here she is with her three. She had a normal delivery for the first two, but the last one (in front on right in photo) was being delivered as a tail-first breech. It was a bit of a struggle to get him out and there was no way she could have delivered him on her own. But everyone is alive and well and that’s why we try to be present for all the births. There is some video footage of her newborns on vimeo.
This little Americauna chicken ran away from my brother’s flock of hens and took over the sheep barn. She makes it her business to clean out all the corners of the barn, piling the straw and corncob bedding up behind her. The tops of the sheep feeders are a great place for her to keep an eye on things and she can easily jump down and chase away any cat that happens to get too close for her liking. And at night she sleeps on the windowsill in the bank barn where she can monitor the sheep goings-on.
A few of the lambs were old enough to be moved with their mothers to the “mixing pen” where we put 5-10 mothers along with their babies. In a few days, if the weather’s nice, they’ll then graduate to the pasture.
This little fellow and his sister were so happy to get out of the 4ft x 4ft maternity pen that they totally wore themselves out with all their skipping and hopping.
Although lambing season is our busiest time of the year, there are times to sit and wait. I like to spend those sitting, waiting times petting my sheep–I just love them. I love the way their wool smells of hay, and their warm cud-chewing breath–especially when belched right in my face–smells of fermented forages. How they like their ankles and briskets itched, and how they paw at me when I quit and they weren’t finished. And how I like to dig in their ears and pull out the earwaxy crusties they have in there and how they will lie down next to me and chew their cud if I sit still long enough. How piles of their shiny, black poobles just beg to be picked up and tossed at Philip.
–Dee
