Sheeps and bees and cherries

As always, lots happened today.
Isn't it funny, how a day seems uneventful until you sit down and try to chronicle it.


We wormed Thyme with Strongid and gave her a dose of Polyvisol. She is thin and her fleece looks scruffy. I think part of it is that she is so high lanolin and in this heat the sweat pushes it to the end.

Kermit is doing better. We gave him a bottle of Pedialyte this morning, a dose syringe of Peptobismol, a pan of beet pulp and stock 12 mash and grass hay. When we were at the farm this afternoon, he seemed very active but was crying constantly. So, Shawn lifted him over the fence in with the sheep and Pequena. He spent a lot of time licking the sulfur/salt block. We didn't give him anything special for dinner, just the hay and grain that the sheep get and we left him in with his sis.

Lynn and Sonny came and checked out the beesies and took home Clyde the Super Collider. The biggest of the bottle babies, Clyde was Salvia's black lamb by Homer. She rejected him at birth and kept her solid white lamb. Clyde has been on a bottle all his life, but he is big! Lynn will give him a good home and maybe now we'll have enough milk that a human might get to drink some?

Sonny said the bees are fine and he gave us some good tips. He showed us that they are two different breeds, the bees on the left are Italian and make more honey, faster. The bees on the right are either Russian or Buckfast bees. They are much darker than the little Italians. It is fascinating to see the differences - so close together!
We stole a frame of honey - just couldn't resist.

Lynn was looking at our trees while the guys were looking at bees. Of course, she was the only one who got stung!
She said the red sumac berries are edible if bitter and they make a great pink lemonade. She commented that the wild cherry leaves are toxic to the goats when their color starts to turn. We said, "Good thing we don't have any," and she showed us where we were wrong - we have lots of wild cherry. I wonder if the wild cherry is like tart cherry? It has the stripey silver bark and the leave are just starting to turn red. It is everywhere, so I guess we'll just have to hope the goats stay away from it.

She said in a normal year there would be wild cherries on the trees, but this year, because of the late killing freeze there are really no tree fruits in the area. Even the oaks did not set acorns. The deer and the squirrels are going to be very hungry this winter.

We put Bramble in with Cremepouf for a bit tonight. They fought, but not too seriously. He does have the idea that he is something special and he is developing a buck attitude, so I think he'll do fine breeding everybody this year.