September 21, 2008  We are well on our way to our 2009  lambs.  Not all by our choice but these animals have their own agenda.  We had selected a group for the ram, Jordan, to breed and had selected other ewes for other rams to breed.  Then there was that night....Jordan and several of his ewes jumped the fence and ended up with the milkers, several were marked that night.  Brad separated them all again and took the two separate groups out to the pasture and fenced them in.....before he could get the electricity fence plugged back in, they jumped the line again.  One more time separating and one more night of mixing it up and Jordan’s harem is now the bulk of our flock.  Which is really okay for breeding purposes.  Jordan’s lineage is reportedly a good one and he is totally unrelated to our flock.  His dam and sire were purchased by us and he was the only surviving part of the family.  He survived only because he was sold to Gretchen Wilson in Monroe and after the flood she very generously sent him back to us.  Jordan is a beautiful ram, a bit ornery, but he settled down when in the ram pen with all the others.  Currently though, he has his harem and is a bit more protective of them.  That is what rams do.  Brad has to watch him carefully when he is in the pen as Jordan will take a male presence as a threat to his kingdom.  Jordan does not seem to mind my presence in the pen as much, but that does not mean I don’t keep my eye on him.  Thirty-eight of the ewes have been marked.  Jordan can’t go anywhere without his following, 4-5 of the ewes in heat will stick tighter to him than “flies to honey” and when they are not cycling they dump him.  Alas, I really don’t think he minds as the next group, cycling into heat, is already at his side.  This means we are almost done with breeding the older ewes.  I have about 20 ewe lambs we will breed but not until October 15th.  We will then give one of the other rams a chance to prove himself.  I have a beautiful ram lamb who I have admired from the start.  He is out of one of our good milkers and sired by a ram from one of our best milkers ever.  I had hoped to use him this year on some of the ewes but will put him in with the ewe lambs he is unrelated to and see what we get.  The truth will not be known until we start milking their babies in 2010!  That is why it is a bit scary only using one ram this year on our ewe flock.  He has reportedly good milking genes but nothing proven as we had not milked any of the offspring of his father.  His mother was young yet and not a wonderful milker.....time will give us the answer and the genetics of the mothers will play their part in the breeding game, or gamble....

September 7, 2008  This morning I was blessed with one of those heartwarming sights a mother will remember.  John has been on a mission to sleep out in the pasture and protect the sheep.  He has explored the ideas that coyotes and wolves will avoid human scent and not bother him but would hunt the young lambs.  John has wanted to be a good shepherd.  Yesterday he took his bags of supplies, he had a bag with clothes, and a bag with carrots, cookies, and a bottle of gatorade.  He put his insect book into his backpack and set out to find a camping spot.  I let him go thinking he would be back in 15 minutes or so.  After a half an hour I sent Peter out on the Quad to check for him.  Peter said he did not see him.....”did you really look?”  Peter went back out and found John’s campsite under the car canopy we use as heat and rain shelter for the milking mommas.  John had just come back to the house to get his”reinforcements”,  his supplies.  John got a sleeping bag and a pillow along with his father and his brother Andrew.  After we made him stay in the house to eat dinner he led the charge out to the field and set up camp with Brad and Andrew.  We placed bets on how long they would stay out there.  The mother with little faith expected them home about 9:30, Brad figured they would last till 10:00, Peter placed his bets on sometime after ten.  All was apparently well at 9:00 PM as Andrew came in to the house to get cookies for him and his father, Johns’ supply was not enough for all three.  I came down At 6:00 this morning to find Brad in checking e-mails.  He came in about 5:30 and the two boys were still out sleeping.  I took my cup of coffee out with me at 7:00 and there they were.  Two heads sticking out of sleeping bags,  with books, flashlights, and camping food remains around them.  They were lit from behind by the rising sun that was just creeping in under the canopy far enough to find their sleepy faces.  Circling the canopy were about 15-20 of our milking mommas with dewey backs wondering just how come they had been evicted from their shelter, not quite sure they wanted to share space with the smells and noises that they found there.  The boys had a good time.  They ate their cookies, made shadows with their hands on the roof of the canopy after dark.  They slept well outside, Brad did not.   A fun time was had by a couple of farm boys on a late summer night.   John is already talking about doing it again.  I think we will dodge tonight, he has his first day of preschool tomorrow.

August 31, 2008  Market Season is over for us now.  We had our last day in Puyallup yesterday.  We don’t have to calculate how much milk to pastuerize for Tuesday today, I won’t have to find some time tomorrow on the holiday to make cheese for Tuesday market.  No driving.  We got a new car on May 10th, we have put 10,000miles on it in 3 and a half months.  We hope to button up the farm for winter.  All those things that are wonderful to do like weed the garden and cover with a barrier so it will be ready for planting in the spring.  Like cover and protect exposed water lines.  Work on mud abatement.  Start school.  Things will change, hopefully the energy level will continue so we get things done. 
Brad will still make cheese.  We hope to continue with some of the fresh cheese sales for about a month or two.  We will be milking about 2 gallons a day for a while and can make 25 gallons worth of fresh cheese every other week.  To do my markets it would take 36 gallons a week.  So by dribbling it out we are better off selling to stores.  Besides I can take cheese to stores and drop it off and leave for home in time to collect kids from their respective schools. 
School starts.  This makes for a totally different structure in our lives.  It will be good to be done with markets in order to structure our lives around school.  To have well fed and rested children.  I admit I usually get lazy in the summer and let the younger kids sleep in. It is about the only time I have alone in the house or if I need to make cheese it is nice to know they will come find me when they wake up.   Also by letting them sleep things stay cleaner in the house.  How kids be come tornadoes upon waking is amazing.  Don’t turn your back if you are cleaning house because all the hard work will never be noticed.  Sigh.  I had a friend drop by market the other day her kids had made a day of her cleaning efforts futile.  It is tolerable sometimes but somedays you just need to see the fruit of your labor and it has been gobbled up by little hands and many toys.  Sigh.
Change is good.  Change is needed.  We have had a very busy year and this change will be welcome.
August 24, 2008  Well the decision has been made.  We are done with Farmers Markets for the year.  It was not an easy decision to make when considering how wonderful our customers are, how kind, generous, and faithful they have been.  But we only have 5 rounds of Queso left and 7 rounds of Mopsy’s the Black Sheep Tomme and more Mopsy’s will be ready at Thanksgiving time and if Brad uses the milk in the freezer from Tin Willows Farm for a couple batches of Queso de Oveja and Mopsy’s Best we will hope to have those ready in time for the Christmas season.  I will say my husband has done an extraordinary job this year balancing the milk and cheese.  We started the season with one pop cooler and added another when the cheese came back from Beechers (where it went after the flood till we could house it again).  Then there was the milk.  Freezing some, using lots, keeping some on hand so we always could have fresh cheese for markets.  The pop cooler caves were full and the freezers were full at several points and then an order for fresh cheese would come in and would aleviate the congestion, or Brad would make Feta which takes less space to age.....it was a dance.  It has been a season of dances.  Avoiding mud. milking, reporters, volunteers, more mud, more volunteers, cheesemaking, more reporters,  markets, study groups...how to respond to disasters, how to help move animals to safety, how the USDA can best help farmers.  It has been a huge season in many ways and it is time to slow down.  I was going to go through September with our markets but when we looked closely at the cheese inventory we realized it is time to be done and finish all the outside projects that need work before winter hits.  The sheep who have been milking  so faithfully are down to one milking a day and the new ewes will not enter the parlour for a couple more weeks.  This will enable us to keep fresh cheeses at Market of Choice and at New Seasons Markets and as I said we will have Thanksgiving and Christmas Cheese.  But school starts next week, it is time to focus on our kids and take the time to enjoy them and all they will begin this fall.  We have one who is trying Golf and will need to get in 50 hours of driving to get his license, one going into fourth grade with a new teacher and all the excitement a budding scientist finds.  (I did veto the snake going up stairs in a jar, sorry not all moms are willing to have snake habitiats in  boy’s bedrooms).  We have a preschooler who will need transportation midday to school and lots of encouragement to listen and follow instructions, as well as continue being creative.  It is a fine line to walk but if have faith he will find it.   So we will say goodbye to our market friends this week and look forward to next year when we can focus on cheese and marketing and hope the flood recovery will be minimal!

August 17, 2008 We have arrived at the dating game again.  It is the time of year we evaluate the rams and the ewes, look at the genetics from whence they came and decide to where they go.  Which ram and ewe will be matched up to create wonderful babies and next years milk.  Brad is still milking 38 but only 24 are milking twice a day.  Our milking outcome is dwindling but we are hoping to see some lambs begin dropping in the next few weeks so we will know the prognosis for our hope of additional milk and the prospects for Christmas cheese.  What an interesting year this has been.  We have faced and accomplished a lot of things along with the help of too many people to count.  Our animals look really good.  The ewes who survived the flood were wonderful mothers and ended up being very good milkers.  The 10 ewes that Deb Bender sent have been excellent milkers and we look forward to seeing how their ewe lambs progress.  They are too young to breed this year but we will keep them for the dating game next year.  With so many donations for ewes we were able to purchase in 12 ewes from Kate Posey from Eastern Washington.  They are beautiful animals and have really added a lot to our milking crew.  The genetics brought in by these animals will be a boost to our flock as well.  We have an additional 17 ewes we purchased from Promised Land Farm in Wisconsin.  They are the ones who we hope to see lambing over the next several weeks.  They have some Dorset blood lines in them and some Polypay.  They are a stockier lot, the Freisians are much more dainty with thin legs and narrow faces.  These girls have stockier legs and are thicker through the middle sections.  The linebackers versus the running backs, but all part of the same team.  These lambs may be a better sort for selling as meat.  They were bred by Alex our ram who is also of the stockier build than our Freisian or Lacuanne type rams.  We will need to take all of this into our planning.  We hope to have two lambing seasons---with a break in the middle.  We will pick the ewes to breed and put them in with the ram for 34 days.  Sheep cycle every 17 days so the hope would be our ram boy would have two opportunites to make his mark on our growing flock.  The ram will truly have opportunity to make his mark as we place a marking harness on his chest and when a ewe is bred she will bear a mark from the color of the crayon our ram is holding in the harness.  If we get our act together and find our ram boys after the first 17 days we will be able to change the color of the crayon which will tell us if a ewe was marked and bred or just marked and not breds so she came into heat again.  All these marks tell us a lot about the abilities of the ram and the fertility of the ewes.  It gives us a date the ewe was hopefully bred so we know when to expect babies.  It is very nice for the winter lambing seasons so we can tell which nights to look at which mommas.  Not fool proof but better than not knowing at all who to look at.    We have reached another season.  The cycle of lambing, milking, breeding, and then we start over again.  Breeding leads to the anticipation of lambing which leads to the anticipation of milking which brings on the breeding season.  As we evaluate each ewes performance both with lambing, raising her babies and her milking output we will make decisions about the next step.  And usually by this time we are ready for a change.  Maybe year round milking is not in our best interests.....we will see.  Check next year to see if we do it again
We sat down last August and figured out 75 ewes to breed, 22 pregnant ones survived the flood, and here we are planning on breeding about 75 again.  God is good and people are great.  We have had an exhausting year but are still standing, thanks to the grace of God and the help of many hands.  Our animals look really good.  Thank you all!
August 7, 2008  The winners were announced last weekend at the American Cheese Society’s Cheese Contest.  A lot of Northwest Cheesemakers did very well.  Congratulations to all.  Even though we had not entered any cheese this year I got all the nervous twitter as Brad was reading off the names and awards of friends we have made over the past 4 years: Mt Townsend Creamery, Estrella Family Creamery, River’s Edge Chevre, Beechers, Rogue Creamery, Tumalo Farms, also winning were Washington State University, Tillamook County Creamery, and Willamette Valley Cheese Company   Many good folks making fine cheeses and it is great fun to see them being successful!  We have a new sheep milk cheesemaker in the Northwest!  We expect to see great things from Le Ferme de Metras, home of the Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese.  Stephen and Amy have made it to market after a long haul getting their farm going and perfecting many things.   They will debut their fresh sheep cheeses in Seattle at Metropolitan Markets and at tow Farmers Markets.  It is good to see all the hard work come to a new level.  I remember feeling like we had gotten to base camp when we had all the facility in order and began making cheese.  Then there was the mountain to climb but it is good to use muscles and stretch a bit and Stephen and Amy have proved themselves up to the challenge!  Good luck to them.
On the home front we have had another new baby, Ione.  We have a complete kitchen I just need to find the time to gather everything back and find a home for it.  The Cheese packing room has electricity and water to the edge of it.  Hay is cut and baled, and we hope to get it into the barn today.  Markets are busy and full of good people.  Sometimes it feels as if we are moving at 110 miles per hour but it will all come to an end and we hope to have a restful winter.  
Ione is a new baby born way out of our regular lambing season but it has just been a year for strange things and practices. We have about 5-6 more ewes who look pregnant and will deliver between now and mid-September.  Monday we went to Ione Oregon to purchase some sheep milk from Terry Felda at Tin Willows farm.  We got back late and when Brad went out to feed the lambs and check the sheep there was a new lamb in the pasture.  A little girl out of one of Deb Benders ewes.  (whose stock by the way is excellent for those looking for dairy ewes!)  I went out on Tusday morning to feed and see the new baby.....she was nowhere to be seen.  The paddock the sheep are in is only 300 feet by 150 feet I could not see a white speck anywhere, mom was grazing peacefully which was pacifying yet puzzling.  What on earth did she do with her baby?  I stepped over the fence to go find out and Brutus, the Gaurd dog, came to greet me....leaving behind a small little lamb that he was taking care of while its mother was grazing.  Momma and baby were reunited and Brutus was rewarded for doing a great job.  All is well

July 20, 2008 We feel we are finally looking like a real sheep farm again.  Even better than before!  The sheep are now grazing the hay field.  They must walk out there before and after both the morning and evening milkings.  That means the Shepherds must walk out there as well.  It is a good thing.  They get exercise and so do we.  The pace is not always fast, and not always slow.  There is time to enjoy the trees and the greenery.  The sheep have not been “herded” this way before.  We usually lead them out and they find the big pasture.  This was okay but the back field that was flooded is now a dust bowl.  I cannot understand why but the sheep tend to graze on the dust.  Perhaps because anything that emerges will be young and tender and more to their liking but why the dust?  The sheep look much better out in the green pasture and the Gaurd dogs are staying with them and hopefully doing their job.  They are not wandering, that is good.  We hope the Gaurd dogs are doing their job by just being in the field and leaving their scent.  We hope they do not get challenged by the Coyotes but the last week has been very good. 
This new pasturing plan is one we have been thinking we must do for a while and never got to the point of doing it.  Again the flood has nudged us over into doing something good.  We purchased several of the semi-permanent net fences from Premier Supply.  not cheap but well worth it.  I set up a paddock by myself last night in about half an hour.  The benefits are huge.  We can rotate pastures like we should have been doing all along with sheep.  We can move fields and make paddocks to fit the number of animals in that group.  We have five groups of sheep now: the milkers, the non-milking ewes, the ewe lambs, the rams, and the smallest lambs I still feed the 12% protein mix to.  It is very good to have them all separated out so we can save grain by getting it to the rights ones in a smaller group and not feeding a large group in hopes the ones that need it get their share.  These  fences will allow us to keep the electricity on.  Our back field has a perimeter fence that was always being overgrown with brambles and branches.  It would draw off the power and that is how the gaurd dogs got out so much  Jewel even respects this fence.  She is usually the one who gets out and leads Brutus astray.  The coyotes could get in through the old perimeter fence and we have lost 4 lambs this year to coyotes.  They usually were the ones that fell asleep in the grass and mid day the mommas would come to the barn for some shade and the lambs were left in the field.  The gaurd dog stayed with the mommas and was in the barn when the lambs were taken.  It is always hard to see the little ones go so we hope this new system will keep the right canines in and the wrong ones out!
The shade issue is big as we shear in the winter and now the wool is about half grown.  We purchase some carport type structures to use as shade and hope to get some black shade cloth sides to increase the shaded area.  We will be putting these on skids so we can move them as the sheep move from paddock to paddock.  The plan is a good one it just needs to come to fruition.  We set up the carport, the lambs use it daily in the warm sun, the dogs use it all the time.  We have yet to get the skids on as we have not needed to change pasture yet.....so the wind took one on a sail yesterday.  I came home from market and there it was in the gully.  We took off a couple legs, rolled it onto the roof and dragged it up the slope.  We rolled it over the fence, almost onto the backs of the curious little lambs and it is now staked to the ground.  It all looks very good, peaceful, pastoral.  It is nice to see such a huge picture of progress.  God has blessed this little farm and we pray it in return honors Him.

July 18, 2008 Summer is here and life has been busy and it is good.  Mopsy’s Best has made her appearance.  We tested her a couple weeks ago and the cheese was good but not great.  It had matured a couple weeks longer now and is getting all those wonderful full flavors my customers have been asking for for weeks.  Vivian and Nickie from Issaquah were here with their Church, Faith United Methodist Church.  They volunteered to be tasters.  We cut into a new round of Mopsys Best, first one from this seasons milk and both of them gave us the thumbs up for it to go to market.  This church has been sending waves of volunteers all week  Susan, the organizer, came down a couple weeks ago to scout out the needs.  We had carpenter type men cut the doors in the new structure on Tuesday.  I had two women paint my Kitchen.  ( The cabinets, stove, and Island come next week)  On Wednesday we had Electrical type men here who ran wires and readied the new building for the addition of the cooling unit for the cave to the panel and put their heads together on which way the wire should run to a box.  Three women painted the windows and door frames, and cleaned in the Lanudry room.  I think I let them down, not knowing how many were coming I was not ready and I was cheesing away as I had big deliverys to Portland on Wednesday.  Yesterday the youth came and worked on our fence.  The mud has grounded out the wire on the road fence and the curious little lambs were getting out.  Not good.  These kids weed whacked and dug out the wire and got the load halfway cleared.  The fence was charging last night when we checked it as we tucked our mommas and babies into their fields for the night.  Today?  yet more cave work.  We really hope to get this up and running....soon
The cheese this week has been going fast.  We sent another round of cheese to Tilth Restaurant in Seattle.  This time it was the Queso de Oveja, our Spanish cheese.  I always want to sneak into a kitchen and watch the preparations and reactions to the cheese.  We also sent two rounds of the Queso de Oveja to Beechers.  Tuesday was the big make day.  We had 40 gallons of milk to make into fresh cheese which was 111 pounds of cheese.  Whew.  Deborah saved my life on this make.  She comes on Tuesdays and makes my Wednesday cheese while I am at the Community Farmers Market in Chehalis.  She came about noon and was there till 11 pm!  It was such a blessing to have her help...I certainly wasn’t a ball of energy when I went out between 7 to 10 pm, kinda rummy after a hot day selling cheese.  Wednesday I took a load of cheese to the Arbor Heights New Seasons Store in North Portland.  They were excited to  see it back.  I also took packages of fresh cheese to the Market of Choice in West Linn which will end up in five of their stores from Portland to Eugene.  Then on to the Moreland Market for my Wednesday Party in the Sellwood Moreland neighborhood.  The car was so packed I had to use the luggage rack for my market canopy.  What a good thing it was!  One more market this week and then some time to visit with my sister and her family here from Virginia..  Onto Puyallup this Saturday!

July 6, 2008  Farm dogs are all different and all the same.  They have to put up with a lot of varying in routine and a lot change in their lives.  Our Alberta, Bert for short, was with us for almost 15 years.  She showed up on Peter’s first birthday, a stray.  She hung around for a few days, I thought she had come with the corn cutting crew but they did not know who she was.  Peter being a one year old did the obligatory sticking his finger up her nose and squishing her with hugs and she did not mind.  After a few days and no one claiming her I took her to the Vet.  She was healthy, about three months old, and full of fleas.  We took her home washed her up and she was ours.  The next day two boys rode by on bikes and said she had wandered away from their house....I felt crestfallen.  They were quick to add that she was one of a litter of 13 and they were going to have to take her to the pound so we could keep her....Whew.   It turned out her Border Collie looks were artificial she was part Husky and part Golden Retreiver.  She was our watch dog.  She barked to announce anyone’s entrance to the farm.  Even the wind some times.  She was about 75 pounds and all bark with a wagging tail.  The Golden in her gave her the best attitude you could want in a dog.  She followed the tractor when Brad would disc.  She ate plenty of varmits doing this in her younger days.  She was always ready to go.  A walk to the river, a trip to the field.  She kept the deer away from my garden she very rarely came in the house.  She would shiver and act scared until we let her back out.  The Husky in her kept her warm at night and even when we felt bad for here being out on cold nights but she still did not want to be inside.   Bert was always there, almost always.  The first two sheep and one goat we got were pastured in our orchard to eat all the many climbing blackberry vines and to mow.  The goat liked what was outside the fence better than inside so we had to electrify the wires.  Well chances were that the first day it was electrified we entertained a huge thunder and lightening storm.  Bert got zapped by the fence and we could not find her after the storm was over.  Not to fear she was at the neighbors house hiding in their garage.  For several years every T-storm we had Bert was to be found at the neighbors seeking refuge.  This wore off after several years as she got older and became a bit deaf.  Bert put up with two more kids over the years.  She watched several cats come and go and a few other dogs.  She did not get along with the first Border Collie we had as they were both Alpha dogs, they had brutal fights when Patch got off the chain.  We found a good home for Patch, Bert stayed.  Bert got to go to the Pediatric clinic and be sewed up by our Nurse Practioner after one of those fights.  The NP needed practice stitching and our Bert was a very willing volunteer, she just lay there while being stiched.  Bert got older and deafer.  We began to check behind the car each time we backed out as she would lay out in the sun gathering heat in her black fur.  She could not hear and would not move when the car started.  I ran over a foot last fall and it scared me many times to think I could have hit her.  We got old Bert into the house during the flood, she left with us in the boat, was airlifted in the helicopter. She spent a month at our minister’s home this winter.  She came home with us after the new year and spent the next three months inside, except to go out to releive herself.  When Brad had the pnemonia they kept each other company downstairs.  She bagan to spend more time outside as the weather wearmed up but we could tell she was getting older and less able to get around.  She finally was hit by a truck.  She laid down under one out of sight and did not get up when the motor started.  She was a very good dog and the boys buried her out by the river with Momma cat.  Farm dogs, as with all dogs, have a lot of changes to accomodate in their lives.  Season changes, household changes, many different purposes on the farm.  Good Farm dogs adjust and are ready  to go no matter what the occasion.  Bert was like that.  Just a happy to be your friend kind of gal.  We say good bye but what a good life she had.