Dearest BOTLiebers,

The cool mornings, the pup under a blanket, and the dinner time sunsets all tell us the same thing: another summer is drawing to a close here at BOTL Farm.  As we put the following touches on our third year here in The House, it occurs to us that we have many words to share with you.  Many words.  Gather round the pixels we will sequentially illuminate, and let us illustrate and elaborate on another general farm update:

The herds live on!  We've got the boys and the girls separated still, but we're getting ready to combine them again for winter to produce next year's baby sheep and baby goats.  We did our best at shearing our own sheep this spring, which is a bit like mutton busting while trying to use hair trimmers on a shag carpet soaked in crisco.  We're looking forward to another attempt at that this fall.  Except for on our boy breeder sheep.  He's huge.  Shearing him is going to be like giving a haircut while riding a bull.  Several members of the sheep herd have been selected for a free trip to sheep camp this fall.  They're looking forward to the trip, and we're looking forward to the neatly packed boxes they'll return in!

Editor's note... this was published a few weeks after it was written... Sorry about the timing, oops.

Greetings!  It's been a long winter since our last update, but spring is beginning to sprung and with spring comes BABIES.

Tess, one of our seasoned ewes, gave birth yesterday evening to twins.  As Experienced Farmers who have owned sheep for several months, we totally knew it was going to happen.  She had mostly stopped eating yesterday morning, was hanging out by herself for most of the day, and when she finally went into the shelter she growled at anyone who tried to join her.  Tess and Goaty McGoatFace (GMGF) seemed to compromise in the afternoon that GMGF could sit half-in, half-out of the shelter as long as GMGF was quiet.  That's quite a compromise for Goaty.

By late afternoon, Tess had started to occasionally twitch, gasp open her mouth, and then grind her teeth -- I don't know much about giving birth, but i told myself that her contractions had started.  However, our farming mentor had assured us that most of her sheep give birth overnight.  Whew, that was going to be lots of hours of contractions.

So we did what responsible farmers would do and went to the bar to hang out with our Friends and eat chicken wings, thinking that we'd be back in time for the birth later at night.

When we returned to the farm and exited the car, it was immediately apparent that there were new tiny animals and one of them was giving pathetic little cries.  One of the twins had gotten separated from Tess and was still wet and sticky (yuck) and was trying vainly to nurse from Sesvanna (who named these ridiculous sheep), who hasn't given birth yet and was having none of it.  We were able to scoop up the sticky twin and put it back down by Tess, who started licking and nursing it.  A great success.

One more farm story: so we're hard-boiling extra/cracked/small eggs for the pigs, right?  Pigs LOVE eggs. 

Two days ago, we took out a bucket of eggs for the pigs, but it appeared they had slept out in the forest somewhere because they weren't around the feeding area and weren't in their shelter.  We said fine, whatever, they'll come up for food and water at some point and eat the eggs then.

New farm lesson: crows LOVE eggs.  A group of nasty, too-intelligent-for-their-own-good crows proceeded to spend the morning trying to figure out how to efficiently hold whole, hard boiled eggs and fly at the same time.  They ended up scattering at least 5 of the eggs over the two fields and nearby forest, which pup was happy to run around and find and eat.  It was like pup-easter.  It's tuff to tell how many the crows successfully stole and ate.

So yesterday in the morning, we go out, no pigs.  So we put a lid on the egg bucket and set it outside the pig area, thinking we'll put them out when we sees the pigs return at some point that day so they'll eat them right away.  The pigs never returned, so last night while we were paparazzi-ing Tess we put the eggs out for the pigs, thinking the crows wouldn't eat them in the dark.

This morning we go out with another bucket of eggs and last night's eggs are still there. Those lazy goddamn pigs had already gone to sleep in the woods and hadn't woken up or returned to their feeders yet.

So we went to find them.  They were all in their pig-pile about 200 feet from the feeding area, but didn't seem inclined to get up just because a farmer was approaching.  So we let pup in.  She got free pig-butt-licks and snout licks because they still wouldn't get up.  Sheesh.  Pigs are not morning animals.  We kept trying to get them to wake up and go eat eggs for about 10 minutes before it worked.  At one point, I had a foot under one of them and was urging it up while pup was licking its butt.  It just laid there, placidly snorting and steaming. 

Hello there BOTL Farm fan club.  Today we explore a tale of success and failure, a story of victory and defeat.  A tale of lovely stock and tail.  Let's talk about sheep.

When the farm was first established in the summer of 1965, we wrote a business plan using a primitive text editor, similar to vim and not at all like a typewriter, but actually maintained by Microsoft.  The business plan said BOTL Farm would primarily focus on the development and sales of swine products.  We self identify as pork enthusiasts and our hobbies include home-made sausage and bacon, and hosting an annual pig roast.  An aspiring pig farmer never imagines they will own sheep.  Sheep are not pigs, and pigs do not need to be sheared, and nobody has ever eaten sheep bacon.

We were going upon our merry ways, doing BOTL Farm things, cutting down trees, collecting giant buckets of eggs, trying to figure out how to make a bee hive live to celebrate a birthday, doing cold laser therapy on our dog's shoulder and our farm laborer's back, and that's when it hit us.  Like a phone call from our farm mentor.  Our mentor, guide, hero, inspiration, and general moral compass had decided to quit farming and move to a distant island in the Pacific and buy a sailboat.  After decades of building a successful farm, teaching us everything we knew about stock piling yogurt cups and how to mend electro-net, she was throwing in the towel.  Also she wanted to give us sheep.  We didn't want sheep, but we also do whatever she says.

Originally we said no sheep, then we agreed to three sheep, and finally we took delivery of nine sheep.  Three lady breeder sheeps, each with two baby lamb sheeps.  We raised one of the baby lambs into a breeder boy sheep.  Don't think too much about that, it's totally normal farm animal stuff.  Now I hear you, dear reader, asking why the sheep are not pigs.  For pigs have pork chops, and pork chops are delicious, much like racks of lambs.  The answer for why we do not have pigs is a tale for another time.. a story of road building, barn building, bridge burning, and inland New Jersey.  We'll discuss that later.  For now, you must know that we have sheep we never wanted, but now love.

So our mentor moved to to the beach and gave us her herd of nine sheep.  Now we move them daily to new grass pastures.  We built them a sheep shelter, and we feed them minerals.  Owning a sheep occasionally involves doing very Rude Things.  Sheep need a mix of selenium and garlic oil, but they don't know they need this.  They know it so little, we must squirt it down their throats while they are trapped in a pallet maze.  It's quite rude, and incredibly necessary.

The sheep are helping us clear the forest of BOTL Farm's 40 acres, at a rate we previously didn't think was possible.  Our human farmer can use a dinosaur powered chainsaw and sintered metal lopers to clear a quarter acres in three weeks, but our sheep herd can use their molars and hooves to clear a full acre in half that time.  They eat weeds and picker bushes, and if we take down small saplings they eat all the leaves and follow us excitedly looking to see if we are carrying buckets.  Buckets are the best, only good things come from buckets.  Except for when Rude Things come from buckets, but mostly good things come from buckets.

Here in the midst of fall, we're staring down the barrel of another winter and the challenge of keeping alive animals that eat grass.  We don't yet have a barn built, and we are faced with difficult decisions like how to heat a sheep standing on an ice sheet in the middle of Connecticut.  The solution, is to transfer the sheep to a warmer location.  Like the freezer.  So we'll do that for a few of the sheep, except for the breeders.  Those we're going to feed hay and skip their fall shearing, and pray to some livestock deities and hope for the best.

And so we have added another unexpected product to our current line up of candles, coasters, no honey, lumber, eggs by the hundred, whole chickens, and free poison ivy samples -- whole lambs!  As it so happens, we have already sold all three of our lambs for this season, however our male breeder sheep happily reports that more lambs should be in stock for next year !

Sheep are an unexpected addition to our farm, but have turned out to be an enjoyable one and we look forward to our role of shepherding them into the future.