It feels like a real spring and we are done with lambing! Almost. We have one more to lamb, but at this point it feels like we are at the end. We enjoy lambing season and watching babies run and play in the pasture, and we are also thankful when we get to the end and everyone is safe. We did some math, and pending our last ewe, we’ve had a 96 percent success rate. We lost two lambs but have 27 healthy babies on the ground. We’ve had two bottle babies, and they have been the last two to be born. Both bottle babies went to wonderful homes, and one will actually come back to live on the farm once he is old enough. 

There are so many high moments with lambing, but as with all things, there are some low moments too. Personally, I’m a firm believer that the highs greatly outweigh the lows, and we have learned so much from this lambing season. We grew really quickly from last year and are so blessed to have so many healthy babies. I’ll share some of the changes we made and things we learned.

We were able to rearrange our pastures and move sheep to where there was more shelter. Bryson and our neighbor Frank then built temporary lambing stalls, and we still had our “sheep sheds” from last year. We also have our real stall we were able to use for older lambs to be put up at night. We got everything arranged, and then June had puppies! 

Obviously, we knew the puppies were coming, but they took away some lambing space. They started out in a sheep shed, and once they started opening their eyes and moving around a lot they went into the bigger lambing pen. It took some juggling, but our rotation ended up working well. I know a lot of people leave them out to lamb in the pasture and never bring them in, but we like getting them under a heat lamp on the really cold first couple of nights. Most of ours lambed in the pasture, then we brought them in for a couple of days. 

Our lambing season started fairly slow and spaced out. This made it easier to juggle moving ewes and lambs around. We had about two weeks of really busy lambing. Fortunately we never ran out of space and timing seemed to be perfect. We are keeping most of our ewe lambs from this year, so we will re-evaluate for next year. 

My biggest takeaways from the season seem pretty obvious, but still nice to confirm and learn. I am a worrier by nature, and I always wish I had a way to “fix” things. I’m feeling more comfortable with “momma knows best”. Any livestock animal, or any animal, has instincts for a reason and they can take care of things way better than we can. When we do step in to help, it is best to make sure it is as minimal as possible. 

If you follow us on social media, you got to see a couple of our births. It never gets less amazing for me. We were blessed to have so many ewes lamb without difficulties. Really, they all did except one, and we will never really know what happened as we were not there. She had one of the lamb we lost. We could speculate forever about what actually happened, but probably a difficult labor played a role. Momma and the remaining lamb are great, and we will actually keep him to breed next season. My takeaway from this one: even though we do everything possible, things like this still happen when you raise animals. It is heartbreaking, and it is not fair to beat yourself up when it happens. Because it will happen.

That incident was early in the season, only the second ewe to lamb. It was smooth (as in very little sleep, busy mornings, days, afternoons, and nights, and a lot of movement) for the rest of the season until our last two ewes. We ended up with a bottle baby from each of them. I have a lot of reflections for them, so I’m leaving you with a cliffhanger until next week. 

I am also very aware that teaching remotely was timed perfectly with lambing. I am thankful I was able to be home during the day for a lot of our ewes. We will probably not be in the same boat next year. 

Aside from lambing (and puppies) this spring, we have plans for an updated chicken coop and have the start to our small orchard. I’m excited to post updates about that!

Come back next week for my reflections about bottle babies…and hopefully new babies! As always, thanks for joining as we homestead on the side!

“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” Colossians 3:1