First, my Mother bless her heart. This is the main reason I’ve dropped out of existence for a while. Several weeks ago, things got very bad for her and I ended up moving in with her. As with how her health problems have been since November, things had gone from bad to worse. After yet one more ER visit, the ER Doctor got me on the phone. He told me that my Mother was in Advanced End Stage Lung Disease (this was news) and that I “needed to grow up and accept the fact that she is dying and that she and I needed to get use to it”. What a nice man..that I might add, last I checked is still on Administrative Leave! He sent Mom home saying that there was nothing wrong with her. Two days later she was admitted to the hospital for what would end up being a seven day stay. (nothing wrong with her, eh?) On the seventh day I took her to a Rehab Clinic for treatment of Steroidal Myopathy. She was there for 1 week and was sent home. Did I happen to mention that Mom has lost from 165 to 121 pounds since November and can no longer walk?

After 4 days at home, she fell. Now she is in a Skilled Nursing Home & Rehabilitation Center. Her estimated time there is 6 weeks. I now have a little break.

I’m finally back at the farm full time. It is amazing how much has been lost over these past months since Mom started going downhill. My business has suffered to the point that there is no income being generated at all. Because of promising orders would be filled, then emergencies that took me away from the farm, I am a bit “gun shy” now about trying to promise anyone anything. There are so many calls to make, emails to answer and at this point I’m not sure what to say…sorry just doesn’t seem to cut it. So wish me luck with this task.

Even though Mom is in a facility, that doesn’t mean that my responsibility with her ceases – so I am still seeing how many directions I can go in on a daily basis!

I realized yesterday that I had not lined up a shearer this year. My friend, Kathy – Scarlet Fleece is taking a shearing class so I offered up my flock for practice subjects. She is just as particular as I am, so I know she’ll do a wonderful job. Thank God for friends.

Since Mom’s illness has been far reaching into our lives, we also had not seeded, limed or fertilized our fields in the Fall, so this past weekend we started that project and hope to finish this coming weekend. The time change will help out a lot with all of the projects on the list..like cleaning the barn (a usual Winter project for us). This year is house painting year too. We are very lucky that this project is only trim and shutter painting. Also, before we know it, it will be garden and market season and we haven’t ordered the first seed.

Last night my husband announced he will be going to training school in April, so I get to be both the woman and man of the farm. The dates he will be gone are dangerously close to that 6 week mark with Mom – more stress that I didn’t need!

So anyway, I am back! Keep checking back to see my Blog-I promise there will be less illness and poor me and more about the farm. It’s a wonderful time of year and I look forward to green pastures and dandelions!

Cheers!

Naomi - June 2003 - February 2010

We are very sad to say this morning that we lost Naomi as a result of complications from Polioencephalomalacia. She put up a good fight and we worked with her day and night but in the end, I think we may have noticed her symptoms to late to save her. After her first injection of Vitamin B1, she rallied almost immediately. We continued her injections but yesterday afternoon, she went down again and at midnight she was gone. We will miss her so much. What a beautiful and wonderful girl she was, her fleece was to die for and her personality was perfect.

Naomi was born in the June of 2003 and weighed in at 15 pounds. We worried about her Mom (Ada Claire) because she was a very small ewe, but upon returning from work the day she delivered, she had given birth to this monster lamb without incident. Naomi never lambed herself. We figured she thought that just wasn’t for her but she was an awesome baby sitter. She would wait, sometime not patiently, for the lambs to be big enough to play with. Their Mother’s obviously frowned upon Naomi’s behavior but she’d just make wide circles, roust up the lambs and it was game on!! Her fleece was like nothing I had ever seen. She was the granddaughter of Natalina Marie (our grandmother’s names) who was one of our original foundation flock. This is where that magnificent fleece came from..a Rambouillet x Romney x Border Leicester makes for some of the most gorgeous fleece and tons of it. She always produced the highest volume of fleece of any animal on this farm..rams included. I will miss that too.

As my husband stood over her lifeless body he said, “she is safe now in the ultimate Shepherd’s flock”. Goodbye my sweet girl, your’s is a presence that will definitely be missed.

Time for some help. Unfortunately, our large animal Vets around here are so involved with horses and alpacas, sheep take place at the bottom, so I started researching online what might be wrong with Naomi.  Polioencephalomalacia was the answer. For those of you who find yourself being your own vet from time to time, I will share what I read regarding this condition.

Pathology:

Polioencephalomalacia (PEM), also known as cerebrocortical necrosis, is a disease characterized by a disturbance of the central nervous system. The brain of infected animals becomes inflamed and swollen, and eventually becomes necrotic. Diagnosis is usually done by performing a necropsy on the brain of the dead animal. Dead gray matter will fluoresce under a Wood’s lamp.

Causes:

PEM sometimes occurs on high grain diets, and diets that include plants high on thiaminases and sulfur. Thiaminases are enzymes found in a few plants, such as bracken fern, and the raw flesh and viscera of certain fish and shellfish. When ingested these enzymes split thiamin (Vitamin B1), an important compound in energy metabolism, and render it inactive. Normally ruminants are fairly resistant to thiamin deficiency since rumen microbes provide the animal with sufficient amounts of thiamin. However, the ingestion of thiaminases will lead to deficiency. Additionally, young growing ruminants, especially cattle and sheep, fed high-grain diets are especially susceptible. Diets high in grains can encourage the growth of certain thiaminase-producing bacteria in the rumen. These bacteria, including Clostridium sporogenes and a few species of Bascillus can produce enough thiaminases to induce thiamin deficiency. A thiamine-analogue is also produced within the rumen if there is excess sulfur, which may replace thiamine in important metabolic reactions in the brain. When thiamine is deficient, key tissues that require large amounts of thiamine, such as the brain and heart, are the first to show lesions.

Clinical signs:

This usually occurs suddenly. Affected sheep stand or sit alone, are blind and arch their necks back and stare upwards and become “star gazers”, the medical name for this being opishotonus. They are disoriented, lose their appetite, and they do not want to drink. Temperature and respiratory rate are usually normal but the heart rate may be depressed. Excitement may be seen but is usually replaced with dullness. Normally only a few individuals are affected. The animal may go down on its side with its head thrown back. The legs may be rigidly extended and convulsions may occur. Animals with PEM will often press their head against a wall or post. If not treated on time, most animals with PEM will die within 48 hours.

Treatment and prevention:

Sheep suffering from polioencephalomalacia generally respond very well to treatment if caught early. They can be successfully treated with 200 to 500 mg of thiamin injected intravenously, intramuscularly, or subcutaneously. Because thiamine is water-soluble, it is quickly eliminated from the body through the kidneys and, therefore there is little risk of overdosing. Dexamethasone (you can only get this from a Vet and for our 150 pound ewe, we needed 34 ml for one dose) is often administered along with thiamine to reduce brain swelling. Although recovery is usually quick, if significant brain damage has occurred, the recovered sheep rarely regain satisfactory levels of productivity. Therefore, very early treatment is critical. If a case of PEM is diagnosed in a herd of sheep, it is advisable to inject the remaining animals with thiamine as prevention. Drinking water should be tested for sulfur contents, sources of thiaminases, if any, should be removed and animals should be introduced to grain diets in steps to avoid a sudden increase in thiaminases-producing bacteria in the rumen.

We, as I am sure is the case with many of you who have livestock, you have increased grain feeding due to the harsh weather conditions we have experienced this winter. We do not feed silage, so are fairly confident that the increase in grain feeding had everything to do with this problem.

As of this writing, Naomi has had 2 B1 injections and is now standing and walking. Her head is in its normal position and hubby is on his way to pick up Dexamethasone from the Vet. Looks like we caught it in time and that she will be OK. She, of course,  is now on the watch list for a few days but we expect a full recovery.

Naomi - March 2009

I have blended this silver gray wool with about an 1/8 mohair and dyed it a rich Raspberry. The plan is to spin it up and then ply it with a single ply of natural gray. The test spinning that I did produced a gorgeous very soft, loose spun yarn that I could easily see a jacket made out of it. More specifically, a boiled wool jacket. Now that I have stopped dying my own hair (hehe) I find myself wanting to blend more colors that go with gray..this one does it beautifully!

The next dye job that I’ve put a lot of effort into is using a Royal Blue, again, with this silver gray fleece. For this I did things a bit different. I used 1/2 of the wool and then blended separately mohair, alpaca and cashmere. I over dyed the wool in Royal and then dyed the 3 blended fibers, blend all of the fibers and hated it! So, it was back to the drawing board. I spun the the over dyed into a single and the blended into a single and plyed those together..yuck! I gave a lot of consideration to dying the whole mess black, then I thought about the “chafe” wool that I had saved off of the same silver gray sheep. I took the “chafe” and over dyed it in a Salmon color. Once it was dry, I went after it with scissors and chopped it into a dense dust. I went ahead and blended all of the fibers together and as I spun it up, I tossed little bits of the Salmon/silver over dye into it. Perfect!! Not only did it make a beautiful yarn but it now has texture too. Since I am apparently limited in my originality right now..I see another boiled wool jacket. Possibly, a Mother/Daughter set because I’ve done about 3 pounds of it. We’ll see.

Just a quick update on my Mother. She is still loosing ground with her health but on an up note, we moved her to a Skilled Nursing Home/Rehab on Wednesday. The plan is to try and get her weight back and get her legs working again. Even though, right now, she thinks this is the beginning of the end for her, I am optimistic that this was a good choice. The place where she is has 50+ years experience in rehabilitation work with a tremendous success rate. We just have to get her head, heart and body in the right frame of mind if this is going to work..that’s the really hard part. I told her that kidding season will be underway soon and that I am depending on her to help me as she does every year..she just smiled and said the girls were going to have to get use to her not being there. That was my que to give her a big hug and come home.

Everyone have a wonderful weekend.

This is my entry for Fiber Arts Friday and updates too.

One of the most special and influential people in my life was born on Valentine’s Day. This lady was so cool. She would spend the week before hiding Valentine’s all over the place for me to find..in my lunch bag, under my dinner plate, inside my pillow case, I never knew when a card was going to jump out at me. All of my friends loved it because she would do the same for them too. The house was always brimming with red and white roses from her fans. She made heart shaped cupcakes, big cakes and even once she baked a pork tenderloin shaped like a heart and did a ruffle of mashed potatoes and cherry tomatoes (Have you ever tried to do this? I have, apparently I don’t possess enough love!!). Not only was Valentine’s special to her because of her birthday, it was also her wedding anniversary. She just dripped with love at every turn on her special day and she shared it with everyone she knew.

This wonderful lady has been gone for over 33 years now but every Valentine’s Day I give my Mother a bud vase with one white rose (for this special lady), one red rose for her and one yellow rose for me. We were always the three generations..yes, the special lady was my Grandmother.

Today, as I walked down the hall of the hospital to my Mother’s room, with my 3 roses in one hand and my husband’s hand in the other, I prayed quietly for this tradition not to end quite yet.

I hope that everyone has had a Happy Valentine’s Day and that each of you have remembered all of those who have meant “love” in your lives..you know, it’s not just another day!

Taken At 8:00 AM This Morning!

Participating in Wordless Wednesday…

In all fairness, right now I think everyone is having a hard time with the weather though. I know around here, we are simply not use to all of this snow and neither is our livestock. Poor things..they don’t know what to do with themselves. The sheep and goats hoove at the ground, expecting to find grass and there isn’t any..there’s just more snow. My guys have taken to just lying on top of the snow and snoozing. When the grain bucket surfaces they are like mad animals running in all directions, then they look at us like “oh no, not this stuff again”. It’s kind of sad, at least we can go to the market or our local co-op and get fresh lettuces and other veggies.  They can’t nor can we afford to do that for them.

So we do things like talk about spring and plod through our seed catalogs, looking forward to those warmer days. For those of us who are responsible for livestock..weather like this always keeps us at a little higher stress level whether we realize it or not. Be sure to take care of you during this time of year. Eat right and work on that attitude. In the long run you will be better off for it and so will your farm.

It is still coming down and doesn’t really show signs of stopping. I just walked into the kitchen to see what I might eat next and the kitchen window was full of birds (had the storm window up). The poor things don’t know what to do with themselves.

This photo is what I see when I look out that same kitchen window. The girls were looking for hubs to come feed them.One thing for sure, if you have a camera and you’ve had a snowy winter, you definitely got your shots for next years Christmas card. According to the forecast, we’re going to have more snow Tuesday! Can’t wait.

Be safe and stay warm.

It’s the time of year when we are starting to get excited about shearing the sheep and combing the goats. Just take a look at the fleeces on these girls.  The other day I pulled on a few of their coats and found staple lengths to average 7 inches. That actually included the 2 Icelandics that were shorn in November.

We’ve decided this year to make a few changes in what the end products will be. Last year we tried our hand at a Fiber CSA, that did really well locally but not so great through the website. So, this year we are going to dump all fleece together and have it processed; 1/4 roving and 3/4 yarns. No doubt much of it will be dyed (since I’m “Jonesing” to dye!). What I should end up with is a blend of Sheep wool, Cashmere, Mohair and Alpaca. My business partner with the Alpaca’s figures we’ve got 148 fleeces this time. In the 15 + years that I have raised fiber producing animals, I have never done anything like this, so I’ve decided to start now making up samples. If any of you think you’d like to try a sample either of roving or yarn email me at breezehillfarm@verizon.net and when they are done I’ll send them out to you.

This is my big entry for Fiber Arts Friday. Have a great weekend, until next Friday!

We went to the grocery last night, the first time I had been able to get out since last weekends storm. I should have taken the camera so I could take pictures of the shelves. I’m lucky that no one out here in the country likes to buy organic..that way I could get milk and bread, otherwise, we would have had to do without. The poor shelves had been stripped. Thought while I was out I would get fixins for the Super Bowl..need to do that Sunday morning if we’re dug out by then.

Took a look at the Almanac yesterday. According to it, we will have a major winter event every weekend in February in our part of the country. Oh goodie!

Well I’ve taken up enough time yammering about the weather. Have a great day and stay warm and safe.

Cheers!