Casualties

The last couple of weeks have been a bit traumatic for our poor chickens.  We lost nine of them to various predators.  Five of the casualties we never found any trace of, which probably means they were taken away by a hawk.  The rest were left headless by either a skunk or a weasel (they like to just eat the heads and drink the blood).  This week we are trying to keep Adzuki outside with them as much as possible and that seems to be helping so far.
Our sheep meanwhile are doing very well.  The first few days after we brought them to our farm they were scared of us but we've managed to win their love through bribery, using treats of grain and tree branches full of delicious leaves (for some reason their favorite food in the world seems to be trees of any type).  Now they come running to greet us and follow us around their paddock. 

 

Our ram, who we've decided to name Heimdal, after the guardian of the gods from Norse  mythology.  (Thanks Adam for the suggestion!)

I'm still keeping busy with my needle-felting.  I've been doing a lot of dog portraits lately as you can see:

An enormous Tibetan mastiff named Cider

We have Sheep!

Today Emma and I drove out to Red Brick Road Farm to pick up our sheep.  It had to be the most beautiful farm we had ever seen.  The sheep were free to roam around a large area encompassing a small patch of forest, a beautiful creek and an expansive pasture.
So we now have 6 sheep: 1 ram lamb, 3 ewe lambs, and 2 adult ewes.  They are all Icelandics, one of the most ancient breeds of domestic sheep in the world.  They've been around for 1100 years!

    our young ram

    mutual suspicion

So far this week has been an extremely busy one for our farm.  Aside from preparing for the arrival of our sheep, Emma and I built another mobile coop for our chickens, ground hundreds of pounds of chicken/duck feed and on Friday we moved the chicks out to join the ducklings on pasture.

    do you think it's safe?