New Lambs

Today, marks the beginning of the newest phase of Sheep Farm. The lambs have been born, their eating has stabilized and they are docked and vacinated and castrated where neccesary. All together, three ewes, two wethers and one ram.

Triplets were born on March 12th. The first, a white female was born just as the sun came out after a tremendous ice storm at about 3:15PM. She is named Sunshine. Then the drama started. The second, a black female came out backwards and I needed to remove the placenta quickly before she drowned. She was quite weak and couldn't nurse to get the colostrum from her mom. I put her in a bucket of warm water and dried her briskly with a towel to get her temperature up. At that point a third, a white male arrived easily and the mom concentrated on him and the first. The second was rejected totally, so I fed her colostrum formula directly into her stomach by tube and syringe. She still spends the night in the house and I feed her milk replacer by bottle.

Two days later, the second ewe gave birth outside in 20 degree weather to a white male. After letting her lick and become bonded I brought them into the lambing pens in the barn. Everything has been fine and the lamb is doing well.

A day later a third ewe gave birth in to a white female. The process and results were much the same as the day before.

A forth ewe had already begun a long period of appearing ready to lamb. Her udder was very full and nearly the size of a soccer ball. She seemed healthy and was walking and eating. As the week or more went by her udder turned blue and hard and cold near the bottom. I suspected mastitis and phoned the vet. He concurred but thought it might still turn out O'K. I massaged her udder on a regular basis and it seemed to stabilize. At 5:30 AM on the 28th, she finally gave birth to a stillborn white female that I pulled out to relieve her and make way for the possibility of a second. As I was finally giving up trying to revive the dead one, a second, a black male, came out in the freezing pasture. The mom licked and bonded, but her udder was too low for him to nurse. Adding to the problem, she had two false nipples up high that the weak new lamb went fruitlessly after. I milked her and bottle-fed him to ensure he would get colostrum. After milkings every two hours for 36 hours, I finally got him to nurse directly by lying on the floor of the pen and supporting her udder. In a few days he got strong enough to kneel down and get the lower proper nipples.

Excepting the sad still-born, all is well and they will be back at The Fields Sculpture Park by May. I plan to have a shearing on April 28th, but that date is yet to be finalized. I will update as soon as I know for sure.

I continue to make photographs and footage for a video.

new location for lambing period

Today, 14, Jan 2008, I have moved the sheep from The Fields Sculpture Park to my place for lambing. The sheep will return to the sculpture park in early spring. I will post new photos soon.
Portraits of the sheep are available.

Local, as concept. Is China local?

The subject of Local is important to Sheep Farm. I've been asked many times; How local is local? Sheep Farm was constructed of local lumber, the sheep were born locally and the site of the sculpture park had been farmed continuously from colonial times until its conversion to the park in 1998. Does local then mean, anything from outside a 25 mile radius is not to be concidered local or credible?.

My view is really quite different. Local for me is all that I have a more or less direct connection to. I prefer to buy my food locally. I live in the rural northeast and this is entirely possible for more than half the year. I know the actual farmers and their practices. If the farm is organic there should be no worry of chemicals and contaminants in the fertilizers and livestock feeds. In the remaining monthes I rely on the collective research and wisdom of food co-ops and healthfood stores. Fortunately, I live near a bio-dynamic farm with a year-round farmstore (search: hawthorne valley association). In the end, I go a bit on faith and intuition. I think being skeptical is healthy, but retreating, walling-off and gating is not. Many of the problems occuring in foods and other products that are blamed on outsourcing and the global economy may have roots in corporate profit mandates.

China is in the news every day, being charged with producing contaminated foods and other dangerous products. The accumulated effect of these stories creates the impression Chinese companies are inept and unscrupulous. This may be true in some cases, but it should be asked, too; how much control do U.S. and other foreign corporations have over the specifications and materials used by their Chinese contractors. I've read that some of the suspect materials used by the contractors didn't come from China and the labelling was confusing and misleading.

In the 1960's, when Japan made its big move into foreign consumer markets, they went head-to-head with manufacturers from those market countries. Honda, Toyota, Kawasaki, Sony and Nikon, all produced high quality products. China has currently done the same in construction equipment.

Maybe local means having an unmediated connection with the source. One where the pride of the product is fundamental to the relationship of the producer and consumer. The closer your connection to the source, the better your chances of developing that relationship, but I feel real communities have no physical borders.

How do you view local?