Marmalade has been watching Marcel the lamb very carefully. Thinking about whether he can be bothered making friends with a barn person.
Yesterday he came down off his perch to say hullo. It was a very quick kiss. Too fast for my camera to catch. But here you are. Fuzzy double Sweetness.
Sweet meets Sweet.
The cold is coming back. I cannot pretend to be happy. There is too much to do in the barn in preparation for the calves and the milking. And of course John is going back to work next week. So I am going to have to do it alone. Which is ok too. Many houses, even parts of small towns around here are now without water, with the freeze over 3 foot down into the ground freezing and splitting pipes. We have done pretty well so far. So I should not complain. But it is getting very cold again. Wait. I will show you my forecast.
Rubbish. See what I mean? I could just Spit! Here is the site I use to transfer the Fahrenheit into Celcius. Just don’t tell me though, I do not want to know.
Today it is bitter out there but I will spend some time making the calf hot house in the barn sun-room that Sheila has recently vacated. I need to get way ahead of the game on this one. I want to be very prepared. I hate calving inside. Daisy does have a few weeks to go but as you and I know, preparedness is the key. Especially when like Daisy and I you have not calved indoors in the freezing cold. And my barn is not big.
It looks like Sheila is not going to be able to breed. So. She will be our Virgin Queen. I know I am not meant to have 400 pound pets, but this time I am breaking the rules. She can stick around. As long as she sells enough calenders to cover her feed. The last calender I made is going to be too expensive for you to buy though. So I am going to look around for a cheaper printer. Any ideas?
Oh and Mama is much happier today. She has been wormed and has had some extra Vitamin B. The sheep have had to move across to the Rat House as I need the barn pens for the cows to calve. But it is East facing and out of the wind so they are even happier out there. We have not been able to get into that field for ages due to the frozen snow banks and gates frozen shut, so they are all much relieved to be in the sun.
I hope you all have a lovely day.
Your friend on the frozen farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
90 responses to “Fuzzy Double Sweetness”
don’t forget to move your closed mouth like it’s using a hula hoop; glad for virgin queen; am up for calendar (enshillah and God-will’in) when the times comes; i’ll send warm vibes!
Aw, so cute!
Just an observation. Where your weather shows the 10-day forecast, it looks like you can choose Fahrenheit or Celsius. I don’t usually add my 2 cents anywhere, but I do love your blog! If I were closer, I’d stop by to help out!
Bev I am so silly i have never even noticed that, thank you for your clever observation. I always pop everything back into C for my people back home! many thanks.. c
Another possibility for the calendar – check with your local newspaper to see if they do other printing jobs. The local paper (published twice weekly) in my hometown does other printing work on the side, and do a nice job, too. If the local paper is a daily, you’re less likely to have any luck there – the small town weeklies often need a bit more income than they get from advertising alone 🙂
On the other hand, the print jobs I’ve had done at Staples/Office Max/Office Depot/Kinko’s have come out very nicely, as things I’ve had done thru Vistaprint (keep an eye out for sales at Vistaprint, as they can make a big difference in your cost).
For Sheila, you might give your local vet school a call (or ask your vet to call for you). They generally have vets who specialize in an area called theriogenology (a 50 cent word for reproduction issues). They might have some additional suggestions regarding hormonal treatment, if you want to try.
What makes looking at Marmalade and Marcel even sweeter is remembering what a poor tiny thing Marmalade was, his life touch & go but now, he’s a big, sleek ginger boy.
Re Sheila et al, sometimes our purpose is not the obvious, whether we be human, four-legged, feathered, etc, and I like to leave space for possibilities. For mine, I think the Farmy would be quite an austere place if value was measured purely on first degree productivity.
Oh, your weather… hopefully it’s the last gasp of winter, heralding a warmer change.
Morning…..do you want a glossy fancy calendar…….if not, there’s lots of sites where you can get a free template, some with room for a photo, just google ‘free calender’ and make them yourself. ….easy since you’ll have so much free time between writing, spinning and knitting and calving babies *wink* A Farmy friend might do it for you, it would just mean you sending them the photos you’ve chosen. Alternatively, there’s Snapfish, their calenders work out at about $24.95 and that might be Aussie dollars. I haven’t read all the other comments, but did notice someone suggested a ‘donate’ button…..I was going to suggest that too, I know of a small holding farmer in Vermont who does that to keep things going…..Cold Antler Farm….I would support something like that. Double sweetness is lovely, Marmalade is very confident and obviously feels quite secure to be getting up close and personal with another species. Sending sub-tropical warmth to you.
I know many people who use Zazzle and other services so they don’t even have to do the shipping themselves. Customers order through the site, they make it, it gets shipped, you get profit.
I had a company called Printpelican.com makes some calenders for me a couple of years ago and they did a great job at a very reasonable price. I noticed looked them up today & they are having a 49% off orders for a short time. They have lots of options to pick & choose to control much of the cost. The more you buy the cheaper they become. They have lots of options to select that help control the cost per calender. I think I paid about $5 for each of my calenders, but I did not order a sufficient quality to get the best price & there was no 49% discount when I had mine printed. You could likely do much better per calender than I did.
Ah, Shelia the Virgin Queen. Perhaps she could become the official mascot for the farmy, I was thinking that another way to cover the costs of her feed & any vet. services she may need would be to sell shares of ownership in Shelia. I could never have a pig in my urban condo,, but I might find it interesting to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of telling my friends I help fund a small percentage of a special pig like Shelia. The benefits, aside from covering her actual expenses would be bragging rights & the ability to show everyone lovely photos of Shelia. Since I have no grandchildren to brag about, I think Shelia could be an interesting substitute,
It may be that Shelia could have a foundation named after her that could be designated as a charitable or non-profit pig and then anyone who pays in could deduct their contributions from their taxes (always looking for incentives)? If there are crazy people online that donate money for shopping addicts to pay off their credit card debt, I think there are lots of people who would like the opportunity to contribute to Shelia’s living expenses now that she is a lady of leisure. You could even put on of those PayPal donation buckets on your side bar & have an account set up specially for Shelia. I think the donation idea would easily cover Shelia;s maintenance costs. The donation bucket could be done in addition to the calenders. If you can show an estimate of her yearly expenses, then one of those fund raising thermometers will signal people of her unmet need on a monthly basis. It is just a thought about a way to let people who wish to help you & Shelia out. She provides a lot of enjoyment to many people & I think a fair number of people might like to help her out. Between her smiling face, charming personality & the sad tale of her failed fertility treatments, Shelia is an ideal candidate for charitable giving. Who wouldn’t want to toss a few bucks in her famous dinner bowl?
Very sweet to see Marmalade & Marcel checking one another out. Perhaps Marmalade is seeking a more gentler friend that Boo. I am also happy to hear Mama is starting to perk up & feeling better. Nothing like a good worming to return one’s zest for life. Take care going it alone this week with the freezing cold rearing it’s ugly head again.
Thank you, i shall pop over and have a look .. I love the idea of people contributing to Sheila but I am also wary of asking for money.. I think i will try and sell as many soaps and calenders and so forth and see if we can make feed money that way. Sheila really does not eat a lot, it is her accomodation that will be the problem that i have to solve. And that is more man power! Have a lovely evening.. c
Aw, so sweet!
Oh my…so much sweetness! I love it!
Methinks we all adore Sheila and a Paypal SheilaFund would be an excellent idea! I have belonged to SEDA [Seeing Eye Dogs of Australia] for a number of years since the suicide of a dear friend who could not cope with her macular degeneration. We are ‘given’ a small puppy at six weeks, a whole lot of us pay an affordable few dollars every month towards expenses and training and get pics and news of ‘our’ pup until she/he is passed onto the recipient in two years time. Then we begin raising a new one!!! Well we already get the ‘SheilaNews’ 🙂 !! So . . . Oh so glad Marmalade put Marcel on the positive side of his ledger!!!!!
That is a lot of sweetness–and NO calories!
Hey Celi .. weather in Auckland is hot today and so dry. Oh boy! Where did you come from in NZ? Love your photos of Marmalade and Marcel … and yes he is on my computer screen. Thank you!
I come from Hawkes Bay, in fact I grew up on the beach of westshore, so i am a long way from home.. c
The winter must seem endless to you! But I know that warmth is coming your way because we are having some cooler nights and days – not today though, as Julie reports above. Hot and full of cicada song. I’m telling the warmth, come on, you can slip over to Celi for a while. We are happy to share.
Soon, I hope.. soon.. c
I know that forecast! Wish I didn’t but I do recognize it. Tomorrow, Thursday, is supposed to be the worst of the lot. Let’s hope it’s also that last we see of a temp that cold until next year. I wondered when Marmalade and Marcel were going to meet. Like it or not, Marcel’s curiosity would soon win out and he’d have to check out the new kid on the block. You did get some great photos, too. 🙂