What's for Lunch?

I've been a little fixated on food lately, since I'm trying to eat less of it. I'm not starving myself in any way, and feel full and satisfied, but I'm eating fewer sweets, more protein, and fewer carbs (but I'm not doing the extreme low-carb diet. No thanks.) My goal is to drop the 25 pounds I put on during a two-year-long eating binge, and then not binge again. In six weeks fourteen pounds have come off, so I'm doing okay. (But I'm getting desperate for a glass of wine! Arghh.)

It's hard not to think about food. So instead of thinking about human food (or wine), I will instead focus on the food our sheep and cattle eat.

When animals graze, you need to know what they're eating. Are they eating mostly grass? Here's some grass:


What kind is it? I must confess I neither know or care, which will bring a scolding from Melissa, since she's fascinated by all the different types of grass. Me? Is it green? Does it have blades? It's grass.

What's in the pasture besides grass? Is there a lot of clover in the pasture? Or alfalfa? If the sheep are eating mostly grass then suddenly move to a pasture with lots of clover, there could be a problem. Sheep and cattle will bloat on too much clover or alfalfa, as their tummies don't have enough "clover or alfalfa-eating microbes."

When we notice there's a lot of clover in a pasture, we might move the sheep in there for a few hours, but then kick them out again, back to the previous pasture. They don't like this. They look at us as if we've lost our minds. We've already eaten everything back there. You expect us to go back and nibble around our piles of poop?

Yes, we do, at least until they've had a day or two to adjust to the different diet.

So what does clover look like? Everyone's seen this red clover:




And what does alfalfa look like? Like this:



We have three legumes in our pasture: clover, alfalfa, and birds' foot trefoil. Clover and alfalfa can cause bloat, but here's the AMAZING thing about the trefoil: no bloat. Sheep can eat all they want and they won't bloat. It's a miracle food.

Here's what a pasture full of yellow birds' foot trefoil looks like:



And close up? Can you see the slender brown seed pods? They look like, not surprisingly, a bird's foot.





Not all farms can grow trefoil successfully, but for some reason the plant likes our heavy clay soil, and thrives.

Maybe if I find myself needing to go on another food binge, I should choose birds' foot trefoil as my lunch.

The only question is, shall I choose red wine, or white?

A Nameless Ram and Four Bucket Heads


We bought a new ram last week. (We sold Erik in the fall because we needed some new genes.)This guy, recently sheared, is 3/4 Corriedale, 1/8 Arcott-Rideau, and 1/8 mystery sheep. He has a sweet face, and we hope he'll enhance our already lovely fleece.

Anyone have ideas for a name? In the past we've had Rudy, Otis, Andy, Duncan, Perfect Tommy (Buckaroo Banzai fans will know who this is,) and Erik. We're open to suggestions!









The calves are ready to be weaned, and will soon be out on pasture full time (sorry, guys, no barn to hide in when it rains---besides, you all need baths.) So to celebrate their last few days of milk, I caught them in their favorite activity before I let them out of the barn to graze the rest of the day: Wearing their milk buckets as hats.

To make sure they get every drop, the calves convert their milk buckets to bucket hats. They tip their heads back, heads buried in the bucket, sucking for the last drop of milk. There is much banging in the barn until we wrestle the buckets off their heads.







And when the bucket's empty and the milk's gone? Where can you find more milk? On the muzzle of the guy next to you. Numbers 1 and 2 suck face after every meal. Why waste perfectly good milk?





And here's the final word from Pumpkin: "My mom went to Petco to buy grooming shears and all I got was this dumb haircut."