Flo and Minne (I’m not sure if that’s Kitty or Anne in the foreground)
Like people animals communicate with body language and proximity to each other.
Suzy, Liam, Asher, and Issachar are happy to have me scratch their backs and heads. Socks, Pumpkin Biddy, Constance, Merricat, and Lori will get right up to my face but as soon as I move my hands they back away. After all these years, Kim is just getting used to taking treats from me. And Robin will come up to me but doesn’t like me approaching him.
Fate is afraid of Flo and won’t come into the house if she’s sitting near the door. And Zinnia waits for Bud to come in the house before she’ll come in.
Bud and Fate keeping me company on the couch yesterday.
Bright yellow, deep rich red, I can still see it, the two colors vibrant and rich.
That’s what I saw when I woke up on the bathroom floor on Friday night. The blood that was pouring out of my mouth and making a puddle on the floor was from a cut on my lip after falling when I fainted. But I didn’t know that at first and I was scared.
I only had to call Jon’s name a few times before he was at the door. By then I had a better idea of what happened. When I tried to lift my head, the whole room moved and I knew I would faint again, so I kept my head down.
And as I texted my friend Suzy this morning when she asked how I was feeling after reading Jon’s blog, I’ll spare you the gory details. I’ll just say that I had food poisoning, which is why I was in the bathroom and why I fainted.
And that’s how Jon found me, laying on the bathroom floor in my own mess.
Although Jon later told me I kept apologizing, I also wasn’t able to move much, so I had no other choice than to just lay there. It’s the most physically vulnerable and humiliated I’ve ever been.
As shocked and scared as he first was, Jon didn’t seem even seem shaken to me. He calmly wiped the blood off my face then asked me if I could get up, if I needed an ambulance, told me I was going to be okay and to stop apologizing, that I’d done nothing wrong.
He ran me a bath which I was eventually able to get into. Then Jon cleaned up my mess.
“It’s no big deal,” he said when I kept thanking him, “I’ve cleaned up worse with the dogs”. But it was a big deal. And, in my mind, it’s very different cleaning up after a dog than it is a person.
That’s true love I said to him.
I couldn’t make it upstairs to bed that night, so I slept on the couch. And Jon slept in the chair next to me until 2am when I woke up and assured him I was better and he should go to bed and get some real sleep.
I slept and read all day Saturday, my lip bruised, but I was better. I kept thinking how if this had to happen with anyone I would have wanted it to be with Jon. Which in a way seems selfish to me, to wish that on someone you love.
But it’s also that kind of vulnerability that can either bring people closer together or push them apart.
I thought of the piece Jon wrote a couple of weeks ago about us walking in the woods and how it was difficult for Jon to walk on the ice and snow. We both realized it wasn’t something he could do anymore. But his vulnerability just made me want to help him more, to love him more.
Now I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that.
We were surprised to wake up to snow on the ground and more falling this morning. We’re supposed to get about seven inches, so once again the animals will be stuck in the pole barn till it melts.
I’m glad we got the reprieve last week and the snow from the storm the week before was mostly gone so at least the animals got to graze for a few days.
Water is still pouring over the Gulley Bridge, but if we do get the snow that’s predicted I’ll be able to take some snowshoe walks through the fields with Fate and get into the woods without having to cross the bridge.
Zinnia, of course, is enjoying every minute of the snow and Bud is enjoying sleeping by the woodstoves.
Unlike Jon, I haven’t written much about the new puppy we’re getting. That’s really so much his thing, writing about dogs. But that’s not why I haven’t done it, Jon and I can write about the same thing and we will write about it very differently.
I haven’t written about the puppy, because I was waiting. Waiting till it felt to me like it would really happen.
Even when the Garnett, the mom gave birth last Wednesday, I wasn’t ready. But then, as Jon and I were driving home on Sunday from our weekend away, the breeder called Jon and said she had a pup for us and she was cashing the deposit check he had sent her.
So now I’m ready to accept that we really will have a new puppy at the farm in just 8 weeks.
And I’m not really surprised, even though I was being cautious. Because there have been some telling signs since the beginning.
The first was that just a few days after Red died, Gretchen, who was the breeder of our Lab Lenore, emailed Jon and told her about her friend who was a breeder and had a dog who she believed was pregnant. And strangely, the breeder’s name is Lenore.
Then Jon came up with the name Zinnia for the puppy since it’s one of my favorite flowers. We’ll call her “Zin” a good one syllable dog name.
I vaguely remembered, years ago when we were lambing, that my friend Suzy (who I named my sheep Suzy after) mentioned Zinnia as a good name for a lamb. A few days ago, I texted Suzy telling her name we decided on for the puppy and asked if she remembered suggesting it for a lamb.
She did. She said she liked to give the kids of her goats a name beginning with the same letter of the mother’s name. She had suggested the name “Zinnia” for Zelda’s lamb. But Zelda’s lamb was stillborn and I never mentioned the name to Jon.
Then, on the day we euthanized Zelda, Garnett’s puppies were born.
Garnett had three female puppies. Lenore has been sending Jon photos of the puppies since they were born so we’ll be able to watch them growing up. Then when they’re five weeks old, we’ll be able to visit our pup and see and hold her for the first time.
As we got Fate to be my dog after Frieda died, Zin will be Jon’s dog. But just as Fate is on her way, right now, to The Mansion with Jon to do therapy work, I have a feeling Zin will love to go for walks with me and Fate in the woods.
I’ve begun seeing pictures of Zin in my mind and trying to send them to Fate and Bud, to let them know she’s coming. Jon and I are thinking about where her crate will be in the house and where she’ll sleep.
I seem to have forgotten what a pain in the butt a puppy can be, right now I’m only remembering the good parts.
Liam, a Border Leicester/ Cheviot, is so big it makes me wonder how big he’d be if he were a ram instead of a whether.
He was the only lamb that had no trouble being born. We came home one day and Suzy was standing by the pole barn a little white lamb next to her.
He was full of himself from the beginning and Suzy watched over him like an Italian mother dotes on her only son. Liam’s ribs were broken by our donkey Simon who didn’t know what to make of him. For a few weeks, he walked around the farm with a bandage around his middle until he healed. Which he did quickly.
Although his father, a cheviot, was a gentle ram, I always had the feeling that if we didn’t castrate Liam he would have turned aggressive.
Now Liam is almost as big as the donkeys. He and his mother Suzy are still close, often sitting together. And he’s mostly gentle, even though he gave Red a hard time towards the end of Red’s life.
Without Red, it’s hard to get Liam to move when he’s laying down. He ignores Fate and is indifferent to Bud too.
Liam’s has a lot of wool and I usually mix it with the wool of the other white sheep. So it’s a mix of Border Leister, Cheviot, Karakul, and Romney. The last few shearings, I dyed all the white wool a couple of different colors.
So on Sunday, Jon and I are going to Boston to see Freyer and The Professor, the two octopuses in residence.
We thought talking about how even though octopuses are so different than us, they can relate to humans much as our dogs and cats do, would make a good podcast. So we sat down in Jon’s office this morning and recorded our 6th Podcast.
Somehow, the conversation went off topic to how Bud and my Border Leicester, Suzy are having a spring time romance. Then it moved onto Jon’s and my dispute about stacking dishes. I think,(I haven’t listened back to it yet) in the end we brought it back to our trip to the Aquarium.
We’re still waiting for Apple to approve our podcast, Katz n Wulf On Bedlam Farm so it can go up on iTunes and Google, but for now you can listen to it by clicking here.
When we first got Kim about five years ago, we noticed how much she looks like the puppet Lambchop. Although she has been known to stomp her foot at the Fate and Bud, to try and chase them away, she has a really sweet face
She’s a Karakul, an Asian sheep who stores water in her tail. Most farmers dock the tails of lambs a few days after they’re born. It’s done for health reasons, because the sheeps tails can collect feces.
We bought Kim from the farmer, Daryl, who gave me my first sheep, Tess, Socks, Suzy and Zelda.
Daryl’s daughter raises Karakuls. They’re pretty unusual where we live. Their wool is especially good for rug making and felting. I usually mix Kim’s wool with the wool of my other white sheep when I have it processed into yarn.
I just put my latest batch of wool up for sale in my Etsy Shop.
I don’t have a lot this time, less than 40 skeins in all. Because I had the sheep shorn so late in the season last spring, I only sheared 6 of my sheep in the fall. Their wool just wasn’t long enough.
The Red and Purple are dyed over the natural grays of Suzy, Izzy and Pumpkin. It’s a mix of Border Leicester, Romney and a touch of Cheviot.
The Blue and Green are dyed from the white wool of Rosemary, Kim and Liam. (The same Liam that Bed fended off this morning. You can read about that here).
Each skein of wool is 200 yard and they are all 3 ply worsted. They’re $25 each + shipping. You can see and buy them all in my Etsy Shop.
I sat at my computer in my studio and saw Bud, through the window, barking and charging the fence.
The sheep were on the other side grazing. Suzy looked up for only a moment before getting back to the grass. Liam and Rosemary paid no attention to him at all.
The sheep know the meaning of a fence.
Bud quickly moved on to better things when he saw his barking was useless.
Bud, the newest member of the Bedlam Farm family, will be at the Open House in October.
This is how it happens….
A couple of days ago, Suzy Fatzinger texted me that she wouldn’t be at the Open House this year spinning her wool. I was sad she couldn’t come, as she has the past few years, but glad that she’ll be sending seven of her hand spun, hand knit scarves to sell in my School House Gallery.
Then, the next day, Jon and I happen to see Rachel Barlow at the Round House Cafe and she agrees to do an oil painting demonstration at 12:15 on Saturday at the Open House. (Rachel is now selling her work on Etsy, so if you can’t make it to the Open House, you can buy her original paintings and prints here.)
Original Oil Painting By Rachel Barlow
That’s how the Bedlam Farm Open House continues to be an evolving, creative entity.
This morning I ordered a new sign to put on the front lawn announcing the Open House. We also have signs for Bellydancing, which is happening on Sunday at 1pm and Sheepherding, which Jon and Red, without Fate’s help, will do though out the weekend.
And we can’t forget the arrive of Bud.
We’ll be picking up Bud, the newest member of our Bedlam Farm family, the week before the Open House. It will be the perfect homecoming for Bud to get to meet everyone at the Open House.
For more information about the Bedlam Farm Open House, October 6th and 7th, click here.
Carol Law Conklin, pulling a batik out of her dye bath. I’m showing and selling Carol’s work in my School House Gallery.
