We Bought a Farm: Picking up Feed & Ewes

We are very excited by our relationship with Paramis Farm. They are a farm about 45 minutes from us that decided to become a distributor for the organic feed we use here on the farm. Prior to them doing this, we were having to drive eight hours round trip to Virginia to get a large shipment or to Asheville, NC (3 hour round trip) to get feed. There is just no one around here that sells this feed that we need. There is a place in Knoxville (just over an hour) but they sell their feed to us for almost $12 a bag more!

Since it was such a beautiful day and it is a beautiful drive, Grama Joni and our WWOOFer, Emily, came along with our family of six.

We handed the camera to Isaac when we arrived at the farm and began loading. Here are the photos he captured. It is really interesting how a child sees the world. They are really a lot shorter than adults!

Joni then took the camera back over as we got a short tour of the farm:

One of their ducks!

The three ewes we are going to buy. (And the big ol' dog that guards them from coyotes.)

Cindy's daughter pointing out the sheep we are getting.

A milk goat.

Meeting their pigs.

I love how interested Sidge is in animals of all kinds. He is really paying attention and learning at all times when it comes to animals.

Abigail and her Daddy. One of the wonderful things about living in the mountains is how cool the mornings are. Within a few hours, we are in tank tops and shorts.

Meeting the ram of our new sheep.

A bottle-fed ram (very friendly!)

JB found a short tail shrew.

And now ... time to collect our sheep!

Emily carried #2

Great job Emily!

And here I am with #3!

Loaded up!

Ready to go!

Cindy saying good bye!

This picture cracks me up.

We love for the kids to be involved with every aspect that we can include them on!

We realized that Hannah was not just looking at the ewes ...

She was stuck!

The sheep were far out in our pasture. We couldn't carry them that far, and JB didn't want to risk getting his truck stuck in the field, so he opted to try to rope one of them (knowing the others would follow.)

The dogs were out to meet our newest members.

Overall the tying technique worked ... well enough.

But our leader kept laying down on the job!

JB getting a good walk on.

Me trying to gently "nudge" the sheep in the direction we needed them to go.

Picking them up and adding them to the flock!