A few weeks ago we went to pick up a lamb that will become our breeding ram in 2011.  His name is Noah.  He is a registered Gulf Coast sheep, just like all of our ladies, only he is colorful.  Here he is munching away with his new roommate, Josef.  He is actually much smaller than Josef, the perspective looks a little funny in this cell-phone shot.

You eventually learn that true priorities are like arms; if you think you have more than a couple, you’re either lying or crazy.

-Merlin Mann

We are working on redressing the site a bit. Let us know if you have any criticisms. We’ll have it all up and running shortly.

I think the drought is over.  We received almost a third of our average annual rainfall in one day.  We’ve witnessed, now, the power of water whether it be too much or not enough.  Several of our neighbors have had fences washed out and have ponds where their pastures used to be.  Our back pasture, still returning to grassland from being plowed many years is a mess.   As we are on the side of a hill water just washed across it causing some erosion, but mostly just a lot of mud.  So much so that the sheep’s portable fence came down and they enjoyed the run of the property for the afternoon.  We won’t be able to return them to their “weed patrol” in that recovering pasture until it dries, so for now they are camped out under the trees.  Our drive way was partially washed out, so we can’t park inside the gate yet.  In a day or two I’ll take to it with a shovel to repair it temporarily until we can get someone with a tractor to relocate the gravel.  Our garden was partially underwater, but thanks to the raised beds they should be damaged from the rain, although our tomatoes look like they got a little hail damage.  I think they’ll pull through.  The gulley’s around our tent were actually full of water.  It was apparently the first time in many years this happened.  We were fortunate for no serious damage, injury, or loss of animals.  We are also very fortunate for some much needed rain.  Although the water did some immediate damage to the recovery of our poor back pasture, I think all in all it will come out ahead.  It makes us realize how soon we can go from our “drought relief plan” to “flood emergency plan”  and how little we were prepared.