Our smallest apricot and pear trees burst into bloom only a couple days after we pruned our fruit trees. Hopefully we didn't harm the trees by pruning so late. The pinkish flowers are apricot. The white ones are pear.
The pruned branches are awaiting our getting our chipper functional. We plan to reduce the cherry & apple branches in this picture to chips we will use in barbecuing this summer.
Praise God, our interventions were a success so far with our septic ewe & her ram lamb. Mama can now walk on her own, has now been sheared & the lamb's tail is banded. The tail will eventually fall off from lack of blood supply. Behind the ewe & lamb is our arthritic "Grandma" ewe. We thought she wouldn't make it through the winter two years ago, but she's still hobbling along in her ancient & thinner state.
Our smallest apricot and pear trees burst into bloom only a couple days after we pruned our fruit trees. Hopefully we didn't harm the trees by pruning so late. The pinkish flowers are apricot. The white ones are pear.
The pruned branches are awaiting our getting our chipper functional. We plan to reduce the cherry & apple branches in this picture to chips we will use in barbecuing this summer.
Praise God, our interventions were a success so far with our septic ewe & her ram lamb. Mama can now walk on her own, has now been sheared & the lamb's tail is banded. The tail will eventually fall off from lack of blood supply. Behind the ewe & lamb is our arthritic "Grandma" ewe. We thought she wouldn't make it through the winter two years ago, but she's still hobbling along in her ancient & thinner state.
3 comments:
Seeing your apricot trees reminds me of something I heard in a conference on Saturday. The speaker mentioned Prov. 25:11 -- a word spoken in right circumstances is like apples of gold in settings in silver. She said in the area of the world where that proverb originated there were no "apples" as we know them. But they had a kind of apricot, the name of which literally meant "apples of gold". The under side of the leaf of that tree was a fuzzy silver colour, so when someone beneath the tree looked up, they saw "apples of gold in settings of silver".
Hmm -- I didn't realize this lambie was a ram! Now does this mean there may be the possibility of more lambs next year or do you have to be careful not to interbreed?
Were you the hair-dresser or do you have to get someone to come in to do the shearing? Do you do anything with the wool or is it just discarded? And why do you band little lamb's tail??!
As you can tell, I am not a farmer's daughter!
Thanks for enlightening me re. the "apples of gold in settings of silver"!
Yes, our lamb is very fortunate that we only banded his tail. Most ram lambs have their testicles banded at a very young age. We are keeping him to replace the slightly arthritic ram we sent to the cull market. Limited interbreeding is acceptable, but we could not keep doing this generation after generation. Louis has sheared our sheep some past years, but not this year. It's very hard on the lower back. We have a wonderful Christian sheep-shearer, LeRoy, who is fast & hardly ever nicks the sheep. He uses his earnings to support a Bible School in the Philippines. We also give any good wool to LeRoy. Two of our ewes have too much hair in with the wool for it to be worth anything. Their wool is discarded. We dock the tails mainly for cleanliness & reducing the fly problem for the sheep. If we send yearlings to the meat market, they prefer to have the tails docked.
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