Our oldest ewe (the one Ruthie named Lasaraleen) had twin girls last week tuesday.  The tough little creatures had to endure high winds and rain on their first evening in the world.  I was away to Ohio for camp days at Rosedale Bible College, so didn't see them till Wednesday night.  An interesting fact is that Monday (the day before they were born) we butchered their older brother with the help of a neighbor who had a lot of experience at a meat packing facility close to Salyersville.  One of the new little females looks just like her older brother (light brown with a dark face and legs).  Her sister has a white body with dark legs and face.

Then this morning (just before the next storm came through) another ewe (named Madame Curie by Ruthie) had her first little one.  It is a little male -- mostly white with a couple of light brown spots.  It was still damp when I found it -- meaning that it had just been born in the past hour or two.  I was hoping that she would have twins too, but since it was her first birth....

Duane Beachy (the MCC Applachia director) was the one I bought my sheep from.  They have had the sheep on their farm and when I talked to him last he told me to just keep the Ram that I had borrowed from him.  They don't have too many people on their team that really like eating lamb and so they were not even planning to breed their ewes this year.  So, I asked him if I could bring his ewes over here since I have a fairly large pasture to feed them on.  In exchange he offered to let me have their lambs when they are weaned.  He'll come to get his two ewes when the grass starts to come in this spring.

So right now we have the Ram (named Billy), my three ewes, Duane's two ewes, and three little lambs.  That makes a total of 9.

I'm starting to get syrup making fever.  Usually around the end of January is the best time down here to tap some maple trees, haul the gallons of sap to a place where I've got lots of wood to burn up and boil that sap down into some of the sweetest stuff in this world.  There's nothing like a cup of tea made in "thin syrup" with some half and half poured in to make it delectable.  I'm guessing that I'll wait another week and a half, but with snow on the ground and some days in the forecast where the nights are below freezing and the days are up in the 40's it sure is tempting.