“Touch it!”

“No.”

“Come on! I really want you to touch it.”

“No. I’m not gonna touch it.”

“You’re gonna touch it eventually. You should touch it now so it doesn’t scare you when it happens later.”

“I don’t care! I won’t touch it!”

“Please touch it? I want to know if you think it’s strong enough.”

“I’m not a sheep.”

We put up the fence today. It got tangled. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a knife handy. I don’t think electric fences work too well when they are cut to shreds. We finally got the tangles out and got the pieces all set up and got the charger plugged in. Then we had to drive back to Cburg for more poles. We were there this morning already. Blerg. But hey, the fence is up!

We also got some hay and cracked cornn for the sheep today. The folks at GFF said the sheep’ve been eating cracked corn, so we figured we should have some for them when they get here. Speaking of feeding critters, I picked Japanese beetles for the ducks. The last few days there have been hordes of them on the blackberry plants down by the road. Today I only found about a dozen. I never thought I’d be sad to not be able to find Japanese beetles on my plants.

Yesterday Andy called me at work and told me the blackberries are starting to be ripe. He said he’d picked one or two when he was down checking the mail and planned to go back later in the day to pick some more. When I got home, I parked the truck at the craft shack and walked back to the blackberry brambles that are growing along the fence on the front of the property. Low and behold, Andy was there already picking!

There’s a sort of ongoing thing with me and Andy. When I hit the driveway at the end of the day, I’m focused on a couple things: whatever story happens to be on NPR, avoiding bunnies, the current state of the driveway and the weeds/wild flowers leaning over the driveway that I get to hit when I pass, the level of the pond, the ducks waiting for me, dinner, bills, knitting… Lots of stuff. So, when I get to the house, and Andy’s not there and then trundles up later asking, “Did you not see me jumping up and down waving by the pond/at the craft shack door/by the mailbox/near the barn???” …Well, is it surprising the answer is “No?”

I really try to look out for him, I do. The problem is, he keeps moving. At first he would hang out by the pond. So, I started slowing down a bit as I passed the pond to look for him. Then, though, he decided to hang out at the craft shack. So, I had to start to pay attention to the craft shack AND the pond. Luckily, when he was hanging out in the middle of the driveway down by the mailbox…that time I did see him. Because, well, he was in the middle of the driveway. (If he had been standing slightly to the side of the driveway? That’s a different story.)

Back to the story. I walked up to the blackberry patch, and there Andy was. He seemed excited!

“Yay! You heard me yelling!”

“Umm…..ermmm….”

“You remembered I said I’d be here and you heard me yell as you went by and you stopped. Awww!”

“Ummm…well…No. I just decided to stop. *cough*”

He then seemed a bit sad and yet again confused at how I could have missed him yet again. But, he recovered quickly when I began to help him pick the berries. Blackberry picking is painful. The thorns on the plants are bigger and meaner than on raspberry plants, and, according to Andy, the sting lingers. In addition to the patch on the front fence, we also found a smaller patch near the apple tree and another on the steep slope at the curve in the driveway by the pond. We also found a lot of poison ivy. I did not pick the berries sitting on the poison ivy. (I hope.)

Here’s the day’s bounty (berries plus the three tomatoes we’ve picked so far this year). It’s about a quart or so and weighs 2lbs.

Blackberries look a lot like bunny cecotrope-y poo, which is the poo that the bunnies eat back up because it still has lots of good stuff in it. If you have bunnies you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t have bunnies, you are probably gagging right now. In bunny reference material, they often say these bunny poo candies look like clusters of grapes. In truth, the bunny poo candies look like blackberries.

This bunny poo, however, is the normal poo poo type. It looks like cocoa puffs. In this case, the bunny poo looks like a smiley of cocoa puffs.

Sheep fence arrives today. Sheep on Sunday!

We got an email from Kate at Green Fence Farm. Our sheeps are ready to come home! The plan right now is to pick them up this coming weekend. We weren’t expecting to bring them home quite this soon, so we’ve been hustling to get things ready.

Yesterday we went to tractor supply (we had to go anyhow to get bunny litter) and picked up a bag of sheep minerals and a water bowl/bucket thingy. That was the easy part. Today, Andy started working on getting the barn ready. He had to clean a ton of junk out and pull up some plastic that the previous owners had put down. The previous owners really really liked to put down plastic. Finally, we built a wall to make a smaller, cozier area for the sheep and put down a bunch of lawn hay. Whaddya think? Would you sleep there?

It was sort of difficult to put a wall up in the middle of an open spot. Good thing there were lots of bits and pieces of wood in the barn. This next photo is shot from the backside of the wall (where the sheep will not go). It may look funny, but it seems pretty stable. (And it was all free!!!) The tires are there to add a bit of resistance to sheep pushing.

We still have to get the fencing up. Not looking forward to that task at all.