Hopefully by the end of the summer we will have our first two _real_ farm critters! Earlier this week, Andy contacted Green Fence Farm, and we are now on their waiting list for two Icelandic ewe lambs! WHEEEE! (Or should I say, “BAAAAAAAH!”)

The lamb-popping-out process hasn’t finished yet, so GFF can’t promise we’ll get our two ewes, so Andy and I must wait in agonizing anticipation for the next few weeks. In the meantime, we need to start cleaning out the barn and making sure it won’t fall over on us or the lambs, and we need to work on setting up fencing for the little girls to graze. (And we need to win the lottery so we can pay for this all.)

After we were put on the list, I started thinking about names. I _think_ GFF will name these girls before we get them. The lambs will be registered, and to do that I would guess names are required. However, we can give them nicknames, right? So, yeah, I was thinking about names. Lots of farms have naming themes: Celtic, Robin Hood, coffee. What would our theme be? I was thinking at first about using Slavic names, since I’m sort of Slavic and Andy’s Polish, which is kind of Slavic (?). Then it hit me.

Loafkeeper Farm.

BREAD!

We’re going to give our farm critters bread names! Pita, Sourdough, Paesano, Crumpet, Wonder, Muffin, Toast, Waffle (Andy says waffles aren’t bread, but I think it’s close enough), Tortilla! I’ve already decided that we’ll name our dog Naan, which is an Indian flat bread.

So, even though our (hopeful) two lamb girls will come to us with names already, we’ll probably call them Biscuit and Rye, or something like that.

These category things are confusing me. Does a post about bunnies go in “Cabol” because they are my bunnies? Should it be a “Farm” item because bunnies are animals…even though they are pets and not food? Or, do I list it as “Country Living” because many people who live in the country decorate with geese and bunnies?

The bunnies are shedding. Each has their own way of going about it, but the results are the same: clouds of white fur floating around in the air and gathering along the baseboards.

Wibble is the most fun of shedders. He sheds in clumps. His back and rump are shaggy, and I can pluck little plugs of fur right out. I find this extremely satisfying. Wibble finds it extremely annoying and usually runs off after one or two plucks, glares over his shoulder at me and thumps. Hrmpf. Fine.

Hop also sheds in clumps, and she would probably let me pluck at her fur for minutes at a time. Of course, she doesn’t get all shaggy, and there’s not enough fur for more than one or two plucks. Here’s the neat thing, though: Hop’s butt fur is brown, but the little shaggy bits of fur are white. (I guess it’s only brown on top?) It looks like she’s sprung a fur leak sometimes when a little fountain of white shaggy fur works its way up.

Carla sheds in silent, secret foofs of fur. I rarely ever see her looking shagy, and I can never find little fur bits to pluck. I would almost say to you that she is not, in fact, shedding. Thing is, she has a fluffy, white border of Carla fur tucked into the snaggy parts around the edge of her cage and sticking out from under the straw floor mat.

On top of Hop and Wibble’s cage is a dark green glass jar. At one point it was a sugar jar, then it became a kitchen utensil jar, and now it is a rabbit fur jar. When my mom and I harvest bunny fur, we shake it off our fingers into the jar. (You don’t drop it really…it’s almost too light to be affected by gravity.) I have visions of using the fluff to make some incredibly floaty yarn. I know the fur is too short to make yarn on it’s own, so I’m going to see if I can toss bits in to some wool fiber as I spin that. I suppose this brief paragraph about harvesting fiber (haha) and spinning yarn firmly puts this into the “Farm” category. I’m glad I got that figured out.

Today in the mail I received our June tax bill for the new property. It is for half of the annual tax bill.

It is less than one month’s worth of taxes in Ann Arbor.

Sure, we don’t get those important services like water, sewer, garbage, fire department, mass transit…but a tax bill that’s barely a car payment sure is freakin’ nice.

-A