Fresh starts - first Monday of the new year

I do love fresh starts - new years, new weeks, new days, new seasons...you can take almost any increment of time and make it feel like a new fresh beginning down to hours, minutes and seconds. As I've posted on my other blog, my year seems to run on the sheep calendar. Other than keeping them all alive during winter, this is our lull time on the farm. DH does the feeding and watering...I maintain minerals and such but this doesn't take much outside time for me. DH is outside a lot but he likes it. He's got a inner heater that is beyond belief and my hands are numb within a couple of minutes even with gloves on out there...so I say go for it!

So during the lull time I am making lists of things that need to be done. Today I'll go get some protein tubs for the "girls." These really help during pregnancy and while it's so cold to keep them growing those lambs nicely. I need to order lamb ear tags too. I just registered the ewe lambs we kept for replacements but haven't received the registrations back yet. Will check on that today. I saw on the Ag news this morning that temps are expected to be below normal for the next 90 days in the NW. Need to think of that for lambing time in March. There is just no way of getting around the cold springs we have in Ellensburg and the wind howling 40-50 mph most of the time. That is the one nice thing about winter here....little wind.

So, this lull time is being spent possibly a bit frivolously and possibly it's just a recharge time for body and spirit. I have been reading, cleaning, exercising, watching TV, knitting, doing puzzles, etc. I work on the weekdays of course but weekends are really getting LAZYYYY. I start to feel like a mole staying "underground" all of the time but I know what's to come soon enough....up all day and many nights lambing out in the cold, washing machine going non-stop washing towels and my hands chapped from washing them so much and always on alert. Lambs in the house warming up until they return to mamma and trying to keep the jugs cleaned and water buckets filled and shots given and tails docked and keeping track of who I put ear tags in and who I didn't and which one of the sets of lambs were born first when the jugs start to fill up. I'm enjoying this quiet time...yet I look forward to the new year of sheep in March too.

I finished reading The Secret Life of Bees this weekend. Fast read and interesting story. It's part of my 2009 list of Read More, Stress Less....for now anyhow.