Living the Country Life

Betsy's Backyard Blog

Betsy Freese is the editor-in-chief of Living the Country Life and executive editor of Successful Farming. She grew up on a fruit farm in Maryland (see www.strawberryfarm.com) and moved to the Midwest to get an agricultural journalism degree from Iowa State University. She and her husband, Bob, a veterinarian, have three children and own a farm where they raise sheep, hay, corn, and soybeans. 

April 18, 2012

Getting a manicure on the farm

Our streaming LambCam video caught Bob and Caroline trimming hooves and tagging lambs last night. All the ewes in this photo were moved into larger pens on the east side of the barn, with more pregnant ewes taking their place.

We learned a lesson this year. One very pregnant, very swollen ewe started suffering from vaginal prolapses. After a few days of prolapses she stopped eating. A few days later, Bob performed a c-section and removed live triplets. But she wouldn’t eat or nurse. Two days later she delivered a fourth lamb, dead. Bob couldn’t believe he missed that last lamb, but quads are unusual. Lesson: If a ewe starts prolapsing it could mean lots of big lambs; put her in a pen and give her extra grain. Get those babies out early.

April 17, 2012

More mowers needed

Michelle got her first ride on a lawn mower. Caroline doesn’t like to mow the east grove (“boring”), so she taught the foreign exchange student how to do it. Don’t worry, Caroline, we will have plenty of grass for you to mow all summer once Michelle goes back to Sweden.

Bob gets plenty of ride time, too. Here he is on the west side of the house. Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the roof of the garage with a camera and book. HA.

April 13, 2012

Get that garden growing!

Weeds sprouted early this year and took over my garden plot before I got anything planted, so Bob tilled the bed for the second time. Yesterday I planted red and white potatoes, cabbages, yellow and white onions, three kinds of lettuce, and a few tomato plants. In the middle of planting I stopped to help our neighbor, Bill, pull a lamb. That made me think — I now have all the ingredients for next winter’s stew.

April 12, 2012

Hold my beer and watch this!

The quads are doing great. If you need proof, here are two of them. [Photo by Caroline Freese.] They spend all day jumping off and on the stumps in the grove. The acrobat above acts just like his dad, Little Billy. I’m calling him Bubba. Bubba Goat.

I posted this photo on the Living the Country Life Facebook page. Readers have entered many great captions… My favorite so far is from Jim Moffitt: “Hold my beer and watch this!”

April 10, 2012

Lovely lilacs

A hard freeze is coming tonight. Goodbye, lilacs. It’s been a delightful season. What a heavenly scent has filled our acreage the past two weeks.

April 9, 2012

Hope chest

For Caroline’s graduation, I worked with the artists at Sticks to design a birch hope chest that symbolizes her childhood. Each side is a season. The front is summer — with the barn (and hay elevator), our house and white fence, sheep, and some chickens (from her younger “poultry phase”). The back is spring — with strawberry fields, a goat, morels, and the church. On one side is fall — with pigs, pumpkins, a barn, 4-H symbol, and a red-haired girl running cross country. On another side is winter — with snow and a girl skiing with music playing around her.

The top has her name and words I selected — Faith, family, love, laugh, believe…

She won’t take this beautiful piece of art to college, so it’s really my present for the next four years!

 

April 6, 2012

Morels!

The staff of Living the Country Life is hard at work…finding morel mushrooms. After four years of trying, Tracey Kelley (below), with the help of Jodi Henke, found her first morel. Think of Ralphie when he spies his Red Ryder BB gun at Christmas.

Meanwhile, Diana Weesner has no trouble finding bushels of the delicious mushrooms, shown below:

April 5, 2012

New lambs and Uncle Glenn

Our family said goodbye to Bob’s uncle Glenn Damman yesterday. He died at age 81 after farming his whole life near Melbourne, Iowa. His wife, Lois, and son, Charlie, remain on the family farm.

Bob spent many summer days there making hay with Charlie and Glenn. It’s where he acquired his passion for baling and stacking hay, and it is a skill he passed from Uncle Glenn to our kids (whether they like it or not).

Glenn was a quiet, honest, and modest man who enjoyed collecting Minneapolis-Moline tractors.He loved flowers, and tulips were his favorite. It is fitting that we are enjoying an early spring this year and tulips are in full bloom at the time of his death.

It is also fitting that when we arrived home from the funeral the first of our ewes gave birth to a nice set of twins. The busy lambing season has arrived.

Here is Glenn many years ago with his lambs.

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