Rain and Sheep

There was another lamb this morning. Just when I think they stopped, another one. A little black female lamb out of one of the first lambers. I like this dab of Romney. Makes the ewes a little more agressive about the welfare of their lambs. The Romanov gives them that rapid growth and number of lambs in subsequent lambings. The Tunis gives them a decent body and some milk. Dave Sauter laughs at me about my odd crosses, but I think I have one on him here.

The flock is doubled in size. I have two, maybe three lambings to go. I do hope that Peggy doesn't lamb. Poor think is 20 years old this year. Wow!

Raining hard today. Should be snow. I don't care for the extra work that snow involves, but I think that in winter, there should be snow and in the other three seasons... rain. Am I harking to my mothers favorite... everything has a place, put everything in it's place... theory in life? I think that for me it is easier to try to organize things like a cupboard, clean the bathroom, rewrite a budget that you cannot pay unless people pay you... little things that really mean nothing in the grand scheme of things but make you feel like you are achieving something.

Too much wind overnight. I cannot tell if it is the wind that makes me loose sleep or the fact that we tend to get the wind in the winter and that corresponds with a significant lack of money every winter (cows cost us money in winter and Dave drops number of cows calving to avoid the problems with calving inside in the winter).

I started milking down the road. Cannot remember if I said that before. Trying to get money to pay Dave cash for the milk as I use it so that I can build up inventory for farmers markets this summer. We cannot afford to loose cash flow while cheese is aging. I don't want to loose out on sales over the summer like last year. I make a good cheese, but add lack of aging capacity and my own issues about fearing success/failure and I undersold product last year. Or rather, I didn't make enough of product last year and kept selling out of lower value fresh cheeses rather than focus on higher margin aged cheeses.

Waiting for money for projects last year. I hate looking at mailboxes and making bets with myself that the check(s) will actually be there. I have this bad feeling about the US economy and want to eliminate all debt under $5000 this year. I just have to hash out freelance work, a book maybe, more business plans, more workshops... sell more cheese... It is easy to forget that the main focus is suppose to be cheese.