Torn Ear, and cold
Torn Ear survived another year. Last week on my way home from the barn in the dark, Kevin yelled at me to hurry to the house. So I did. He quickly brought me out onto the back porch and flashed the spotlight - Torn Ear bolted from the yard. I yelled to him and he stopped in the open and looked at me. His eyes locked mine. My boy made it again. Seeing that big, beautiful animal stop because I asked him to, is something there are no words to describe. As we suspected the rut was delayed this year because of the warm weather. It's on now, and it was not on during gun season in early November.
He just stopped in to let us know he is OK. We have not seen him since and we likely won't until the snow flies. He does this every year. It's amazing he's been coming here in the winter for seven years now. He is 14 points, bigger this year than last. I hope to be able to get a picture of him this year. The picture above is from last December.
We went back in the nursery late yesterday afternoon to look for a Christmas tree. With all the cages this year and the Christmas village up, we have a lot less space than usual for the usual huge tree we bring in.... so it will have to be smaller this year. We found a couple we liked. We'll only take a tree if we can use all of it or most, with little waste. Some tops were gorgeous, but we'd waste too much and that's not our goal. It was too late to cut it and drag it out so we left it and we'll go back maybe tomorrow. Today we had new family members arrive which I'll write about in a bit. Just behind the barn a coyote ran out in front of us... he stopped and locked eyes with us before going behind a rock face. This morning there was fresh scat right by the house.
It has finally turned cold. This morning our pond was completely frozen as were my water troughs. They remained that way all day. We have a decent amount of wood in, a couple face cord split and more piled up by the splitter. We like working in the cold better, and I much prefer hiking in the cold. Last night it was perfect, you keep warm, you don't overheat yourself so quickly, it's much more comfortable. I look forward to long hikes now that things have frozen, and in a month or so, we'll start the search for antlers again when the bucks drop them.
Braveheart, our blind bottle ram, turned three years old today. It's hard to believe that three years ago today I was sitting by the woodstove trying desperately to get that cold little lamb to drink a bottle. That turned into three months of medication, Vet visits, injections, feeding him and checking him every two hours for weeks and weeks. But he made it, and he truly is our miracle child. We've had a lot of miracles on this farm, with animals, with people, but I think Lambie is still the biggest one.
I'm off to the barn just to check on everyone before bed. It's going to be an early night for us I think.
