Cindy Update

 

Maria, The lady that bought Cindy in 2012, pictured above with Rebekah, sent updates with pictures today. She writes: She’s an awesome horse  She bred Cindy to a Gypsy Vanner in 2014 and had a filly in 2015. Below is Cindy with her half Gypsy daughter. Cindy is now almost completely white. Her daughter is HUGE!

Cindy was sold in foal to Raven to Maria and delivered a filly that Maria named Bella. Bella was bred in 2017 and had filly herself in 2018. They are pictured below.

I'm always thrilled with updates and can't wait to show Ruth and Rebekah. The ground was still frozen on our walk this morning but only because the ground itself is so cold. The thermometer was above freezing all night and this morning was 36 degrees. It warmed up to 45 but felt much colder because of clouds and wind. One of the huge blessings of the warm up is I no longer need to bring the keys to my car inside. Mark believes the extreme cold is bad on those Prius key batteries. That meant TWO trips out to the car each morning. The first trip was to climb in the car and push the start button and when the car didn't start only then remember the key was in the house.  We are from the Midwest and trained to always leave the keys in the car just in case someone needed to borrow it. Mark was from the East and there evidently cars must be kept locked at all times. That sometimes makes for a few arguments around here.  My cousin from New Jersey, Janet, raises sheep and one of her ewes had triplets during that last big storm and she posted the picture below.

This reminded of me of my first ewe.  Back when we had Daisy the cow, pigs and chickens I decided it would be good to ad lamb to our meat supply. My very first ewe was a named Jane. There was a man in Hanna City that raised sheep. I stopped to visit him and asked if he would ever consider selling a pregnant ewe. He had just one he wanted to sell. This ewe had mastitis in one side of her udder and he didn't want to mess with her.  I bought her, fenced in the side yard at Pleasant Home and about a month later she was ready to deliver. When the time came for her to give birth I brought her into a stall and she had no problem delivering a beautiful ewe lamb. I was pretty thrilled but within a few minutes went back into labor and delivered another ewe lamb. The second lamb was being cleaned up when she went into labor again and delivered a third ewe lamb.  Wow did I ever get a bargain! Four for the price of one.  Not only that her mastitis had been healed and she was able to nurse all 3 with no problems. The only problem was I couldn't bring myself to butcher a ewe lamb, we had only ever butchered wethers (castrated males) Instead when they were weaned I sold 1 and kept 2 and took Jane back to the Hanna City farm to be bred again. The next year she had twins again both ewes. The 3rd year Jane was bred and so were 2 of her daughters. This year she had twins but had problems with mastitis and only one was thriving. I spent a lot of time making sure the smaller one would could nurse and was able to save them both. Sheep are a lot of work. It cost $4.50 each to shear them so I decided to learn to do it myself and the first time I sheared it took me an hour to get just one done and my back was killing me.  The next time I paid the $4.50 each to have someone do it then we sold the wool and I made a whopping $7.00. We had one ewe deliver outside in the cold and the lamb died so then I made a place in the basement of Pleasant Home for the ewes to deliver if they were due in the winter but it wasn't the best solution. No matter how much bedding I brought in and put down and how hard I worked to clean the room the smell would drift upstairs. One very good thing about the sheep were they would clean up weeds so could be moved from paddock to paddock and keep the weeds down but then the wool would get full of burrs which ruined the value of the wool but they still needed to be sheared each year. By this time Jane was having hoof problems and the kids didn't really like eating the lamb so the flock was sold. This evening Mark and I picked up mom and Diane for church. Mike Kaisner had the message and this was a message I've struggled with.  He spoke first in Malachi 3 and then Matthew 11. To understand how much the Old Testament meshes with the New Testament and how my views that God in the old didn't always mesh with Jesus in the new but how those views NEEDED to mesh and my views must change. Mike brought it out clearly. I recommend listening to the service again. There was so much more in the message.