Peaches the Pyrenees

In the last six months, Peaches has gone from a ball of white fluff to a beautiful dog who knows her job - mostly. Sometimes Peaches forgets that guarding the animals is her job. She's still a puppy and she wants to play!

Yesterday I looked out the window and caught her chasing the sheep. I watched a minute to see what she was really up to. She would start to run then the sheep would start to run. Before it all got out of hand I opened the window and yelled "Peaches, NO!"

She sat right down where she stopped and looked at me as if to say: AWWW Mom! I was just playing. I wasn't hurting anybody.

I just looked at her and shook my head. I truly believe she wasn't trying to hurt the sheep, but she's getting really big. When she was littler she stayed with the hens and when she was bored she would hold one of the hens down just to here her squawk. She never hurt them. Once they squawked she would let them up. That's why we moved her over with the cows and sheep until she matures a bit. Still it's better to nip that behaviour before it gets out of hand. In the spring there will be tiny lambs and we can't have Peaches getting everybody all upset.

Lately, Mom says she hears Peaches barking at night. If you listen you can hear her go to the 4 corners of the pasture and bark into the night. I told her that is good. Peaches is letting all the night time bad boys know she is on the job and her bite is as big as her bark!

Great Pyrenees tend to patrol at night and sleep during the day. Peaches' favorite sleeping place is with the calves in a hay pile left over from one of the round bales. That is where I find her stretched out with the steers sound asleep when I go out to feed in the morning. She wakes up when the steers get up. Looks around sleepily, then ambles over to get a pet.

We need to get small

No not Alice in Wonderland small....

Brian and I have been doing alot of soul searching and number crunching this last week. We've decided that our farming endeavors need to get really small for a while.
Why did we come to this decision? Well, we've been pretty stressed this year with all the setbacks from wind and weather and it's started taking it's toll. We need to build a barn, put up fence, put out a fall garden and we still don't have our hay in. Our family obligations and needs have changed too. Brian's youngest daughter has moved in with us and her older sister has given us our first grandbaby, my daughter is getting married and my son and his wife will soon start on their homestead. This week my mother fell and broke her arm. She needs a good bit of extra help with things while she is in a cast. Our family needs us. We've decided it's time to pull back and give ourselves room to breath.
We are going to sell half of our heritage cattle and sheep. We won't be raising pastured poultry to sell next year and we are cutting our laying flock down to the bare neccessity of 35 hens. We've decided to concentrate next year on putting food by for our family. We will still have some produce to sell, but we won't be supporting a CSA. We will have pork and lamb to sell next year, but no beef or chicken.
We want to have time to go fishing with Kacie (one of her favorite pastimes) and play with the baby and to ride and drive our Haflingers. We want to have time to show folks around the farm when they come to visit without that little voice in the back of my mind listing off all the things that need to be done. In short, we've decided to cut back so that we are having fun farming again not stressing out all the time.