what happens to all that damn squash you didn't sell, you ask? i'm about to tell you:
first, it freezes on top of half rotten straw bales. then, it gets thrown into wyatt's truck with great zeal- shley quote: "it's so nice to not have to be careful with this shit anymore." cause despite the strange desire one gets to toss a pumpkin when one get's their hands on it, it musn't be done. oh, you've got to be gentle with the little orange rounds, lest they get scratched and unsellable. not anymore! chuck 'em! when the truck is weighted down to the point of sagging dangerously, it's driven over to george's farm, where it gets thrown again into a great pile of sheep food. they love the stuff and their faces turn orange after eating a lot of it. also, it helps with sheepy fertility. check your local animal husbandry source to find out why (something to do with a boost of nutrients that make it easier to keep a lamb in yer belly full term). the sheep were goin' at it while i was there, though, so that's all the proof i need. go sheep!
after chucking squash at the sheep, one miss shley is free of her squash burden!! that is, all but two bushels that she was convinced to take home for the winter months. i can't help it, it looks so healthy and full of vitamins. and it's orange inside! two bushels is about 80 pounds. that's a lot of fucking squash to eat. but hopefully, being free of the daily task of moving and displaying and moving and moving and MOVING squash around, i will now be able to write about things other than you know what.
george keeps one llama with his sheep as a guard. a llama. i guess the llama gets downright ugly if a predator comes around and will spit furiously. when we drove up in the pick-up the llama positioned itself between us and the sheep and looked as though it was gathering a great lougy* in the back of its llama throat. we got out hesitantly (like we're on safari or something) and left the doors of the truck open just in case we needed to put some glass between us and the spit, but the llama decided we were ok because we had food and sauntered off to nibble on a butternut. oh man, it's satisfying to toss a pumpkin on the ground and watch it split open! some of the squash don't split though, no matter how hard you throw them, cause they're freakin' storage vegetables and hard as rocks. i now feel the sore coming on from throwing something like 3000 pounds of squash on the ground.
i'm also definately going to be sore form the rotten straw bale moving. y.u.c.k. is what rotten straw smells like and i had it all over me today. moving straw bales was a wholly unpleasant experience, especially after i uncovered a little mouse nest complete with little pink baby mice. i had to give them a straw burial. boo.
so all in all it was a very farmy day. sheep, mice, straw and squash. now i'm off to missouri- employment upon return is unknown......
* i can't decide how to spell lougy. loogee? lougie? loogie? loogy.
3 comments:
Donkeys also are useful as sheep guards. I took the kids to a farm here last year to see some lambs frolicking (it was spring!) and there were two donkeys keeping a vigilant eye over all. The farmer told us that they are especially useful in keeping wolves at bay.
Is that ewe taking a piss in the background (far left)?
if there are two llamas with the sheep they cease to care about the sheep because they're too interested in each other. i wonder why donkeys aren't the same. and i wonder why wolves haven't figured out that (in the case of llama security) spit doesn't hurt.
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