Check out the latest news from Essex Farm in this note from Kristin Kimball’s Blog:

“Farming is many things, but it is never dull. This morning, Mike came in from animal chores to tell me that he’d found a newborn lamb in the flock. None of the ewes is supposed to even be pregnant, let alone ready to lamb. So I just squinted at him, thinking, thinking. I have seen my share of unplanned breedings on this farm, so I know that the force of life is like a light, and given the slightest crack, it will shine through. I have heard of animals getting bred through a fence, and I have watched an ambitious young bull use a hill to his advantage. But in this case, I really couldn’t imagine how it might have happened.

We didn’t even have a ram in mid-March, when the breeding must have taken place, and as for this year’s ram lambs, even if we’d missed a testicle during castration, the oldest would only have been four weeks old. Immaculate conception? Then I looked at my calendar, and realized that the new mother was one of the ewe lambs I bought this past spring, and they arrived here the last day of March – apparently two weeks pregnant. So it wasn’t a miracle, just some clever boy sheep who figured out how to get to the young ladies, and it wasn’t my fault!

With that settled, Jane and Miranda and I went out to see the new baby. She was on her feet, a bit bothered by flies, but strong and ready to nurse. Several of the other ewes from that group have big udders, so it looks like we’re going to learn a lot about summer lambing in the next week or two…” Continue reading this Essex Farm Note.

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