My First Test

Tuesday of last week was the first day of Autumn. I had every intention of sharing photos of the newly, decorated porch, an autumn inspired dinner, and pumpkins. But that all changed when we came home from our Tuesday afternoon errands in town.
As I was driving down the driveway, I noticed one of the rams lying with his head down in the middle of our barn. That was odd, so I stopped the car and hopped out. I started yelling his name (George) and clapping. No movement. Then I started sprinting into the barn paddock. He was dead! This wasn't our first dead animal on the homestead, but the most substantial and he was just here visiting for a while. After feeling on the dead ram (lifting eyelids, etc.) to check for several things, I moved the rest of the sheep to a new pasture. It would still need to be secured with electric line, but that was going to have to wait until the next morning.  Our friends (and his owners) came after it was dark to salvage any wool and help me start a fire to burn him. (We didn't need coyotes to be attracted to the homestead. Mabel is still a little young to fend off coyotes.) The next day the fire would need to be stoked again and tended to so that all of the ram would burn. That night I couldn't sleep because of all the adrenaline and fear of predators, I guess, so I canned grape jelly.
Did I mention that Bryan had left for a work related training in Chicago!!! on Monday? He wasn't due to return until the end of the week. So I feel like this was my first true farmer test.
To make the new pasture secure, I had to trim around it with the trimmer and restring electric line around the bottom perimeter. I had only done this with Bryan three times. Now I had to do it alone and do it correctly. I broke the line on the trimmer seven times while trimming the pasture. Thankfully, I knew how to restring the trimmer and it is relatively easy. Then I had to restring the pasture. I was confident about everything except the corners. After I had the whole pasture strung, it was time to flip the switch. I'm not sure why I doubted myself so much but I just reached out and touched the line. It was the first time I had done that and yep, it was blazing, hot. After I danced around for a few seconds, all I could do was smile. It wasn't easy and it took me nearly 5 hours, but I did it all by myself. I had a quick cry, checked on all of the rest of the animals, and then the boys and I went inside to start our homeschooling day. Later that night (in the dark) our friends came over to de-worm the rest of the sheep. The ram had died of worms and there were two others that had worms and they needed to be treated.
That night I could finally sleep because I was exhausted!
Things are calmer this week, Bryan is back home, and I feel a bit more like a farmer. I have a long way to go, but I kind of love this whole farming thing. Good and bad.