On Jan 12, 2010, at 1:17 PM, Mary & Bob Pratt -- Elihu Farm wrote: > Ron, The winter weather in UK and Europe has been in the news here in > the US. How much snow and cold do you have in Sweden? (Just looked at > weather underground, and discovered a wx map for Sweden. > http://www.wunderground.com/global/SN.html ( Is the coast of Norway > really around +40F? )
Yep, it's true. The Gulf Stream goes by. Not so in Sweden where the temps are unusually cold with below zero F temps. > > The Northeast has been very cold, but that does happen here. We're > supposed to be used to it HA. The people in the South are really > freezing, much colder than usual there. I check temps in MN to make me feel warmer here. > > Chores take forever on these days. Frozen water buckets to empty in the > a.m. Eggs to collect often so they don't freeze. Extra grain for the > lambs, which are outside with big bale feeders full of baleage. Don't > want to give the impression we do all of this ourselves. We were > farming > full time for quite awhile before we hired 'real' help, instead of > limping along with various high school or college kids after school or > on weekends. But it's still tough in this cold, especially with nearly > all the sheep outside 24 hrs a day. We always lamed starting April Fool's Day. The ewes were out all Winter with no problems. Shearing was in late March, then they had access to an open barn free choice. > > Now we're heading for a warm up, which will be welcome. Maybe the ewes > due to lamb can go out on a neighbor's field with portable fence. > Meanwhile, it's time to bring in the dozen or so pregnant ones, for > mid-February lambing. I used only one ram for that group, Dickens, a > recessive-colored Romney. A good test to find out if we have some girls > with recessive color genes. If not, we'll have recessive color > carriers. > > Mary in eastern NY\\ Have fun! Ron rbpar...@swipnet.se
