Springtime On The Farm

Who doesn't love Springtime on the farm? All the sweet, new babies being born. Things are greening up. The air is fresh and clean.  Aww, love it!

This past weekend we went out to my parent's farm to see some of their new baby lambs.  Last week in Iowa we had AMAZING weather!  Highs in the 50's and 60's, even hit 70's one day!  Then Thursday things changed, we had a system come through with rain and snow and the temps dropped back down to the 20's.  And guess what - sheep started dropping their lambs like crazy!  In one day/night my dad had 2 sets of triplets, 4 sets of doubles and 1 single - that's craziness right there!  Out of a herd of 50 ewes that's quite a percentage at once!

Sunday morning we got everyone's muck boots on and headed to the farm.  What's not to love about kiddos in much boots? :)

Here's my mom picking out a baby from one of the pens in this barn.  They have the sheep spread out between two barns and 2 old hog lots.  The ewes who are lambing are in the two barns.

Aiden's an old pro with the sheep now. :)

Aiden held the baby while Andy held MY baby so she could meet her first little lamb.  She wasn't afraid, maybe a tad hesitant, but she stuck her cute little pointer finger out and touched that little lamb's nose.

This one was one of a set of triplets.  He was the runt of the litter and oh my was he tiny for a lamb!  His body was the size of a piglet!  But look at those long legs!

Tate needed a little coaxing (and a bucket to stand on) but he finally got close enough to pet a lamb.  He gave it three little pets then said "I'm done."  He was content looking on from a few feet away.

This momma and her babes look like little calves with their coloring!

And look at this 'deer sheep'!  Unusual coloring for my parent's flock.

This sheep is one of my dad's "old girls".  She is fairly tame, especially if my dad has a bucket of corn! Just look at her eating out of the bucket my dad's holding!

Then the rest of the sheep in that pen got wind of what was happening and came running over - they wanted corn, too, but weren't willing to get that close to us to get some.

We moved on to one of the old hog lots to see the older lambs that were born in December. My dad doesn't usually have ewes lambing at various times throughout the year, they all lamb in Feb/March but he had bought a dozen or so ewes from someone and they were already bred, thus the Christmas lambs.

Tate said "These sheepies need fed, Papa." So Papa fed 'these sheepies'.

Papa and Tenley <3

I love this boy!  I can't believe Aiden will be 11 this summer.

Time to haul these "sheep" away!

This pictured I love.  Tate told Papa the sheep needed fed so Dad took off to get a bucket of corn.  Tate took off after him.  If you wind the clock back 32 years this is what you'd see - Dad walking to do chores with me trailing along behind him.  Oh the good old days, I miss them.  I'm glad my kids get to experience a tiny bit of what I did on the farm.  And I'm glad my little kiddos love my Dad as much as I do, he's quite the Papa!

Life on the farm, doesn't get much better than that!