Susan Wise Bauer's Blog, page 7

The full flock

Georgiana and Caroline have arrived to complete the new Leicester Longwool flock.

And for a sheeps-eye view of the whole flock, check out my Wandering Sheep video, shot this morning.

Sheep!

This weekend, six of my eight-sheep “starter flock” arrived on the farm.

I’ve wanted to raise sheep for YEARS. I researched the breeds; I wanted wool as a priority over meat, good temperament, naturally polled (hornless) if possible, and good “tourism” value for the visitors to the Peace Hill B&B. Finally I settled on Leicester Longwools, a breed developed in the eighteenth century by the English farmer Robert Bakewell. Leicester Longwools (you can read about the breed here) nearly died out before Colonial Williamsburg’s breed conservancy program began to raise them, about twenty years ago. They’re still rare, and I like the idea of helping preserve a breed. Plus, I wanted some sort of historic connection to this part of Virginia, and these sheep were raised here in colonial times.

I bought sheep from three different farms, hoping to get as much genetic variety as possible: Row House Farm, Old Gjerpen Farm, and Hopping Acres. The complete flock will have three white ewes and three black (the black longwools are even rarer), plus a white ram and a black ram.

So far, the lambs from Old Gjerpen and Row House have arrived. We’re heading off today to pick up the last two from Hopping Acres.

And here they are! (Yes, these are “lambs.” They’ll be lambs until they turn a year old, but as you can see, they grow pretty fast; they’re 3-4 months old right now. The rams are probably around 100 pounds right now and will top out closer to 200; the ewes are in the 45-60 pound range and will end up around 150.)

This is Mr. Bingley, contemplating his new home. Most shepherds name their flocks each year with a theme, so we decided that this year’s theme would be Pride & Prejudice. The black ram is Mr. Collins. (We have two cats named Darcy and Wickham, so those names were already taken, in case you’re wondering.)

Mr. Bingley keeps a watchful eye inside the sheepfold…

Lydia and Charlotte graze at sunset…

And here’s the flock so far. Mr. Bingley and the white ewes, Jane and Elizabeth; and Mr. Collins, the black ram, with Lydia and Charlotte. The last two ewes we’ll pick up today, one white and one black, are Georgiana and Caroline. (Yeah, we had to go kind of deep into the character list.) I’ll post photos tomorrow.

We’ll separate the rams from the ewes in a month or so, and if all goes well, we’ll re-combine them in November and have lambs in March or April.

This falls under the “doing a few other things” heading on my blog, I guess…

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-07-01

Getting ready to give the plenary address at the Society for Classical Learning annual conference in Charleston, SC. Beautiful city. #
Back home: today, SHEEP DELIVERY! (That's how you get started in shepherding, FYI: you take your credit card and buy a Starter Flock.) #

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Post-France, post-manuscript, and in full-blown fish-mode

So I haven’t posted on my blog in a couple of weeks. And here I thought that, once the History of the Renaissance was turned in, I’d be all bloggy again.

Actually, I feel weird. I’ve been focused on that manuscript for SO long that I’m feeling a little…gormless. Unfocused. Scattered. Clueless. In fish-mode. (You know, where you go a little to the left, and then a little to the right, and then a little to the left, and then you turn around and go back the way you came.)

So here’s what I’m going left and right and back and forth with.

I’m getting the second level of my middle-grade writing program, Writing With Skill, ready for the beta-testers.

I’m still finishing up the maps

and timelines

for the History of the Renaissance. That’s time-consuming and particular work. (You’ll notice the color-coding; don’t get excited, the final versions will be black-and-white, like those in the previous two volumes,

but the color-coding is a strategy that the good folks in Norton’s production department came up with to try to avoid a repeat of previous frustrations.)

I’m trying to decide which chapters need illustrations.

I’m finishing up the summer’s conferencing (on my way to the Society for Classical Learning, even as I type this). Still have a Texas conference to go.

Working on the next Peace Hill Press catalog, the one that we’ll launch in 2013.

Getting ready to can/freeze the eight zillion peaches that are about to come in. After several years of bad crops, we’re looking at a bumper harvest.

(Yes, this is better living through chemistry and, yes, I too feel ambivalent about it.)

Getting ready for the arrival of the sheep, most recently by adding a guardian donkey to the farm. This is Athena, named after the goddess of war. Which you would understand, if you saw her go after the dogs.

All of this is great stuff. It just feels so scattered. I don’t miss the pressure of always feeling behind, which I’ve lived with for the last year as the History of the Renaissance oozed farther and farther past its original deadline. But I miss the single focus I had when I was working on it.

Which is probably why I keep contemplating starting another Really Big Project…

The last guessing game

So where’s this? (The last adventure before we head home tomorrow.)

And if you want extra credit, you can figure out where we were yesterday:

Here’s where we were on Wednesday…

So what’s your guess?

Oh, and I have to include a picture of a blue-taloned chicken, in honor of my favorite local spot.

Time for a challenge…

OK, you all know I’m in the south of France. So can you figure out where I spent my afternoon today?

I’ll give you two hints: It’s not a historic landmark. And it is in the guidebooks.

Have fun…

So where am I now?

You guys are good. Try this one. (Sunday afternoon, June 3, if it matters.)

Guess where I am?

To celebrate the finished History of the Renaissance, Peter and I ran away from home for a week. Want to play, “Where is Susan?”

…And there was much rejoicing.

(Here, anyway. Don’t know if my editor will share that emotion when he has to READ the whole thing.)

THE WHOLE BOOK IS FINISHED.

808 pages.

235,000 words.

45 pages of works cited.

Now I’m taking a week off.