This has been a busy summer for us. We have been working on lots of projects from working on the house to putting up hay to moving sheep (a lot of moving sheep). 
So we finally got the permanent certificate of occupancy for the house. There are still things to be done but it is really looking like a home. Paulette has done a great job painting the trim, doors and windows. We still love the solar and I am in the process of wiring a propane stand by generator into the system that will start automatically if the batteries get below a certain voltage. I almost forgot: Paulette’s father, he is a carpenter, built us a deck off the back of the house. It is about 10 x 14 and it has become one of our favorite places to sit at the end of the day. Paulette has also done great job keeping us well fed. Her garden has been doing really well. The feezer is getting full and we are eating a LOT of fresh veggies.
We put up all the hay for the winter, we had an opportunity to get it all done in one week and just went for it. We bought around 300 bales of first cut reed canary grass and 300 bales of second cut reed canary grass. The second cut is really nice and green and should do a nice job keeping the ewes fed though the winter. 
We finally got “real” rain for the first time in a long time. We were VERY dry up on the hill and the grass stopped growing. I tried adjusting the size of the paddocks and moving the seep faster though them but the forage just was not there. I ended moving the flock to an abandoned field down the road to get them by until we got some rain. It was kind of un-nerving having them out of site. We could hear Dante and Midge at night barking every once in a while. I strip grazed them though fairly quickly so they could eat what they wanted but didn’t force them, I am thinking about getting weight on the market lambs as well as starting to think about getting the ewes back in shape before winter. It may seem like winter is a long way off but for us it will come very fast. Getting weight on the sheep before the winter is a big deal; skinny sheep have fewer lambs and will never gain the weight back over the winter. I heard a saying from a shepherd “a fat sheep going into the winter is like money in the bank”.
I have the sheep trampling in a cover crop of rye, oats and turnips. I am only planting an acre to try it out but this should extend the grazing season for the ewes which will save me money. The big expense for raising sheep is the hay costs over the winter. If I can do things to decrees the time I have to feed hay I can increase the profit I make on lamb sales.
