Yes, that is a sheep sleeping on the floor of my office/fiber shop. It was a hard day for Uncle Honeybunch, but hopefully whatever made him sick is on its way out of his poor gut. I kind of panicked and let (read: dragged) him into my office, knowing the heat wave was going to be rough on him when he was off feed and feeling poor. Poorly? Poor? Grammar Girl, where are you?!
I lost the whole day to fretting over the animals in the heat. Notorious pig Uncle Honeybunch was off his feed since last night, and not eating or burping (burping = life for ruminants; otherwise they can become big bloated gas balloons & die, no kidding). I know the vet thought I was out of my mind, bringing a sheep into my office, but it was crazy hot, so I was way more cautious. If he’d been off feed in 85-degree weather, I’d’ve been a lot more wait-and-see about it. It’s unlikely I’d have even called the vet.
He’s back outside with his posse now, though still little interested in eating. But his poop is now looking more like proper sheep poo (what comes out of either end of the sheep is quite important); and he can’t really live in my office. One day of being stuck in here was enough for me. I was worried if I left for too long, he might run amok. You know, pissed off at all the bags of wool everywhere….
As for the other sheep, I put up a big coolarool shade today and kept their water cool with frozen jugs of water to encourage hydration, a very clever idea I learned somewhere on the internet. They seem to be hanging in there, and thankfully the nights are reasonably cool, because it’s only going to stay hot.
Liz left today. I really enjoyed her work, and it made me wistful about the residency program. We’ve had to let it languish somewhat because with money as it is today, we just can’t afford to promote it overall (it’s awesome but doesn’t earn anything, and we still haven’t found a magic goodies machine to pay the bills).
I’d really love to have a residency coordinator so that our workshop-free months would be more peppered with people making good work. It’s nice to have little clumps of folks; the solo residents have to be highly motivated and resistant to boredom/block, but with little groups, you get the flock feeding vibe that keeps everyone making.
With Ron’s new shop on the horizon and my new workshops brewing, I suspect our time and money will be gobbled up and we’ll have to wait until 2012 to really put our backs into promoting the residency program again. But time does tend to fly, so it should be here before we know it. We do have something of a master plan, but sometimes all the little pictures interfere with the big one.