Beau Jackson

It’s amazing what you can forget.  I grew up in Southern California, with the smog, and traffic, and hordes of people.  And I forgot about it.

Now I live in rural Missouri on a 13 acre hobby farm.  I only have two neighbors I can even see from my place.  The entire property is fenced, and the driveway is gated.  We’re at least 1/4 mile from a paved road.  When the kids want to go outside, I don’t give it a second thought.  They’re supposed to ask/tell us when they go out, but if they don’t, it’s not a big deal because they aren’t going to go anywhere they could get into danger.

Last Sunday we went to Kansas City to visit some friends.  We’d been there a couple of hours - the adults were talking, the kids were playing, everyone was having a fine time.  Then there was a knock at the door.   It was a police officer, and he was holding my three year old daughter Teresa.  Apparently she decided to go for a walk.  She opened the door and let herself out.

I forgot about living in the city.  I forgot that you don’t just lock the doors to keep people out.  Sometimes you lock the doors to keep people in.  Fortunately, Teresa only got a few houses down the road and somebody spotted her, and didn’t recognize her as one of the neighborhood kids.  This person brought her in and called the police.  Surprisingly, Teresa was able to tell them where she had come from.  She was gone about 25 minutes all told.

All I can do is thank God that she didn’t wander into the street.  It’s a residential area, but our friends street is still pretty busy.  And thank God that the person that found her was a good and caring person.

So I learned a little lesson.  Stay just a little paranoid about where your kids are.  Check on them frequently, and keep the doors locked if your somewhere they could get out and get lost.

So, it’s been about a month. I’m getting to be a terrible slacker when it comes to posting to the blog. I’ve had a couple of things to post about, and I have pictures and I keep forgetting to get the stinking pictures off of the camera. So, now that I’ve finally done that, I’m going to make one big ol’ post about all of it.

Several weeks and I Dominic and I had the opportunity to go cave exploring. We went to Smittle cave, which is located about about 20 miles South of Lebanon, Missouri. The DNR only lets people into Smittle cave two months out of the year - September and May (I think) - due to there being a large bat colony in there. Dominic and I were joined by our friends Andrew and Damien from Kansas City. That’s Damien on the left below and Andrew on the right.

Smittle cave has a very large opening and we were able to just walk through the cave for a good long time. The cave is very muddy though. I think we were about 200 feet into the cave and I sank up to my knees in the mud. The deepest mud I discovered was up to my belt (and I’m 6′ 5″). There were a lot of really beautiful formations in the cave - the pictures don’t really do them justice. You can see more pictures of the cave in the Smittle Cave photo gallery.

Later on in the cave things got a little tighter. There was a lot of tunnel that we were able to kind of squat-walk in, or at least crawl. Further on it got REALLY tight. I haven’t low-crawled since I was in the army. For those who aren’t familiar with that term, low-crawling involves sliding on your stomach with your head flat against the ground. In the army you low-crawl to keep from getting shot. In a cave you low-crawl because that’s the only way you can squeeze through the little crack you’re trying to call through. I’m not normally claustrophobic, but I actually got a little nervous. When you’re crawling on your belly with no space to turn around, it is not a good time to think about a cave collapsing on you! Things soon opened up a bit though - at least we could sit up and turn around. I was really proud of Dominic on the whole adventure - there were a few places where he was obviously scared but he powered on through and had a great time. Did I mention the cave was muddy?

The next thing I wanted to talk about in my cumulative post is the Spindle And Wheel fiber frenzy swap. I participated in the “goodies” swap - and I got some really cools stuff. Most of it is pictured below, but both of my pals sent some candy and it just didn’t last long enough to make it into the picture. Anyhow, I got some really soft sock yarn from each pal, as well as some nice roving. From one pal I got some really big “man sized” knitting needles, and from the other I got some tiny needles for knitting socks with. I think I may try to knit a cargo net with the big needles. I also got some gourmet coffee (I’m a coffee snob so I love this!) a book mark, a “real men knit” magnet, some stitch markers and post-it notes. Thanks very much to Nancy and Lea for all the great stuff!

The final portion of the multi-post is about birthdays, of which we’ve had a several lately. All of our kids birthdays fall in a short period of time so in the last couple of months, Elizabeth turned 5, Dominic turned 14, Teresa turned 3 and yesterday William turned 1. So, today we had a big party with lots of kids over for cupcakes and hotdogs and lots of running around and playing. I think this was William’s favorite gift, but all of the kids have had fun with it (even Dominic!).

I had a Tonka truck a lot like this one when I was a kid. They’re dang tough and I expect it’ll see a lot of of use.

We got a new little ram lamb last night. This one was acquired instead of home-grown. Our ewe DuClair that lost both of her lambs has a new adopted baby. One of the other Shetland sheep breeders in the area had a lamb that was rejected by her mother. We had a ewe with full udders with no lambs. Perfect!

We got him home at 10:00pm or so last night. Neither party was thrilled with the situation, and he ended up getting his first feedings via bottle (which he was also not thrilled about). However, he’s decided that he enjoys nursing now and sets-to with vigor. DuClair is STILL not thrilled. :D She’ll either get over it in a few days, or we’ll just keep holding her head while the little guy nurses, which is a LOT easier than bottle-feeding.

The new lamb is black with just a few little white tufts on his ears. We’ve named him Jerome. He was named after this Jerome, not this Jerome, but if you want to have a sheep name-sake Jerome, I’ll say we named him after you all along ;)

I woke up this morning around 3:30am…bad dream.  I figured as long as I was up, I’d check the sheep.  I went out to look and Mist had a set of twins by her side!  She had a little black ewe and a gray-flecket ram.  We tried to graft the little ewe onto DuClair, but neither one of them seemed interested.  Oh, well…we tried.

The two new lambs seem to be doing well, but it was a tense early morning.  Having just lost two lambs a few hours earlier, we were a bit on the paranoid side about things.  Anyhow, all seems to be going well, and the lamb count is now two ewes and two rams.

It’s a sad day here on the ranch. Another one of our ewes gave birth to two very loud flecket lambs (black with lots of white splotches). She had a lot of trouble with birth and they both died.  We worked very hard to save them - one lived a few minutes, the other about half an hour.  I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.