Christmas Dinner

Actually it’s Christmas Eve breakfast, but you wouldn’t know it judging by the weather. Fifty degrees at eight in the morning on Christmas Eve!

Like every morning, Mira helped me pick out which bale of hay to open and followed me out to help feed the boys. Unlike every morning, the boys pulled half of their breakfast back out of the feeder as soon as I’d put it in, the better to fight over it and kick it around and waste as much of it as possible.

“Hay in the mud is the best!”

It took long enough for me to sort that out (even with Mira helping!) that when we got back to the barn Clover had come back inside to see what the hold up was on his breakfast.

“Why are you so slow, ShepherdPerson? I thought I was going to starve!”

I worry sometimes about making sure Clover gets enough to eat, since he doesn’t have big horns and he was the smallest wether on the farm when he was a lamb. I remember labeling him my “Tiny Tim” his first Christmas. But even though he will forever be that lamb in my mind, now that he’s (theoretically) an adult he isn’t actually that much smaller than the others, and when he isn’t using his “I’m small and pitiful” routine to manipulate me he does all right for himself. Even when he gets to they hay feeder last because he detoured back into the barn to check on complain at me.

“Hey Flynn, is there room here for me to eat, too?”

“No! Wait your turn!”

“Maybe there’s room at the other end?”

Duke was down at that end. He’s mellowed out a lot over the years or he’d be trying to keep the whole feeder to himself, but he still usually insists on a fair amount of elbow room. Clover wasn’t going to have any luck there. With Duke on one end and Clover’s favorite former babysitter Holly in the middle, Clover decided that Flynn was the one who’d have to go.

“OK, I waited! My turn now!“

“Hey! I wasn’t finished!”

“Finally! Breakfast!”

“I’m telling Mama you’re being mean to me!”

Flynn did in fact go find his mother, but Nova was much more interested in deciding if she wanted to bug me for treats or push her way back in at one of the feeders. Nova lost interest in helping Flynn win fights when he was still a baby, mostly I think because he kept starting fights with Angel and expecting Nova to finish them.

“Clover’s being mean to me!”

“Don’t bother me now, I’m watching to see if ShepherdPerson’s hand moves towards the treat pocket!”

Lady, being a middle-aged matriarch and not quite as steady on her feet as she used to be, doesn’t like all the shoving around the main feeder and takes her breakfast separately at the far hay rack on the divider fence between the little fields and the big field. Two of her “babies,” Neo and Danny, came down to have breakfast with her this morning, which was a nice thing for them to do at Christmas.

“ShepherdPerson, we’re going to need more breakfast down here!”

And of course she followed me down to the gate to collect the rightful tribute due to the flock queen.

“Hurry up and give me my treats, those boys of mine are going to eat all of my hay while I’m gone!”

She hinted very strongly that she would rather have yard grass for breakfast instead of hay, but I told her the dogs had to have their turn first.

*blows raspberries* “Mean old ShepherdPerson!”

She got her own personal treats and toddled back to her own personal hay feeder when she accepted I wasn’t going to open the gate, so I don’t think she’s too mistreated. They might get to come in the yard later today, when the dogs come in for a nap. If it doesn’t get too windy or rainy, I might even take a chair out and sit with them a while. If we’re going to have highs near 60 for Christmas, I might as well make the most of it!