Erin Mortreuil's Rural Roots - Winter Views
Our Dexter cows are getting their supper. These cows are pregnant and as of June, most of them have had their calves. We are still waiting for two of the mothers to calf.
 This is a group of all different kinds of sheep—they are all crossbred (at least of six or seven different kinds of sheep all mixed together). When I took this picture, most of the ewes shown here were pregnant. Now we have about 50 or more lambs.
This is our heifer that shared a pen with my 4-H calf. She has been sold, and I will be selling my calf on Saturday. I hope to get at least $1 a pound, but hopefully more. The money must pay for his feed, a halter, a show comb, a show stick and shampoo. If there is money left over, I can keep it in my bank account or spend it on whatever I need.
This is my Mom giving the sheep their supper. They eat green feed and they must be fed twice a day. My chores include feeding my calf, walking the dog and feeding the chickens and sometimes doing our layers - by that I mean picking up the eggs from our chickens (our layers).
This is my mom standing by the cow's bale. She is forking hay for the cattle.
This is my male border collie named Rock. He is the father of three batches of puppies.
These are our layers! These days, we have about 15 or 16 eggs a day. We eat some of the eggs and the others we sell to people we know.
This is my border collie, June. She is the mother of all of our border collie puppies. She can round up the sheep—she is the best at this because she has had the most training. She can get in the pen, round up the sheep, control them if they are misbehaving and take them out to a working corral.
These are two of our barn cats—Fluffy and Boomer. They live outside and they eat gophers and mice. Fluffy is Boomer's kitten. We give them feed twice a day—in the winter they rely on that, but in the summer time, there are plenty of mice and gophers to keep them fed.
 Some of our chickens are on the roosting bar. They are looking at the feed and the water that is on the ground.

Troy Koester | Danny Cammaert | Danielle Gariepy | Erin Mortreuil | Kenzie Kettenbach