It's hard not to project
As shepherds we think we know what’s best for our sheep. The benefit of years watching and learning from these creatures has helped me realize that most of the time, they do know best and don't need our interference. If we’ll listen to them and not try to “project” our human interpretation, we can see that. Sure, we have to get involved from time to time but I’ve found if we trust their instincts and get out of their way, they’ll often take care of things.
Like the ewe that insists on having her lamb in the woods, we let her. Is it the safest? Probably not but that’s what she wants to do. It makes it harder on us once she’s had the lamb to get them to safety but I believe allowing them to have those moments and make those decisions gives us a more mutually respectful relationship.
I’m sure there’s a shepherd or two out there ranting at me right now, “we must be able to manage them and that requires some degree of doing things in spite of their natural instincts.” Like I said, I realize there are times we need to step in and I realize my way isn’t going to align with most others…it’s just my desire to let them be as true to their natural ways as I can. I might pay for it with a little extra effort on my part but I believe I gain by raising sheep that are in touch with their intuitive ways.
The other day I was rehashing a decision to want to keep one of our older ewes back from breeding. She has given us plenty of beautiful babies. She deserves to rest, I thought. So, I did just that. She went to spend her time grazing in green pastures with the teenagers. What a glorious gift, or was it?
Well, to shorten what could be a very long tale, Willow, that’s her name, ended up pregnant anyway. How? We’ll never be 100% sure. Through a fence? Could be, but boys were not in adjoining fences except for short stints while moving sheep? Could she be that fast? One of our lambs might have been more mature then we thought? Like i said, we’ll never know for sure.
A funny thing happened on that day I realized she was with lamb, as I walked away from her pasture something beckoned me to look back. There went Willow trotting away from me and kicking up her heels.
She was mighty happy.
It’s as if she was saying to me, I love being a mom! You don’t get to decide.
I believe I had just been reminded, we’re not necessarily smarter then mother nature!
Shearing Day was not a washout!
Rain or shine, farm chores must go on and sometimes, in spite of the conditions, something wonderful happens.
There are certain farm chores that come with the territory. On a sheep farm one annual task we have is shearing. Most folks shear their sheep annually although some of our sheep need it twice a year.. A great deal of our farms success depends on the wool our sheep provide so it’s an important date on our calendar.
Regardless, the shearing must be done.
Several years ago we decided to make an event of it and include the public. That’s it, we’ll invite folks that have never had the opportunity to see sheep loose their winter coats. Some folks have never even seen a sheep before. As the annual event has progressed it has turned into quite a big ordeal. Hundreds of folks each year come to the farm to see, learn and enjoy the farm setting.
This year will go down as one we’ll NEVER forget.
Shearing for us always takes place in late February or early March. We plan as far out on the calendar as we can but generally cannot set the date too far in advance because setting that date depends on a few things out of our control. Number ONE, we’re dependent on the shearer. As you might imagine, shearers are not easy to come by. When you find one you like you do your best to work closely with them and develop a relationship you both can depend on. Once you get your shearer to agree to a date all the event planning begins. We cater lunch and offer other activities for folks once they get here. How do we know how many people to plan for? Well we don’t really. We generally go by the previous years attendance and add a buffer. So, we order food ahead. We plan help. We commit to a band. Yes a band; there is something special about sitting on a blanket looking out over a pastoral setting, listening to some musicians pickin’ away.
OK, check, check and check. Everything is in order.
The last thing we’re dependent on is the weather. Yup. Counting on the weather is like tossing a coin in the air. Mother Nature is going to do her thing regardless of how much time, money and effort you’ve invested. Once you’ve set the date (as far in advance as you can for obvious reasons) there is no turning back. We’ve all seen a next days weather forecast change or even sun when Al Roker said rain!
Well 2019 shouldn’t have been a total surprise what with the onslaught of rain we’d had. Weeks before and leading up to the day…the rain did not let up. From the first day the extended 10 day weather forecast is posted on television and smartphones, I am tuning in. First thing each morning even before coffee I am reviewing every weather outlet to see the latest predictions. Thursday, before this years event, they had predicted rain all day. THE SUN CAME OUT! Me, the eternal optimism kept imaging Saturday would be the same. Under my breath I also muttered, “it is going to be what it’s going to be”. I knew we’d have to deal with it.
The caterer called giving us the option to cancel or reduce our quantities. A few of the band members came by to say it was OK if we wanted to cancel. Alas, the event had been advertised and the shearer was coming…THE SHOW MUST GO ON.
Saturday began with more rain then I had seen any day that week, POURING! Even if it stopped before the gates opened we’d have mud galore.
How should we prepare? Would people even come?
Although the attendance was certainly down we had some real troopers out here! No one seemed bothered. Most were fully aware what to expect from the weather. Some learned their water resistant clothing wasn’t as water proof as they thought!. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves! Everyone understood I couldn’t ‘warm’ it up or move the puddles.
We sheared, we ate, we got wet and shivered a bit together and somehow, in the midst of all the rain and mud I so enjoyed the day with way more folks then I’d anticipated. In many ways, I didn’t realize it was raining until I removed my wet clothes!
I had several memorable interactions.
The interaction I most wanted to share is the young girl and her parents who together had been discovering the world of knitting. They had decided, to buy some wool and take it through the process of washing, carding, spinning and finally knitting. They were picking a freshly shorn fleece to buy and I encouraged them while here to pick a sheep and really connect the wool to the source. The family was able to deliberately pick a sheep that attracted her. They were able to pet the sheep and watch the sheep get shorn. With a tear in she and her mother’s eye they shared with me how that experience touched them! They will always connect with that finished handmade piece in a way that cannot be matched! I learned of the girls grandmother in Switzerland that would be so happy to hear their experience.
I will never forget that experience and I will never forget them!
Win, loose or draw with the days finance report…it doesn’t seem to matter after a day like this!
Sustainability & Our Precious Soil
As farmers, we've been told over and over, your #1 asset is your soil.
It makes sense, the soil is the foundation of everything on this farm. For us and most sustainable livestock farmers the pastures feed our sheep by daily spring, summer, and fall gnashing and in the winter its fed as hay. That's all pretty straight forward, right.?
Prior to my farming life my familiarity with grass was only my own "city" lawn. The lawn that framed my house and defined my space....the lawn I had to mow. Almost every week-end in the summer I knew I'd be rolling out the self propelled grass eating machine to "manicure" my lawn. Just like everyone else in the neighborhood I kept my 9 to 5 schedule during the week knowing yard work, long moments with coffee and the religious newspaper experiences were all part of my upcoming, predictable, always looked forward to week-end. I don't recall ever worrying about the grass other then it's color or the number of dandelions that emerged. I probably could have done more to beautify my lawn but that wasn't my thing. I was all about my garden beds and the pots that adorned my entrance or patio. As long as my grass was "groomed" I didn't do much else to my lawn. My next door neighbor, now he was into it. Every evening after work he was ready to work some more... in his yard. His week-ends were spent fertilizing or amending something. He had the lawn! You know, the kind you imagine running barefoot through. Everyone knows the lawn I'm describing, like a green carpet with perfectly shaped edges.
I drove in and out of that neighborhood with all the perfectly manicured and aspiring to be lawns and never thought twice...it was all I'd ever known.
.....
if I knew then what I know now.
As a farmer working directly with mother nature I see so much I never realized.
She speaks in so many visible ways.
Naturally, as grasses grow then die back with the seasons, the soil is replenished with decomposing nutrients and a layer of "mulch" for protection. If we mow the grass or take the grass for our livestock or "manicured" lawns we've robbed the soil of it's natural sources for replenishment .
Simply put, "taking" the grass
impacts the soil's fertility. Whether we mow a lawn or graze a pasture we are interrupting the natural process.
Because we depend on the grasses on our farm we learned very quickly the choices we had available to keep that grass healthy and growing! If we we're going to take her natural source of nutrient we had to give something back.
Our choices? Natural or Synthetic. The nutrients in both types of fertilizer are much the same. The differences lie in their source, quantity, availability to plants and long term effects on the micro life of the soil.
Natural fertilizers sources come from plants, animal waste and natural minerals. They also provide micro nutrients such as boron, copper, iron and manganese. Synthetic fertilizers contain nutrients made from fossil fuels.
See this beautiful pasture? Just as green and lush as you can imagine. It's kept that way at a tremendous expense. Every year the farmer applies synthetic fertilizers and every year it looks like this. What could be wrong with this? Just like my "city" neighbor applying all those synthetic fertilizers on his lawn, the results are gorgeous and we're conditioned to want them that way.
So golly, why not?
The synthetic fertilizers are like steroids, they feed the plant but interrupt the symbiotic relationship between the plant and the soil. The plant can no longer depend on the soil to feed it.
Eventually, the grass, without another application of those same synthetic fertilizers won't even green. The natural flora of the soil is gone. Believe me, I've seen it, even on this same pasture not far from our farm.
Our other option and the only sustainable solution... we rebuild and/or replenish the soil with natural sources of nutrients.
Why isn't the natural solution the most chosen method?
First, we've been conditioned (brainwashed) to dependency on the commercially available options. Second, it takes an investment of time and effort.
It takes years of applying natural sources of nutrients back to your soil for the perfect balance to be achieved. It takes testing your soil to know what's absent. It takes sourcing the nutrients or in our case creating them from sources here on the farm. We collect the leaves and gather our kitchen scraps. We trek our barn waste to our collection areas along with all the other valuable waste materials and layer them together to age. In this way we build our own dark rich compost that we refer to as gold. We apply that "gold" to our pastures and our soil has what it needs to do what mother nature intended...GROW GOOD STUFF!
So, it takes first admitting the need to do it for the health of our soils and ourselves and second the commitment to the investment of time and labor.
Are we willing to make that investment?
Can we afford not to?
Come out to our farm and see first hand how my immediate boss,
Mother Nature
, whispers in my ear, pokes me in the arm and sometimes slaps me upside the head...
As I write this post I feel proud that we've taken the time and ever prouder of that dark, rich, healthy soil we give back to our soils........
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September 2024
- Sep 10, 2024 Back to basics with sheep healthcare Sep 10, 2024
- Sep 10, 2024 Mac and Cheese Bites Sep 10, 2024
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August 2024
- Aug 12, 2024 Tales of a female farmer Aug 12, 2024
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July 2024
- Jul 12, 2024 Caring for sheep hides Jul 12, 2024
- Jul 11, 2024 Cucumber Lemonade Jul 11, 2024
- Jul 1, 2024 Cucumber Gazpacho Jul 1, 2024
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May 2024
- May 23, 2024 Almonds, Sweet and Spicy May 23, 2024
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January 2024
- Jan 17, 2024 Sheep fencing gone wrong… Jan 17, 2024
- Jan 17, 2024 In the beginning :Tales from the shepherd Jan 17, 2024
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April 2023
- Apr 3, 2023 The journey to vegetarian, or not? Apr 3, 2023
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March 2023
- Mar 20, 2023 Making sense of scents, or not... Mar 20, 2023
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February 2023
- Feb 26, 2023 Lamb Sliders Feb 26, 2023
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March 2022
- Mar 15, 2022 HOW TO BE THE BEST SHEPHERD: Lessons from a sheep Mar 15, 2022
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January 2022
- Jan 17, 2022 Lamb Bone Broth /Stock Jan 17, 2022
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April 2021
- Apr 26, 2021 Farming through Covid Apr 26, 2021
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June 2020
- Jun 19, 2020 Turning 60 Jun 19, 2020
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January 2020
- Jan 12, 2020 wool dryer ball transparency Jan 12, 2020
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September 2019
- Sep 10, 2019 It's hard not to project Sep 10, 2019
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June 2019
- Jun 21, 2019 Weaning, a whole new meaning Jun 21, 2019
- Jun 17, 2019 Strawberry Balsamic Basil Pops Jun 17, 2019
- Jun 10, 2019 Collard Salad Jun 10, 2019
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February 2019
- Feb 28, 2019 Shearing Day was not a washout! Feb 28, 2019
- Feb 5, 2019 The life of a sheep! Feb 5, 2019
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January 2019
- Jan 25, 2019 Lamb Liver Paté Jan 25, 2019
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August 2018
- Aug 23, 2018 Pokeweed, Friend or Foe? Aug 23, 2018
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July 2018
- Jul 20, 2018 Cucumbers Galore Jul 20, 2018
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September 2016
- Sep 5, 2016 Mother Nature's Lessons Sep 5, 2016
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August 2016
- Aug 23, 2016 Walking the Walk Aug 23, 2016
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July 2015
- Jul 2, 2015 To Wean or not to Wean Jul 2, 2015
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February 2015
- Feb 1, 2015 Sustainability & Our Precious Soil Feb 1, 2015
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July 2014
- Jul 24, 2014 Squash Lasagna Jul 24, 2014
- Jul 24, 2014 Squash Squares Jul 24, 2014
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June 2014
- Jun 2, 2014 Sustainability...What's it all about! Jun 2, 2014
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May 2014
- May 29, 2014 What I know now.... May 29, 2014
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April 2014
- Apr 4, 2014 Is the boss the farmer or the sheep? Apr 4, 2014
- Apr 3, 2014 Felted Chicks Apr 3, 2014
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January 2014
- Jan 28, 2014 Lamb Ribs Jan 28, 2014
- Jan 26, 2014 DIY Wool Dryer Balls Jan 26, 2014
- Jan 15, 2014 Let the New Year Begin Jan 15, 2014
- Jan 13, 2014 DIY Heat Jan 13, 2014
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October 2013
- Oct 30, 2013 WHOLEsome Food: EGGS Oct 30, 2013
- Oct 7, 2013 Cinnamon Pickles Oct 7, 2013
- Oct 7, 2013 Dog Biscuits Oct 7, 2013
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September 2013
- Sep 18, 2013 Peaches, Peaches everywhere Sep 18, 2013
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August 2013
- Aug 14, 2013 The Spider and the Butterfly Aug 14, 2013
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July 2013
- Jul 30, 2013 They don't wear galoshes Jul 30, 2013
- Jul 21, 2013 Blackberry Lime Jam Jul 21, 2013
- Jul 11, 2013 Lamb Sliders Jul 11, 2013
- Jul 9, 2013 Our Little Orchard Jul 9, 2013
- Jul 2, 2013 The Hay Bale Fiasco Jul 2, 2013
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May 2013
- May 17, 2013 My Secret Place May 17, 2013
- May 2, 2013 April. Did I miss it? May 2, 2013
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March 2013
- Mar 28, 2013 Prada to Carhart Mar 28, 2013
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February 2013
- Feb 21, 2013 Puttin Up the Fence Feb 21, 2013
- Feb 7, 2013 Lovely Cup of Chai Feb 7, 2013
- Feb 5, 2013 Looking for Llama's Feb 5, 2013
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January 2013
- Jan 29, 2013 Winter Garden Jan 29, 2013
- Jan 24, 2013 The rams are back in their pasture Jan 24, 2013
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September 2012
- Sep 7, 2012 Pickles! Sep 7, 2012
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June 2012
- Jun 13, 2012 Morning Gifts Jun 13, 2012
- Jun 5, 2012 Finding the Words Jun 5, 2012
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April 2012
- Apr 13, 2012 The girls and a few token boys! Apr 13, 2012
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March 2012
- Mar 30, 2012 Flavor! Mar 30, 2012
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October 2011
- Oct 9, 2011 Hay. A little three letter word that packs a PUNCH! Oct 9, 2011
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July 2011
- Jul 22, 2011 The Glorious Tomato Jul 22, 2011
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February 2011
- Feb 10, 2011 Shearing Day 2011 Feb 10, 2011
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November 2010
- Nov 30, 2010 This farm gives me Goose Bumps Nov 30, 2010
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July 2010
- Jul 23, 2010 Another aHaa Moment in Farming Jul 23, 2010
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February 2010
- Feb 24, 2010 Farmers Wearing Lace? Feb 24, 2010
- Feb 16, 2010 Girls with no Coats Feb 16, 2010
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January 2010
- Jan 4, 2010 Midnite on the farm Jan 4, 2010
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April 2009
- Apr 22, 2009 Hard Day on the Farm Apr 22, 2009
- Apr 15, 2009 Lamb Meatballs Apr 15, 2009
- Apr 14, 2009 Spring Apr 14, 2009
- Apr 14, 2009 Roasted Coffee Marinated Leg of Lamb Apr 14, 2009
- Apr 13, 2009 In the Beginning Apr 13, 2009