Make new friends

The first thing that Newton did upon arriving at the farm (after getting his ears taped so that he grows up to have proper Bouvier ears) was to look for a friend. The first animal he met was BC, the barn cat.

















A few sniffs, a few exploratory mouthings and a reprimanding swat or two...
and now they both watch for each other, firm friends.

Wearing wool

Sock models (from left to right) Dawn, Alice, Becca, Dave, Glen

I just finished reading Sheepish a wonderful book by Catherine Friend. She writes about all the wonderful qualities of wool; things I have known but forgotten. Qualities like the fact that wet wool still keeps you warm, in fact, wet wool fibers actually give off heat. And the fact that the bacteria that make cotton, nylon and polyester clothing stink after a single days wear, don’t survive in wool. Or the fact that some wools, like Merino, can be spun and knit into undergarments as fine and easy to wear as cotton or the man-made fibers.

On our annual canoe trip this fall, I wore a wool tshirt. After four days of paddling and portaging, it still didn’t smell bad, unlike the cotton long sleeved shirt that I wore over it. I had to wash the cotton shirt twice in the lake. The merino shirt won’t last forever like a polyester one, but it feels much better against my skin and doesn’t smell.

I wore my wool socks under sandals. We portaged five or six times on most days, jumping out of the canoe, clambering through the shallows to shore, carrying our gear across the portage and then stepping into the water again to reload the canoe. My feet and socks were wet most of the time, but my feet were only cold when I took my socks off.

Catherine found several American companies that use American wool and I found several more. Try Ramblers Way Farm, Wigwam Socks, Pendelton, Smartwool and Ibex, or even better, knit something yourself.

Shepherds

When our daughters, Amber and Laurel, were young, we sent them out to check the flock, to make sure that none of the ewes had their heads stuck in the fence and that the waterers were full. We asked their help when moving the sheep from one pasture to another, or when, heaven forbid, the flock escaped from their pasture to explore the hayfield or the road to town.

Once the kids graduated and left home, herding the sheep became more of a challenge. I have insanely frustrating memories of trying to coach neighbor kids how to herd sheep as we were herding the sheep, or even worse, to coach them over the phone from 600 miles away. “Stand here and don’t let any sheep past you,” we’d say. Or after the flock had flowed around them, “stand here and wave your arms and shout when they come toward you.” Or even “walk down the drive way and try to look as if you are as fat as the driveway.”

We talked for years about getting a herd dog. Most of the herd dogs I’ve watched take their owners directions much better than Dave takes mine (or, for that matter, than I take his). We even tried to teach Strider, our dog before Carly, how to herd. He should have been able to learn, his breed herds – cattle especially. But we failed. It was undoubtedly our fault, as he was an intelligent dog. We did teach him to pull hay bales on a sled to the next pasture, but he decided it was too much work and finally just lay down in the snow. (See, I said he was an intelligent dog.)

Now we have another chance. After a dogless year we bought a puppy, a cute, fuzzy Bouvier de Flandres. We have pledged to each other that we will train this dog, both in normal dog skills like not biting, not eating the furniture (or wool), and urinating and defecating outdoors, and in the extra skill of sheep herding.

So far, we are batting zero for four. But our grandsons, Kieran and Jasper, haven’t learned to herd sheep yet either. We’ll give all three of them a little more time and a lot more training. I fully expect to have three wonderful sheep herders by next summer.

WInthrop in detention

I drove four hours to Windom Minnesota to pick up Winthrop, our new ram, and four hours back. Dave had to work that day, but it was the only day that I had free and Winthrop’s owner had free that week and I wanted the ram at our farm so I could observe him for awhile before putting him in with the ewes on October 1, thus my solitary trip, with MPR as my only company– fortunately it was a good day for MPR. I learned about the uses and misuses of suspension and detention in the public schools.

Winthrop’s’ home pastures in Windom had been dry and closely cropped; we had stockpiled forage in the ram pasture for him to eat during his enforced solitude or detention, so he jumped out of the pickup happily to begin grazing.

Within an hour of arriving home we realized that there would be no solitude and no enforcing. Winthrop didn’t believe in detention. He jumped right over the 6 foot high fence dividing the ram pasture from the home pasture, then cleverly found the almost open gate from the home pasture to the south central pasture, and was tracking ewes as they grazed back and forth in the south central pasture - one flimsy fence between them. It was dusk. Winthrop had just jumped our tallest fence. We were leaving soon to visit Kieran, our grandson, and his mom and dad, as well as pick up a new puppy. There was no way in the world that Emily, our animal sitter, would be able to corral the ewes, separate Winthrop, then move him to a new pasture, and detain him if he went over the fence again.

Dave and I looked at each other and shrugged. Like the experts had said on MPR, detention just doesn’t work. We decided right then to introduce Winthrop to his new ewes immediately instead of in two weeks and as a result, begin lambing two weeks earlier in 2012.

When we let Winthrop into the ewe’s pasture, he immediately began sniffing ewes, trying to figure out who was the most receptive, who was ready to breed. The next morning, all the ewes were lying down, not quite ready to submit to Winthrop’s affections, but he was not discouraged and continued to stride from ewe to ewe, sniffing and pawing – behavior that he would continue until every ewe was pregnant and he could lay down at rest, actually looking forward to his enforced solitude and detention.

Luck

Last March, as lamb after lamb died practically in our arms, Dave and I struggled to find a cause. Not the hay, not the corn, not lead based paint in our unpainted barn, not a metabolic problem or an infection. Finally, after veterinary examinations and an autopsy, we were left with only two possible reasons for the loss of 20 lambs – either bad luck or bad genes.

Luck we could do nothing about; but bad genes compounded by inbreeding, we could rectify. We’d been using the same rams for four years. Most of our ewes were young – daughters, grand-daughters or even great grand-daughters of those rams. Several years of faulty ear tags that either fell out or broke meant that we no longer knew the exact parentage and thus genetic background of each ewe. We could easily have been breeding them to their fathers, grand-fathers, even great grand-fathers. Most small farmers don’t worry about inbreeding. It can yield an equal number of outstanding animals or defective animals and most of the young show no effects.

However, I wasn’t willing to take the chance again. I couldn’t sell what I wouldn’t use myself, so in August we trucked our rams to the butcher. Our butcher created four varieties of “Bad Dad” sausage from those animals, enough to fill our freezers and keep all our friends and relations in sausage for the next year.

Then I searched the internet for a new ram – one that was a twin, who had a fine crimpy fleece, and who was mature enough to impregnate fifty ewes in three weeks. We found him at the Thiesen Farm, a two year old Columbia ram with a proven track record. With Winthrop's new blood in our flock, if we’re lucky, lambing next spring will be easier, more joyous, and all good.

Gourmet tomatoes

Little orange grape tomatoes grow fantastically in our garden. We eat them for lunch and supper. I even snack on their bright sweetness when I walk through the garden or the kitchen

I don’t can those tomatoes, I save them for drying. Sliced in half and arranged on the circular trays of our dehydrator, it takes about 36 hours to turn three or four quarts of plump, juicy tomatoes into thin golden wafers – essence of tomato.

On our yearly canoe trip to the Boundary Waters or Quetico in Canda, the dried tomatoes provide vitamin C and bright flavor to our camping meals – an assortment of rice or noodles with variously flavored cheese sauces – alfredo, parmesan, and American, all selected not for their taste, but because they are light in weight, prepackaged, and only need to be boiled in water for 7 to 10 minutes to produce a filling meal. Our camp cooking isn’t gourmet until we add those dried tomatoes.

The long view

Last week, Dave cut down the cotoneaster hedge on the west edge of our yard, as well as three young box elder trees sharing the space. We can now see across our driveway, the barnyard, three pastures and into the state “waterfowl protected area” land beyond. We can see the sheep in four of their nine pastures, grazing quietly against the hills and ponds of Otter Tail County. It’s a beautiful view that we have missed out on for thirty years because of that hedge.

We have spent the last several weeks discussing the purchase of ten goats. We bought all of our hay this year, so we know exactly how much it will cost to feed an animal over the winter - $150 for hay and $25 for corn. That means if each doe has two kids, we have to sell each kid for at least $90 to break even assuming we have no other expenses. Worming medications and vaccinations will cost about $5 per doe. And the kids will eat creep, need ear tags and vaccinations themselves.

Hashi, our student, isn’t sure that the Somalis he knows will pay that much for a 100# kid, and we don’t know how fast our kids will gain weight. When will they reach 100#s?

Once we figured out these statistics, we realized that they fit our own flock as well. I’ve always justified our low lamb prices because we also shear a fleece off of each ewe and that is eventually added income. But most of the fleeces need further processing before they can be sold, so the wool is a part of our long range planning. Each ewe should also produce two babies.

This year, for the first time we have made over $100 for each lamb sold. We are learning to value our work. Perhaps taking the long view will mean that we can actually make a reasonable amount of money off the flock