Happy Thanksgiving
Well our goal is to update the blog once a week… and as you can see goals aren’t always met around here. It has been a whirlwind since we returned from HOA with some fun surprises and health curveballs. But that’s what keeps life interesting.
The farm is winding down out of the joyful chaos of Summer into the peaceful naptime that is winter. Sometimes I feel that Fall is when the farm throws a mild temper -tantrum about going to sleep for the winter; sort of like a toddler not ready to go down for an afternoon nap. It does not WANT to stop playing! This has taken many forms, such as our maiden ewe flock escaping from their paddock a few times and alerting our neighbors to their new status as free range sheep. Its been wonderful for our relationship with our neighbors, and I do mean that quite sincerely. Apparently since we now have a substantial flock of sheep and a milk cow, we are officially homesteaders, clearly here to stay, and have proven ourselves to be fine upstanding citizens. This is quite the relief that we finally have that reputation, as the previous owners of our property apparently scarred everyone and we were not really met with open arms when we moved in five years ago. As a result, we have been enjoying some newfound local community with neighbors that is always a blessing and mildly essential when living in the countryside.
Another more sad form of Fall’s temper tantrum was in the form of losing two sheep from our ram flock. One was a ram lam we were raising for meat, and another was the one we were holding back as a replacement ram for our registered Gulf Coast Ram, Love` (prounounced LOO-vay) named Tumnus. The meat lamb we found dead one morning and weren’t sure what had happened. Tumnus we found a few days later prostate but still alive. We determined he had pneumonia and brought him into the barn for several rounds of penicillin and hard core vitamin therapy. Sadly it wasn’t enough and he passed away comfortably in the barn a few days later. None of the other flock showed any signs of issues, but we moved the rams off that paddock a little early and into their winter barn lot for the winter. We think what happened is that our warm spell of 70 degree weather was brought to a sudden halt with a few days of rain and then temperatures plummeting down into the 30’s. Sheep can do wet, and sheep can do cold. But wet cold and windy is not something sheep can do very well with that harsh of a temperature fluctuation. Fortunately the boys were the only group without shelter at that time so the rest of the sheep were able to seek shelter as they needed it, and the rest of the ram flock seems to be hardy and healthy - if not a bit grumpy. Usually we have been very conscientious to get all sheep into areas with shelter when weather changes like this, but this year we had some other things going on at the time which kept us from getting to them. Most shepherds in our area vaccinate against pneumonia. We try to avoid vaccinations of our animals as much as possible, but when that is the management practice then the payoff is you will have an overall stronger flock long term, but will lose animals in the short term. Not only is losing animals incredibly disheartening but its expensive. Four sheep lost to natural culling has cost us $800 in just the animal’s worth alone - not counting all the medicine we used on them to try to save them, or all the supplements and feed we put into them before hand. Now that the animal is dead, we can’t harvest the meat and the wool isn’t long enough to harvest, so we must either bury or burn the carcass, which takes time and resources that could have gone elsewhere on the farm. So its important to weigh ALL your options and look at OVERALL sustainability when Homesteading - not let idealism or tunnel vision in only ONE area of the farm determine your overall management practice.
I’ve honestly had the most beneficial conversations on this topic with shepherds from Africa and Europe, especially the Highlands of Scotland (Social media is such a wonderful networking tool!!!). My one friend will spend hours each day wandering the moors of Scotland rounding up small flocks of sheep to bring them in for management with her trusty sheepdogs, a baby strapped to her back and her pixie children bouncing over the hills with her. It sounds truly romantic but her videos of rain whipped cheeks and fogged up glasses give a reality check from time to time. For those interested, head over to Instagram and follow @_jo_skye for an amazing look at shepherding as an entire lifestyle. She and I have had many chats about when chemicals are a needed blessing for fast relief, and when its best to avoid them and let nature take its course. Of course, she has around 1,500 sheep to manage whereas I have closer to 20… but its just a simple scale difference right? One thing she keeps reminding me is that good animal husbandry does not adhere to a particular school of thought but rather pays attention to the needs of the farmer, farm, and farm animals as an ecosystem. Janet over at Timbercreek Farm (@timbercreekfarmer on instagram) loudly echoes that sentiment whenever I bemoan the fact that we aren’t legalistically sticking to the buzzword farming practice tenets.
Its always important to garner community no matter what lifestyle you are called to. Shepherding, however, seems to have a very distinct need for other shepherds to fall back onto as it is a field in farming with both the most heartbreak and reward of any of them. Sheep MUST be tended to more than any other livestock. They have to be checked daily. They need tended to. Even with all the best care in the world they are still vulnerable to a multitude of ailments and predators - both big and microscopic. There’s some days we humans just can’t get to it all and the sheep suffer for it. And those are the days the community is vital, because they are the ones who get it the most.
Alright enough of the philosophical talk. Back to Fall on the farm.
The pigs are due to farrow late next month. They are on their last paddock as well before coming in for the winter - although we still have to FINISH their farrowing paddock. We are very firmly in the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ camp of always have your infrastructure installed BEFORE the animals arrive! Again finding that balance of listening to what Joel Salatin says of “don’t install anything permanent for at least two years so you know if it works there or not” and also realizing that sometimes you just need to install the fence and if it doesn’t work you can grumble about it later but its useable for now!
We were interviewed by Red Tool House on the Pastured Pig Podcast so if you haven’t listened to that episode, check it out. We had a ton of fun waxing poetic about our off-the-wall reason for getting pigs, and apparently saved Troy’s voice while we laughed at ourselves as he was recovering from a cold at the time of the interview.
Chestnut the cow is bred and really wishes we would let her dry up, as this is the season her previous owner would let her be dry and calf. Since we had never Artificial Inseminated before, she wasn’t bred back until far later than we originally planned as we couldn’t tell when she was in heat. So she is due to calf in May, and she usually calved in October. We’ll see how we like this calving schedule as the calf is due a month after lambs and that whole season is one of the busiest on the farm - it also coincides with Honeybee Swarming season. I am not sure how we will manage that this year as I know we won’t have time to constantly be on swarm patrol so we may have to really do our homework and do some honeybee splits this next spring instead of letting them naturally reproduce. Again, not ideal, but its overall the best for a sustainable farm.
Well the title of this blog post is ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ and I haven’t mentioned thankfulness or the holiday once, so I will say here at the end of this blog post how thankful we are for all our supporters and friends and readers of this blog and Instagram posts who have made our homesteading experience so much more vibrant than it would otherwise be. I really do not know what we would do without all of you as your friendship, encouragement and prayers are absolutely vital for us to continue on this homesteading journey without melting into discouragement sometimes. Its a challenging lifestyle, make no mistake. It is so easy to idealize homesteading life, and it really is wonderful most days. But overwhelm, grief, guilt, fear or guilt over our incompetence or ignorance do threaten to overbear the good days some times and that’s where loving friends and cheerful support swoop in and save the day.
We’ve begun our annual debate on whether we will try raising Turkeys next year. We have one vehement potential customer in our Sunday school class who BEGS us every October to PLEASE RAISE TURKEYS so he can buy at least one from us. I think I may have found a local source for chicks, which I have read is the way to go if you are going to raise turkeys because they do not withstand mail order stress like chicks and ducks do. Kyle is not nearly as enthusiastic about that venture - as he will be the one doing the pen moving predominantly and I have barely convinced him that we REALLY MUST continue raising our own meat birds. He has a point in that our chicken tractor models are incredibly less than ideal and we really ought to switch to electronet if we are going to continue with our own meat birds… which is only another rather large infrastructure investment. But oh well the beat goes on.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram or sign up for our email newsletter as we are going to be doing a few holiday giveaways and discounts for our farm shop. Send us an email if you have any product questions or suggestions! Stay healthy and thankful this holiday season and may you be blessed in whatever calling the Lord has placed on your life.
