Shearing Day

The day starts like most days –

Working alone not long after sunrise.

The work, though,

Is different. The ewes, separated

From their lambs and held off feed,

Voice their opinion at maximum volume.

Set up begins.  The shearing board is leveled,

The shearing machine is positioned with precision.

The oily smell of jute fills my nostrils as I perch

On the ladder to hang the first wool sack of the day.

The crew arrives – the crew is what I love most about

Shearing day.  Shearing is to our culture as branding is to cowboys

And wannabe cowboys.  Shared labor and shared laughter,

Which makes the labor seem less intense.

The clatter of cutters over combs adds

To the general cacophony of bleating ewes

And bawling lambs.  The “boss” – usually me,

Runs the first bunch of sheep into the shearing pen.

The 90-second waltz begins.

The shearer, dancing with each ewe, unpeels the fleece.

His footwork is precise – I imagine the black-and-white footprints

Of dance instruction.  The first pen of ewes, relieved of their wool,

Bolts out the door to sunlight and green grass and hungry lambs.

Fleeces are gathered, thrown and rolled – and tossed into the sack.

The “sacker” emerges as he stomps each fleece into the burlap.

Full sacks are sewn and heaved onto the pile – and another is placed on the stand.

Sami arrives, and at last, it’s lunch –

Dirty hands hold sodas that will later hold beers.

Trying not to touch the sandwiches directly, the crew

Lounges in the green grass in the shade while the shearer naps.

We begin again.

The corrals, which all morning seem full of sheep,

Start to empty.  “The one we’ve been looking for,”

My standard declaration with each year’s last ewe,

Is never truly accurate – we always bring the bucks

In to be shorn last.  Then we’re done.

Shearing is a milepost that marks the end of lambing

And the beginning summer.  It means we’ve survived another year.

It marks the beginning, too, of every wool garment –

Every sock, every sweater, every blanket begins

With the clatter of the handpiece,

With lanolin-soft and grimy hands holding onto sodas at lunch,

With shared labor and shared laughter.

This Wool...

This wool has a story - it comes from sheep that graze the hillsides, pasturelands and brushfields around my Sierra foothills home.

This wool is shorn and skirted and rolled and sacked by the hands of my family and friends.
This wool comes from sheep that spend their entire lives on grass.
This wool is protected by Buck and Reno and Rosie - three dedicated guardian dogs.
It is also protected by Clara and Tina - two less dedicated and quite funny looking llamas.

This wool comes from sheep that are guided from pasture to pasture by Taff and Mo and Ernie.
This wool helps make my part of Auburn a little more fire-safe during the summer.
This wool helps protect and restore native grasslands.  It helps hawks and owls find more food by reducing the grass that hides the rodents.

This wool comes from a family that is trying to make its living from the land and from a livelihood that's older than history itself.

A Seed Catalog for Sheep Farmers

When I grew vegetables for the farmers' markets, I always looked forward to the day (usually around Christmas) that my seed catalogs would arrive.  Farming at this scale (for me, at least) required a certain amount of amnesia - I found that I had to forget how hard the work was last year in order to be able to even consider farming this year.  The seed catalog was always an essential part of forgetting about the prior year's tribulations.  One look at the new varieties of sweet corn or winter squash, and I was already anticipating the flavor of a new year's labors!

At our Shepherd's Picnic last weekend, I finally picked up my own copy of the latest edition of the British Sheep and Wool Book from my friend and fellow shepherd Robin Lynde (of Meridian Jacobs near Vacaville).  I'd been looking for the book for years after reading about it in one of my favorite Wendell Berry essays ("Let the Farm Judge").  To paraphrase Berry's essay, he says that the fact that there are more than 80 breeds of sheep that originated in England and Scotland - an island approximately the size of Berry's native Kentucky - testifies to the careful observation and husbandry of generations of British shepherds.

The current edition features descriptions of more than 60 breeds of sheep - information about where and how they originated, the characteristics of their fleeces, and the uses to which their wool is put.  Beautiful photos accompany the text - photos that show why England and Scotland are sheep-producing countries!

We're fairly settled on the breeds of sheep we raise - following Mr. Berry's advice, we've selected breeds and individual sheep that fit the parameters of our land, our management system and our market.  That said, I'm always interested in learning how other farmers - over hundreds or even thousands of years - have made similar decisions that ultimately resulted in the breeds we raise today.  In many ways, the British Sheep and Wool Book is a seed catalog for sheep farmers!

The Great Escape - or Always Bring a Dog

Ewes and lambs returning from their morning escapade!

My friend and fellow sheep rancher Lana Rowley once posted on facebook that she was never sorry when she took a dog or a gun with her when she left the house.  While I'm not as much as a gun guy, I share Lana's sentiment about dogs.  I was thinking of her quote this morning as I left the house, as a matter of fact - I didn't think I'd have any work for the dogs, and I needed to go to the office after my sheep chores, so I left the border collies at home.

Almost home, thanks to Mo and Taff!

Ironically, I discovered that the sheep had escaped from their paddock as I drove up Mt. Vernon Road towards Shanley Road - the result of a dead battery.  Without a dog, it would have taken me all morning (and perhaps longer) to put 190 ewes with lambs back into their electric fencing.  I made a u-turn and rushed home to pick up Mo and Taff.  By the time I returned (less than 10 minutes later), the guard dogs were exploring Mt. Vernon Road (and stopping traffic) and the sheep were spread over 20 acres.  I caught one of the guard dogs (Reno slipped back under the fence to be with his sheep) and parked at the now-empty paddock.  I sent Mo and Taff around the sheep, and what would have been a 2-3 hour job for a human was a 5-minute jaunt for the dogs.  I've learned my lesson!  My next border collie will be named American Express - I'll never leave home without him!

Conversations on Stockmanship

I had occasion one morning several weeks ago to drop by Jim and Steph Barrie’s place in Thermalands (just northeast of Lincoln).  Mutual friends from southeastern Oregon who winter their cattle with Jim and Steph had left some “Shepherd’s Scarf” kits when they dropped off bulls the week before, and I finally had time to pick them up (I’ll be selling them at our farmers’ market).  I’ve known Jim since his days as the county trapper, and our paths have crossed now and again.  After retiring from the county, Jim has devoted his time to managing the family ranch, and to training horses and dogs.

After the typical rancher complaints about the weather and the vagaries of the livestock business, our conversation turned to dogs, horses and people we’d known.  I related that one of things I like most about working dogs is the challenge of communication with another species – of conveying clear direction to my dogs and listening to what they’re trying to tell me.  In response, Jim told me a great story that illustrates this point much better than I ever have.

A number of years ago, Jim was training a cow dog for another rancher.  She’d have Jim come when she wasn’t around and train her dog on her cows in a large field.  Jim said that one particular horned cow would always challenge the dog at some point – and the dog would try to leave the cow and work the rest of the herd.  Jim (as I have done) would always force the dog back onto the recalcitrant cow, which the dog obviously didn’t like.  After one such training session, Jim asked his dad about it.  “My dad said, ‘That dog’s trying to tell you something,” Jim told me.  “’Next time you work him, just let him be and see what he does.’”

The next time they worked the cows, Jim tried his dad’s advice. “That cow turned,” Jim said, “and I just stayed quiet.  The dog pushed the rest of the cows up the fenceline to a big willow.  He got them settled in under the tree and then went back – all on his own – and took on the horned cow.  He nipped her heals all the way up the field until she joined the rest of the herd, and I stayed quiet the whole time.”

When Jim got home, he told his dad what had happened.  “My dad said, ‘The dog was telling you that he was worried that the rest of the cows would get away if he dealt with the ornery cow like you wanted him to.  He figured he needed to get the rest of the cows settled before he could deal with her.’” As Jim said, the dog reasoned it out.

I pass this story because I think it’s an important lesson for me (and perhaps for others) as a stockman who has realized that I’ll always be learning.  It’s also important on several other levels, however.  First, it illustrates a way of looking at working with animals that I think is important.  To me, it suggests that the listening part of communicating with another species (and probably with our own species) involves using more than our ears – it requires us to use our eyes, our brains and our intuition.  It implies that we need to have a relationship of trust with our animal partners (in my case, with dogs and horses or mules) that gives us the confidence to try things even if we’re afraid they might not work.

Like me, Jim has considered offering internships as a way to pass along his experience and knowledge to a new generation of stockmen (and women).  We both lament the changes in our community that make it more difficult for a young person to get hands-on, real-world experience in working with livestock – most kids don’t grow up on a ranch anymore.  The changes in our community give us less time to work together, too – stockmanship skills, I think, are learned by working together – by sharing stories and approaches to our work, and by sharing actual work.  Modern life makes us think that we’re too busy to spend an hour with a friend in the midst of a hectic work day swapping stories.  I’ve written previously about the value in slowing down so that the work will go faster – this visit was a reminder that slowing down helps me learn important lessons, too.  Thanks, Jim!

2013 Lambing Notebook - Installment #6

As of this evening, we're just about done lambing - only 3-15 ewes left to lamb.  Within the next week, we'll be entirely done.  All in all, it's been a successful lambing season.  While I would have liked more precipitation during the spring, the dry weather made lambing easy this year - we had a tremendous survival rate.

Today, I decided I needed to put some of the ewes and their lambs through a footbath - the recent wet weather has resulted in some foot-scald in the sheep (a bacterial infection that causes lameness).  A footbath of zinc sulfate in water clears this up, so today (despite the rainy weather) was the day to get the work done. Moving ewes and young lambs is always a test of my dogs (and me) - and Taff and Mo performed admirably bringing the sheep in from the paddock.

On a down note, when we gathered the sheep today, I discovered a large lamb that had died overnight - the first lamb we've lost so far.  Hard to tell why the lamb had died - sometimes it just happens.

On a much more positive note, I had to use our young dog, Ernie, to help move the ewes and lambs back from the corrals to the pasture.  Ernie has been a bit of a wild man, but since my old man Taff (who's 9) was pretty worn out, I brought in Ernie as a reinforcement.  He was great!  He listened, took commands, and treated the sheep well - I couldn't have been more happy with him!

2013 Lambing Notebook - Installment #5

When do you call the vet?!

Part of raising sheep at a commercial scale is learning when you need to call the vet - and when you need to do things on your own.  This applies (perhaps even more so) even when you're married to your vet - as I am!

Last Sunday, we held our annual Pasture Lambing Workshop.  We hosted around 15 new and aspiring shepherds at the ranch and provided an overview of our lambing system.  We also offered hands-on experience in marking lambs (which involves ear-tagging, docking and castrating, and paint-marking each lamb), as well as hand-on experience in building temporary electric fence and moving ewes and lambs onto fresh grass.  As if on cue, one of our ewes was in labor when we arrived at the ranch at 9:30 a.m.  As we were wrapping up the workshop around noon, she had still not delivered her lambs.  Before our students departed, I demonstrated the method I use for assisting a ewe in delivering lambs.  This particular ewe needed help delivering twins.  She provided a great opportunity to talk about developing the observation and husbandry skills necessary for determining when a ewe might need help and actually providing the help.

After the students left, my friend Roger and I found a ewe that appeared to be having a more significant problem delivering her lamb.  An entire foreleg was protruding from her birth canal, which is abnormal.  We caught the ewe and I reached inside her to try to ascertain what was happening.  By feel, I found the lamb's other foreleg (I thought) and head, but I was unable to get things lined up so that she could deliver the lamb.  My nose told me that the lamb was not alive - there's a very distinctive odor to a lamb that has died before birth.

I often call my wife (the vet) for advice, but I try not to ask her to make a ranch call.  This is partly because I know she's busy with other things - and partly because of the expense (even with my family discount!).  This particular situation, though, was well beyond my expertise.  As Sami drove up the dirt track to our pasture, Roger remarked that she was just like James Herriot!  Sami, in turn, remarked that we looked like a couple of old sheepmen from All Creatures Great and Small waiting for the vet to arrive.

After examining the ewe and the lamb, Sami determined that the lamb was indeed dead, and that it was either tangled up with another lamb or with itself.  In all of our years of raising sheep, I've never had a problem like this.  The ewe was obviously in pain, and we began to worry that we'd lose her as well as her lamb if we weren't able to remove the dead fetus.  After a great deal of work, Sami removed the lamb and saved the ewe's life.  She examined the dead lamb and told us that the lamb had been dead for some time - the result of some congenital condition.  As of today (4 days later) the ewe appears to be recovering.

When Sami and I were first married and she was still in vet school, a cattle-ranching friend told her that she had a responsibility to tell her ranching clients how much a procedure would cost before performing it.  Sami took his advice to heart - she's always been very good about telling her clients about the economic implications of her efforts.  As a rancher, I've learned to ask my vet to teach me skills like pulling lambs, evaluating flock health, and treating common ailments.  I'm lucky to have such a knowledgeable and skilled teacher!

2013 Lambing Notebook - Installment #4

During Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, we experienced our first stormy weather during this year's lambing season.  We received just over a half inch of rain, and we had lots of wind.  I had put the ewes in a paddock which offered lots of shelter, and the ewes and lambs made it through the stormy weather just fine.

As I was making my early morning check of the sheep, however, I realized that both guardian dogs (Buck and Reno) were missing.  We'd had a short section of fence blow down, so I wasn't too surprised that they were out.  As the morning went on, however, their continued absence was concerning - usually they stay close by and are anxious to get back with their sheep.  I finally found them at a neighboring property just before 10 a.m.  They were both happy to see me and to be back with the ewes.

Yesterday evening, after I assisted a ewe in delivering a large single lamb, a neighbor on Shanley Hill called me over to our fence to ask about the dogs being out.  She has alpacas, and one of her males had been attacked during the night.  While the woman was quite friendly, she clearly suspected that the guardian dogs were responsible.  Since our dogs have guarded sheep with llamas, I thought this was unlikely, but I asked her to let me know what her veterinarian thought after he examined the alpaca and the signs of the attack in her barn.

The neighbor called me after I got home and reported that the vet thought that a mountain lion had attacked the alpaca.  While we've seen coyotes on Shanley Hill, this is the first possible contact with a cougar.  I'm hoping that the neighbors contact the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the county trapper to verify a cougar attack - in the meantime, I'll be more vigilant when I'm on the Hill by myself!

We have always been (and will continue to be) "predator friendly" - which to me means that we try to coexist with the wild predators in our environment.  We like to tell our customers that while we are predator-friendly, our guardian dogs are not.  Our dogs are the reason we can coexist - they persuade the predators to look elsewhere for their prey.  If the attack on Tuesday evening was in fact perpetrated by a mountain lion, I suspect our dogs interrupted the attack and probably saved the alpaca's life.

I once heard the folksinger Utah Phillips, a confirmed pacifist, describe a bar fight.  I'm paraphrasing, but he said that a pacifist must decide in the time interval between being punched and hitting the floor whether he'll remain a pacifist.  Being predator friendly is similar, I think - my sheep rely on me (and by extension, my guardian dogs) for protection.  I guess in many respects I expect the predators to reciprocate my friendly attitude - they need to look elsewhere for a meal!  I believe that I have a responsibility to my sheep to ask the proper authorities to deal with a coyote or a cougar that prefers a meal mutton or lamb.

2013 Lambing Notebook - Installment #3

Zen and the Art of Sheepherding

Over the years, I've come to realize that one of the principles of working or moving livestock is that I must move slowly to go fast.  Every time I get in a hurry to get something done - loading sheep in the trailer or moving sheep through the corrals, for example - the job takes much longer than it would if I had the proper patience.  When I'm quiet, my dogs are quiet as well - and the job goes quickly.

This principle, I think, is especially applicable at lambing time.  There is an art to lambing in a pasture (or really to any lambing system) that can only be learned by experience.  Moving slowly - both in a physical sense and from the standpoint of watching and waiting - is critical during lambing season.  A couple of examples:

• Yesterday, we moved the entire flock onto new pasture.  A handful of 2-3 day-old lambs decided it would be great fun to stay back in the old pasture.  Rather than try to catch them or chase them, I worked with Mo to quietly and slowly herd them ahead to the rest of the flock.  Mo was incredibly patient - herding young lambs is worse than herding cats - and I tried to quietly help Mo follow his instincts.  We finally got the lambs close enough to the new paddock that their mothers found them and led them the rest of the way.
• This afternoon, I came upon a lamb that didn't seem to have a mother.  She was dried off and energetic, but her mother was nowhere to be found.  I tried putting her with a ewe that had another lamb, thinking that perhaps she was a twin.  The ewe ultimately rejected her, but I decided to leave her in the pasture until I came back for my evening rounds.  She was still by herself when I returned, but I tried putting her with another ewe that had a single lamb.  Bingo! The lamb was her missing twin, and when I left tonight both lambs were following her and nursing regularly.

Much of my time at lambing is spent waiting and watching - waiting for a ewe to deliver her lambs on her own or watching to make sure that a ewe has bonded with her lambs.  If I move to quickly at this point, I risk disrupting the ewe-lamb bond by pulling a lamb or increasing my labor requirements by bringing a lamb home to be bottle raised.  Going slow, in this case, means less work!

2013 Lambing Notebook - Installment #2

The subtitle of today's entry is Bottle Babies and Fair Lambs!

I'll write more about this later, but here are some photos of Smalls and The Great Lambino (with apologies to "The Sand Lot"), along with Emma's fair lamb, Milo.  Milo was born today - he's out of Emma's ewe Oats.  Emma is so excited - can't wait to see how this turns out!

Breakfast!

Uncle Buck

Emma with her lamb - ear-tagging.

Reno at rest!

Emma and Milo - watch out, Gold Country Fair!

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The Great Lambino (L), Emma (C) and Smalls (R) - the first bummer lambs of the year.