A Little Piece of Work...

 ...and big satisfaction!

We moved sheep this afternoon. Not a momentous occasion - we move sheep at least once a week most of the year. Moving sheep during lambing is a bit more complicated, though - the lambs are old enough to be rambunctious, and young enough not to realize that the move means fresh feed (and that the border collie is serious about pointing them in the right direction). So while our little move up the road wasn’t a big deal, work-wise, I took great satisfaction in it.

Part of my satisfaction comes from getting work done. Too often, I think, many of us are unable to see the results of our work at the end of the day. At 4:30pm, the sheep were in a paddock that was running short on feed. By 5:30pm, they were happily grazing a new pasture. For a stockman, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing livestock with their heads down grazing. I find the sound of sheep grazing to be one of the most relaxing sounds I know.

But my satisfaction from afternoons like this is more profound than simply accomplishing a task. My partner Roger and I are students of livestock behavior - a simple move like this fascinates both of us. My current top dog, Mae, is an amazing working partner - she intuitively knows how much pressure to apply to a stompy ewe versus an airhead lamb. And just as importantly, the ewe flock we’ve spent a decade and a half building is mostly comprised of outstanding mothers. Before we left this evening, we walked through the sheep to make sure everyone was “mothered up” (that is, that lambs were with their mothers). I glanced up to watch Ewe 1386 (a ewe that tried to run me over when I “marked” her lambs three weeks ago) happily grazing with all three of her lambs nibbling grass beside her. She’s exemplary, but even the lesser mothers had their lambs in close proximity.

As I’ve said before, I think good stock people work in livestock as artists work in other media. Our sheep represent our “body of work” - a corpus that is always evolving and (hopefully) improving. Our sheep fit our land and our management - as Wendell Berry has written, we’ve “let the farm judge” the quality of our breeding program. Similarly, I take incredible satisfaction in the partnership that I have with my working dogs (both border collies and livestock guardian dogs). My “day job” can be stressful and, at times, unsatisfying. My sheepherding job, too, can be stressful - our current drought is a case in point. But there are days - and parts of days (like this afternoon) - that remind me why I love doing this.

Coming to Terms with Being Part-Time

Photo by Kaleiah Schiller

About a decade ago, I was focused on becoming a full-time rancher. We had more sheep than we'd ever had before (and more than we've had since). We were getting paid to graze within the city limits of Rocklin and Lincoln, as well as at Sierra College's campuses in Grass Valley and Rocklin. We were selling grassfed lamb and beef at farmers markets in Auburn, Roseville, Tahoe City, and Truckee. I was working more than full time, but was only paying myself a part-time wage. Ten years later, we run our sheep business as a part-time partnership. I work full time for the University of California; the sheep are a sideline. And I think I've finally embraced the idea of being a part-time rancher.

Ranching - raising grazing livestock on rangeland and pasture - has always been a difficult business. The amount of land necessary for an economically viable operation has always been enormous - even in relatively productive regions like the Sierra foothills. Over the years, I've realized that I would need to have at least 600 ewes to generate enough income to pay myself a reasonable full-time salary. This many ovine mouths would require somewhere around 1000 acres of rangeland and 120 acres of irrigated pasture to be feasible. While I might be able to earn similar income with fewer sheep if I were getting paid to graze, there would be tradeoffs in terms of headaches and time away from home. When I first began to realize the barriers to achieving my full-time goal, I cursed the modern-day challenges of urbanization (and conversion of land to other uses), of ranch fragmentation, of my own standard-of-living expectations. These external challenges were compounded by my own under-capitalization (partly due to my reluctance to take on debt) and, if I'm honest, my own naivete.

The transition away from my goal of ranching full-time wasn't always easy, nor was it a straight line. In 2012, I went to work part time for our local cooperative extension office as a community education specialist. The wages weren't great, but the health benefits were! In 2013 (just as our 1000-year drought was intensifying) I went to work half-time for McCormack Sheep and Grain in Rio Vista (where I was able to graze our sheep, as well). When the drought forced the operation to downsize in early 2014, I picked up more hours for cooperative extension. Later that year, I went to work as the beef herdsman at the UC Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center, simultaneously starting an online master's degree program at Colorado State University. A year later, I joined the UC Rangelands Lab as an assistant specialist, focusing on water quality and drought issues. Finally, in 2017, I finished my master's degree and was hired as the livestock and natural resources advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in the community where I lived and raised sheep.

This personal history came back to me one evening last week as I was checking the lambing ewes well after dark (sheepherding is often solitary work, so my mind usually wanders!). Rangeland livestock production, at least at the family scale, has often been part time. Most of the ranchers I've known since I was a kid in Tuolumne County had a side hustle (before any of us even knew the term) - ranchers were often loggers, or worked at the sawmill. Somebody in the family usually had a town job - mostly for the benefits and stability of a regular income. Some ranchers were (and are) teachers, lawyers, contractors, or other professionals - maybe ranching is the side hustle!

Part of my struggle with being part-time, I think, has been the self-imposed idea that anything less than full-time is just a hobby. Several weeks ago, my friend Joe Fischer, who runs a purebred Angus operation here in the foothills, offered this observation:

"There are part-time ranches who take their operations seriously as a business. These are the ranchers who understand that their livestock often set the schedule - that even a part-time business can sometimes require full-time attention."

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from my favorite author, Ivan Doig:

"To be successful with sheep, even when you're not thinking about them, you need to think about them a little."

As I was walking through the ewes that evening last week, looking for a set of newborn lambs in the midst of a rainstorm, I thought about both of these quotes. I realized that a job or a business are simply a piece of making a "living" - that a "livelihood" is more than just the income I receive. Raising sheep, for me, is both a part-time business and a full-time avocation. 

More on Recreation...

Last month, as part of my “day job”, I organized a webinar I called, “Working with Ranchers: A Field Guide for Agencies and NGOs.” As I prepared for the workshop, I asked a handful of local ranchers what they would want agency and nonprofit staff to know about ranching. One of my friends said simply, “Tell them this isn’t recreation - it’s a business.” I am reminded of his sentiment this week as I start and end my work day by checking our lambing ewes.

Perhaps I should start by describing my morning/evening routine through the eyes of a non-rancher (if you’ll allow me that liberty). As the sun rises over the crest of the Sierra Nevada, I’m hiking through the grasslands and oak woodlands of the Placer County foothills. Climbing a hill gets my heart and respiration rates revved up. I notice the wildflowers starting to bloom - and if I’m lucky, I get to see some wildlife. Native birds, certainly; sometimes other critters as well! And then there are the lambs! New life - if you’ve never seen lambs bouncing across a green field, I’m sorry for you. And as the sun sets over the coast range, I marvel at the views of the Sacramento Valley and Sutter Buttes. I’m a lucky guy, to be sure.

Now let me describe what I’m actually doing! Lambing requires all of my senses. As you might imagine, I’m looking and listening intently as I walk through the flock. Looking to make sure that lambs are matched with their mothers. Looking to see if a ewe is in labor and might need help. Listening to hear if a ewe is calling for her lambs, or if a ewe is vocalizing as she’s pushing to deliver a lamb. Listening to and watching my dogs as well - are the livestock guardian dogs relaxed or anxious? I even rely on my sense of smell at times - a lambing flock smells different than a flock during the summer months. Lambing season, in other words, requires my total focus and total presence in the moment. And it requires me to work until the work is done - I don’t simply leave a ewe with a lambing problem because it’s time to get to a meeting. And I love it - I love the work of raising sheep like nothing else I’ve ever done.

So where’s the rub? The rub, for me, is in trying to relate to neighbors and friends who envy the morning walk without appreciating the morning work. The rub is in trying to explain that while this is a very part-time business, it’s still a business - and a livestock business, at that. The morning hike might be interrupted by a ewe whose lamb has died. The evening stroll might extend well past sundown as I try to make sure that every lamb has mothered up. My sleep might be interrupted by the need to make sure the sheep are okay during a late winter storm.

Don’t get me wrong - I’ve chosen (and continue to chose) to ranch part time and work full time. If I’m honest, I do this mostly (entirely?) because I love the work of raising sheep on grass in the Sierra foothills. But because I love it so intensely, I take it seriously. As my friend said last month, “This isn’t recreation.” For me, it’s that and much, much more.

Mixed Blessings and Sleepless Nights

I’m sure this will shock some of you, but rain in March makes me lose sleep - even in a dry year like this! I know I’ve vowed never to complain about rain again (having raised sheep through the millennial drought of 2012-2015) - and I’m not complaining now. But I also know I’m enough of a shepherd that I’ll probably not get a good night’s sleep tonight.

Let me explain! For the first time since we started lambing two-and-a-half weeks ago, we’re getting a decent rainstorm this evening. We absolutely need the rain - with the grass growing and the trees leafing out, our soil moisture deficit is reaching a critical point. We didn’t have much soil moisture to begin with; the lack of precipitation and the increased soil-water demand is concerning. There’s a chance that we’ll end March 2021 with less seasonal rainfall here in Auburn than we’d measured by this time in 2014. The grass-growing side of my brain is rejoicing tonight!

But the lambing side of my brain (and yes, at this stage of lambing season, grass and lambs is about all I have room for in my sheepherder mind) is anxious. Our production calendar tries to strike a balance between lambing during nice weather and lambing early enough to take full advantage of the spring flush of grass. Unlike many of the larger operations in the Delta and San Joaquin Valley, we don’t have sufficient fall forage to lamb in the fall, and I’m not willing to feed the hay necessary to lamb in mid-winter. Our compromise is to lamb in the late winter and early spring - when the grass is usually primed to take off. And when the weather can still be iffy. March, I think, is the cruelest month for a spring-lambing outfit like ours.

We are very intentional about our grazing and flock management year round - but especially so at lambing. We save our most sheltered pastures for lambing - our paddocks have enough tree and brush cover to provide shelter and windbreaks for the ewes and the lambs to get out of the weather. We’ve started using some nifty lamb raincoats developed in the UK - biodegradable plastic “lamb macs” that cost us less than $0.50 each. We make late night and early morning (before sunrise) rounds through the flock to make sure lambs are nursing.

Ultimately, though, we have to trust our sheep - and ourselves. We’ve spent years selecting for ewes that are great mothers - ewes that can count at least to two (and often to three), ewes that produce enough milk, ewes that know to shelter under the trees we’ve fenced within their paddocks. For the most part, our ewes have earned our trust!

But...

But I know I’ll wake up tonight if we get a sudden downpour. I know I’ll wake up when my partner texts me after he’s walked through the sheep at 10 pm tonight. I know I’ll awaken even earlier than normal tomorrow morning, and that I’ll be checking the flock before the sun rises. And I know I’ll be grateful for whatever rain falls overnight. The blessing of rain is worth a sleepless night during lambing.