Shepherds are Shepherds, No Matter Where (or When)

Thanks to my friend and fellow sheep-raiser, Ryan Mahoney, who suggested we start recording our sheep-related conversations during the first spring of the COVID-19 pandemic, I've had the chance to be part of a fun little podcast we call Sheep Stuff Ewe Should Know for the last year-and-a-half. About a year ago, another sheep geek, Dr. Rosie Busch (our UC Davis Sheep and Goat Extension Veterinarian), joined our podcast. Amazingly, we've found time to talk once a week (mostly) about all kinds of sheepy topics - and a handful of folks have started listening! What fun!

Before the pandemic began, another shepherd friend and fellow California Wool Growers Association director, Joanne Nissen, sent me a copy of an amazing book - A Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks. A British shepherd, Rebanks' book described his relationship to his native landscape (where his family has grazed sheep for nearly a thousand years, and where sheep have grazed for far longer than that). He wrote about ways of knowing a place and a production system built on place, on community, and on family. I devoured the book.

Last year, Rebanks published a new book - Pastoral Song (in the U.S., English Pastoral in the U.K). His new work describes his realization that traditional farming (which usually included livestock and crops) offers solutions for our modern food system. He talks about his own realization that the modern focus on specialization and efficiency has had ecological consequences. He also talks about the importance of people who have economic and ecologic ties to a specific place - farmers.

Rebanks is perhaps the most famous shepherd on social media - he has nearly 150,000 followers on his @herdyshepherd1 Twitter account. Last spring, he tweeted something about wanting to talk about his new book before it came out in the U.S. in August 2021. So I contacted him! And last week, I got to interview James for Sheep Stuff!

Through the miracle of Zoom, I talked to James on Thursday morning (my time - after my morning chores; Thursday evening in the U.K.). Had we been talking in a pub (on his side of the Atlantic) or a bar here in Auburn, I suspect we'd still be talking. 

I won't spoil the podcast, which will be available next week. But I will say that shepherds are shepherds, no matter where they raise their sheep. A California sheepherder friend of Basque descent, Martin Etchamendy, told me a great story about an international gathering of shepherds he attended more than 30 years ago. "There where shepherds from Russia and Iran and all sorts of other places," he said, adding, "We all spoke different languages, but we understood one another." I experienced the same thing talking with James!

In the meantime, if you haven't read A Shepherd's Life, I highly recommend it! And be sure to ask your local bookstore if they have Pastoral Song! At the end of our conversation, I asked James if he was a farmer who writes or a writer who farms. You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear his answer; you'll need to read his books to decide for yourself!

Midsummer Work

We've reached the point in our sheep year that I enjoy the least. The lambs are weaned and most are sold. The ewes are dried off and grazing on dry (and flammable) vegetation west of Auburn. And we're moving water - seven days a week, we're dragging K-Line irrigation pods across our irrigated pastures. For me, the summer doldrums have arrived.

Dislike is too strong a word, but I think I enjoy summer chores least out of all of the work we do with our sheep, largely because of the heat. While the first few 90-degree days always shock my system, my body generally acclimates to hot daytime temperatures. Hot nights, however, are another matter. Hot nights make sleeping difficult; waking up hot tends to make me a little grumpy - and definitely less than rested.

Beyond the heat, though, I find the lack of variety in our work tedious. Each day starts with a trip to our irrigated pasture. Irrigated with K-Line means that I drive four-wheeler over the same circuit across our irrigated pasture every day from mid-April through mid-October. While I'm grateful to have the water (especially in a year like this), the monotony of irrigating starts to grate on me by mid-July, even when everything goes right. But like any ranching activity, irrigation doesn't always go right. Clogged sprinklers, broken lines, and low water pressure are a constant battle. We need the green grass to feed our replacement and feeder lambs, and to get our ewes ready for breeding in the fall. Growing green grass in the summer in our Mediterranean climate means we have to make it "rain" every day for six months.

Other seasons of the sheep year are more stimulating for me. Flushing the ewes (which involves feeding them extra calories to boost their conception rate) is like entering a mosh pit for four weeks. Evaluating the breeding flock and turning the rams in with the ewes feels like New Year's Day - a fresh start for all of us! Once the rams are done with their work, we settle in to our (relatively) slow time - moving the ewes on annual rangeland every 5-7 days, and no more irrigating! In January, we trim feet and vaccinate the ewes in preparation for lambing - and lambs begin to arrive in late February. The spring flush of grass - even in a dry spring like this - is always challenging and fun. How are we going to graze all of the grass that needs grazing? In the midst of this fun, we bring all of the sheep home for shearing. And as the spring flush tapers off, we wean and sell our lambs.

Then July arrives - my least favorite of the summer months. In June, summer still seems fun - perhaps because I can still remember the cold days checking the lambing ewes in early March. August is better than July - mostly because we almost always have a day in August that feels like autumn is coming. But July is just plain hot and monotonous.

Farming and ranching require many skills and a great deal of knowledge - animal husbandry, financial management, regulatory compliance, biology, soil science; I could go on. Farming or ranching at any scale, however, also requires a great deal of stamina - working through fatigue, doing the same thing day after day after day. Little breaks from the tediousness are helpful for me - a trip to a mountain stream for an afternoon of fly-fishing, an overnight backpacking trip, any meal that includes homegrown tomatoes and sweet corn, or a Sunday afternoon nap with a ballgame on the radio. And the knowledge that I'll be flipping the page on my calendar in about 2 weeks!

Of Wolves and Social Media… and Real Life

Social media is an interesting phenomenon, when it comes to friendships. I have “friends” on Facebook who I’ve never met. I have followers - and I follow folks - on Twitter and Instagram, who are strangers in real life. I share some (many?) things in common - an interest in sheep (obviously), a focus on science, an affinity for the Sierra Nevada. But sometimes, I find, social media allows us (myself included) to post things without thinking about how my “friends” feel about the issue. For me, as a sheep rancher and as a cooperative extension researcher and educator, predators are a particularly complicated subject. And no predator is more complicated, at least in the Sierra, than gray wolves.

Officially, there are three established packs of wolves in California - in Siskiyou, Lassen, and now Plumas Counties. Other wolves have traveled through the northern two-thirds of the state (most notably, a collared wolf from Oregon that came down the east side of the Sierra, traveled though Tuolumne County, and ended up in San Luis Obispo County before his collar quit transmitting). More recently, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed a new pack in the north end of the Sierra Valley - one of my favorite places in the northern Sierra, and home to the ranches of a number of friends and acquaintances.

I learned of this new pack last month, when friends and colleagues reported the loss of a yearling heifer, and harassment of a group of yearlings (who ran through fences several times). Today, another friend posted how excited he was to learn of this new pack.

As a scientist and lifelong Sierra resident, I’d be thrilled to see wolves. Indeed, I’ve been conducting a research project to evaluate the effectiveness of livestock guardians dogs in newly re-established wolf territory. But as a sheep rancher and colleague of those who lost animals to this new pack, I’m upset about this new pack’s predilection for beef. My concern, like my colleagues, is much more than economic impact - any loss of an animal in my care feels like failure on a personal level.

Social media has lots of upside - it connects us with people we wouldn’t know otherwise; it exposes us to points of view different than our own. But I find that I am uncomfortable commenting on posts like I saw this afternoon, celebrating something that I have mixed feelings about. I don’t want to offend my virtual friends, and yet I also don’t want to diminish the pain that my colleagues have experienced at the loss of their livestock.

We live in interesting times….