Between the Barstool and the Floor

Sunbathing in our lambing paddock! Photo by Roger Ingram.

Perhaps a decade ago or more, I had the amazing opportunity to meet folksinger and activist Utah Phillips at Riverhill Farm in Nevada City – owned at that time by my friend Alan Haight. I’d heard Phillips on our local community radio station (KVMR) for years – if you’ve never heard his story Moose Turd Pie, you owe it to yourself to listen – regardless of your politics! It might be the most humorous story about working on a crew ever! It's good (though)!

But back to this story! Somewhere (probably on KVMR), I heard Phillips tell a story about his pacifism. As I recall, the story involved a bar fight in which he was on the losing end. The guy next to him punched him so hard he fell off his barstool. He said, and I paraphrase, “Somewhere between the barstool and the floor, you decide whether you’re really a pacifist.”

I was reminded of this story this week when my Flying Mule Sheep Company partner Roger Ingram sent me a photo of a grey fox, from inside our lambing paddock! Roger is taking the afternoon checks now that we’re done lambing – and he came upon a sunbathing fox inside our 10-acre pasture. The fox trotted off to the brushy ravine that bisects the paddock and -  despite our repeated attempts to flush him out later that evening – was never seen again.

The next morning, when I checked the sheep, both livestock guardian dogs were down in the creek channel when I arrived. Neither was barking, and neither was particularly agitated. The sheep seemed calm – a handful of ewes were calling for recalcitrant lambs, but nobody seemed to be missing a lamb.

As the handful of you who read my blog know, we’ve committed to using nonlethal predator protection tools as much as possible. Our electric fencing and livestock guardian dogs seem to work – we’ve never lost an animal where we were using both. And part of the reason I love raising sheep on rangeland is that it puts me in an environment where I’m likely to see wildlife – including predators.

But I realized this week, after seeing the fox, that I’m probably not a pacifist when it comes to protecting our sheep. We use LGDs and electric fencing as a rational – rather than philosophical – approach to raising sheep. Ultimately, I think I have an ethical responsibility to my sheep as well as to my environment. Our predator protection approach minimizes conflict; our responsibility to the sheep in our care would require more direct action.

Because of the drought, we’re trying to maximize our grazing in every paddock we build. This current paddock has enough forage to last for two more days – which buys us two more days before we need to ship the flock back to irrigated pasture around April 19. We could move – away from the fox and away from the forage – but it would mean moving sheep early or buying expensive hay. And while I’ve realized that I’m probably not a pacifist when it comes to predators, I’ve also realized – somewhere between the barstool and the floor – that I should trust our system (and especially our dogs!)

Elko - a happy guardian!