Farming in the shade

We are working on updating our website, and so part of my homework is to work up a short history of the farm, as well as other fun assignments. You get to read my rough drafts and comment on them, if you choose. There are many ways to farm, and we've tried several of them. Despite the awful effects in the 1980s of the "Get big or get out" motto, early in our farming career we couldn't see any other way. But getting big didn't really mesh with our dreams. We didn't have a ton of money, and we had no desire to get over our heads in debt. We knew we would rather farm than manage employees. Our idea of a fun time didn't include dealing with paperwork all day long. We wanted a good place to raise a family. We wanted to be connected to the land and to our community. We consciously stayed small , but farmed conventionally, using the tools of modern agriculture. In an effort to make a living wage, we diversified. Part of our reason for diversifying was to ...

Today we worked with the sheep. We sorted off the larger lambs and put them into their own group. If they haven't already been weaned by their mothers, they will be weaned now.  Here The Farmer and one of his side-kicks are pulling out a few of the largest lambs, already big enough for freezer camp.  The plan was to move the lambs across the road to a recently-cut hayfield. We've never put sheep on the south side of the road, mostly because we don't have any fence there (other than the little pasture right by the big red barn). But we also haven't done it because we haven't needed to. This year it's different. We haven't had rain, and it's dry here. The pastures are in definite hold pattern--not growing at all. Moving the lambs across the road is a decision we made partly out of desperation. We set up temporary fence from the sheep barn, were we sorted the sheep, across the road to the big red barn and the small pasture. The lambs will ...