The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Yesterday’s snowfall at nearby Crater Lake, together with the rapidly shortening days, reminds us that the grass is about to stop growing, breeding season is upon us, and it is time to prepare for feeding hay and the beginning of the rainy season — all closely related events.

Preparations for breeding are pretty routine by now:  we have started flushing the ewes to increase our percentage of twins, and the lucky flocksires have been selected and are eager to get started in a couple of weeks.
Other fall chores are not particularly appealing, truth to tell; it is a time when I am just as glad to settle for traditional gender roles — the men out in the field, to be specific.

Earlier this afternoon Steve reluctantly set out to load the summer’s accumulation of trash-headed-for-the-dump into Willie (as in Nelson), our trusty 1988 F150.  Ordinarily we would be content to let the trash accumulate over the winter, hoping against hope it would magically disappear.  But this summer most of it piled up right where the tractor needs to navigate to get to the winter hay supply, so Steve had no choice but to deal with it.  All well and good, until he realized his 2-way radio, an essential communication tool on our long but narrow farm, was missing.  We checked all the usual places to no avail.  You can imagine Steve’s distress when I called him and the faint sound of my voice rose from the bottom of Willie’s back end, underneath a truly vile assemblage of “stuff.”  I gave fleeting consideration to recording the entire search process but thought better of it.  I will leave to your imagination to envision Steve digging through this mess to recover his radio.

Meanwhile, our ranch hand, Shawn, was not faring much better.  He drew the duty to clean out the accumulated waste hay and sheep droppings from the winter feeding areas, a chore that did not become any more appealing for having been postponed all summer.  I have to admit Shawn was not amused at my delight in seeing all this potential fertilizer piled next to my garden where it can “cook” during the winter and be ready for tilling as soon as the ground warms just a little in February.

Mucking out the feeding areas actually helps keep our flock of Soay sheep healthy.  At the start of the winter rainy season, we want a clean layer of crushed rock (we use 3/4 minus) underneath the winter feeders to minimize the amount of wet ooze the sheep have to stand in.  Not only does it prevent foot rot, it also lessens the possibility of respiratory problems.  The same characteristics that make the feeding area muck so good for garden fertilizer argue for getting it out of any place where our sheep will be standing still several times a day during the winter.

How to get the men in your life to undertake these yucky chores?  The promise of chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven, works well on our farm.  Time to turn on the oven and find the hidden cache of Nestle’s semi-sweets.

For now …

Far be it from me to presume to know, actually, but I do know their shepherds see all sorts of lines and angles and curves in everyday objects that can delight the eye and provide an additional layer of pleasure to what sometimes feels like pretty humdrum stuff — feeding, watering, filling the mineral feeders.

On my way out to feed early one recent morning after a lovely big soft snowstorm — no wind, no drifts, just the fluffy stuff coming straight down — my eyes were greeted by all sorts of arresting scenery and it occurred to me that what we see, and our sheep see, on a wintery morning, is all part of the fascination in raising small livestock on a small acreage.  I hope you will enjoy these images of life in the country.

Corduroy comes in all colors, including “fence beige”

One of Steve’s dreams for our farm ever since we got serious about formal conservation breeding with our British Soay sheep has been to have breeding paddocks consolidated in one place.  He figured it would make chores more manageable, and our livestock guardian dog’s protection more effective, than having the breeding groups spread throughout the pastures.  And besides, he has had a hammer in his hand and a tool kit slung on his hip since he was a toddler, so there generally is no way to dissuade him from taking on yet another project, improving on the 4th generation of shelters, thinking up new ways to protect the mineral feeders from getting rained on — you get the idea.

This year, with the help of our trusty summer ranch hand Shawn, the breeding paddock dream came true.  I have never seen so many angles and Frank-Lloyd-Wright-like surfaces on a farm before, but I find them very pleasing to the eye.  Here is the Saltmarsh Sheraton, a four-star breeding hotel:

Let me know if you are interested in a detailed description of how these pens are put together.  On a flat surface, they actually would be quite manageable to construct.  On land as slopey as ours, that’s another matter.

Not everything at Saltmarsh Ranch is as meticulously constructed as the new breeding pens, nor as pleasing to the eye, but I thought you might smile at this picture of our sheep trailer, which I maintain must have started life as a circus wagon, parked in the snow next to our trusty old pickup Willie (as in Nelson), filled to the brim with snow-covered scrap metal, largely from the building project.  The angular trailer has its own story, but that’s for another day.

And last and most, here is the legendary Berci Box all decked out in its winter finery when it got caught out in the snow, with snags of snow hanging from the air holes on its side.

The Berci box has carried countless Soay sheep up and down the west coast, but one of its earliest and most notable uses was to carry Soay sheep into the U.S. from Athelstan, Quebec a decade ago, a story unto itself and a worthy tale for reading on a winter day.   If you don’t know Kathie Miller’s saga, I commend it to you.  It’s a great tale about legendary sheep (and their crate), and about Kathie, an even more legendary pioneering Soay sheep maven.

For now …