everything you can’t find elsewhere in the menu
For eleven months of the year, I watch with glee as our sheep search and destroy the wild Himalayan blackberry vines that are the curse of fields and streams here in Oregon and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Each year we are amazed at our animals’ ability to forestall the re-infestation of our fenced pastures. Nary has […]
All my life I’ve been blessed, or cursed, with an uncontrollable urge to start singing a matching song when something or someone catches my eye. And so it came as no surprise that I found myself humming the Camelot tune as I was out photographing lambs. All of a sudden four of our yearling ewes who […]
When last we met here, Otley was a 3-day old, unusually small lamb who already had seen the world and was none too pleased with it. As you will recall, Otley not only arrived at less than two and a half pounds after her mother struggled mightily to deliver her, she also ran away from […]
Some of the indications that a Soay ewe is about to lamb are seen only in an experienced ewe. If she is going to twin, she usually looks like a propane tank. Even if carrying only a single lamb, an older ewe will develop saddlebags and a waddle. The yearling ewes (“gimmers”) who are lambing for the first time exhibit more subtle signs of approaching labor, oftentimes surprising […]
Apparently a lot, but you sure couldn’t prove it by looking out in our fields. As near as I can tell, the only impact weather has on our flock is that when it gets cold, the sheep tuck their feet under and hunker down in the pasture. In the summer, the sheep drink a lot […]
I never can predict when owning Soay sheep will enrich my life in a new and different way. Last Wednesday an e-mail showed up out of the blue that read, in total: “Here is a photo of Yorkshire soay in the snow and being bottle fed.” That’s it, no signature, no mailing address, no explanation of why I was the beneficiary of the photographs, […]