Don on adapting to be attuned to his flock as a whole

“I think the the biggest change from what we thought it was gonna be like to what it became like is when you’re when you’re raising a flock of sheep, the unit of appropriate concern is the flock and not the individual sheep. And if the individual sheep distinguishes herself as being especially needy, either you don’t want that sheep, or it’s kind of like a red flag that trouble is going down the road for the flock. But I mean, initially like everybody else, I suppose we we gave our sheep names. There were only 10 initially, but even when we had like 40 sheep, we had names for them. “Oh, there goes Penelope of Sadie” or something or  “how you doing Esther”, you know. That’s an extremely adolescent naive approach to what’s going on. You become attuned instead over time to how the flock is doing. That’s what your eye goes to, the flock.”

Hilary on her interest in the changing genetics of her flock

“So I grew up with sheep, my mom bought a small flock of a dozen Border Leicester sheep, when I was pretty young, I think I was probably maybe in like fifth grade or something like that, in about the year 2000. And just we, both my mom and I really liked sheep and so that’s what spurred my interest. And then with my mom and her flock, we, we kind of slowly grew the flock and we bred different breeds of rams to the flock for meat or wool. And I just really enjoyed the process of seeing the change in genetics. And with sheep, it happens really fast, right, Because you have the lambs for six months, and they go to slaughter and then the next year, you have a whole nother 20 or 30 lambs that you can see and, and I liked watching and studying the way that the genetics changed the flock and the resiliency and the hardiness and what worked and what didn’t.”

Hilary on her relationship with her sheep

“Yeah, I think I used to have a much closer, when we when they were smaller flock, like we had 30 or 40 ewes, it was like every single one really felt extremely unique and really personable. And now that the flock has gotten a little bit larger, I’ve lost some of that, which at first felt kind of weird. But now I view the flock as like a whole system on our farm. So we utilize that system for this part of the farm and then for cash here. But there are certainly still some sheep who stand out within the flock. So we’ll have ones who just for whatever reason are super friendly, and I can go up and pet them. And then there’s every year we have to cull out which is sort of shipping off the ewes who are too old to breed anymore, or the ones who weren’t satisfactory genetic wise, or as mothers, or for whatever reason. And so that part for some reason is always a little bit hard because you’ve gotten so much from that ewe for so many years, and you know her so well and all of her lambs that she has, so that that part kind of brings it back down to like, oh these are really, they’re pretty special to me. But that being said, I don’t view them as like, my precious babies, you know, like they’re still a product on our farm. And they’re extremely useful and valuable in that sense.”

Mary on mimicking the wild with shepherding

“Yeah, so the kind of the kind of sheep farming that I get really excited about is, is a one where you’re lambing you’re like, actively improving your sheep species, your breed. So it’s like, we’re doing things, the shepherd is kind of taking a role of mother nature. And we have to make these decisions, like I talk a lot about mimicking the wild with your shepherding practices. So wild, like herd animals who graze in the wild? What sort of things do they move towards? And what grasses do they look for? They look for water, they look for shade. And so when I’m rotating my animals, I’m always like, Okay, this is where they’re gonna be for the day. So I move them every day. And I’m like, do they have everything they need? Do they have shade? Do they have water? Do they have yummy things to eat? I want to make sure I give them everything that they would seek out if they were their wild sisters….Yeah, definitely something I’ve I have been thinking about ever since I was little but didn’t couldn’t really put words to it. But just trying to figure out wild animals and livestock and pets and our relationship to them all and how those are different. And It’s a really important thing to talk to kids about because it’s really hard to wrap your head around, and I think kids want to try to figure it out. And but I definitely have been able to put words to it better since learning more about restorative grazing practices. I forget, there’s a guy who’s like a grazing specialist who really drives home the idea of mimicking the wild. And once he said that, I was like that, that makes like everything fall into place for me. And it made me feel more like it made me feel better about having sheep because I was kind of not really feeling great about livestock because it’s like, something that humans really created over time for ourselves. And so it made it so I was able to be like you know, it wasn’t my choice for domesticated sheep to exist, but it’s my responsibility to deal with them now that we have them humans created them and I’m a human and humans should be like doing right by them. And this is how I feel we’re doing right by them, by like making really good decisions about who breeds and who doesn’t because in the in the wild that is decided by you know, survival of the fittest. Yeah, so it’s made me like take it more seriously and gave me more direction with it. It made me like, feel good about doing it, it made sense. Because, because for a while I was oh, this is cute? Sheep are cute. Yeah. I’ll breed those two they’ll make a cute one. And now I’m like, oh no, I’m gonna breed those two because their lambs aren’t going to be awesome specimens of the Icelandic breed. Yeah, and they’re gonna do well they’re gonna be healthy and happy yeah, because healthy and happy, healthy and happy is like the top thing. And once I once I put up like, okay, I want the sheep to be healthy and happy. What does that mean? And how are wild animals healthy and happy and how do we know if they’re healthy and happy? And that’s been more clear over time. “