Birchtree Farm

We have finally finished our fencing project and have pasture for our sheep!

We have had pasture-envy for these past nearly 4 years, since we moved from NY to NH. Every time we pass an open and unused green field we try not to drool, and we wonder why no one is using it for anything (like sheep!). When we came here, we knew it was going to be work. There were no properties in this area that were of suitable size and ready for grazing animals. All properties of 10 acres or more (our minimum requirement) were wooded, OR were so far out of our price range as to be ridiculous. Yes, if we'd won the lottery we could have purchased a turn-key situation with barn and outbuildings and pastures and a nice house, but that will run you half a million around here, at least. So, we settled on a property of just under 12 acres, mostly wooded, with a house that needed lots of work, and no barn. That was in late 2007, with our final move in the spring of 2008. There was enough open room to put in a large paddock and have a little grazing area for occasional "salad bar" grazing, but hay has been the staple, and we use hoophouses for shelter - no barn available. We were blessed to have someone who let us borrow their pasture for the summers, and we did use that when we could, gratefully.

We finally got it logged in 2009, which cleared out the big timber, but left a huge mess. We were starting to clean it up in spring of 2010 when Ken threw out his back and that effectively stalled the project for several months. Eventually he recovered and by fall we started clearing fenceline and putting in posts, until the ground froze.

A long cold spring delayed the snow melt and the ground thaw, but finally we got back to work on it this spring, and yesterday we opened the paddock where it joined the new runway/alleyway/"on-ramp" to the pasture, and led the sheep through. I think we had about 8 bales of hay left, so it was just in time. A lot of native grasses and forbs have come up without any help from us, now that the sun can get through to the ground, and there is also ton of browse for them. We did seed some as well, but will need to do more liming and seeding in the future.

It's maybe about 4 acres - hard to estimate given the irregular shape. I know that would seem really small to some people. Many folks have single pastures that are bigger than our entire property, but it's a really big deal for us, and it's plenty big enough for the number of sheep we have or will ever have. It still needs a LOT of work. The sheep will help with some of that - keeping the shrubby bits and tree sprouts under control - but there's still a lot of slash to pick up and tops of trees left behind that need to be cut up for firewood. But this whole place is a continuous project/work-in-progress. Maybe by the time we get too old to deal with it anymore it will be one of those places worth half a million. One can hope. ;-)

As is so often the case with sheep, joy and sadness intermingle. This year our oldest and favorite ewe, Penny, lambed first. I never do guess correctly who is going to lamb first. Last year I was sure it would be Liadan, and it ended up being Niamh. This year, I knew that Penny, Liadan, and Niamh were in a race for first place, but didn't think it would be Penny. They always keep me guessing.

Anyway, on March 30 in the evening I noted that Penny was closer to lambing, but when I went out for a last check at 12:30am, nothing seemed to be going on, so I went to bed. At 6:30am I woke up and trekked out to the paddock to see what was happening. There was Penny, with a tiny lamb at her side, and she was giving Aileen some good knocks as Aileen appeared to be trying to get around Penny to the lamb. Penny wasn't having any of that and kept herself between Aileen and her baby.

I got through the gates and walked up toward Penny, wondering if she had singled again like last year. Except for her first breeding as an ewe lamb, she's always twinned, up until last spring, but I thought that was probably because she was not in great shape the fall before, due to nursing a lamb on poor pasture. I thought maybe she had just had another single this year. I started to look for the afterbirth, and as I turned my head to the right, there was the small still form of a white lamb laying on the ground. This lamb was slightly bigger, and nothing apparently wrong with it, but it was dead. It looked like it had been cleaned off, but there was a lot of hay and manure on it, and the head was twisted back under the body as if it had been tossed around.

Penny saw me looking at the lamb and came over, nickering. She knows she had two, but one is gone, and she is now mostly concerned with the living one. I started wondering if Aileen had had anything to do with the dead lamb. It's not nice to contemplate but it seemed possible that she, a two year old who'd never lambed before and herself the daughter of an ewe who was a bully, had attacked this lamb and killed it while Penny was in labor delivering the twin.

I took the dead lamb, and removed the pelt, and there seemed to be an inordinate amount of blood under the skin in the neck and chest region. I then did a very quick necropsy to see if the lamb had nursed at all. Penny is very good at getting her lambs up and nursing quickly. If this lamb had been born healthy, it would likely have nursed before she started giving birth to the second lamb (and actually, I don't know which was born first). If it had been very weak or stillborn however, it would not have been able to nurse. As it turned out, I could see no evidence of colostrum in its digestive system. So although I still don't totally trust Aileen, and we are keeping her separated for the time being, it seems less likely that she had anything to do with the death of the lamb. Lambs that are slow getting up are often pawed at by their mothers to try to encourage them. That might explain the blood under the skin, and the fact that there was dirt, hay and manure on top of the lamb even though it looked like she had licked it clean.

Two years ago, Penny also had twins with one born dead. I hope that it is not something wrong with her, but I suppose if she twins again next year and it happens again, then we'll have to consider the possibility that while she can carry two to term, for some reason one is dying just before birth. I'm not sure why that would happen.

So that is probably enough of the sad part. Let's get on to the happy part. The surviving lamb is a black grey ram, who weighed almost 7lbs at birth (a normal size), and he was born the day before the nasty April Fool's Day snowstorm we just had. So he's spent his first 36 hours pretty much confined by his mother to the hoophouse. She's a smart girl, that one, and didn't bring him out at all once the snow started falling late last night.

And here are the photos!

You can't see his horn buds, but they are there, and the white flashing shows he will be a grey. This means that his sire carries grey under his white pattern, which is good to know.

No one lambed during the snow storm which was a relief. Now they have a clear weekend and hopefully either Niamh or Liadan or both will lamb soon, then it will probably be at least another week before any of the other three have their turn.

Here are scenes from February 7th, in the early morning after a light snow. I love the color in these photos.

As long as the weather holds out we will keep working on clearing fenceline.  We are more than halfway done at this point, and even have some posts in.  We are focusing however on getting the rest of the clearing done before we go ahead and install more posts. I say "we" but Ken has done a lot of it by himself. I did help today though. :)

Today we cleared about another 100 feet, across the north end, east of the logging road.  It's not just taking out trees but also clearing slash left by the logging last year.  In several cases, small trees were just pushed over with their roots still in the ground.  There were a few stumps to get through as well.

Here are a few photos of our progress.  The first two are of the west side fenceline, taken back on November 20th.  The first one shows some of the fenceposts (looking south), the second photo was taken from the same spot, but looking north up the line to the northwest corner.

This photo was taken from the northwest corner, looking south. The stick with the orange tape is approximately where the corner of the fence will be.

This photo was taken from the logging road looking back west to the northwest corner.

This was what we worked on today, from the logging road east.

And finally, this is the view from the northeast corner of the planned fenceline looking south. You can just see our hay shelter in the center of the photo. The fence will actually angle down the hill about to where those long trees are lying before continuing south along the east side of the property.

It's now approaching Thanksgiving and things are slowing down a bit here on the farm.  The two breeding groups were set up on October 30, about three weeks earlier than we managed last year.  We'll see if it makes a difference.  Sometimes ewes just seem to have their lambs at the same time each Spring no matter what.

On November 11th we took four lambs and two ewes to the Windham Butcher Shop in ME.  We were able to sell all the lambs we had available and there was more interest that we had to turn away, which is hopeful for the future.  The potential is there for raising about 12 lambs next year, as we have 6 ewes being bred, and since this area seems to be saturated as far as selling breeding stock goes, we're trying to focus on meat lambs and take any future breeding stock sales as icing on the cake.  It's hard though when hay and feed in general is so expensive to see how we could even hope to break even just selling meat lambs.  But getting our new pastures up and growing will help as the less hay we need to purchase, the better.

The customers were very happy with their lambs and we were even able to sell to one local small cafe that does dinners focusing on local foods, so that may help us gain some future customers.  The two cull ewes, who were 3 and 4 years old, ended up in our own freezer, and we have taste-tested some ground meat already and it's great! Along with our own duck and chicken, the meat from the ewes, and locally purchased grassfed beef, we are well stocked for the winter.

Our main project now, as long as the weather permits, is expanding our fencing.  We have several hundred feet of fenceline cleared, and much of that has the posts installed. Ken cleared another 100 or so feet by himself on the west side one day while I was off playing at a NH Spinners & Dyers Guild meeting, and that was no small feat, considering it was an area with some large fallen logs, as well as a lot of smaller trees that had been pushed over in all directions by the skidder.  So, now we can finished putting the posts in on the west side and then start working our way across the north end.  At some point we are going to have to borrow or rent an augur to bore large post holes for the gate posts.  Each gate will be comprised of two eight foot tube gates that meet in the middle so that the logging road will still be easily accessible to any large equipment that needs to get through.  Also, since the logging road is a right-of-way for a neighbor, they need to be sturdy and stand up to repeated opening and closing when he needs to get through.