Category: Voices from the Farm

March 22, and lambing of the second group began. Everything was going smoothly until March 25. when a huge blizzard hit us. The sheep were very nice about not lambing during the height of the blizzard! There weren’t many problems except for a close call on April 9. We did not lose any lambs in this second group, and only one in the first group, so I was getting very close to my dream of “No lambs lost!”

That fall I was nominated for the MN State Sheep Award, “The Silver Bell,” by our County Ag Agent. I protested that I was not ready for that honor, and asked him to wait a couple years, but he went ahead with it anyway. I did not win the Silver Bell Award that year, but surprisingly, I finished in the top quarter of contestants!

At last, a beautiful spring, the ewes and lambs were out on pasture, and life was good once more! The kids were counting the days until school would be out, and so was I, as it would mean I would not have to attend to two ponies and a horse every morning, along with my other chores. We had lovely pastures, and it was a temptation to just turn everything loose in them! Unfortunately, our ponies were prone to founder, and our sheep to bloat.

The year did not start off well, we were going to have to find a new home for Bob, the Old English Sheep Dog. My attempts to mollify his aggressive behavior toward the sheep were a total failure. The defining moment came when he broke his heavy chain, and was chasing ewes through deep snow drifts in late January. This was just unacceptable, the ewes were due to start lambing in late February. One of them, “BoPeep,” died as a result. Bob had to go!

I had bred for early lambs, so by the end of February lambing was done. I wanted to hit the early July market, as in recent years that had been the best market. There would be a slightly over 100 head of ewes and lambs on pasture. There would have been more, but I sold 25 of last years’ ewe lambs to another sheep producer, and only retained 3 for our flock.

1976, Early April: Lambing, as always, was stressful, but out of 64 lambs born we lost only three. That was just under 5%, which was considered quite an acceptable loss to most producers. It was not acceptable to me! I had a dream of a year when no lambs were lost.

We had an early fall, with first frosts on September 12. Lisa and I covered the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, watermelons and cantaloupes with plastic tarps so we were still harvesting them in October, otherwise they would have been long gone. Our young orchard produced a huge apple crop that fall and my sister, Merle, also had a bumper crop. We decided we should make apple juice and can it for winter enjoyment.

After a hard day’s shearing was accomplished, all the beautiful fleeces were stacked under a window near the front of the barn. The price of wool was very low, due to the prevalence of polyester clothing, and also to a large influx of imported wool from Australia. At a price of thirty three cents a pound, I did not intend to sell the wool at that time, but would add it to the last year’s clip, which was stored in my sister Merle’s dry basement. Hopefully, the price of wool would rise to a decent level before her basement overflowed, so the wool was awaiting transport to her farm the next morning. Mother Nature however, had other ideas!