Cheers!

Cheers and happy holidays! May you know the peace of a pasture sunset all through the year.

It's Very Cold and Snowy

It’s winter,

it’s very cold and snowy,

it’s a bright Gemini full moon.

The lambs are fat,

the rams are ready for breeding season,

and we eat pot roasts for every meal.

The days are short and nights are long

and I’m getting even stronger from the trudging and shoveling

than from the summer’s work load.

I love these animals

and I love feeling alive

and I love a good long rest after being outside.

This is a lamb born in May

This is a lamb born in May, looking quite grown up now. Lambs (and piglets) grow extremely fast. By the time a lamb reaches market weight, the average person would not even know it’s a young animal because it no longer looks like a baby lamb.

This is the best our lambs have ever looked, as our first few years raising sheep on this land we slowly figured out our soil has a cobalt deficiency. We have always provided mineral to our animals, but when starting from a deficiency it just wasn’t quite enough for optimal health. Now all the ewes receive a cobalt bolus, which is like a big pill that they swallow and hangs out in their rumen, slowly releasing the essential vitamin b12 over the course of a few years.

And with a larger flock now (60 sheep this year as opposed to the 20 we started with) we are also able to rotationally graze all our land while keeping our grass in a vegetative state, which means the animals are eating it when it’s providing optimal nutrition. Without so many animals we couldn’t always get to certain pastures before the grass got stemmy and went to seed. But this difference in grazing in combination with the ewes getting enough cobalt has resulted in big, healthy lambs like we’ve never seen before!

Grazing Sequesters Carbon

The grass has been slow to grow up in northern Minnesota but the cattle are grazing and enjoying a feast of dandelions. We now have a respectable herd of 46 cattle, mostly Shorthorn and Hereford/Red Angus crosses.

I have been doing a lot of grass monitoring to determine what size paddock this many cattle need. We already know the biology in our soil is not super active as it had never been grazed before our arrival. But now that we have a real herd, we can reach more of our pastures with rotational grazing.

The more we graze, allowing the proper rest time, the more the soil biology will be stimulated to wake up and do the work of feeding the grass. The more the grass is eaten and regrows, the more it pulls carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and stores it in the soil. 

The more cattle we can get rotationally grazing the land, the more carbon is sequestered. The more YOU eat grass fed beef and lamb, the more we both fight climate change.

Lambing Drama

Lambing and the start of grazing are a very busy time of year. There’s been icy rain and snow, hypothermia, lamb sweaters, 3am bottle feedings, triplets, QUINTUPLETS(?!), hand milking, lambs snuggling with dogs, many healthy unassisted births, and lots of crying lamb babies.

This little lamb was from the set of quints. The two biggest took right to nursing but she and her even smaller brother were premature at 3.5 and 3 pounds and became bottle babies. I worked with her for a few days to see if she could eventually learn to nurse from her mama, but ultimately the bonding window closed and the ewe no longer recognized her as her lamb. She was a vigorous little thing but looked like a doll at half the size of all the other lambs in the pasture. When her mama wasn’t interested anymore, she snuggled up to Lena the livestock guardian dog’s tail. 

Ultimately it became clear she and her little brother—who was still just learning to walk and having some trouble with a leg—needed to be raised as full time bottle babies by someone who could give them more time and attention. I felt fortunate to find a wonderful family just starting their homesteading journey who took them both and are showering them with love.

There are still a handful of mamas left to give birth, and a gaggle of 25 lambs bouncing around the pastures each morning and night. I post many videos of all the lambing action to my Instagram and Facebook stories each day. Follow along there to catch some major cuteness along with all the drama!

Lambs Arrived on Mother's Day!

Happy Mother’s Day! The first lambs arrived this morning. It’s a perfect day for lambing; warm and sunny for the lambs but not too hot for the mamas. The livestock guardian dogs are doing a great job keeping watch, giving a few licks to bond, but not interfering with nursing or mothering by the ewes. And reminding me to thank all the mother figures who tend to the children—we couldn’t do it without you!

Keep an eye on our social media feeds for all the lambing action as it unfolds. This is just the beginning!