Beauty Interrupted

Animals, Musings, Sheep

Beauty, in all its manifestations,  has always been important to me but the older I get the more it has become a faith, a yearning, and a guiding principle for my life. My great fortune is that the farm puts all this in crystal clear perspective, day after day. This...

A Season to Which We Gladly Say Good-bye

Animals, Grass Fed Lamb, Sheep

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about the winter this year in the slightest. In fact we have SO MUCH to be thankful for! Despite two snow storms that dumped 23 inches of the white stuff on the farm within a week we are all completely unscathed.   Our...

Brayden Attempts Shearing

Animals, Sheep

Spring is always the time for new beginnings and we have had our share at River Cottage Farm.  On the ground and running are twenty one lambs from our flock of sheep.  Here is a sampling of this year’s brood.  My only black lamb this year came as part of a set, one...

Hand Shearing

Animals, Farm News, Sheep

In a constant attempt to simplify things on the farm and bring life ever closer to a sane pace, I have always wanted, nay needed, to change the way we shear our sheep. It isn’t that we have had incompetent shearers, actually we have been blessed with some of the best...

Sheep Milk: An Experiment

Animals, Raw Milk, Sheep

This is the year that I will finally milk my own sheep. After three trips to Italy seeking out all the sheep’s milk products I could find, it is finally time to make my own sheep’s milk quark, cheese and yogurt. All things sheep are healthier than their counterparts...