Musicians Farming Sheep: The Need For Rest... And Balance

I received an email yesterday from a student/friend. She mentioned that the man who delivers her hay was looking to re-home a five year old sow named Tea Cup. Apparently Tea Cup could actually fit into one, at some point, but that time has long passed. It seems a fairly common story that people see an ad or read about the availability of piglets who are some kind of small breed who will never tip the scales at anything close to 200lbs...and then those piglets begin to grow and just keep on growing.

I believe I have mentioned my desire for swine. Probably a throw back to Wilbur from Charlotte's Web, or possibly Babe. In my mind's eye I see us walking down the dirt road together to gather sheep, my dogs quietly strolling behind us in perfect line. From time to time my pig looks up at me, adoringly, and gives a quiet snort. I understand. We are the perfect farm family.

Cut to what probably constitutes reality; I'm at a pretty fast jog chasing Tea Cup down the dirt road as he gallops, in all of his 300lb glory, after my puppy Muir, his un-trimmed teeth gnashing. It takes me, Paul, Josh and a tow truck to get Tea Cup back into his enclosure only to find that he has broken out again fifteen minutes later, with a not-so-quiet snort.

At dinner last night I broach the subject to Paul because I have the uncanny ability to ignore my own warning signals. We sit quietly eating steamed dumplings and I tell him about the email I have received about the pig. I like to think that the choking had nothing to do with the email...

At first he simply said “no”. But, with some gently reminding about being a team and making decisions together he said, “...probably not.” We were getting closer to the answer I thought I was looking for.

We spent a lot of time talking about the pros and cons of the situation. It remains important to us that everything on our small farm have a purpose; the dogs move our sheep, the sheep grow wool for blankets that we sell, the chickens provide dozen-boxed eggs, and we grow grass. What would Tea Cup's contribution be? If your first thought is bacon, you thought wrong. I mentioned having her birth a litter of piglets to sell. That made Paul tilt his head to the right a little, but not quite enough to overcome the dollar signs in his eyes over pig food, a new shelter to be built, and straw...always straw.

What we did talk about was the amount of time the work we already do takes up. There are morning and evening chores: rain, shine, or snow. We don't mind them, in fact we even enjoy them. But they do take up time. When we went on vacation for seven days we needed both a dog and farm sitter. Adding Tea Cup to the farm might require her own pig sitter! We talked about music and performances now that Covid restrictions are lighter, about things in our lives that are as important as the farm. We talked about the need for rest. We agreed to table the discussion in favor of ice cream cones.

Last night, sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up. It was one of those wake-ups where you aren't brain-foggy in the least, but completely awake almost immediately. And there it was. The answer.

I could see the issues represented in the figure of a mountain, and Tea Cup was balanced, precariously, on the top. It was obvious that adding a pig to our farm at this time would represent the tipping point.

Having a full life, a life full of purpose, is important. But if you stuff too many things into that life, you lose balance. When all is said and done, there needs to be time for ice cream, walks and swims. In other words, rest.

I closed my eyes again, feeling restful in the knowledge that this was the right decision....for now.

Musicians Farming Sheep: Muir

If you use working dogs on your farm you have to realize that, at some point, the dog(s) that are working will, like all of us, slow down, break down and wear out. A lot of working-dog owners will begin looking for their next herder when the older dog is about three.

Our border collie, Sam, is now twelve and Bronte six. We are a bit behind. For several months we have been thinking about bringing a new pup onto the farm to help with our growing flock of sheep. The reason that we haven't done it yet is because both dogs, Sam especially, are so good at their job. Our dogs live to work. They have both done well in sheep dog trialing also but they love the challenges of farm work best of all. Each morning we gather the sheep in their upper paddock and take them down into the pasture for the day. Bronte is almost all black and has prick ears making her resemble a wolf. When she zips around the sheep to flank them toward the gate, they pay attention. Physically, Sam is the Border Collie on the dog food bags. He has the perfect black and white markings and his ears tip slightly which makes him appear friendly and gentle...which he is. To a point. When a ewe decides she would rather go left than right, Sam slows drops into a low crouch and simply looks at her: asking, in his Sam way, to continue after the shepherdess down the hill. If the ewe still resists, he asks bit more forcefully, adding just enough pressure to change her mind. Most of this is done simply with his eye.

They are invaluable to what we do. They take only a few minutes minutes to do an hour job. Based on this, and the fact that training a border collie to herd takes a good couple of years, we began looking around. We spoke with several people about their litters but, nothing felt quite right. So we did what we often do. We procrastinated.

About four months ago a friend told me about some people at a nearby farm who were expecting a litter of Border Collies. Both parents were on sight which was very appealing. I tentatively made another call. Gwyneth and I had several long conversations about what we were looking for, and how they were proceeding with this, their first litter. We began to get a little excited.

Come early February, as the snow blew drifts across the roads and icicles decorated our roof line, we got word that seven pups had been born. In the following weeks we made two trips to their farm. The first time the pups were crawling, army-style around the pen, eyes barely opened and squeaking more like Guinea Pigs than puppies. The second time, full on running in that pot-bellied drunken wobble of a new canine. I had first pick of the litter and now was the time. I steeled myself against all adorableness and kept my mind clear about what I was looking for. I wanted the pup to be curious, forward, bright and attentive to his siblings but to have some independence as well. I also wanted a female who had a rough coat.

Then my father’s health began to fail . He was hospitalized for three weeks during which, due to Covid restrictions, we could not visit him and I began to question the timing of our decision. Having a new puppy had seemed wonderful and exciting, but now it seemed crazy and overwhelming in the face of everything going on. Paul reminded me of the motto by which we try to live our lives, “As hard as you can, for as long as you can.” And so, even in the face of my father dying, I took that step forward into the unknown: the start of any real adventure.

I walked over to the pen in the barn: one of the pups looked right at me, trotted over to the fence, promptly sat down and wagged its tail. Very bright, clearly curious and obviously independent. Something in my stomach flipped. However, I stayed steady, chose the top three that interested me and brought them outside. Two spent much of their time using their new growling technique and wrestling with each other but the one who had come over to me at the fence looked around and promptly wandered off in search of some other happiness. Suddenly one of the chickens scooted past and everything stopped. First “my” dog began to walk slowly and deliberately toward the chicken, a bit of a crouch and clear purpose in his step: more telling was that as the chicken made note of him and began to move, he dropped to the ground and stayed perfectly still. The papers were signed.

I was going to be the new guardian of a curious, bright, independent puppy who was a male and the only smooth coat in the bunch. Go figure.

Last weekend we gathered up our Muir. All of the traits that I saw in him have remained true and obvious. Just as my older kids were when I brought home a sweet new baby that stole all the attention, Sam and Bronte are a bit rumpled by the addition. I tried having a sit-down with them, reminding them of their indelible positions on our team (Sam being flock manager). He patiently stood and let me talk with him but I was only getting one eye, and that one was full of disdain.

So here we are. Lying in bed, listening to our newly crated pup swear at us, getting up before the sun (like farmers!!) and disengaging needle-like teeth from our clothes and hair.

Spring is the time of new life on the farm. Sam remains top dog and it is time for him, and for us, to impart some of our hard-earned wisdom on a youngster.

And so it goes.

Melissa Perley

Musicians Farming Sheep: January

The holidays have come and gone. We have made the numerous trips up and down the ladder to the upper storage space in our garage with box after box of decorations. The sparkle of December has left [us] and January has arrived.

In Vermont, January is traditionally one of, if not the coldest month of the year. It is the month when we are most likely to see the thermostat plummet below zero, sometimes for a stretch of frozen days. We don't see much of anyone, Covid or not, because we are hibernating. The rule in our house is that nobody comes in the door without an armload of wood. When returning from an evening walk the final holler is always “everybody grab an armload.” I want to kick the threshold and thunk snow off my boots as I enter the house and run into a wall of heat coming off the stove. There is something wonderfully comforting about the tick of the metal expanding in the stovepipe as things heat up. I quickly pull a chair up and prop my chilly feet on the footrests so kindly designed into our hundred year old wood stove.

This afternoon Paul, Josh and I spent a few hours stuffing wool to be made into blankets into shipping boxes I relished the opportunity to plunge my bare hands into the pile of mitten material. We stacked two wooden planks on top of the wool and labeled all boxes for shipment: my hands, colder by the second, fumbling with the markers that too, did not seem to like working in the cold. Once finished I piled some thawed blueberries into a bowl to feed to the chickens. I stood outside the hen house and did my best chicken impression, calling the ladies in for an afternoon treat. I watched them come running, not out of the coop, of course, but out of the sheep barn. Wings tucked back, they reminded me, somewhat, of Batman racing to the Bat-mobile. I sat down on the milk crate which acts as a step into their laying boxes and began handing out the cold blueberries. It didn't take long as they are pigs as well as chickens, but my hands were now truly blue, in every sense of the word.

I noticed the handle of the barn door mysteriously (or not) bobbing, so I ducked under the door to the hay storage barn to grab a handful of grain for Mrs. Chubbers. Sam followed on my heels because Border Collies find sheep grain a great treat. I'm not sure that Sam likes the treat quite as much as he enjoys taking those treats from the proverbial mouths of the sheep, but either way he was staring me down...and won. The buckets that hold all grain, etc. are of course, metal and not helping the cold of my own paws.

Finally, wool boxed, chickens, sheep and Border pigs sated, I crunch up the road to the house. I sneak in without an armload because I'm afraid my hands are too cold to hold the logs anyway. I open the front door, feel the heat in front of me while the cold pushes from behind and smell food cooking in the oven.

Normally we are all looking for outdoor things to do on our days off. But in January we are content to be still. Paul reads in the living room while Josh works on editing photos from the couch, a fire coming to life in the fireplace. The dogs stretch out with their backs against the warm stones near the stove, understanding that for now, herding is on hold.

The pandemic has heightened our consciousness of living according to the season. January being the time to curl up into our corners. The chaos of the past weeks making us realize the importance of taking this quiet time to think about defining who we are and what is important, or at least acceptable, to each of us. There is something metaphoric about the frozen landscape and the need for patience as we wait for the thaw and the revelation of change.

Death Visits The Farm

When we decided to bring animals onto our land it brought not only the purposefulness that we sought, but also happiness. It is joyful to watch our Border Collies guide sheep down to the fields in the mornings. I feel peace in walking into the sheep barn in the evenings: the ewes look up from their feeding, startled, heads and faces covered with hay. It makes me laugh to drive into the driveway and watch the chickens come bombing around the corner to press against the fence and witness my arrival. My only true experience as a rock star. However, as in all of life, we also knew that the reality of lightness is dark and, though unwelcome, death is a regular visitor to farms.

I noticed one of our pullets was separating herself from the flock. In all flock animals, the act of deliberately distancing from the safety of the flock or herd can only indicate something not right. In the course of the next couple of days, despite attempts to hand feed her and to carry her back to the flock, she continued to slide downhill. On the fourth day I walked into the coop to find her completely alone in a corner, tilting left. I walked over and gently lifted her to put her into the comfort of the hen house and she made a half-hearted attempt to flap out of my arms but fell over in the process, gave a long squawk, took several stilted breaths and died at my feet. I stood there, stunned. As her body folded into the ground I had a hard time grasping the reality of what had just happened.

Two days later, one of my Brahmas began acting the same way the Bard Rock had previously. She wouldn't come over to eat, hung around the yard instead of investigating the sheep paddock with the others and acting overall dumpy. I fussed and worried over her, even had bad chicken dreams, but, as with all worry, it didn't do any good. I lost her as well.

In talking with my vet about possible causes, we came up with the possibility of their food being culprit. Due to Covid, a lot of locally sourced livestock feed producers were having trouble sourcing certain vitamins and nutrients. In addition some of the food may been sitting in warehouses in storage for too long. Young hens are especially reliant on their vitamin D intake for good development. I immediately got rid of the rest of the 50 pound bag of food (causing Paul to feel ill) and brought in standard chicken pellets. In between students I would race out to the coop to toss cracked corn, which I had been warned might make them fat...which is, at this point, exactly what I wanted. And things turned around. Death took his crook and vamoosed....for now.

There were several things that I felt watching my first farm death; the hens had been feeling ill, that was clear, but, despite that, their last moments were full of struggle to hang onto life. It truly shook me to watch them flap and squawk only to tip over into death. Alive one moment and dead the next. It seemed silly, even to me, to not fully comprehend this; I have given birth and I have seen death. I did not feel that the fact that they were “only” chickens made it any less relevant. At that moment, they represented everyone and everything. In those final seconds, I watched my hens wrestle with death, holler to chase it away, flap to stay with their flock. To no avail.

I called my friend Renee, who owns a cattle farm, but also raises chickens. I told her my story and she was quiet for a minute and then said “Well, you’re a chicken farmer now.” Life makes farming fun. Death makes farming real.

In the weeks following, I find myself more appreciative of my slightly smaller flock. I notice tinier details in their behavior and take time to bring out handfuls of blueberries and sit with them as they peck them from my hand. I listen for the Blue Jay screaming at me to get out of the way of his flight path to the leftover cracked corn. I enjoy the sunshine filtered through the still-colorful fall leaves while leaning back against an old maple. I take the time to really be there.

Interesting, especially now, to note how we never fully appreciate what we have until it has been changed, or, until we no longer have it.

Melissa Perley