Tag Archives: sheep

The drop: lambing season begins!

27 Sunday Sep 2015

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A young ram lamb takes shelter with its mother.

After weeks of expecting a lamb at any moment, the season has begun with five dropping at once! Fathered by the late, great Damara x Dorper ram Pecorino (sheepish in all but his appetites, he came to an untimely end after over-doing it on lupins), these little crossbreeds have a distinct Damara bearing and appearance, with their floppy ears and dappled coats. While the alpacas typically have an adolescent aloofness, now that there are lambs about they’ve switched into vigilant mode, keeping a close eye on their young charges and leading the flock to water and fresh pasture.

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After starting the flock with Wiltshire Horns, we found that this breed didn’t exactly relish our pre-treed (ie. open, windswept and exposed) environs, so we’ve started breeding the flock towards hardier, less selective grazers like the Dorper and Damara that also offer a yield in meat and hides. So with last year’s lambs being Wiltshire Horn x Dorper, these are all of the above, but mostly Dorper. As with virtually every aspect of this farming project, it’s an experiment!

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Farm hack: Making a sheep working race

11 Saturday Jul 2015

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One of our hoggets, sizing up the new facilities.

We’re great fans of temporary. Not aiming for permanence tends to mean that ideas can be trialled inexpensively, can be easily changed and that learning from failure can be quick and low-impact. In that spirit, as we develop the sheep enterprise of the farm, we’ve tried to keep things low-key. For yards, we use locally-made portable panels, but when working closely with sheep, we found the mesh sides problematic due to the ease with which horns or feet can become entangled. In more established circumstances, yards would have a working race for such a purpose, but the cost of a manufactured race can be steep. It was time to get out the tools and make our own.

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The ‘new’ working race in position, with sheep, also in position. As a further refinement, we need to attach bracing to the far end to help it stand up to the inevitable knocks and bumps.

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The Whole Beast: harvesting hides

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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IMG_5994When we took our sheep to be slaughtered towards the end of last year, in the spirit of using the whole beast, we asked the meatworks if we could keep the skins. Wiltshire Horns are not renowned for their hides, and while the abattoir workers looked at us a little askance, they played along. As soon as the animals were killed, we drove the skins across to Port Elliot, where tanner Tony Scott salted them and enthusiastically took us on a tour of his tannery, one of the few surviving such establishments in Australia.

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This week a package arrived from Port Elliot. Inside were the skins, transformed from their dusty, paddock hue: the lamb skins soft and creamy, the elder beasts a light, dappled grey with black spots. While there’s no doubt that draping one’s home in animal hides brings with it a whiff of hillbilly, it’s also deeply satisfying to use as much as we can of our animals.

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As an experimental run, most of these skins are already accounted for, but if you would like first pick on future hide harvests, let us know.

Ram update: The Pecorino Support Group

08 Sunday Mar 2015

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Pecorino, with new BFF Ernesto the Alpaca

A few weeks ago, Pecorino, our new Damara-Dorper cross ram arrived at the farm. Initially, he seemed a little coy, intimidated by all from the alpacas to last year’s lambs. Within even a week, it was clear that he was becoming enculturated into the flock, following their cues to move to new pasture, and joining the usual welcoming committee whenever we come to visit.

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Friendship is parallel grazing. Note Pecorino’s fat-tail, a Damara characteristic, it’s the camel’s hump of the sheep world.

Now, Pecorino’s assembled something of a support group around himself, composed of alpacas Fidel and Ernesto and a wether lamb. They tend to remain aloof of the rest of the flock, grazing a little away from the rest. While other sheep-farming pals tell us that this is not uncommon, we’re genuinely amazed to see how Pecorino’s robust desert breeding is exhibited in his grazing habits. Where the Wiltshire Horns hurry for shelter at the first glimmer of sunlight and sit panting until a cloud covers the sun again, Pecorino and his clique munch on, apparently regardless of temperature, and far less selectively than the others. Now all we need is for him to start sharing those genes around.

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Pecorino joins the party.

Year of the Sheep: Introducing Pecorino

15 Sunday Feb 2015

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Despite his noble bearing, thus far Pecorino has demonstrated a rather sheepish personality.

With the Year of the Sheep just around the corner on the Chinese calendar, it’s fitting that we’re celebrating the arrival of Pecorino. Pecorino is a Dorper-Damara cross ram, adopted from our friends Stefan and Amanda from their property at Inman Valley. Although our Wiltshire Horn-Dorper lambs have been pretty unfazed by the blinding summer heat, their Wiltshire Horn mothers have not fared so well. Enter Pecorino and his robust African desert-survival genetics and fat-tailed energy-storing mystique. Continue reading →

Farm hack: reusing livestock water

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in diy, livestock, regeneration

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The new Trough Hose Outlet Mark 2 (aka. THOM2), in position.

When our livestock are moved into the next paddock, or the trough needs a clean, the contents, up to 450 litres of water, are dumped into the pasture. While we’ve tended to hold a ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ mentality for our tree planting, we couldn’t help but feel that this water could be better directed on nearby seedlings. So, a little while ago, we whipped up our first attempt at a stock trough water diverter that would do just this.  Continue reading →

Snag-a-Palooza: Celebrating with sausage!

02 Monday Feb 2015

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IMG_5603We celebrated our first sheep harvest with Snag-a-Palooza, our inaugural sausage-making fiesta. An entire beast was put through the mincer, so we invited a number of mutton-connoisseurs and aspiring snag-o-nauts to come and belt out some bangers. With several sausage fillers on the go, including a couple of 5kg hand-cranked machines hired from a butcher, the group made short work of the meat and had a vast amount of sausages ready in time for a barbeque lunch. Despite having armfuls of library books to prime ourselves, there were a few handy tricks we developed over the day to make the sausage-making a little smoother:

  • Don’t tie the end of the sausage while you’re making it to allow air pumped out by the sausage-maker to escape,
  • Allow about 10cm of empty casing either end of the sausage to allow for squeezing the filling to eliminate air bubbles,
  • Construct one big sausage, then make the links afterwards by pinching, then alternate your twists forwards and backwards for each small sausage,
  • Feed the casing out slowly, allowing the mince to inflate the casing with minimal air bubbles,
  • Avoid making sausages in your loungeroom, as explosions, followed by mince showers, are possible.
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Guiding fresh sausage into its spiral.

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Making the most of mutton

22 Thursday Jan 2015

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A mutton and lentil stew, with mutton consumed.

Back in December, we conducted our first slaughter from our flock, selecting some of our more senior ewes and a handful of lambs to be dispatched at the local meatworks. We’ve discovered a great deal of buried enthusiasm for the merits of good mutton. From the likes of Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall and Prince Charles with their Mutton Renaissance campaign, to various friends who fondly recalled being raised on the more mature meat.

At its best, mutton is renowned for being a fine grained meat, with a complexity of flavour reflective of its diversity of forage. With Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall describing mutton as the beef of the sheep world, fellow foodie Sophie Grigson has gushed over mutton as “beautifully tender, firm-grained, and with a rich but not aggressive flavour,” offering, in comparison to lamb, “more depth of flavour, a more complex rounded taste, more ‘umami’, if you like.” Continue reading →

A moveable sheep shelter: the sequel

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in diy, livestock, trees

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With recent temperatures climbing into the 40s (about 107 degrees Fahrenheit), and tree-induced shade still a few years away, we’ve constructed another moveable sheep shelter to ensure our sheep and alpacas have a cooler place to recline on the most hostile of days.

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Employing the off-grid carpentry prowess of Jeremy and Pete, we knocked up the second shelter to the same rough plan as the original: salvaged hardwood for a sled base, allowing it to be dragged from pasture to pasture, fallen redgum for uprights, and tin reclaimed from the gullies for the roof. The previous life of the tin means that a hole is already cut for the installation of a pot-belly stove, should the sheep find one that fits their budget. This sheep shelter also includes a perch, should passing birds need a break while searching for a tree. Continue reading →

The Farm Year in Review: 2014

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in events, livestock, planning, regeneration

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2014 was a year where the dry season came early and stayed late. It seemed as if the rain barely had a chance to soften the ground and throw up some soursobs before our clay soils began to crack again and the pasture browned off. Despite this, after two years observing the rhythms of this patch of ground, I feel like we’re becoming more resilient and optimistic: where previously we despaired at every lost seedling, now we celebrate every survivor.

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Summer: a shingleback lizard soaks up some sunshine.

In the spirit of permaculture, this year also marks a transition from our observational period towards beginning to implement infrastructure for a sustainable farming enterprise. With fencing and water infrastructure for livestock, our appreciation of the need for water only deepens, and despite its challenges, we’ve learnt to stop worrying and love winter.

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