I RETURNED FROM MY LUNCH BREAK at work one day to find a folded copy of the NewsGuide at my desk. The NewsGuide is our local weekly paper, the kind of publication that announces garage sales, classifieds for used motorcycles, and minutes of the Catamount Rotary Club meetings. This particular issue had a University of Vermont Extension class circled in red Sharpie ink. I picked it up and started to read the announcement some agricultural fairy godmother had left for me: “Beginner Sheep Raising Class. Held in various locations throughout the state. UVM livestock specialist Chet Parson will instruct this daylong workshop in basic shepherding.” The cost was minimal, and the location was only forty minutes north of my cabin in a farm education center called Smokey House.
As I stood there reading, a friendly voice rose up from behind me.
“Did you see that class?” It was Trish, a fellow designer in the office. We’d gotten to know each other through a mutual love of fiber and knitting. I was still a beginner compared to Trish, who not only knit but also spun her own yarn. Through our chats at the office, she’d learned about my farm dreams and knew I wanted my own flock. She had left the paper on my desk, thinking it would be fitting for me, a place to start scratching my itch and see what really went into raising a few sheep in New England.
“Are you kidding me?” I gushed. “I’ll absolutely take that class. …” This was perfect. Just a few months in Vermont and the state was handing out flyers for my dream lifestyle. I signed up online, mailed my check, and was told to show up early on the Saturday morning of the workshop.
A few weeks later, on a sunny, cold morning in late March, I found myself at the Smokey House Farm Center, sitting in a metal folding chair in a classroom lined with maps and farming posters. About twenty people, of every age, shape, and size imaginable, were milling about, calmly paging through their handouts. Next to me were a couple in their mid-sixties and to my other side were a couple in their late twenties. I seemed to be one of the few single people in the room — possibly the only single person. Did I read the fine print wrong? It didn’t say anywhere on the website that this was some sort of couples retreat (“Better Relationships Through Second-Cut Hay Purchases”). Apparently, sheep bring people together.
I was feeling slightly self-conscious about the fact that I had come without a date. I’m not ashamed to admit I scanned the crowd for a solo thirty-something guy in rumpled clothes with a border collie at his feet and a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. (Better luck next time.) My wishful thinking was quickly interrupted by a crisp, friendly voice from the front of the room, announcing that we were about to get started. I looked up at what could only be Chet, our instructor.
Chet was a graying, bearded fellow in a ball cap. He stood among us like a high school coach prepping his team before the big game. He exuded experience … exactly the kind of guy you’d want around three months into raising your first flock, when something unimaginable went wrong. He spent the next three hours pontificating about wannabe farmers, expounding on the legacy of New England shepherds, and giving us what I can only describe as a field guide to sheep breeds. He covered the popular breeds for our region — the hardy meat stock, as well as handsome wool breeds popular with the hand-spinning market. Chet also went through the sheep I was most interested in: the dual-purpose breeds — sheep you can either wear or eat, depending on your preferences.
When it came to raising a small flock, my intentions were fairly humble. All I wanted was a small group of healthy animals, maybe five or ten, I could raise for both the closet and the table. The dual-purpose breeds like Romney, Cormo, Rambouillet, and California Red would offer wool of spinning quality and still pack on enough pounds to fetch decent market prices. I wanted to raise breeding ewes that would drop lambs in the spring for market and drop fleeces, too. I wanted enough animals on my someday farm to have a supplemental income and keep me stocked with lamb chops, but not so many that a single woman with the help of a good dog or two couldn’t maintain them. This class was making my notion of keeping sheep seem like a real possibility. I squirmed in my seat.
All around me, people who were just as excited and curious were asking questions and talking about their farms. They asked about what kind of fences to use, where to set up water tanks, and if it’s true you should buy goldfish for your stock tanks to eat algae. I’d never even thought of that! I drew a goldfish by my notes, while a recently retired couple explained how little they wanted to mow their lawns and hoped a pair of sheep could do it for them. We all had our reasons.
Then it hit me: Most of these people already owned land. I was squatting on someone else’s backyard and trying to will it into production. I tried not to let that get to me or dampen my hopes. So what if I didn’t have ten acres and a green tractor? I had a pasture (kinda). And I had a landlord who already allowed dogs and chickens. Maybe she’d be okay with three sheep and a small pen, some portable fences, and a shed. Raising sheep on rented land wasn’t that crazy.
As the class continued, Chet told us that at one time Vermont was Sheep Central. Long before my great-great-grandmother hopped a boat to America from Presov, Czechoslovakia, 80 percent of my current state was pasture and 20 percent was woodlands. (Now those numbers are reversed.) Apparently, a fellow named William Jarvis signed an agreement with Spain to allow Merino sheep to be raised in the state of Vermont. Napoleon was wreaking havoc in Europe, and the Spanish didn’t want the breeding lines of their native sheep in danger of being depleted. Thanks to that mess, Jarvis was able to start a flock at his famed Weathers-field Farm (from the original English word wethersfield, as in a castrated ram’s field).
Sitting in a historic building, hearing a shepherd talk about his livelihood’s history, surrounded by people as intoxicated by the idea of lanolin on their palms as I was — it was pure heaven. I decided that if I ever bought a ram from Vermont, I would name him Jarvis. My thoughts were interrupted when someone handed me a taxidermied rumen — a sheep stomach hollowed out so that we could see what we’d be filling up with grass in a short while. It smelled like old soup.
When breaks came between lectures, I sidled up to people and introduced myself. I figured we were already in a sheep class together: clearly, we had an icebreaker. I talked with an ex–broadcast journalist who raised Sebastopol geese and dreamed of a flock of rare Soay sheep. He and his wife were here to learn what starting that flock would entail. Another woman sitting to my right had always dreamed of having a fiber flock. After years of spinning other people’s wool, she wanted her own.
Another young farming couple I met already ran a meat CSA. They were new to sheep but had seventy lambs being delivered tomorrow. For that couple today was not an afternoon of speculating about hobby farming; it was a crash course. I had never been so jealous of anything quite so terrifying. Tomorrow this happy couple would be rounding up dozens of lambs. I would have done anything to be in their place. Now I knew why they were asking so many questions about pasture rotation. It was what they’d be doing Tuesday afternoon while I was in an e-commerce meeting. Some days you sigh deeper than others.
There are a lot of ways to keep sheep, but the main options seem to fall into three categories. Some people just raise spring lambs for the table; this keeps things simple and cheap, since summer grass is free and winter hay is not. Alternatively, you could have a full-season flock that you overwinter, shear, and live with all year but do not breed. And then there are people like me, people who hope to experience the entire spectrum of ovine thrills with a “fully fleeced flock,” as it’s called. I would be buying lambs, rotating pasture, breeding with stud rams, buying hay, and becoming a midwife.
All of that sounded perfectly logical until Chet started sharing the complications of lambing. Now we were seeing the darker side of shepherding, the real stuff. Apparently lambing goes as planned “99 percent of the time,” Chet assured us with a grin, but there were a few “situations” we needed to know about. He showed us some of the many ways a lamb could be presented to the world incorrectly. The screen behind him showed lambs being pulled from the womb by their back legs and shepherds in elbow-length gloves going inside a ewe to organize hoof placement, turn bodies, and (I am not making this up) tie ropes and pulleys to akimbo limbs to pull out a stuck lamb. Then there was the additional complication of twins (which is common) and even triplets.
I watched, fascinated, but increasingly nervous. I had just assumed those little guys plopped out on warm grass one day and hung out with Mom until I saw fit to separate them. Not the case. Some lambs die, some get rejected or forgotten by their mothers, some ewes die, and sometimes all of the above happens, and if you don’t have a heat-lamped lambing crate ready for orphans and a vet on call, you could be in a world of trouble. I kept taking notes, nodding, and asking questions. I was not going to waver. The lambing complications did not deter me as much as they made me shake my head and hope I’d never be in a predicament that requires twine and lubricant.
I was a little shaken, but still excited, when we broke for lunch. After we ate we’d be heading down to the barn to get our hands on some livestock. I walked out into the March sunlight and stretched long and lanky as I could.
Even though the temperature hung in the mid-forties, most of us picnicked out on the grass. Bundled in sweaters and scarves, we talked about our future flocks. None of us knew each other personally, but the solidarity of shepherds is strong. There were no real strangers here. We all wanted sheep in our lives, so we were all comfortable with each other. Sitting Indian style on the grass, munching a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on bread I had baked the day before, I felt very pleased with the world.
After lunch we stood outside the red, weathered barn waiting for Chet. Everyone was playing his or her own version of cool, sitting on the outside steps of another outbuilding or leaning against a car, but we were all dying to get inside that barn and get some wool between our fingers. Some of the other participants were able to mask their excitement, but I was having a hard time hiding mine. Even the most level-headed among us turned their heads at every stray baa or whenever the hired, coveralled farm help opened the sliding doors.
I can’t speak for any of the other students, but walking into that barn was like crossing a different kind of threshold. My knees started to buckle, just a little. This wasn’t my barn, and these weren’t my sheep, but this was the first time I was ever such a hands-on participant in the life I wanted to take part in. I didn’t have a partner, or land, or a barn, but I was there. And standing in that barn was 100 percent closer to my own flock than I had been the day before. And I was miles closer than I had been sitting in a Borders café in college, paging through a copy of Hobby Farms magazine and daydreaming about livestock. When I couldn’t believe it was really happening, that I was standing in a sheep barn in rural Vermont, I could reach down and feel a lamb’s ear in my hands. It was happening. Consider me pinched.
Inside the barn, dusty shafts of sunlight revealed fifty ewes and their spring lambs. Multicolored babies skittered and played tag at our feet while their patient parents chewed cud and occasionally baaed at us if we got in their way. Some of the more nervous ewes skittered to the wall, which was lined with a long trough of hay.
I noticed that the trough was made with slats in different sizes, to enable ewes, lambs, and their guard llama to eat at different places and avoid piling on top of each other. It was simple but ingenious. I found myself taking more notes in the barn than I had in the classroom. I jotted down how hay was presented and where medical supplies were stashed. I asked the farm help where they dumped mulch straw. Or did they prefer the deep-bedding method?
During all the barn demonstrations, there was a little ram lamb that wouldn’t leave us alone. He was a little black guy with a white blaze on his head. Every time I stopped petting him, he started chewing on my jeans, so I crouched by him and let him lean against my side while I listened to Chet. He was like my own private fan club, a nice little boost when you’re covered in sheep manure from the knees down.
When Chet asked if anyone would help him catch some ewes to demonstrate handling and foot care, I hopped the fence before anyone else could even get a hand in the air. Together we cornered three or four ewes, and when one tried to race out past me, I crouched and caught the hundred pounds of panic as if I had been doing this my whole life. “Nice catch,” was all Chet said. I beamed.
We spent the rest of the day handling the animals, watching Chet’s demonstration of the proper way to flip a ewe on her rump, tag ears, crop tails, and inject medicine. I kept my pen hand busy, but most of this was the kind of experience you need to practice firsthand to gain any real competency. That couple getting seventy lambs tomorrow would be able to put all this know-how to use right quick. I realized with some sadness that it might be years — maybe even decades — before I could tag lambs of my own.
After all, there was a reality to my limitations, both financially and geographically. I was a low-level corporate employee living on my own, so my income was modest. Although I was thrilled to be using Photoshop at a day job in a town where I could be attacked by a puma, it did limit my possibilities. I couldn’t buy my own farm like some of these other classmates already had. I didn’t even rent a farm anymore. In Idaho I’d had land I could grow into, dozens of acres, even if it wasn’t mine. Here in Vermont, I lived in a small cabin, and of the acres I had, only half an acre wasn’t covered with trees. So, even if by some miracle my landlord would allow me a few sheep or a goat, space was still an issue.
When the barn work was done and we were all back in the classroom, my mood lightened considerably. Before saying thanks and a final “Good luck,” Chet handed each of us a small yellow ledger that looked a lot like a checkbook. It was a lambing record book. It had the University of Vermont logo and a Suffolk lamb outline on the cover. It was a simple record-keeping device and probably cost no more than forty-five cents to print and bind.
It was nothing special, yet I held this little yellow book like a golden ticket. I sneaked a sly glance at the other attendees to see if anyone else was as excited by it as I was. They didn’t seem to be affected. But how could they not be? We were holding a gem, the talisman of a culture that 99.9 percent of Americans would never know. This was a tool possessed only by people who walked in their fields, bought hay by the truckload, and knew more breeds of sheep than of dogs.
As far as I was concerned, it was a passport to the future. I’d taken the class, shared a meal with shepherds, and held a scrambling ewe in my arms today. Now I held a little notebook I would someday write in with bloodstained fingers in a dark April barn. It was my proof that I was one of the few, the hay-stained, the happy.