My stone soup adventures a couple of weeks ago were mostly a bust, with one delightful and important exception: I relearned key subtleties of active shepherding that I’d let slide over the last few years. Chief among them: the essence of shepherding is creating the opportunity for sheep to have a sense of discovery about their food. Parents will not be surprised.
The challenges of keeping everyone well-nourished in this exceptionally dry summer are leading me into the shepherding equivalent of stone soup: creative use of the patches of good forage and biodiversity that are still around, while still keeping the flock safe from fire threats.
Saturday, 4 January. As I’m writing this, we’re experiencing a Very High Fire Danger day here in Tas, but nothing like what they are going through on the mainland. I’m inside, out of the heat, but listening to the 50 kph winds whistling around my house, and obsessively checking the Tas Fire Services website to see if any new fires have started up anywhere nearby. The southerly change (front) that is making it so windy has reduced the temperature, and blown away this morning’s smoke haze. Knowing just how dry the landscape is, though, keeps me on tenterhooks.
In the continuing extra dry conditions for Tasmania, shepherding has once again become a priority. We’ve had less than half of our annual average rainfall over the last 12 months, and with the Indian Ocean Dipole at a record high, it doesn’t seem likely we’ll see much precipitation before early 2020 when the sea surface temperature pattern is expected to return to a more neutral configuration. (See my other farm journal, Yarns from the Farm, for a discussion of the IOD.) Knowing what’s causing the dry, and even when it’s likely to finally let up, is useful but doesn’t get us very far in terms of how to manage this gracefully. Shepherding will help.
My stone soup adventures a couple of weeks ago were mostly a bust, with one delightful and important exception: I relearned key subtleties of active shepherding that I’d let slide over the last few years. Chief among them: the essence of shepherding is creating the opportunity for sheep to have a sense of discovery about their food. Parents will not be surprised.
Saturday, 4 January. As I’m writing this, we’re experiencing a Very High Fire Danger day here in Tas, but nothing like what they are going through on the mainland. I’m inside, out of the heat, but listening to the 50 kph winds whistling around my house, and obsessively checking the Tas Fire Services website to see if any new fires have started up anywhere nearby. The southerly change (front) that is making it so windy has reduced the temperature, and blown away this morning’s smoke haze. Knowing just how dry the landscape is, though, keeps me on tenterhooks.
In the continuing extra dry conditions for Tasmania, shepherding has once again become a priority. We’ve had less than half of our annual average rainfall over the last 12 months, and with the Indian Ocean Dipole at a record high, it doesn’t seem likely we’ll see much precipitation before early 2020 when the sea surface temperature pattern is expected to return to a more neutral configuration. (See my other farm journal, Yarns from the Farm, for a discussion of the IOD.) Knowing what’s causing the dry, and even when it’s likely to finally let up, is useful but doesn’t get us very far in terms of how to manage this gracefully. Shepherding will help.
“We are tree-herds, we old Ents. Few enough of us are left now. Sheep get like shepherd, and shepherds like sheep, it is said; but slowly, and neither have long in the world. It is quicker and closer with trees and Ents, and they walk down the ages together.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
When I first started farming I planted trees for my own sake, for the aesthetic of copses to break up the grassland expanses, and for the pleasure of hearing wind in the boughs. Then, as I learned more about how ecosystems work, and the pivotal role of diversity in creating resilience, I planted trees for the sake of the land.
Back in my university student days, I took up photography with all the enthusiasm you would expect. I even learned how to develop and print my own photos. In my zeal, I took my trusty SLR camera with me everywhere, on every adventure. After a couple of years, though, I realised my world had shrunk to what I could see through the lens: I was framing my experiences by what would fit in the limited rectangle of the viewfinder. So I quit taking photographs, relying on the emulsion sheet of memory to record my adventures, hoping to regain a wide-angle experience. I regret not having a photographic record of those years, but I'm sure I was more present in each moment as a result.
As often happens to me, I mis-remembered this quote. It's not from the original Wilde play "The Importance of Being Earnest", but rather is a song entitled "A Handbag is not a Proper Mother" from the musical Ernest in Love, based on Wilde's play. Nevertheless, I'm sticking with my version, as I frequently feel like more like a suitcase than a handbag in the context of raising bottle lambs!
It was a chilly, windy day on the hill yesterday, but a perfectly lovely winter's graze. The flock currently have the run of White Gum Wood, the Grass Gully, Eagle Tree and the Back Gully. While there is a certain amount of biodiversity in all of those paddocks, the best native ecosystems are in the adjoining reserves.
The scientist in me finds unexplained illness among my flock deeply unsatisfying. You may remember that I lost 4 ewes, none of them pregnant, during lambing. The post-mortem, frustratingly, could neither confirm nor rule out the most likely culprit: pulpy kidney (clostridium toxicity). There have been no further deaths, but I've been keeping an eye on a ewe who began losing her fleece not long after the mystery ailment episode.
A week ago Saturday was the official end of lambing, though no one apparently told the ewes. On Tuesday, ANZAC day, I found Zac, apparently disdained by his birth mother in favour of the other twin. I did my best to get them back together in the paddock. Zac was willing, but mama was not. Zac is now my baby--or more accurately, I'm his mama--a relationship that will continue as long as both of us are alive.
Lambing is due to start the ides of March (15th) and continue for 5 weeks. Some of the ewes are looking distinctly pregnant, so I decided to get them into their lambing paddock early so they can settle down, create some short grass "camps" and generally be calm and peaceful in the run-up to lambing.
The sheer length and density of grass on the property is a long-term boon and a short term struggle. Capital "S" shepherding, the style I've been using and telling you about for the last 3 years is just not what's needed or even possible right now. I'm trying out the idea for myself of thinking of this as a time of small "s" shepherding--all of the many things I need to do to ensure the health of the animals, whether or not I move them any distance on a given day. I have to admit I miss the big Shepherding days and the hours spent wandering with the flock.
