Sheep 101

The University of Vermont is holding a day-long course for small farms interested in getting started in sheep. It's a basics class over viewing breeds, care, nutrition, diseases, and other common points of interest. It'll be held in three parts of the state, and one not too far from me. It looks like a good way to start taking steps towards my shepherding goals and meeting local people with like interests. So, not sure what date it is but if anyone wants to join me for a Vermont sheep weekend, let me know. Could be fun, out in a cold barn learning to pick hooves and all. I'll make sure to post photos and information when I have it. Hey, just cause I left one farm doesn't mean I don't have to set up a whole new one here. More to come, that's for sure.

jazz sings in sandpoint

I'll miss this place

As many of you know, I'm heading to Vermont soon, and leaving my life in the west in about a week. Already the chickens are gone, the rabbits are about to be adopted. I had to buy eggs at the grocery store and felt dirty, poor even. I hated doing it.

In a few days I'll be packed up in my car and on the road with just Jazz and Annie, which is exactly how we started. I look outside my windows here at the farm and see piles of snow over 10 feet high, and remember how it was in July. How green, how bursting it was with animals and noises, humming honey bees, crowing roosters, cooing hens and howling coyotes. There were deer outside the kitchen window, and moose and their calves in snowdrifts. And how I would walk outside barefoot and go to the garden gates (Now, impassable by a wall of hardpack snow) and pick out anything I wanted to eat right in my gardens. For a few months this place was an Eden. An imperfect Eden cause it had it's problems. Okay, so it was maybe just a Den but it was our Den. A place for two strong dogs, some birds, rabbits and a girl and visiting friends to bake and talk and play music. To grow food, learn the fiddle and sing outloud by a campfire in the backyard.

I'll start over, this isn't the end of ColdAntler, it's just the end of the Idaho Chapter, the first chapter of my striving for a simpler life. It's just sad to know it's over. I think our old boy Buson said it best...

This year.
Yes, even this year.
Has come to an end.