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A Class Of Our Own
A couple of weeks ago I was at the Campaign for Wool Canada’s annual conference in Calgary and I had the opportunity to talk about wool classing. That got me thinking. . . What do other wool-producing countries do? What do we do? How do the two compare? And most importantly, what would a truly…
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Typecast
If you’ve been paying attention to any kind of species — be they dogs, poultry, pigs or sheep — you may have seen that individuals rewarded in the show ring often have traits that filter down (eventually) into the general population. What is the relationship between livestock shows and the animals we see in the…
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Fat-bottom Girls
It’s Thanksgiving Monday here in Canada and as many of us roll around the house in various states of repentance, it seems as good a time as any to consider Feeding Sheep. Specifically, heritage breed sheep. What’s the same? What’s different? And when you factor in our Canadian climate, what gives?? I came to sheep…
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Missing Data, A Wooly Gap
Perhaps you read my recent post about how I’d go about making Canadian wool a viable value chain. I had a wonderful exchange with a lady named Dianne and it got me thinking. Maybe it would help, I thought, if people could see what I’m talking about. So let’s take a look. It’s Wool Month…
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Sh**, Or Get Off The Pot
Once upon a time, wool as a raw material was ubiquitous. Nowadays though, wool is a sliver of the textile/fibre landscape. There are many advocacy groups – both local and national – who are trying to revitalize wool and have been holding meetings and conversations FOR EVER. And I don’t know about you but I…
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Elbow Room
It’s September 3 and I am sitting on the tractor, moving purposefully ahead at a slow-but-steady pace. In front of me, the forks are pushing aspen saplings forward as the tires roll inexorably over them. Behind me, the growling, crunching mayhem of a flail mower, hammers swinging in a clatter of shredding violence, splinter and…
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The Grass We Leave Behind
There’s an old idea about grazing that measures success by what disappears. When it comes to our native pastures, I’m discovering the better metric might be what remains. When I think about it, it makes sense. As a shepherd, I want my sheep to eat their fill. When it comes to some kinds of forage,…
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Everybody, OUT.
It’s July. The sun is shining, the grass is green. . . why is the flerd eating hay?? They don’t like it, not at all, but for right now, deferring our grazing is the wisest choice. On July 1st, we did something that maybe seems a little odd. I pulled all the sheep off pasture,…
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Grazing Glossary
You may have heard of terms like “rotational grazing” or “continuous grazing” or even “adaptive grazing.” A lot of the time, these labels get used interchangeably but, as in most things, the devil is in the details. They are not the same. So what do I do here? What kind of grazing is the “right…
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The Geometry of Grazing
I try my best to lay out our grazing pods so that we can get an even impact across the area. I’m also — not gonna lie — trying to minimize the amount of work I have to do. . . “Work smarter, not harder” amiright? But what makes sense to me – and is…
