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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…
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Maude and the Open Bar
I am in the midst of a very unusual problem – for me. Since I got sheep, I’ve always been dealing with “not enough.” Not enough grass, not enough moisture. This year though, the weather gods are sending us all the water we’ve been missing. All at once. And my pastures have never looked this…
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Weather, Avengers-style
We are in the middle of a system here, a system that’s going to dump more than a month’s worth of rain on us in a little less than a weekend. For this SW Ontario swamp girl, Alberta weather — always baffling — is officially taking things too far. So what exactly is going on?…
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You Shall NOT PASS!
How do you get sheep from Point A to Point B? What happens when you move from a set-it-and-forget-it approach to grazing to something based on an Adaptive Multi-Paddock philosophy? When I was but a baby shepherd (as opposed to the strapping toddler I am now), I used to spend hours a day tearing down…
