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Demon of Screamin’
Shearing alpacas is very different from shearing sheep. Most of my alpacas take their haircuts in stride – Baby Sundae in particular is an absolute angel – but there is one alpaca who takes it personally. And Holy Mary on a Breadstick, does she ever let us know! Alpacas, like their sheepy brethren, need an…
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Mentors!
Mentors are those folks who’ve already made the mistakes you’re thinking about making. The number of people I speak to who want mentors – but don’t want to listen to those same mentors – never fails to astonish me. So let’s talk about mentors. Do you really want a mentor? If you do, how do…
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Snootch Watch 2026
“Hey.” That was the opening, the first line in the text message beamed directly to Alex the Shearer. While most people are pouring themselves a civilized second coffee, I was crouched behind Fat Amy with my phone pointed at her nether regions. I knew Alex would be up, I just thought it was my duty…
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The Quality of the Question
The Quality of the Question determines the Quality of the Answer. . . So whether you’re talking to your veterinarian or typing with AI, how do you make sure you’re collecting and sharing the information you’ve got in a way that will actually be useful for the care decisions that must come next? DISCLAIMER: The…
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Wither the Weather?
For years I have been collecting as much data as I could about the land I’m on. If it could be eyeballed, I eyeballed it. I’ve crawled on my hands-and-knees, dug holes, fought my way through thickets and learned (at the most basic level possible) to ID plants. But my grazing reports had a major…
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Winter With Better Lighting
Counter-cultural opinion!! Spring Sucks. When the temperatures are bouncing all over the thermometer and the snow is pounding, how to keep all the newly-naked sheep comfortable? What exactly am I managing here? Don’t you think that there’s something about crossing that time change line — losing the hour, God help us — that, once you’ve…
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Don’t You Trust Me?
Call them Sales Agreements or Sales Contracts, is it time to move past the “handshake deal”? What does paperwork have to do with livestock farming? There’s a quiet discomfort around sales agreements in agriculture. Sometimes, I can feel it when I bring them up. There’s a pause, something in the air changes and I detect…
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The Story of the Q-Pen
Is quarantine always necessary? Quarantine was a process I built from the ground up and with some great advice. I didn’t think much about it, until I had to. This is our quarantine story. In 2020, I was excited about all things sheep. I had just gotten myself a few cross-bred ewes, a single purebred…
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Rewilding vs. Restoration
Rewilding is making a lot of noise in land stewardship circles. What is it? Will it work in Alberta? How different is rewilding from restoration? In recent years, the word rewilding has become popular in conversations about land care. It carries a hopeful feeling — the idea that if we simply step back and let…
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Care and Handling
Sheep and humans have been interacting for thousands of years but it’s only relatively recently that humans began using “systems” to manage the regular tasks that are part of sheep care. For those of us without them — no chutes, no crowding tubs, no panels — how can we handle sheep the “olde-fashioned” way? What…
Providence Lane Homestead 