Tending to what matters most.
Tending is where the How of Providence Lane Homestead is laid out clearly and concretely. Here you’ll find specific information about adaptive multi-paddock grazing, animal care and handling, welfare standards and accountability, the characteristics of this place, and how wool and fibre move from land and flock into the world. This is the practical spine of the work — the decisions, frameworks, and methods that guide day-to-day care.
If you’re looking for how grazing is planned, how animals are managed, what standards shape welfare and accountability, or how fibre is produced and made available, this is the place to start. The focus here is on clarity and transparency — what is done, how it’s done, and the structures that hold the work steady over time.
Yes, there’s some overlap with Living and that’s intentional. Practice and experience can’t be entirely separate on a working homestead. But the emphasis here is different: this isn’t the place for values discussions — that happens in Living. Instead, this section gathers the practical elements once they’ve settled enough to be named and shared. Living is the foundation, Tending is the house.
From time to time, fibre or related products from the homestead are made available here. They’re always an outcome of tending rather than its purpose, so availability is seasonal and finite — products may appear once and then disappear. Two years ago, one of our ewes gave us an abundance of milk and I spent weeks making soap. Unless that happens again, we may not have soap for the foreseeable future. If you’re looking for something specific but I’m not the right fit directly, I have a community of trusted local retail and small-business partners and I’m glad to help make connections. Just ask me!
If you’re interested in the grounded details of how this place is cared for, then you’re in the right spot — just you go and pull up a chair.
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Notes from Tending
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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…
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Choosing the Best Feeder For You (Well Actually, For Your Flock)
How does the feeder you choose impact the wool you sell? A fibre shepherd’s perspective When people talk about hay feeders, the conversation almost always revolves around one thing: WASTE. Which feeder wastes the least hay?Which feeder is most efficient?Which feeder will stretch the winter feed bill the furthest? Those are reasonable questions. Hay is…
Providence Lane Homestead 