intensive grazing

I do my best at this thing called grass farming, but frankly, I'm quite the novice. My husband, Bob, is a wealth of knowledge and my main advisor. He has an animal science degree from NDSU, been a dairyman for many years, and now uses intensive grazing methods on the organic farm where he works raising grass-fed beef. I have books and magazines, but I like just asking Bob the most. :)

Today I made some shepherding decisions. The sheep have been in paddock #1 for about a month, and its looking pretty chewed down. On the other hand, paddocks 2 and 3 are looking lush with grass and some weeds. This morning saw Elizabeth, Karl and I out with various tools working on the fence line east of the barn. Sheep are quite good at escaping through a less-than-secure fence, and we have several places not very secure.

Karl cut a hog panel, drove two steel posts in and attached the panel to finish off the far east end gap between a gate and the outer fence. (we have a great 6-string barbed fence around the perimeter of the pasture/paddocks.)

Meanwhile, Elizabeth was adding a wire fence (specific kind unknown to me and Bob's not here) to another area, and I drilled some boards to support fence around the waterer that the hogs had torn down last spring.

It was hot but the mosquitos are horrible so we are in long-sleeved shirts and jeans. . .and hoods, too, in Karl's case.

This is a roll of wire fence we found out in the trees. It has come in very handy. The farm had old, wooden fence for horses when we bought the place. It had served well but has now fallen apart and time to replace with something stronger and good for sheep. One day paddocks 2 and 3 will get seperated with a functional fence, too.

The first picture at the top of the blog is the sheep in paddock 1 as I'm circling around them to switch pastures. They got all excited and ran through the gate. About 20 to 30 feet into the new paddock they abruptly stopped and dropped their heads. Aaah. New pasture; life is good.

Icelandic Sheep

Isn't she a beauty! Here's one of our mama sheep with her twins. Icelandic Sheep are originally from. . . Iceland (could you guess?), however ours came from eastern MN. Verna, pictured above, came with 4 other ewes in May, 2009 to join Bubba, the Icelandic Ram. Now we have 8 growing lambs for September sale. They are all quite content in their own pasture with plenty of room to run, fresh air, and a shed to get out of the sun/wind. Theirs is a good life.

Icelandic Sheep have long fiber wool. Since the above pic, the ewes and Bubba have been sheered so they look a bit smaller. With our wonderful warm temps this week, I think they were glad to shed the wool. We have four fleeces and the sheerer took two. I'm still wondering what to do with it. Any ideas? :)

Icelandic meat is said to be more tender and mild-tasting. As this is our first year raising them, I'll have to wait until Fall to find out. But all the testimonies I've read give me reason to look forward to a good product to sell. If you're interested and live near MN/ND border, email us at grass@wtc-mail.net.