♪♪ Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb… ♪♪

Pretty close, with just a few tweaks! Terah here to bring you in the loop on our brand new three little lambs!

How The Lambs Made It to The Farm

It was around early May when my husband and I found ourselves standing in front of our chicken pasture wondering what we were going to do with all of that incredible grass. With the soft wind coming across our land, it was as if we were standing beachside watching majestic waves roll through. Tall grass in the wind is a beautiful thing.

Our meat birds were on the grass and mowing down their part, and laying hens were all out on (and dominating!) all grass in their areas.  We’ve been taking care of this soil for a few years now, and it shows how happy it is by growing incredibly well. The only thing is, we want to keep the grass at a healthy height. There is such a thing as too short of grass and too long of grass. We knew we needed it cut, but how were we going to go about it?

Solutions to Our Grass Issue

We had the option to open the cows up into the chicken pasture, but we’ve done that before and I wasn’t prepared to chase cows away from destroying our chicken mobiles…again. Our other option was to mow the grass down. In our eyes, that was a waste.

After standing there for a while I was blinded by a pretty little lightbulb that came on in this mind of mine and I was taken back to a conversation I was having with a good friend. She is a fan of lamb and made it quite clear that she would love it if our farm ended up with some. The idea became a discussion between my husband and I, which then lead to a phone call about purchasing three Katahdin lambs. Why three? Because I like the number. Haha! Next thing we know, they’re being delivered to their (our) new home.  

We have lambs…now what?

We watch them eat! And holy smokes do they eat! We work really well with movable electric fencing which allows us to move the lambs to different sections of the pasture. This insures they don’t get picky on the grass they mow down and we can figure out where they’re fertilizing. We also put in a water tank so they have access to good drinking water. 

So that was that.  Just sit back and watch the pasture be taken care of by the same animals it takes care of. Circle of life!

Easy as that right? Nope!

One day I look out of our kitchen window and notice a lamb out of their area. We put it back in. Another day, another lamb out. We put that one back in. It had to have taken a solid month of doing this dance with these things before I just said “You win!”

The lambs had full range over the chicken pasture and I was completely fine with it. You know, it’s a silly thing to buy sheep fencing and expect the sheep to stay in. I couldn’t believe it. Haha! Determination is an incredible thing! What a sight to watch those lambs jump right over it.

The Grass is Always Greener

One amazing morning I set out to do the feeding and just about fell over in fright when I noticed zero lambs in the chicken pasture. My heart was racing while at the same time my mind was calculating how much money was lost.

Suddenly, I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see ALL THREE LAMBS in with the cows. How the…?! What the…? Oh crap! So lambs like to dance. Or at least they like to watch me dance around while I try to figure out how to get them back into the chicken pasture which I thought was enough for them. Grass is always greener on the other side. How true a saying. Funny thing was that the grass in the chicken pasture was more lush than any other part of our farm.

Maybe they wanted to make new friends with the cows, maybe they wanted me to have a minor heart attack, maybe it’s just in their nature to be wanderers, or maybe, just maybe, the fencing in the chicken pasture wasn’t properly setup for lambs. Lessons learned and we continue to get better!

Our friendship with the lambs continue to grow with compassion and understanding. They continue to find their way through the fencing to get to the other pastures which irritates the ding dong out of me but nothing beats watching them run around out there, as happy as can be.

It’s all about growing things with love. Growing our children, our community, our vegetables, our meat. Always with love.

Until next time!

– Terah