Bergerie Heritage Hill Farm

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Bergerie Heritage Hill Farm

We are Ross (A.K.A. The Shepherd) and Mary-Ellen, 50-something empty-nesters who both come from a long line of farmers. Our farm is small: we own just slightly more than 6 acres so we rent our barn and another 90 acres or so of crop and pasture land from nearby neighbours. We believe in old-fashioned, self-reliant agricultural practises that rely more on effort, ingenuity, imagination and the wisdom of Nature than on purchased inputs. We are constantly salvaging and re-purposing things to better suit our needs and budget and have consciously adopted the old Depression-era credo “Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do or Do Without” as our unofficial farm motto. Our main commercial crop is market lambs; we keep a small flock of approximately 65-75 ewes and 2 or 3 rams. The customer list for our freezer lambs grows steadily every year, with the unreserved lambs being sold at auction in St. Hyacinth. We also raise a few pigs on pasture each summer, along with a couple of cows, horses and chickens. In our un-Disneyfied version of farming the sun doesn’t always shine; there is always mud, mess, manure, machinery malfunctions, unpredictable weather, uncooperative livestock (and unfortunately, sometimes dead stock), too many weeds, too many stones, pesky insects and other forms of natural chaos too numerous to mention. We always have more work than daylight, more month than money and sometimes it feels as though we rack up more failures than successes. We don’t necessarily enjoy these occasional uncomfortable challenges, we simply accept them as the cost of admission to this home-made, deeply soul-satisfying life we have chosen. It is not always easy but it is always worth it.