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Grace & Grit Farm, Buffalo, MO (2026)

06/20/2025

We brought our new ram home. He just got weaned, CDT shot and wormed. When we saw him last we knew all we needed to bring him home was a dog crate. But he almost didn’t fit in it. He’s grown so much in a couple of weeks. Which is exciting, we are hoping that he will fill out to be a nice muscular ram. So that he can add some muscle and color to our stock.

We purchased him from Karen and Gerrit Voshel at Rowdy Mountain Katadhin. When we initially purchased our foundation ram, Nacho, for our ewes from them. He was a great ram, great parasite resistant (we never needed to worm him in the time we had him), perfect feet ( we only trimmed them once, but they really didn’t need to be trimmed) and he was easy to handle and be around. Rams can be aggressive to their owners and other sheep. But he was always very mellow and stand offish.

It was encouraging to see these traits and that they would be passed onto the future stock. So it made since to purchase another ram for Karen and Gerrit. So that we could continue to add those traits into future stock.

It’s a bit of a gamble to purchase a young Ram. Because you only know what he looks like right now. Not what he will look like fully grown. How his parasite resistance will be, he looks like he has good feet. So far he has a good personality and hasn’t been aggressive. So hopefully with good nutrition and good handling. He will turn into a Great Ram!

06/12/2025

Some projects of the day:

1. Moving the weaned ewe lambs back into the ewe flock. It’s been over 3 weeks and the mother ewes bags are dried up. This wasn’t easy. We don’t have a working chute or a shepherd’s crook. So it was like the Wild West. Jordan was trying to rope the two ewes and one ram lamb.
2. Then we had one commercial ram lamb who missed out on getting banded with the older group. Poor guy is going to be off for a couple of days.
3. Then I painted the mobile chicken coop/ brooder. I had previously painted it but it was starting to mildew on a side to I added another coat.
4. I also painted the head gate Jordan made me the beginning of this lambing season. Missouri is so humid you have to paint and protect your wood. Otherwise, it’ll start to breaking down and grow mildew or mold.
5. Jordan started some new construction on the mobile coop. We are placing an elevated run area above run for chicks to stay outside. Just till they get big enough to figure out the ramp to go out and back in.

He’s been excited because the wood he is using is wood that he milled himself from the property. It heavy and more durable than the store bought pine.

We are thinking about updating the wheels on it also. Because it’s starting to get too heavy for the wheels it has. We also can’t turn it, it just goes back and forth.

There’s always projects and updates to make on the farm.

06/10/2025

It has been amazing to see Charley started to put on some good weight. Compared to what he looked like initially when we purchased him in July 2024. We purchased him from someone who lived in the woods and didn’t have any type of forage other than hay. What hay we did see on the property look like it was of a poor quality.

He has put on some muscle in anticipation of filling our freezer with some beef. We have had a couple of people recommend us take him to the sale barn. They said a similar quality steer sold around $1800-$1900. We banded him in anticipation for butchering and he wasn’t a quality enough animal to breed to our cow and heifer. When we banded him we found out that he had only one dropped testicle. The other was an undecended testicle. So we banded the one to at least help decrease the chances of the hormones affecting the taste of the meat.

I don’t think he is just there yet to butcher weight. I‘ve heard that one way to tell if they are ready to butcher is to look at the brisket on the cow. If it doesn’t sway back and forth when they walk they are ready to be butchered. But that might just be bad advice.

06/08/2025

The other day we went over to Rowdy Mountain Katadhin and looked at a possible future breeding ram lamb. They had posted on their page about getting some color at their farm. So I privately messaged them to inquire about if they were wanting to retain the lamb or sale the lamb. So we communicated and they told me about a couple of ram lambs that they would be selling in the future. So we went over to check out the rams. Take a look at the ewes and rams of the lambs they had for sale. Then we decided on a ram lamb. This little guy is a triplet. Usually breeders will separate one of the triplets because the mother ewe won’t have enough milk to adequately feed all the lamb. But this mother ewe was able to adequately feed all 3 without any problems all while maintaining her body composition. She was a larger red ewe, which we are wanting to add in some larger lambs. To add in the benefit of a more muscular carcass for butchering. His father they said likes to throw some color with his lambs which is evident by this lamb. He didn’t have as much muscle as we would have liked on his rump. But he was a very nice and muscular ram for only being 3-4 years old.

We have purchased from Rowdy before. When we started this journey, we started looking to find a ram for breeding and we found them to be close by us and affordable. So we purchased our initial ram from them. When we started I wasn’t interested in having something pretty in the pasture. I was more focused on finding something easy for a learning shepherdess. So my focus was on finding something with great parasite resistance, good feet, great mothering and something muscular. So our first ram had all of these critical criteria. He also never exhibited any type of ram like behavior and he stayed away from us when we came out to the pasture. We’ve also never needed to worm him and we trimmed his feet once, but he really didn’t need his feet to be trimmed. So after having such a positive experience, I was more than happy to purchase more stock through them.

Some of our other registered ewes we purchased through someone else are having some problems with parasite resistance. So this is going to be a focus on our breeding program for now. Until I will be able to hard cull the stock that are giving us problems. So when we purchase stock in the future. I will want to ensure that all future stock have good parasite resistance. So it is comforting to purchase from someone who makes it a priority to have good stock associated with their name. The color is just an added bonus. But such a pretty one at that.

We won’t be able to breed him this year. Earliest he would most likely be able to breed would be in October or November, when he turns 6-7 months old. So we plan to us him in the spring or fall of 2026. If we attain some additional ewes from some recommended people. Then we can use him to breed them in late fall of 2025.

His name at Rowdy Mountain Katadhin is Dusty. I’m not sure if he will keep that name. Or if I’ll have to rename him something more flashy. I have higher hopes for this little ram. We will see what he grows up to be.

06/07/2025

You always get a little excited when you score a good deal. We found a 15-20 gallon aluminum pot at a swap meet at a somewhat local cave for $40. When they average $80-$200 every where else.

Now we have a pot that we can use for scalding chickens to remove feathers for processing our future meat birds.

A swap meet is like a large outdoor garage sale. People bring everything to them. Clothes, guns, vegetables, plants, and animals. They bring anything and everything. People trade and batter at these meets.

It’s times like these that I appreciate growing up and going to garage sales with my grandma. Some of the garage sales were “drive by” garage sales where they didn’t really have anything good enough to stop by for. This sale was so big that we had to rent a golf cart to drive around the whole area of rows and rows of people selling their wares. There was a couple of things I wish I had splurged on like an antique coffee grinder, butter churn and other fun antique decorations.

It always exciting to score a good deal.

06/05/2025

Lambing season 2025 is over. We have a total of 8 lambs and our last lamb born on May 10th and first lamb was February 8th. So we had lambs over a 3 month period. Which isn’t at all ideal. I would prefer to have lambs in a month period and then be done. I’m not sure if it’s a ram issue or if the ewes are ovulating every 21 days.

We seemed to have a large amount of rams this year. But we didn’t flush our ewes this year. We had 3 ewes, 2 commercial and 1 registered. The one that is registered is such a cutie. But I’m hoping that she doesn’t inherit her mommas decreased parasite resistance. Hopefully she takes after her daddy in that aspect.

Then 5 rams, we are leaving only 2 rams intact mostly because of their coloring. The hope is to be able to sell as breeding stock. If they continue to grow and show promise. So that means good feet, parasite resistance and good weight gain and body frame. We want to ensure that any stock we sell as breeding stock will only advance the Katadhin breed.

We had 3 abortions, which is a first. It’s been upsetting and I’ve been trying to figure out why this has been happening. We were able to send one of the fetuses off to get tested to see what the issue could be. We should be hearing back anytime now about results of the testing.

We had one male twin die. His momma smothered him. It was a cold day and the lambs were cuddling in a dog house. The momma decided to get in there with them and laid on one.

05/11/2025

One of our lamb ewes had to get doctored up today. I noticed a puncture on her face the other day. Mentioned it to Jordan. He said that she must of rubbed on some barbed wire. Our perimeter fencing consists of woven wire and barbed wire over the woven wire. We took a better peek at it today. Jordan said it looked like she might have gotten bite by a coyote. That it was a narrow bite and you can see the teeth marks on the jaw and lip. She also has a cut on her lip that’s open but not bleeding. So we doctored her up. Put some blue kote on the wound. Then administered some penicillin and administered her covexin immunization.

We usually let our livestock’s guardian dogs in with the sheep at night. To help protect the sheep from predators like coyotes, raccoons, skunks, badgers and other varmints. So I’ll need to make a point in putting the LGD in with the sheep.

11/06/2024

Last month, Jordan made me a raised bed with some extra cinder blocks that we had from our house construction.

So I’m trying something new this year. It’s a first time for planting garlic. I planted it the first of October and it’s exciting to see it starting to grow and get big. I put in some hay mulch to help prevent it from freezing in the future months. I purchased the garlic seeds from someone in Springfield. He did a mixture cross of different types of hardneck varieties. Hopefully they will continue to grow and then we can harvest a nice little harvest in July. I planted over 55 bulbs. I had to put a cover over it. Because between the chickens mulching and digging in fresh soil, the cats trying to find a nice litter box and then there is the dogs and them liking to dig holes. I have to protect my garden space.

Grace & Grit Farm

06/20/2025

06/12/2025

06/10/2025

06/08/2025

06/07/2025

06/05/2025

05/11/2025

11/06/2024

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