03/30/2026
Overall we’ve had a great lambing season, and that’s mostly due to the excellent genetics of our flock, a few years of careful management, and this guy right here, who has poured so much into becoming an excellent shepherd. Always learning, always reconfiguring, always improving.
This weekend we had a tough loss— a ewe and her twin lambs— and only I (Hannah) was here to try and save them. I couldn’t do it. John was out of town, a well-deserved break with friends. The emergency vet was over an hour away, and he didn’t get here in time (though when he came, he said it was unlikely he would have been able to save her.) Of course I was home alone with the kids, and it was all mere hours before customers showed up to get their Saturday pre-orders. The ewe was sick and we learned a lot from the loss and from the vet’s postmortem. The cost of first-generation farmers’ educations is often great: physically, emotionally, financially.
I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple days about community. It sure feels significant, to have the love and support of our community. The pop-up customer-friend who showed up a half hour early, when texted, with a dirty chai (my favorite) and helped get the pre-orders ready by noon. The sister-in-law who stood by the phone with her own sheep production handbook open to the page on difficult deliveries, then comforted me when she didn’t make it. The neighbors who answered their phones, even though they couldn’t get here to help. The friends who texted the next morning to check in on me. There are a lot of ways to support your local farmer.
Farming is hard, and beautiful, backbreaking and heartbreaking and heart-filling. Somehow all at once. I hope I never cease to cry when these losses come. And I hope I always smile so big when the healthy lambs jump on their moms’ backs and spring off happily.
