Introductory Column

Lessons on the Farm

My friends laugh when I tell them we raise sheep. I have a hard time calling myself a sheep farmer--but we do raise 24 sheep on 11 acres, and they are not pets. I’ve threatened to include the following plea in our annual Christmas letter, “If anybody saw something in me hinting I would become a sheep farmer, please tell me what it WAS!”

That I’m a mother of two little girls isn’t hard for my friends to believe. That I left the west coast Washington for the east coast version raises a few eyebrows. But how a computer engineer dad and a choral director mom could possibly raise sheep in rural Loudoun County, Virginia is beyond comprehension.

“Why sheep?” my friends ask. That question is logical, the answer perhaps not. “Sheep followed -- literally, because of our Hungarian sheep dog.” I explain. “We got them for Boone.”

“How did you know what to do with sheep?” they ask, slightly amused. I reply: We read Raising Sheep the Modern Way and learned a lot of lessons--the old-fashioned way.

“So you make money on the wool?” they continue. “No,” I explain. “It costs more to have them sheared than what we get selling their wool.” I smile as I remember our first flock of eight and my husband taking time off to bring the “YES SIR, YES SIR eight bags full” of fleece to market. He returned with a whopping $2.39.

They gaze anxiously toward the pasture. “Then what do you do with the sheep?” they ask. In politically-correct DC, we answer in euphemisms, “We sell them at market.” My preschooler’s jingle goes through my head, “TO MARKET, TO MARKET, TO BUY A FAT...”

“That’s when you make money?” “Not exactly,” I answer, biting my lip. Afterall, the costs of a barn, fencing, feed, and veterinary bills outweigh sending ten lambs to market at $50.00 apiece. I haven’t really answered the question.

But five years ago when our first eight ewes were delivered, I awakened the next morning to see them huddled together adjusting to their new farm. As the morning sunshine burned through the fog in the valley, I put on a Celtic CD and was transported miles away from the beltway. At that time I could not have anticipated what these ewes would teach us.

Perhaps we raise sheep because on a late summer’s night when our windows are open, we hear a lamb bleat for her mother. The call and response continue until they find each other, leaving us with only the sound of cicadas and peepers. We raise sheep because the first newborn of every spring reminds us that life is born anew each day. I coax a wet wiggle of white barely standing on knobby knees to find its mother’s teat. When at last the lamb nurses, I sigh, leaving a breath of fog to hang in the chilly spring air.

Most of all, we raise sheep because of the indescribable lessons that come with farming. Our two daughters rejoice over birth and cry over death. They haul feed and water, bottle feed baby lambs, and my six-year-old brags about saving the life of a baby lamb. Our daughters once volunteered their cardboard playhouse turned upside down to corral triplets in our basement utility room, bottle-feeding them indoors six times a day, rather than trooping outdoors to the frozen barnyard. These are just a few of our stories.

When my friends look out over the rolling hills and the Blue Ridge mountains, they say “This is beautiful.” Yes, but I say, farm work and its lessons about life and death are even more beautiful. That’s what “Ann’s Lovin’ Ewe” is about. As you meet my sheep and family, come learn with me about being a lovin’ ewe.

Copyright Ann Stewart 2004
Used by permission
No reprint without author’s permission

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