Come Hail or Shine

How was your Sunday? Ours involved being battered, bruised and bloodied by an army of sheep. Amidst hail, sleet (or was that actually snow), rain, and infrequent sunny spells we managed to complete a full check-up of half our flock.

The lambs needed vaccinating. All the sheep needed a foot bath, worming/drenching and tagging, and the older ewes needed their hooves checked and trimmed. Sound easy? Well of course nothing is as easy as it sounds. Apart from numerous cuts, I got kicked in the mouth and have a fat lip, and Jen dislocated her thumb (it popped back in thankfully). The 'beast', as we call our tipping machine, did a great job once we got the hang of how to use it effectively and the run we set up worked well although most of the sheep needed coaxing into the beast and I frequently found myself wallowing in the mud trying to force an unruly ewe through the foot bath. More than once I found myself in a compromising position behind a ewe trying to prevent her from backpeddling. Jen always threatened to whip out (not a good choice of words I know) the camera so I am thankful at least she didn't - Australians have a dodgy reputation with sheep already so I didn't want to provide anything more for the gossipers among you.

For the fashion conscious, all of the sheep we checked today now have blue mohawks so we can tell them apart from those that need doing next time. I swear by the end of this we'll have a flock of multi-coloured sheep.

At the moment cheese is the furthest thing from our mind (and we are only shaking our heads at the prospect of actually milking some of these sheep), but once summer comes and we can ship the lambs and many of the ewes off to [insert euphemistic term for knackers yard here] we will have a more managable flock, but the lessons we are learning now and the experience we are gaining will become invaluable. 100+ sheep at the moment is just a little too many to manage effectively, but eventually when we taste that first piece of Manchego or Cheddar, I am sure this day will be long forgotten...

We Have Been Approved!

The first official stage of our venture into cheesemaking has passed the muster. After several communiques with the Oregon Department of Agriculture we submitted our construction/renovation plans for the Milk Barn/Cheese Making Facility early last week. This morning we received a phone call from the ODA to tell us that the plans have been approved.

What does this mean? Well it means that the layout we have designed to incorporate all of the construction elements of the PMO has passed the ODA's regulatory assessment. This means things like overall layout, position of rooms, access routes and walkways, location of doors, position and number of sinks, etc is done. It also means that our construction materials, wall coatings, etc have been OK'd too.

Some of the extra safety precautions we had included proved to be unnecessary, but we will include them just the same. This is a huge weight off our shoulders because it means that we can essentially secure our general contractor now and actually begin construction. Our plans have been passed down to an ODA rep in Grant's Pass who will be scheduling a visit in the not too distant future.

As I mentioned before, the roofing contractors are due to begin Monday so its full steam ahead. On another funny note, one of the 4 ewes who had not lambed gave birth to twins out in the fields today. That was completely unexpected. Both are doing well despite being delivered in appaling weather conditions (we've had rain and there was snow dropped overnight on the surrounding hills).

All in all its been a good week as we found out from our vet that our chief sheep herder Marlowe has finally come back negative for Valley Fever. We'll continue with the rest of the medicine he's on until its gone, but after 2 years and plenty of aggrevation, we might have finally seen the end of it.

Spring has Sprung

The daffodils are covering the garden beds, pink blossom covers the cherry trees, and Spring has finally descended upon us. I've noticed the weather has definitely got warmer in the mornings and there is still light in the sky at 8.00pm.

Lambing is now over for the season, only one of the 4 remaining ewe's gave birth, twins to be exact and they were both big and healthy. On the farm front, we have signed a contract to have the roof of the milk room replaced. That should start sometime early next week and take about 3-4 days. Once the new plumbing lines that are presently being installed are done we can get in to test the septic system. We had an inspection done yesterday and the tank is usable as long as the pipes are clear which we'll need the water for. Let's hope they are because a new septic system will cost us around $10,000 and require the milk room floor to be dug up in places (we will have to re-lay that anyway so it's not such a big deal).

Once the new roof is on we can get inside the milk room and begin removing all of the interior walls, exposing the wiring and mapping out where everything will go. All the old stanchions will need cutting out as well.

You can finally change your bookmarks as well. We have got the URL for the farm working at last. At the moment it redirects here but in time I will update it so that the Blog is a separate link and the rest of the site will cover other aspects of the farm and what we are doing.

http://www.catesbyfarms.com

The Milk Barn

This is the Milk Barn that will form the centerpiece to the farm in the years to come. As you can see it needs renovating badly, but everything is there that we need.

Eventually it will house the milking room, the cheese room, a bathroom, and an aging/storage room. Because it has to comply with strict state regulations for us to receive Grade A certification, we need to do more than just 'fix it up'. There is a septic system which is being evaluated next week and then we are getting an industrial hygienist in to determine exactly what will need to be addressed, before we get the Oregon Department of Agriculture in to assess our plans.

First item on the list of things to be done though is to re-roof. That's a certainty and we are getting quotes on that drawn up at the moment. Then we could be faced with reinstalling a new septic system, relaying the concrete floor according to the PMO (Pasteurization and Milk Ordinance) code, and block wall resealing. The actual internal timber framing and construction seems to be the easy part (maybe it's because that's the part we can do ourselves).

So, stay tuned for updates or follow the project on the Milk Barn Renovation links below.

Lesson #23

A three-legged lamb can still run faster than a two-legged man.

No it's not a play on the "Four legs good, two legs bad" meme from Animal Farm, although it could very well be. We noticed one of our lambs limping yesterday morning, so with crook in hand and using our best marshalling skills we have learnt we spent a good fifteen minutes chasing it around the barn. Sheep might be stupid creatures but when they realize one of their own is being 'hunted' they close ranks surprisingly cleverly.

Still, after hooking it at least three times I finally managed to catch it. One of its hooves has split, with the entire hoof casing on one toe almost peeled off. Lovely I hear you say. Alas there is little you can do in a situation like this other than disinfect the wound and isolate the animal, which we have done. If there is little improvement in a couple of days we might have to become creative and bandage the leg. Thankfully all the sheep have now been vaccinated and the booster shot on March 30 should be quite smooth.

Tomorrow we start demolition on the interior of the apartment.

Oregon Cheese Guild Festival

This morning we drove down to Central Point just north of Medford to attend the Oregon Cheese Guild's Festival. This was the first real opportunity we have had to see Oregon cheesemakers and taste their wares and there were certainly some fine cheeses to taste. Coupled with some local vintners and breadmakers it was a great introduction to Oregon farmstead products and an experience we can certainly add to in the future.

Special note must go to what I thought was the best cheese of the show - an aged Gouda from the Willamette Valley Cheese Co..

This week we have had contractors coming and going, providing us with quotes for various jobs around the farm that need doing. I alluded to a long laundry list a while back, well recladding the machinery shed is first on the list, followed by a renovation job in the apartment inside it. This is going to be a tear down to the bare frame, mould removal (by experts) and then a complete rebuild (by us). We had planned on doing this later but we figured that the building experience would be extremely useful for the milk room and cheese kitchen renovation in summer. Regarding the milk room etc, we have an industrial hygienist assessing the structure next week and the completion of the plumbing also on target for late next week.

Job Description: The Sheep Wrangler

What better way to spend a relaxing Sunday than being gored by wild 80 pound 'lambs' being given their 6-week CD/T vaccinations (for overeating disease and tetanus for you laymen and women). And oh yes I have the shredded pants to prove it. They look such sweet and innocent things don't they (the lambs, not the pants)? Yeah right!

Actually I enjoyed it once I got the hang of it. Now I know why shepherds use a crook and why the Kiwi's invented the gambrel, both are essential tools for capture and restraint and I must admit I had a small chuckle when Jen ordered them as I wondered whether we were really going to use them or if they were just for 'show'. So we've done half of them today in just over 2 hours and we will do the remaining half in another two days with a few of the recent newborns waiting a few weeks until we do the booster on the first lot.

It looks like a massacre in the field at the moment, we used a red spray paint on them to indicate they had been vaccinated and there are now 35 lambs walking around with what look like gunshot wounds. I do hope the neighbour doesn't think I'm just a lousy shot.

Jack Frost still lives here

As I wrap my hands around another cup of coffee and the feeling slowly returns to my fingers, things continue to take shape around us. We've secured our milking flock, or the beginnings of it from the most reputable of locations -Vermont Shepherd. As their web page proudly announces - "Vermont Shepherd Cheese is the country's most famous and oldest sheep milk cheese."

So, to acquire both lambs and yearlings from such a well established farm is a huge bonus for us. No our plans as I outlined in an earlier post haven't changed, just the source of our sheep has changed, and we want the best we can get, so with these sheep coming with full milking records of mothers and probably grandmothers, we will have solid records from which to begin our operation. That means selecting 25 of our own flock to keep for at least a year so we will keep a mix of older ewes to provide lambs for us to sell next year, and lambs born this season that have the greatest proportion of Dorset in them for future breeding.

It all seems very complicated at first, but this aspect of it, the genetics and the flock management is one aspect of this life that I really enjoy getting my head around. I think once we have our 25 Vermont Shepherd sheep and got rid of all but 25 of our current sheep I will feel much more like we are on the path to proper flock management.