Catesby Farms

We are a Dairy!!

2010-07-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

Finally all the hard work has paid off. At the beginning of this week we heard back from the Department of Agriculture regarding the milk sample we supplied them. It passed all the required tests easily and we are therefore now an official dairy. Although this part of the state was thick with dairies many years ago they have all since closed and we are now the only licensed dairy in Douglas County, and only the second current sheep dairy in Oregon.

This week we also had further enquiries regarding our milk, so come October when the lambing for this next season starts, we will have plenty of avenues for our milk.

Haying is all but done with just one last field to be baled. We should end up with around 300 bales which is a good 50 more than last year. The rain has finally stopped now and we should be in for a couple of months of fine clear skies. This weekend the dam goes in and as soon as the last hay bales are removed from the field I can start manure spreading. Busy time of the year, but in a month or so we will have the calm before the storm of lambing and milking.

Hey June.

2010-06-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

With the weather finally breaking at the end of last week, we are now in the throes of haying. We have three fields to hay this year, the same ones we did last year but already it seems as though the grass in the top field is longer and thicker, meaning we should have a much higher yield than the 244 bales we managed last year. We'll be working in collaboration with our neighbor, the doctor. He will be using our cutter and our fluffer/rake and we will be using his round baler, although the smaller of the three fields will likely be done in square bales - the clover content is higher and the grass isn't as long, but the protein value looks better. Square bales are easier for me to feed the sheep with whereas the round bales are more along the lines of what people want to buy. Thankfully then we can produce both.

The inspectors from the Department of Ag returned on Tuesday and we now need only to supply them with a milk sample for our license. they'll be dropping by next Monday to pick up a sample, which means we have had to round up the 8-10 ewes that are still feeding their lambs and ensure they haven't fully dried up. This afternoon we milked them (and will do so once each day now so we can give the Dept Ag a milk sample) and were surprised at the volume we got. Even just a weeks worth of one milk session per day will provide us with several gallons of milk to make some more cheese in the coming weeks.

A couple of weeks ago we acquired a couple of pigs. They are both around 250 lbs so we are just putting a few more pounds on them before we have them slaughtered. Looking forward to lots of bacon, pork chops and a couple of good pork roasts. Marlowe can't understand why they don't fear him like the sheep do, and Byron just wants their ears!..

This weekend the last of the wethers will head to the scales and we will be left with our 70 ewes. We are also hoping that in between baling the back field we'll have time to paint the milk barn.

Forward into Summer

2010-05-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been two months since my last post on the blog here. It's not like in that time we haven't been busy, far from it. In fact we are only a single step away from being a fully fledged licensed dairy. Several weeks ago we had the Dept of Ag Food and Safety people out here going over the facility with a fine tooth comb making sure that our facility was up to scratch and met all of the PMO (Pasteurized Milk Ordinance) guidelines. Along with the inspection came the news that we would likely be licensed within the month. Two very minor things needed fixing - the steps up from the milk room to the milking room needed sealing up the step wall and our milk urn into which the vacuum delivers the milk needed replacing with one that was PMO approved (which meant a high polish finish both inside and out). We sealed the steps the day after the inspectors left and our milk urn (Italian stainless steel) arrived at the beginning of the week. We now await the inspectors return and their granting of our license.

We have now dried off our last few ewes and have turned them back into the pasture with our two rams in order to ensure we maximize our efforts starting at the end of this year. All of our ewes, including our yearlings from last year's batch will start a new lambing cycle beginning October 6th (or there abouts). This time we will be going with the D1 procedure (meaning we will take the lambs from their mothers after 24 hours and raise them on formula/milk replacer) as this ensures a longer milking cycle and enables us to get the ewes starting at a high production level. We had found that the D30 technique wasn't as efficient as by that time some of the ewes had already started to slow in their production and could not produce as much milk as was expected.

The last few months have been spent doing a lot of research regarding markets for our milk.We still intend to make cheese with some of it, but we are in the process of finalizing our production procedures for another product. Once we have the graphics, etc in a first stage of completion I will reveal all. Suffice is to say this is a unique product on the market here so we have no competition.

Around the farm Will and I are beginning to remodel the old cow enclosures around the original cattle head gate. We have been using this corral to load the wethers into the trailer for the market and decided that with some work we could make it more useful on a day to day basis. In between the last spring rain showers all of the essential work has been done ready for the coming haying and we are pleased to see the farm at a point now where we are no longer catching up with maintenance and repairs but are seeing projects I had planned when we first got here starting to move forward. As I mentioned earlier we are going to be doing all of our haying ourselves this year. We're confident we can manage it and the benefit is that we keep all of the hay for ourselves and can make a bigger profit on what we don't need.

The other big news is that my mother is here for a three month holiday. I drove down to pick her up in San Francisco at the beginning of May. With the showery weather it's been tough getting the time to do things but now that appears to be breaking and we are making the most of the sunny weather. The above image is a sample of the beautiful Oregon landscape on the road out to Crater Lake.

In all things are going well at the moment, no mishaps or nightmare problems. Our six monthly inspection also happened at the end of April, and again we passed easily. In fact the field officer for the Dept of Ag brought along a small army of field reps from all over Oregon to see our operation, and despite the terrible weather, all were very impressed with what we had done.

Next weekend is the annual Lamb Show, a major event in our calendar, but we won't be showing any of our livestock, maybe next year. I'll be back with some pictures from the show next week.

One of 2009/2010's Success Stories

2010-03-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

One of the big success stories we have had over the last few months has been the effectiveness of the FootVax vaccine we used in September 2009 for the inevitable hoof rot problems we were to encounter over the winter. In order to ensure there were no serious problems, we vaccinated half the flock in September and kept the other group as a control. All sheep who at the time were known to have had the problem were included in the vaccinated group.

During the winter months, when the foot rot bacteria are most prevalent, particularly so in this part of Oregon, we only had 3 sheep displaying problems. All three were jugged and their hooves treated and bandaged. All three were from the control group that were not vaccinated. For the last two hoof trims all of our sheep have been clear. Some feet are still a little scarred from earlier bouts, but all sheep are free and clear of hoof rot problems. For any sheep farmer this is a great victory, but more so for this part of the country where hoof rot is a significant problem with almost every shepherd we speak to experiencing it regularly.

On another good note we have just started our second lambing group. 3 lambs born at the end of last week and several ewes ready to pop. Everything else moves along fairly smoothly. Over the weekend the hay equipment was taken out of the storage shed and moved to the main barn. I'm replacing the blades on the disc mower but converting the old square baler from wire to twine isn't going to happen alas, the cost is just not worth it according to the local New Holland dealership where they do that. Cheaper just to buy a second hand twine one and use mine as a spare parts one. Have to think on that one as acquiring another would likely mean a trip into either Idaho or Washington as they are thin on the ground here in Oregon.

If the old beast can hold up, which there's no reason to believe she can't, then we will be doing our own haying this year. It will likely take us a while, but it's more profit for us. Square bales stack easier than round ones as well and are a lot easier to move around. At the very least I can cut the hay and rake it myself and get someone else in to bale if need be.

Our calf leaves us this week. She's 10 months old now and as big as her mother. We have sold her to the guy we buy our orchard grass/alfalfa from and got what we think is a very reasonable price for her.

On other miscellaneous news, yesterday we had engineers looking over the bridge outside once again. Apparently the design is now out for bid which means that we should have a new bridge going up in the next few months. Interesting times ahead on that.

A Milking Update

2010-02-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

It has been two weeks since we started milking and so far everything has been running relatively smoothly. We seem to have got most of the routine down to a set time give or take a few minutes depending on how the sheep are behaving. We have a couple who are problem animals. They don't like being touched on the insides of their back legs so it makes moving their legs to clean their teats interesting to say the least. I've only been covered in iodine once, not bad really all things considered.

Over the weekend Will and I built a ramp from the main barn into the milking lane just in front of the actual entry to the milking barn. It means we have the ability to properly separate the two flocks of sheep without having to resort to pasture rotation acrobatics or the moving of sheep and the closing of multiple gates. Luring them in with pea pellets certainly help and they only need to do something a couple of times before they learn. That's one good thing about sheep, they're such good....sheep.

So we've been recording milk temperatures as well to make sure we comply with the PMO (Pasteurized Milk Ordinance) which is like the milk producers bible and is what we had to ensure all our construction plans adhered to when building. We are required to reduce the temperature to a certain level in a certain amount of time (50 F or 7 C or less within 2 hours of the completion of milking). We're freezing the milk, but a regular fridge/freezer or chest freezer doesn't have the capacity to lower the temperature fast enough, hence our purchase last year of the laboratory freezer.

On a personal level I am looking forward to the time when we can shear the sheep and the wet weather ends. Cleaning them at the moment before milking is the biggest chore.

This week we plan on starting to make some cheese finally. We're producing enough milk on a daily basis now so its just a question of exactly where we are going to go with the cheese. We have already got a list of maybe a dozen we are going to experiment with, but there are a core 3-4 we want to concentrate on. One of the lessons I have learned from other cheesemakers is that you should choose a small number to use as your starting point rather than trying to produce lots of different varieties. Only selecting a few means we can perfect the process quicker.

D-Day Arrives

2010-02-03T19:30:00.001-08:00

Well today was an interesting day in more ways than one. But, at the end of the day we are happy to announce that everything was a success. Over the last few months we have done hundreds of calculations based on every possible variation in volume, dollar value for raw milk, laction periods, the whole nine yards. This is all done as well based on a 10/14 milking cycle. Oh the intricacies of running a dairy!

The volumes we got today are inside our minimum maximum window which means extrapolated out we will earn more than our minimum but less than our maximum assuming a price of $75 per hundred weight and the milking of 100 sheep. Of course we aren't milking that many ewes and won't be until next year at the earliest (we will have a maximum of 46 over the course of this year), but it does show that everything we have been working towards is rock solid.

Well my apologies if I have completely bored you or lost you dear reader, but this is a major step forward for us and we are very happy. For your viewing pleasure and patience here is another gratuitous lambiness photo.

T-1 and Counting

2010-02-02T10:59:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we start milking properly. By that I mean no more dry runs, practice runs, one sheep at a time runs or any other type of runs. Tomorrow it's 4 sheep, then the next 4 sheep until we're done and with each week from now until the end of the lambing we will be adding new ewes to the group once their lambs are 30 days old.

We have everything ready to go, we couldn't be more prepared if we tried. Last thing in place was a new stainless steel workbench for the milk room so we have somewhere to fill the bags for freezing. How much milk exactly we expect tomorrow is still something of an unknown variable and considering that volume is really what determines viability, it's hard not knowing. Sure we've done tests with single sheep, but they're all different, that's the factor that at the end of the season determines who we keep and who we say goodbye to. That's not the only factor for sure but it's a big one.

Lambing has been going well. We had one bad day last week where we lost 3 lambs. Their mother just wasn't feeding them andno matter how hard we tried, even down to feeding tubes in the stomachs, they just didn't have the will to live. All were incredibly small when they were born. Their mother's know by instinct, it's uncanny, the ones that won't survive get left. It's nature's way. It's still hard coming to terms with the fact that you just can't save some.

No problem with these little ones though, they are all at the stage now where they are running around like crazy.

So the time is coming. Tomorrow I should have a post reflecting on the first day of 'official' milking. Stay tuned!

First Lambs of 2009 / 2010

2009-12-27T16:19:00.000-08:00

This morning the first of our lambs was born for the coming season. The mother was one of our Hampshire/Dorset ewes that was born soon after we arrived on the farm in February 2008. This makes it the second generation we have witnessed being born here. The lamb was a boy, a single birth but a very healthy looking little fellow.

Appearing Soon: New Lambs!!

2009-12-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

Over the last week we have been busy putting the finishing touches to the jugs and the lamb pen for the pending arrival of the new batch of lambs. If our records are correct the first ones will be born on Wednesday (16th December) - although this date is based on when the ram was turned in with the ewes so in all likelihood it will be a few days past that - also the ewes are first time mothers. Things have gone a lot smoother in preparation this time and we knew exactly what we needed to do and how best to change things to suit us.

The weather has been particularly brutal in the last few days. Temperatures got down to 10 F (-12 C) and all the water troughs froze and we had a couple of burst water pipes outside the barn - thankfully no problems with the new dairy piping. Considering that the weather has been called unusually cold by the locals I think that's a testament to the builders and our design! Unfortunately we did lose a ewe lamb from this years March/April crop. She was the smallest and just didn't have enough in her to overcome the chill. By all accounts we have been fortunate once again.

For those interested in a more comprehensive photo diary I am going to update the actual web site - Catesby Farms over the next few days so you can see the complete evolution of the milk barn.

Finishing Touches

2009-11-30T09:36:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend the last few things needed to complete the dairy were done. We just need to go in there this week and give the place a really good clean.

The refrigerated tank arrived and we had a refrigeration technician disconnect it so we could move it, then once in place it was reconnected, serviced and tested. Everything works fine. Moving the tank was made easier (it weighed around 850lbs) when we realized it could be taken through the main door with barely a 1/16 of an inch to spare either side. Same thing with the freezer we had in the garage - it just made it through.

In the actual milking area the stanchions came back from the powder coaters looking fantastic and with a bit of concrete drilling everything was fairly easy to anchor to the floor and install. The double set of head gates will enable us to milk 8 sheep at a time with there being enough room to install a third unit to increase our capacity to 12 in the future as the flock grows. At present, we will be milking 7 groups of sheep. At 10 minutes a group, that should take us about 90 minutes per milking session taking into account prep and clean-up either side. Time will prove us right or wrong.

Over the last few weeks all of the ancillary items from sterile wash cloths to overalls and boots have been slowly arriving as well. We've assembled a small stainless steel trolley, shelves, a wash system, and now just have the pit to paint and the cleaning to do before we call on the Department of Agriculture to come out and give us an inspection. We should have the green light days before the first lambs are due for the next season so our timing is right on the money.

November, being the wettest month of the year usually has seen the lagoon fill fairly quickly. We pumped this year in January and August but will likely pump this week (on account of the pending clear skies - clear of further rain that is). Once emptied it will take the rest of winter and spring to fill before we empty it again in summer although we have to take into account the wash water from the dairy now so maybe we will be pumping again in spring. With the new flexible irripod hoses and irrigation pods this should be a much smoother operation and not involve the on-going moving of aluminimum pipes (which in winter when its freezing cold becomes a real task!). The flexibility allows us to irrigate at least 4 of our fields now without any issues whereas this year with the restriction of the aluminium pipes we could only irrigate 2. With a bit of magic we can probably do almost all of the property from this set-up if we needed.

The dogs of course are loving the weather. As for the inside of the house, it's also moving ahead really quickly. All the wet weather has meant we have had a lot more time inside to work on putting up trim and painting. It seems to be a neverending job, but the house is finally looking warm and comfortable, rather than how it originally looked - white, cold and sterile.

The Catesby Farms Dairy Almost Online

2009-11-19T21:00:00.000-08:00

With just the milking stanchions left to install, the bulk milk tank to be moved into place and primed with Freon, and the freezer to be moved, the Catesby Farms Dairy is on the verge of getting the green light. Once the last three details are completed, sometime mid next week, we will arrange for the Oregon Department of Agriculture to come and inspect us. Assuming we pass, we will be a legitimate dairy operation!

Here are a couple of pictures of how the interior looks right now, post-renovation. Once the milk tank is installed and the freezer is moved I will put some more pictures up. The outside still needs a good coat of paint but that will wait until the warmer months next year.

In other news, we are on top of everything else that needs doing around the place, which we think is a first. The hay is slowly going out the door, a half dozen bales a week and both the Bobcat and the Hyster are now back in operation after breakdowns. Most of the ewes are now pregnant, with the first ones ready to lamb mid December. We shall be taking the ram out of the field in about 10 days and then selling the last remaining wethers.

All the work left to do around the place is small - cleaning the machinery shed is probably the largest job still to do. It feels good to be on top of things at last.

Time Goes By Quickly

2009-10-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

It's been 2 months since I updated the blog, and a lot has happened in that time. Not only have we had visitors from Australia, but the milk barn is now 99% completed and the rains have finally arrived.

In the video above are our two main dogs Marlowe and Byron. Marlowe is the frisbee addict and Byron if you remember was the dog I took to Canada twice to have both his hips replaced. Hard to tell that a year ago he was a virtual cripple. Now he hares around the place like there was never anything wrong.

The nights are starting to get quite cold and the whole place feels as though its falling slowly into sleep mode.

Our first group of lambs for the new facility are due to be born early December. This will be a test group of ewes so that we can get all our automatic milking processes perfected before the bulk of the lambs arrive mid March. If all goes according to plan we will have between 60 and 70 ewes lambing.

The final clean-up before the winter sets in has been temporarily placed on hold while the hydraulic pump on the bobcat is repaired. Alas it isn't a simple, or cheap job and I'm really missing it at the moment as there is still manure to spread and feedlots to scrape.

The farm itself though is in the best shape its been in for many years. All of the fencing is now repaired or replaced where needed, we have spread new pasture grass in one of the paddocks and we are feeling a lot more comfortable with how everything should be as we head into our third winter here.

We recently had some visitors from Australia. Friends of the family that were passing through on a mammoth road trip across America. It seemed strange to hear Australian accents again.

Last weekend the wethers went to the scales. We had 21 this year. In a couple of weeks we will likely thin our ram numbers as well with another 5-6 off to the scales.

One thing we have been using (and so far the results look promising) is a footrot vaccine. Footrot is one of the more common problems with sheep in this part of the country. The bacteria that cause it live in the soil and its almost impossible to get rid of. It thrives in the cold and wet so lies dormant most of summer and then hits hard in Fall or Spring. We treated a couple of ewes with it recently but everyone else looks to be doing well so we are keeping fingers crossed that the vaccine works. Apparently the local vet did all the clinical and field tests in the region, but general reports nationally are mixed about its effectiveness. So far we seem to be going well.

Hopefully I can be more punctual with the next update.

Sheep Dog Trials

2009-08-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend we attended a local Sheep Dog event held by a friend of ours. The Colliding Rivers event was this year being used as a warm-up event for the National Sheep dog Trials being held here in Oregon at Klamath Falls in late September.

Sheep dog trialing is a lot different in Oregon than it is in Arizona where Jen first started doing it. Back there you run your dogs in a small arena-like enclosure, but here in Oregon the courses are large, covering dozens of acres and include hills, valleys and of course a lot more obstacles. The comparison is like show jumping and cross-country with horses.

Over the last few days we have started bringing Hamish, our youngest dog up to the fields so he can have a run around with the sheep. Marlowe is already well versed in the intricacies of sheep handling and Byron has been back on the sheep for a few months now since he was given the all-clear after his double hip surgery. It's fascinating to watch them. You can see them thinking about what they are doing and just like people each has their own personality and of course methodology. Marlowe has drive and determination and his concentration is unequalled. Byron can balance the sheep perfectly, and Hamish seems to have the enthusiasm of Marlowe. We have high hopes for him as he is a relative of the dog that came 5th in the UK Nationals last year, and descended from a line that has won that title on more than one occasion.

We'll be heading down to Klamath Falls overnight when the Nationals begin and hopefully we'll pick up a few more pointers, but it will also be an opportunity to meet up with some of our Arizona friends who got us started in this all those years ago.

Rest in Peace, Bandit

2009-08-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

This morning, before the sun had fully risen into a glorious clear blue sky, we buried Bandit under an apple tree, here on Catesby Farms. In all my life I have never known a dog to have had such a long and eventful life as she did. When the body was no longer willing, nobody told Bandit she had to stop, so she didn't. Just yesterday she was walking around the back yard barking at the other dogs, keeping them in line and telling them what she thought, as she always did.

She lived a long and happy 18 years and experienced more than most dogs ever will. Having lots of other dogs around kept her young at heart and gave her the determination to keep going. She lived out the final year or more of her life as a farm dog, as all good dogs should, and now will always be a part of the farm, keeping an eye on the sheep and watching over us.

Is it hot enough for you?

2009-07-29T15:55:00.000-07:00

The thermometer climbed to 108F for the scond day in a row today. The Pacific Northwest is apparently experiencing a heatwave unlike anything its experienced ever before, not since records were first taken. That makes doing a lot of the work around the place almost unbearably difficult. It also means that we have changed to night time irrigation in an effort to reduce the amout of evaporation happening and thus get more value out of the process.

I feel sorry for the contractors working on the Milk Barn, although they are here at 6.30am and gone by 3.00pm just as the temperature hits 100. They have made excellent progress so far. the new floor slab has been poured and all of the drain plumbing is now in place. Next will be the framing inside and then they will be running the electrical and sink plumbing through the walls. Everything so far looks really good.

I've started to clean out the main loafing barn as well as the jugs, in preparation for the lambing at the end of the year. All the jugs are empty now and I'll need to put some lime down to clear up anything nasty. In a month or two I will lay some straw and everything there will be ready to go. I might be able to do some work on the other end of the barn after that and get it ready for the lambs as a small nursery.

UPDATE: Overnight (29th/30th July) we lost one of our ewes due to the heat. I have been reading that a lot of northwest farmers have lost livestock due to the oppressive heat in the last week. We consider ourselves fortunate that we have plenty of undercover areas and the sheep have access to plenty of fresh water. Unfortunately sometimes you have to take the bad with the good and that's certainly the case when an animal dies. RIP #1134.

Today is.....Shopping Day!

2009-07-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

The Milk Barn is now underway at long last. We have had contrators gutting and rebuilding it from the inside out since last week. So far they have redesigned the milking pit, laid all the foundation concrete and taken all the old walls and ceiling materials away. We also have a 'soon to be door' opening between the actual milking area and the two front rooms.

What does all this mean? Well it means we have finally placed the order for all our milking stanchions and our sinks and an electric water blaster that runs hot/cold off the mains. My one day a week ranch hand is a welder by profession and we are going to get him to assemble them into a solid rig as well as add a couple of things to the milking stand we will find useful, such as a quick release for the stanchions that can be operated from within the pit. Once the building is done, we can ramset the milking platform into the new floor.

Our ram 'Mr. T' is in with the younger sheep we got from Vermont Shepherd, which are now over 18 months of age. This means that we will be setup and ready to milk in early December with a second group of ewes lambing in early March as per this year. We are still undecided if at first we will sell the milk in raw liquid form (requires a bulk tank and compressor to cool it for the milk barn) or whether we will freeze it and sell it frozen. the latter would certainly provide us with a broader market as we could sell it interstate to other cheesemakers.

The irrigation is working well. The Irripods are easy to install and reduce the labour of moving pipes as well as providing a flexibility of moving around that the aluminium pipes don't give. It takes me about 15 minutes in the mornings to take the ATV out and shift them. The grass in the front field as well as the field with the irripods is looking really good at the moment, whereas the surrounding properties are all brown and the grass is dormant, thanks to the summer highs of 95 degrees (33 centigrade) we have been experiencing over the last few weeks.

At the end of last week we discovered in one of our old sheds a kitten that had been abandoned by its mother. Poor little thing is only about 4 weeks old, so we have been feeding it and it now seems to be doing well. It's a cute little black ball of fur at the moment, possibly a Coon Cat that will be good to keep the mice down in the barns when it's older.

The Irrigation Jigsaw Puzzle

2009-07-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

With the end of the haying for this year we are back into laying out the irrigation system. Last year, being our first experience, there were several issues that required major work, from buying a new 5HP pump to determining the best layout of pipes to irrigate maximum land. All that took time and unfortunately because of that and other tasks we were undertaking at the time we were unable to get a second hay cutting on any of our fields. This year things will be different.

Last year we had someone helping us hay, this year we had the same person, but next year we are planning on doing the whole thing ourselves. I bailed the front field using our old New Holland Hayliner, and after a few disasterous results we managed to get a good yield of 110 bales. The irrigation is now on that field so we will get another cutting come late August I am hoping and if the weather is good a third is not out of the question.

Beyond that we have 2 other fields that are being worked on. Moving the 5HP pump to the river side and connecting up the 6" mainline we will be able to irrigate both of them. The smaller will hopefully net us about 200 square bales in a second cutting. All of this is good news because our actual hay consumption in winter is small, meaning that all of the hay we have just cut can be sold - which amounts to about 120 round bales (that sell for about $20 each). As I mentioned because of the lack of rain this year during spring, this season will be a lean one for hay so we will keep ours undercover for a few months and anticipate the price going up.

In order to get a lot of the work done around the place - work that requires two men, I have found myself a farmhand for one day a week. He's been helping now for a couple of weeks and we've already made spectacular progress rebuilding a couple of our fences. I'm hoping that by winter we will have done most of the renovation work around the farm, from the fencing to reseeding a couple of the fields (they're full of foxtail, but that's another story!).

One important piece of news, our cow finally had her calf, a heifer, and she's very sweet. she's already bigger than the ewes so even at 2 weeks of age she's bossing them around.

In a weeks time we put our ram in with the lambs we got last year. They are now about 20 months of age so ready to start producing. This means that we will be lambing in November and then again next March/April. We have a dozen that will lamb at the end of the year assuming all goes well and this will be a good lead into a full milking schedule for next year. By April we will have ironed out all our issues and will be milking around 50 ewes.

We are waiting on the contractor to give us a start date on the renovation of the milk barn. after going through the new plans, the renovation plans and various permutations, we have a list of what needs doing and what needs buying. The hard work there will also be done by the time we lamb/milk in November.

Note: Someone requested more pictures, so I will attempt to add more in each post.

Summer is on its way, at last.

2009-06-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

It's been an odd Spring. It has been a lot dryer than normal, and all of the rainfall figures for Douglas County from January to April are at about 2/3 of the average. What that translates to is a leaner hay season, which started a couple of weeks ago for most people on Memorial Day weekend. Ours started last week, earlier than last year but a sudden thunderstorm stopped everything in its tracks. The ground has dried at last and we're back in the swing of things.

The lambs are all doing very well, most are over the 50lb threshold now and the earliest ones are looking almost as big as last years yearlings. they're all on pasture now and have been for over a month, which has enabled us to determine our hay usage over the winter and so we know from the cut happening now how much we will need for the winter ahead. The rest can be sold, and if we can get a second cutting from at least 2 of the fields we should make a decent profit, at least enough to get the hay equipment we own working 100% so we can do our own hay next year and take all the profits.

With the lagoon in place we have an extra 40,000 gallons of 'water' that we can use for irrigation, with the added bonus that it has manure in it which is great for fertilizing the grass. Once the haying is done we will begin irrigating, and hopefully will get a second cut in late September.

The ewes were all shorn last week and we are about to turn them all into the neighbours fields for a couple of months once he has removed his hay. That will take the pressure off our pastures and allow us to do some serious fencing work, making some of the larger pastures smaller to aid in flock rotation.

Late last month we had some Arizona friends stay with us for just over a week. We had been feeling jaded because of the work we still have ahead of us but they picked us up and have given us a new perspective. The rebuild plans for the milk barn have halted, the quotes we received were a little higher than we had anticipated, even in the economic climate we're in, so we are moving ahead slower than we originally anticipated, but that is good in some degree because we are not feeling out of our depth, as we had felt now and then before. The milk barn has been gutted and over the summer months Jen and I will try and renovate as much as we can ourselves.

We have some new ideas we are looking into, thanks to our Arizona friends, including selling raw mutton from our culls as dog food. Looking at the prices around it should be more profitable than just sending them to slaughter.

At the moment we are handicapped by the fact our Bobcat isn't working. Once its back in one piece and the haying is done and the irrigation is running, I have to use the manure spreader to spread about 3-4 tons of solid manure across our 50 acres. That should be fun! Actually its not that hard a job, it just takes time, like everything.

We are also about to turn our young unproven ram in with about a dozen yearlings so we have some lambs in Autumn. these ewes will hopefully be the first small group that we milk on a regular basis. as I mentioned, moving slower is a lot more comfortable.

Urbanites Opting for Simpler Lifestyle

2009-04-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days (thanks to a USA Today article) I have taken the time to notice that there seems to be a lot of movement of urbanites like ourselves back to the land. While most seem to have been forced as a result of the economic collapse that now seems to be happening pretty much right across the globe, this surely is a good thing. All of the blogs, articles and even Facebook pages that I have been going through are filled with people that despite some rude shocks and a general unpreparedness for their new lifestyle are actually happier, and more balanced people for having made the change.

As I have mentioned before I have urbanite friends in Canada who want nothing more than to be able to buy a couple of hundred acres, build themselves a green home, and raise livestock. They are like a lot of others I am reading about - those who at present are unable to move and so are turning their once dormant back yards into vegetable producing gardens. Even in the UK it seems this revolution is happening with companies reporting enormous increases in seed sales.

Will it last? That's certainly an interesting question. Once economic stability arrives, will these people return to their urban roots and take up where they left off? I don't think so personally. I think that over time the growing trend will be to ruralization rather than urbanization. With the availability of mass communication and the internet these days there is no general need for the average person to be forced into the concrete jungles. All of the people I am reading about have everything they need and are living a more satisfying existence on sustainable plots of land. I know it's not for all of you, you're more than happy in the urban sprawl, and that's just fine as well.

I'd like to show my support for those people who have shown the courage (whether through economic necessity or not) to return to the land and a more satisfying way of life and for anyone out there interested in looking into it, take a look at some of these links:

Self-Sufficiency and Homesteading
Homestead.org
Mother Earth News
The Simple Living Network

When the Catesby Farms website is eventually launched (and yes I know that's been coming for months now), I'd like to include a small section on sustainable living, based of course on our own experiences. Maybe it will give you a better insight into how we are doing this, and maybe, just maybe it might tempt you to look further into it yourself.

Construction Time Again

2009-04-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

Things have been busy with engineers, contractors and friends all doing their part for the Milk Barn project in the last couple of weeks. We have just had all of the original milking stanchions for the 6x6 herringbone cut out and the room is now empty apart from the pit in the middle. We have had various quotes for everything from a complete knock-down and rebuild to a renovation and a refit.

So, in the next couple of weeks we hope to have workers on-site renovating the Milk Barn and turning it back into a milking facility once again. Once that is done we will definitely feel as though we are getting somewhere. We have been looking at various milking systems and are having DeLaval come down from Salem to talk to us in the next few days. I am also in the process of talking to potential buyers of our milk. Initially we will not be able to use all we produce in our first foray into actual raw milk cheesemaking and as the flock grows next year and into 2011 (we are now aiming for 150 ewes) we will have a large surplus of milk that we will need to market. For the time being we want to get comfortable with the milking process in conjunction with the animal husbandry. Jumping into everything at once is never a good idea. Our initial figure projections show that milking 50 ewes next year will turn us a small profit and that we should be able to increase the flock to 100 ewes and then 150.

We realized we were overly ambitious with our initial plans considering there was so much to learn with regard to sheep management, animal husbandry, milking and of course cheesemaking. The first two are an on-going thing and you are always learning something new, the last one is a rewarding process but in order to be successful at it you need to know the three steps before it, and so milking is next.

The lambs are doing extremely well and all are putting on weight and looking very healthy. The differences between the three breeds is now starting to become more evident in their little faces and soon we will be starting to wean them. In the coming weeks we have the haying to look forward to as well. The rain and the warm weather that has started to grace us has kicked the growth season off and it's hard to believe that we only have another 6 weeks before we're haying again. The warm weather will be a welcome break from the particularly wet few months we have just had and will give us the opportunity to finish the vegetable planting for this year.

Final Lamb Count

2009-03-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

The final lamb for the season was born this afternoon (barring any unforseen circumstances). The final breakdown has been as follows:

29 Rams
17 Ewes

With 27 ewes giving birth, we lambed at 170% which is better than the 150% from last year. Unfortunately we lost 5 lambs, meaning our survival rate is 87% (slightly better than the average 85%). We had one set of triplets, 16 sets of twins (10 mixed, 5 all male and 1 all female) and 11 single births.

In all it was a fascinating experience yet again in which we learnt more than we could have hoped particularly assisting in several deliveries. We were slightly disappointed that the ram to ewe ratio was 2:1, but there are things we can try next season with regard to diet to hopefully alter that. We did get our 15 ewes which was what I wanted though.

Now we begin the task of deciding who we keep and who we cull. Unfortunately sentimentality only goes so far.

One of Life's Little Coincidences

2009-03-21T20:45:00.001-07:00

We had 2 ewes lamb today. One was anticipated, the other was completely unexpected. The first, the anticipated one, delivered this morning fairly easily, the second, totally unexpectedly delivered this evening thanks to some handy work by the local vet (Dr. Barry Downie from Bailey Vet here in Roseburg). Being a yearling and with a lamb in the wrong position, it had got part way out and couldn't get any further. I thought it was dead having spent almost 30 minutes trying to pull it. It's head had swelled, its eyes were bulging and its tongue was swollen and protruding from the mouth. I thought I saw a couple of signs of life before the vet arrived, but even he at first thought it wasn't going to make it. Anyway, it did. It's shoulder had locked and that's why it wouldn't budge. It was a rather harrowing entrance to the world for a small lamb.

The coincidence is quite fascinating. Last year my daughters named a set of twins - one called Mint and the other Bambi - they were the first twins whose birth we experienced after we arrived here. In fact here is the first picture of them on the day they were born.

It was Mint and Bambi that lambed today, hours apart from each other, both giving birth to boys. Sometimes life throws real curve balls at you.

Sunny Days Are Here Again

2009-03-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

I let the sheep and the lambs out into the far paddock today, having spent the day ensuring that all the little holes in the fenceline had been effectively repaired. I needed to install a gate betwen that field and the very back one (it only has wire fencing and not anti-sheep stuff so we can't let them graze there although I am looking to fence some of it off because the grass at the front is really good quality).

The little lamb rejected by his mother is now with the rest of the flock and as you can see from the picture he has mastered the art of self-feeding finally which means no late night or early morning feeds from me!

This week we finally begin the task of finding contractors to renovatethe milking barn and turn it into a cheesemaking facility. We'd like them to start around the beginning of next month so that everything is ready to go by May/June.

Ups and Downs

2009-03-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Lacaune that lambed on Friday rejected her little boy pretty much straight away. Over the last day or so he had begun to go down hill so at midnight last night we were putting feeding tubes down his throat and giving him some milk to try and revive him. Poor little guy was cold and we were stoking the fire well into the wee small hours to keep the room nice and warm. This morning he is standing and has taken another feed by himself and the cold has now gone. He's with us now in the office and the dogs are all looking after him and being extremely well behaved. Good news.

On top of that good news we had our first set of twin girls born this morning to one of our East Friesians. One is very small but both are feeding and look strong and healthy.

Lambing 2009: Progress Report

2009-03-06T21:19:00.000-08:00

As of this evening we have had 36 lambs born with only 2 that didn't make it. considering the mortality rate amongst sheep can be as high as 20%, our rate of under 6% is extremely good. We still have 11 ewes penned in the nursery field but we believe only 7 of them are pregnant. With our current lambing figures of 180% that means we will get another 12 lambs. One disappointment is that we have had a male:female ratio of almost 2:1 (23 males and 13 females), but I originally wanted 15 females to give us the right flock size goig into next year and with a dozen or so left to be born we should do that nicely.

We are also going to pick up another 6 Lacaune yearlings next Friday from the same place we got our others. They are downsizing and we got them for a really good price. Judging by the fact that 4 of the 6 we originally got have lambed so far, all had twins and all had a boy and a girl, they seem to be excellent sheep.

Once lambing is completed and we have picked up the new Lacaunes, I'll be able to determine the flock composition for the end of this year, but as I mentioned in an earlier post we are getting rid of all our wethers and all but one of our older ewes. Feeding the extra mouths isn't cost effective and more sheep eat through the pasture quicker.

A Local Promotional Interlude

2009-03-02T09:18:00.001-08:00

As we take a breather for a few minutes with one of our ewes in labour (UPDATE: She had twins, although the first was an assisted birth - only one leg was forward - and the second was a rear presenation that we had to monitor - but all went fine), a New York Times article from this morning has prompted me to present a series of local links to give regular visitors a better idea of this wonderful little town called Roseburg.

First, the article A Perfect Pear by Stephen McCarthy, an excellent stroll down memory lane for a successful entrepreneur making spirits near Portland who grew up in Roseburg. The comments by visitors are particularly interesting.

Next is the Lookingglass Store, a building that has a wonderful history to it. The article was written by our next door neighbour.

For those of you interested in the local activities and sites, here are a series of links that show the area in its uniqueness.

City of Roseburg Site
Umpqua Valley Wine Tours
Oregon Wine Country Tours - Personalized tours of the Umpqua Valley Wine Region
Music on the Halfshell
Crater Lake
Umpqua National Forest
Winston Wildlife Safari Park
Douglas County Museum

Follow some of the links in the above web sites and you will get a great picture of what this part of the world has to offer, from amazing waterfalls and river rafting, to hunting, fishing, and the beauty of the great outdoors. Oregon is a lovely spot in the USA that many visitors miss. It boasts two of the five greenest cities in America (Portland [#1] and Eugene [#5]) and is now developing a wine industry (around Walla Walla and the South Umpqua regions) to rival Napa Valley in California.

As the original NYT article alluded to, there is great pride around Roseburg in the production, support, and availability of locally grown and made products. Most of the (what I call) pointless larger chain stores have not made it here thankfully and the local council seems to be quite serious about keeping them out. OK unemployment is high (over 12%) perhaps as a result of this, but people are friendly and many of those around have been here for more than a single generation.

I am constantly told that moving here, into the farming business, and living a healthy and partially sustainable lifestyle is becoming more and more a desirable future amongst city folk. I can completely understand and can only offer one piece of advice - if you really want it, do it!

The Fast and the Furious.

2009-02-23T15:27:00.001-08:00

As anticipated we had to wait nearly 2 weeks before the first batch of lambs were born. As I mentioned in my previous post, we put the ram in with one ewe and a couple of wether lambs when he first arrived to get him used to his new surroundings. After the two week period we let him loose with the rest of the flock.

Our first lamb was born on February 9th, our next ones were born last Saturday, February 21st. This was a set of triplets to one of our favourite older Dorset ewes. Unfortunately one of the ram lambs from the triplets died that first night. Sunday and Monday things are now starting to snowball. Twins from an East Friesian Sunday (Male and Female), twins from another East Friesian Monday morning (2 males), and a single ewe from another East Friesian this afternoon (Monday).

For all the stories we have heard about East Friesian lambs being quite weak, these ones are showing remarkable hardiness and this afternoon's one was up and walking within a few minutes of birth.

UPDATE: 27th February
I added some pictures of the lambs that are now with the rest of the flock. The bottom image of the three above is a lamb we have called "Noisy" because he can be heard from the house. I had to deliver both him and his sister. On 25th their mother we believed gave birth to a ram. The lamb was by itself in the field and when we picked it up she was the only ewe to come running, so we led her into one of the jugs. Yesterday morning she was on her side in labour. Believing that it was 48 hours after the first lamb in all likelihood this was a still born finally making its way out (sheep can lamb 24 hours apart but 48 is we believe unheard of) I donned surgical gloves and began to help with the birth. to my amazement it opened its mouth so I realized it was alive so as the placenta membrane had burst and its nose was barely exposed I had to pull it.

It was a little girl and she was perfectly fine. 30 minutes later and mama goes into labour again, so I assisted in a second birth, this time a little boy. We are now unsure as to who the mother isof the original lamb we attributed to this ewe, but it is likely an East Friesian who lambed in the morning. we tried to see if she would nurse the little boy but she wasn't having it so we returned him to his 'foster' mother and her two newborns.

Lambing Season Underway

2009-02-09T12:16:00.000-08:00

This morning, just after 8.00am we were presented with our first lamb of the season. The mother was one of the older ewes we had kept from the original 50 that were acquired when we bought the farm in 2007. The lamb is a ewe, which is of course what we hope they all will be, and she has the East Friesian characteristics from the delicate little hooves to the narrow pointed head. If we have another dozen or so exactly like her I will be extremely happy.

Our timing was off by six days (the first was due to be born on the 15th), but this ewe was the one we had penned up with our ram for two weeks prior to him joining the rest of the flock, so we expected at least one early one.

When we arrived last year we got here right in the throes of lambing, so it seemed as though, apart from a steep learning curve, the lambs didn't feel truly ours. This year it will be different, knowing we specifically bred the ewes with the East Friesian ram we acquired, for the specific purpose of building a milking flock. Well today seems as though the hard work has begun to pay off and it feels as though we have taken another giant step forward.

In honour of the first lamb's birth, we wanted regular visitors to the blog to suggest a name for her. Post your suggestions in the comments below or email me at dherber@catesbyfarms.com.

Highs and Lows

2009-01-15T21:35:00.000-08:00

Yes today was a better day. It began with me doing a sheep autopsy. I won't go into all of the details in case some of you are a little squeemish but I needed to get samples of the liver and one of the lungs in order for the vet to do a biopsy. It wasn't a difficult job and it certainly gave me a better understanding of sheep physiology. The one sad factor was that I checked the uterus and discovered that she was carrying triplets, 2 rams and a ewe.

When I finally made it to the vet late in the afternoon he said that part of the reason she had gone down so quick was the fact she was carrying triplets. The body was already under some degree of stress from the pregnancy and the pneumonia that struck her just stressed her that bit more. It made me feel confident I know what I'm doing though that my original diagnosis was correct - pneumonia. the liver sample I took is being sent to a lab and we are having a complete trace element screen done. that will tell us if the sheep are deficient in anything from selenium to manganese and iron.

The best part of the day though was spent moving the flock around and giving them their latest set of vaccinations. This consisted of Covexin 8, a 7-way blackleg plus tetanus and forms the basis of the immunity that pregnant ewes pass on to their lambs.

Tomorrow thankfully, is another day

2009-01-14T20:18:00.000-08:00

2009 hasn't begun well for us. There was some clean up from the flooding around the fields, and a couple of fence holes to repair, but yesterday morning we found a sheep collapsed in the breezeway to the fields and this morning while assembling the creep feeder for the lambs that are due soon, I saw another that was in trouble.

Yesterday's died this morning, of what I guess was pneumonia. Certainly the symptoms indicated that but only an autopsy would tell us for sure (and now that I have spoken to the local vet I am knowledgable enough to perform one). This afternoon the one from the morning died as well, making that 2 deaths in the space of a day. We have had a couple of ewes die previously, and of course last lambing season we had a couple of newborns that didn't make it (that's unfortunately just par for the course), but both of these were East Friesian, likely pregnant, and a big part of our future, so it's come as a real blow.

Sheep are fickle, and the reality of things is that when they get sick there is every likelihood that if its not diagnosed on the spot, it's going to result in a dead sheep. That has been something we have had to come to terms with, but each death still causes despair and frustration. Tomorrow we rotate them into a clean pasture for a few days until I can repair a couple of other fence holes, then we can let them into the very back field for a couple of weeks to allow the grass in the nursery area to grow, then we will bring them back to the nursery field around February 7th, a week before the first is due to lamb.

We made an executive decision this afternoon as well that if we get a good ram from our Dorset mothers this year we will use him to breed Dorset back into the East Friesian bloodline and provide a little more vigour and hardiness. East Friesian sheep are very 'fragile' compared to a lot of other sheep and almost everyone who raises them breeds some other type into them for the local conditions. You've probably read my rantings about this before.

So 2009 begins ominously, but living on a farm you accept such issues and move on, taking whatever precautions you can to prevent others coming down with the same problem, if of course you can.

The other bad news was that we have discovered our youngest border collie, Hamish also has hip dysplasia. Nowhere near as bad as Byron had it, but it is something that may need surgery down the line.

Tomorrow thankfully, is another day.

Man the Lifeboats! UPDATED

2008-12-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

As of 10.00am this morning (December 29th), this is the view of the river to the side of the house. The front fields are now under water, the roads either side of the bridge are barely passable, the neighbour's field over the road is under water, and the river has broken its banks in at least 3 places I can see. Thankfully (for now) the house seems to be OK. The barn is another 4-5 feet above the water line so all the sheep are OK and if things here in the house get worse then the barn is the next stop. Apparently, 10.00am is the peak river time as well, except it's still raining here.

Well, not quite yet anyway but these two images will give you an idea of just how much rain we have had in the last couple of days. coupled with the melting snow further up the valley, it's easy to see how the river can eat away at the river bank and create a raging torrent out of just a small stream. It's hard to believe that since October the river has risen at least 12 feet to what it is now.

2008 in Review and Looking Forward to 2009

2008-12-21T17:33:00.000-08:00

I think a lot of people are in some kind of holding pattern at the moment, waiting to see what the future is going to bring.

The economic collapse that seems to have smothered the whole country has had a fairly significant impact on our operation as well unfortunately. Firstly the fuel crisis raised the price of all our feed plus many of the day to day running expenses, then Jen's part-time IT role was cut back, and with me farming full-time and keeping this place running, it has meant being a lot more frugal with a much smaller income for the time being. Living on savings is never a good position to be in, and there is still a fair amount of work to be done before the milk house and cheesemaking facilities are ready and we can start making cheese.

We will start milking around mid March, and that should last a good six months, but at the moment we are wondering whether, in light of the economy, it would be a smarter thing to spend another year slowly getting things organized. We still have markets for our milk (including Rogue Creamery), but it would mean me getting a part-time job locally just to make ends meet and doing a lot more of the construction of the milk facilities myself - something I'm becoming more familiar and happy with as time goes on. I've already begun to look around and see what is out there as far as a job goes. It's almost certain it won't be in IT unfortunately, but a filler role in a clerical position for a year should get us through.

Things aren't all doom and gloom, far from it. There is still a growing market for artisan cheese and the economy will definitely pick up in the future. We're not the only ones doing it tough, although we are a lot more fortunate than many in that we can grow a lot of our own food, and we have a business that we are working towards, plus we have an income, even if its just enough to get by.

It's been a tough year in some ways, but a massive learning experience as well, which we knew we had ahead of us. Next year we will be able to do a lot of things much more easily and more efficiently as well. Running a sheep farm isn't something you 'fall' into, it takes years of learning, but the desire is as strong as it was the day we arrived, probably more so now as we know we can do it.

If our projections are correct then in March we will begin milking the first of our 26 ewes that will lamb. Conservatively we are hoping for a 100% lamb rate which will ensure at least 26 lambs. If half are ewes then we will add them to the flock, cull the rams and the older 8 Dorset/Suffolk crosses we kept from the original flock. By the end of June then we should have at least 50 ewes, almost 40 of them will be of breeding age by next September. That will also enable us to sell upwards of 20 rams to the markets - or keep some ourselves and sell them locally for better prices. We will also keep at least 1 of the Lacaune rams born and one of the East Friesian's as well so we can do a ram swap with either of the two people we bought our rams from this year - I'm also becoming more partial to the Lacaune's anyway. Despite being a little more flighty than the East Friesians they seem much more hardy and in the valley here where sheep are prone to hoof rot, that extra hardiness might be a good thing. We have enough hay feed to get us through the winter months as well so next year we will be able to hay ourselves and sell a good portion of it - again this years effort was a learning experience.

So, until next year, I'd like to pass on the Season's Greetings to everyone who stops by and hope that you tune in in 2009 for more ramblings from Catesby Farms.

'Mr B's' Second Canadian Adventure

2008-12-11T14:22:00.000-08:00

Next Tuesday I take Byron back to Vancouver, Canada for his second hip replacement. The first one has gone extremely well and he is now racing around the back yard with the rest of the dogs. After running around though he is noticably carrying his right leg, so next week, before his hip deteriorates too much more, we are going to give him his second bionic leg.

Hopefully the weather won't affect the drive up and back, but the last few days we have been busy getting everything finished as a cold front with the prospect of snow is on the horizon.

We also had our first official ODA inspection on Wednesday and we passed without any issues. In fact the guy doing the inspection was impressed with the fact we had covered every base and were doing things properly without cutting corners - which makes you wonder what horror stories there must be out there that he sees on a regular basis.

A Cold Winter is Approaching..

2008-12-04T19:01:00.000-08:00

Looking at the last couple of pictures reminds me of how quick the weather can change around here. The grass is now lush and green, but the mornings are generally foggy and cold.

The last week or two has been spent fencing and general clean up work in preparation for the coming winter and the lambing season that should begin mid February. Our sheep handling equipment finally arrived from Ketcham's and we finally got around to using the foot bath we had built and then ran the flock through the equipment, trimming their hooves and worming them.

Things went really smoothly. We've always been cursed with terrible weather or uncooperative sheep so it was finally nice to get everything done in both good time and feeling pleased with our efforts at the end of it.

The sheep are all in pretty good condition right now so their maintenance for the next few weeks will be minimal, allowing us to concentrate on completing the fencing projects and turning the vegetable garden over one last time, as it's all been cleared of what was left of our 2008 crop.

There seems to be quite a buzz around the neighborhood about our cheesemaking venture. The local store owner (here's some local history on the place written by our next door neighbour - The Lookingglass Store) is already looking forward to stocking some and apparently he has been talking to the local vintners about it as well. It seems we already have a reputation - this on top of an article appearing in a local Portland magazine in January about up and coming cheesemakers, featuring yours truly amongst others!

The New Lagoon

2008-11-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

Now that the lagoon has been completed we are planning the next stage of redevelopment - the Milk Barn. We are awaiting prices from a contractor to complete the exterior, which includes removing old doors and windows and relocating them, putting on new siding and concreting around the outside to give us a cleaner more usable outside work space.

The lagoon project was completed in fairly quick time by Potter Excavation. As I mentioned previously they did an excellent job. We are busy fencing it off at present inbetween the rain showers that are becoming more frequent now as autumn hits us, and once that is done we can allow the sheep back into the adjoining field. The surrounding valley is at present a mix of green, orange, red and gold, but the cold weather is already here and we're hurrying up with our internal remodel of the house so everything is finished by winter.

In the coming weeks we have to plough over the vegetable garden, prune back the fruit trees so we can manage them better next year and then properly lay out the area ready for next year. This year the vegetable garden was more an exercise in discovering what we could successfully grow, and what we had trouble with. Being more organized next year, knowing exactly what to plant and when will ensure we have a more productive garden.

Things are starting to come together at long last. All of the projects that we have been working on since we arrived seem to be slowly coalescing toward our goal. Once the fencing around the lagoon is complete and we have repaired a few holes in the fenceline around the property, we will be ready for the new year. Last week we cleaned out the big barn, moved all of the manure into the holding barn and spread a few loads over the front and side fields. With just the 'lambing' barn and the jugs to be done now we will be ready for mid February when our first lamb is due.

The chessemaking is also about to get underway in a more earnest way. The next few months will see a lot of experimentation. We are hoping that in that time we can perfect our processes and our recording methods so that once we begin milking the sheep come April everything is second nature. We have also finalized our list of equipment with C. van 't Riet Dairy Technology.

Byron's recovery is thankfully almost complete. He still spends the majority of the day in his room, but several times a day he now gets the run of the back yard by himself. He has his 3 month x-ray's scheduled for the third week of this month and once those are done he should be able to join the rest of the dogs again.

The Construction Begins!

2008-09-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

After receiving 5 bids for our 'hole in the ground' we have selected the construction company, and within 5 days they had our back field full of machinary and were working. I'm impressed. Not only are they moving along at a good rate, but they are doing a really excellent job and they are keeping the construction site clean and haven't created any unnecessary problems with the surrounding field. On top of that they are going to do a few extra things for us for the cost of some scrap metal lying around and one of our two piles of manure that was dug from the concrete tank originally. Now that's a deal!

On Saturday we turned our ram out with our ewes. At first he seemed a little shy but now he seems to be doing his job. We have a harness on him at the moment with an ink block attached which is changed every 16 days (to a new colour). This will allow us to determine approximately which ewes are pregnant (or have ovulated) and therefore when their lambs are due to within a day or so.

The new web site is still happening but we are waiting on our new internet service to be installed (they need to put in a relay box and router up at the barn which has a direct line of sight with the tower on the hill in the distance). Once the router is installed we can install one of the key features of the web site - webcams! Yes you'll actually be able to see live on the internet what is going on around Catesby Farms, from lambing to cheesemaking, as they happen! It also means we can use the cameras kind of like a closed circuit TV when lambing is on to keep track of what is happening ourselves. Once the cameras are set up, I'll be releasing the web site.

Last piece of news is that we have begun renovating the house. We have bought paint and slate for the floor and are in the throes of remodelling the house ready for winter.

Byron continues to improve as well and has now taken to jumping on the couch in the evenings when we have him out of his room. In all, things are moving forward exactly how we want them to.

Dogs and the Tidying of Many Things

2008-09-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

As usual time seems to have flown by without even a simple comment from me here, and again I must apologize to those who visit regularly. The last few weeks have been a constant stream of activities from simple tasks like rewiring our livestock trailer to long and emotionally draining things like taking Byron to Vancouver, Canada for his hip replacement surgery. I'll start at the beginning as best I can and hope I neither ramble nor lose you along the way.

Early August was spent mostly in the vegetable garden harvesting all of our produce, and setting up the irrigation for the main fields. We've amassed several hundred pounds of potatos as well as beans, cauliflower, corn, cabbage and are now being inundated with tomatoes. We certainly have enough in the way of produce to keep us going over the winter months ahead, plus in a few weeks the chickens will start laying and the Katahdin sheep we had, well some of them were slaughtered and the meat is now in the freezer (we have kept the best ram though for genetic experimentation next year!).

We acquired a new puppy in the middle of August, another Border Collie that we have named Hamish. He comes from exemplary stock and is an exciting prospect as far as herding goes. From what we have seen of him so far he will become an excellent sheep dog. His aunt recently came 5th in the UK Nationals so he has a lot to live up to. Jen has already started training him and he has picked up the basic commands very quickly. He's also proving to be a master thief and we can't leave anything on the bench top or even an open cupboard because he will steal anything from loaves of bread to shoes. That definitely needs to be worked on!

Late August saw me drive to Vancouver in Canada with Byron for his hip replacement. The operation can be done two ways and the way we had chosen (cementless process where the bone knits to the prosthetic hip ball and socket rather than being glued) required a trip to San Francisco or Vancouver. As the drive is the same and the same doctor would have done the operation (she lives in Vancouver) it made sense to drive north rather than south.

Well the operation to date has been a complete success and we have noticed already that there is a major improvement in the way Byron moves and gets around. Keeping him confined to a single room in the house is proving difficult but he is coping well. He will eventually need the right side replacing as well but we will wait until summer next year before we do that. The doctor has said that he should be strong and agile enough to be able to herd sheep once he has fully recovered so that is really positive news and something to look forward to. Keeping him confined to our office and spending time with him one on one has strengthened the bond between us and he has become more responsive to us.

After returning from Vancouver I headed back up to Portland a few days later to pick up some more sheep. This time it was for our Lacaune ram and six Lacaune ewes, so our flock currently stands at 26 East Friesians (12 yearling ewes, 1 yearling ram and 13 lamb ewes), 7 Lacaunes (6 yearling ewes and 1 lamb ram), 1 Katahdin ram, 24 Dorset/Hampshire/Suffolk crosses (9 older ewes, 7 weathers, 7 ewe lambs and 1 ram that should have been a weather but wasn't castrated properly!).

This week we had the engineering contractor people out to inspect the site for the lagoon. Bids for the job have to be in by today so hopefully by early next week we shall know who is doing the job and when they will start. It has been problematic to say the least (with people leaving their jobs and others on holiday) but it appears we are very close now.

Yesterday we had a lamb go down with a bad case of worms, something that surprised us considering we wormed a few weeks ago and the fecal tests we had done showed no worms. We think its possible the new Lacaune's brought them in, so today is worming day again! The lamb seems to be recovering after a quick trip to the vet, an IV, a shot of magical 'sheep cure all' and now a few doses of maple syrup (the high sugar content is needed to kickstart their system).

The web site alas has taken a back seat, but never fear, it is being worked on and will appear soon.

CAFO Approved

2008-07-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

Today was a major milestone in the development of Catesby Farms. We recieved notification that are CAFO application has been approved and that as of today we are now CAFO certified by the state of Oregon. Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is one of the most important steps required in establishing a cheese facility (if you milk your own animals) and also one of those that tends to get glossed over or forgotten because there is traditionally no fanfare, or physical 'change' to anything that a picture could illustrate.

Still, it enables us to keep up to 200 sheep on our property and defines the parameters within which we can operate our cheese facility. The next certification is the cheese facility itself and once that happens we are fully registered, licensed and certified by the state of Oregon to start producing cheese. Next week we will be confirming the plans with our engineer for the construction of the waste lagoon which will begin construction this Autumn (Fall). We have not yet secured a general contractor to oversee the operation but once we have one they will take charge of both the lagoon and the milk barn refit.

So, this was the first major hurdle. From here on in the actual construction begins.

On a side note, we have sourced some East Friesian / Lacaune rams for our breeding program, down in Klamath Falls. We are still going to do some experimentation with the Katahdin's, but the aim initially will be to increase the size of the milking flock. This year we will only have 12 East Friesian ewes to breed, next year we will have 25 unless we acquire more. On the plus side we do have 10 Dorset ewes that we can breed either the Katahdin's or the East Friesian rams to depending on what else we are looking for. As I mentioned, the meat from the Katahdin's is good quality, so perhaps we will investigate specialist meat cuts locally as a side business.

Chicken Coop 301

2008-07-18T08:56:00.001-07:00

We have now completed our third chicken coop. The first two were conceived and built while we were living in Arizona - the first was an enormous construction that was impossible to move once finished and the second was too light and flimsy and eventually broken into by one of the huskies, with dire results. While the first was truly a work of art, its design proved too over-engineered for our current requirements.

This third model is a hybrid, built for pasture feeding and sturdy enough that it shouldn't prove a lure for foxes or raccoons. It's mobile and will likely be all we need, as the chicks get older and we begin to thin them out there will be plenty of room for a dozen fully grown birds. In 3-4 months time I'll build a small laying box attachment that we can afix to the rear.

We have now begun the quest for a general contractor to begin work on our cheese facility!

Some Semblance of Sanity Returns

2008-07-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

Now that the irrigation is working in the front fields, our new pump has arrived and awaits installation of the electrical panel, and half of our guests have returned home, things are slowly returning to normal. The haying is all but done, neatly stacked in the barn and likely going to be sold as all our pasture is still green and healthy and the neighbour has allowed us to graze the sheep in his pastures as well. The actual haying exercise has been problematic but we have learnt enough to be able to manage it all ourselves next time around, as long as all of our ancient equipment is up to the task and the modifications we need can be made to the bailer (converting it from wire to string tie).

We're hopefully coming to the end of 30+ days of 90 degree weather as well. Just a small dose of rain would be a welcome change. In the last couple of days we have been gathering soil and hay samples to determine the nutrient uptake ability of the ground and the nourishment value of the hay. One thing we have quickly learnt is that what cows and horses will eat is much different to sheep as sheep are much more fussy. Unless its still green they won't touch it, much to our annoyance. We're hoping that in the winter months this fussiness goes.

Our flock has in the last couple of days unexpectedly grown as well. Several weeks ago we noticed that a 'stray' ram had appeared amidst our ewes. It's not breeding season yet so we let him be thinking his owner would eventually come by (even after we scoured the neighbourhood asking who owned him). Well nobody wanted him apparently so we figured when the time came he'd be off to the scales as an extra few dollars in our pocket. Well one sheep might have been fine but yesterday afternoon we discovered 5 more in one of our fields. Same breed, same age roughly (yearlings). Again we did the drive around asking the neighbours, and again nobody knows who owns them. It's not like they're the same as all the other sheep around either, they're quite likely either Katahdin's or Damara's, hair sheep usually reddish in colour. They're also all male, undocked and unweathered.

So, we have a dilemma. What to do with 6 young rams. There are essentially 2 options and both have their merits. Both breeds of sheep are bred to have less fatty meat than traditional meat sheep and are much hardier, able to survive on very low quality scrub feed, so either we could pocket a few hundred dollars by selling them to the scales, or we could slaughter them ourselves for the meat. The second (or is that third) option is to use them as male breeding stock with our East Friesians. Say what? Well they are a similar build, are extremely hardy to sheep parasites (which will do well with the rather frail East Friesians), actually produce above average quantities of milk, and are aggressive toward predators such as coyotes.

I'd just add in here at this point that we are unsure of the 'wandering livestock' rules in Oregon, but these sheep are untagged and apparently not carrying any identifiable marks (I even checked for tattoos in the ears).

Perhaps its not such a dilemma after all, but my initial thought was "We'll contaminate our breeding plan!". We will need to have the sheep fully checked by a local vet to ensure they are OK, but maybe a Damara or Katahdin / East Friesian cross is breaking new ground in the sheep / cheese industry and the possible advantages are extremely interesting. Stay tuned on this one!

Hay there!

2008-06-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

Yes it's been a while since I last posted and a lot has happened in that time. We're currently busy in the throes of haymaking as are all of the people here in the valley. We've had a week so far of wonderful weather so its all hands to the pump as it were.

Given our location and the water rights we have from the creek that runs past our door we will be able to get a second cutting of hay later in the year, something few of our neighbours will enjoy. The irrigation piping is currently being laid out and we have a new pump on order. As has been the case with a lot of the farm's infrastructure, the old wiring for the existing pump is dodgy, badly corroded and likely a hazard. While taking the old pump around to get a new automatic starter / switch for it we got some interesting comments until I assured them that we hadn't just stolen it from the local farming museum. Apparently it was made circa 1952 and most were phased out almost 30 years ago.

We also currently have a full house. Last week I returned briefly to Australia to pick up my kids for a 3 week holiday, and Jennie's sister is also visiting with her two boys from Connecticut, so seven people and nine dogs means something is always happening.

The sheep from Vermont Shephard have all settled in now and their friendliness has begun to rub off on some of the older ewes and what lambs we have left from our lambing season. Two weeks ago we took the cull ewes (mostly the Suffolk and Hampshire's) and 50 lambs down to the scales to thin the flock out and so we are back to just over 50 now, a much more managable number. We'll do one more trip out there probably in a month as we have a couple of the younger lambs who were undersize left as well as a couple of ewes we have now decided to cull.

East Friesian Vs Dorset/Hampshire/Suffolk

2008-05-28T13:01:00.000-07:00

A regular reader, and Canadian friend of mine asked me recently what the differences were between the sheep we currently had and the new ones we had just purchased. This is an excellent question, and seems to follow many of the ones we get from locals - Why can't you just milk the sheep you have?

It's true that we could. The Dorset is a good all-round sheep. It has a decent carcass for meat, its wool is clean and produces a good fiber diameter, and it is an above average milker and breeder (known for higher percentages of multiple births).

They also have a more docile aspect to their nature compared to the Hampshire and Suffolk sheep we have. So, while these attributes are fine under some circumstances (for an all-round operation) the Dorset is not stellar in one particular aspect - the aspect we need - milk production. On the other hand it does have one extremely attractive benefit - what is called the 'out-of-season' breeding characteristic. This means that it is not unusual to get 3 breeding cycles in 2 years instead of the traditional annual cycle.

East Friesian's on the other hand are the most highly productive dairy sheep (producing up to 700kg/1500lbs per lactation cycle which is up to 3 times greater than average sheep).

So, while we could indeed milk our Dorset's, the milk production with East Friesian's is much higher, and more milk means more cheese! Now, cross them with Dorset's and if you can breed into a ewe lamb both the East Friesian milk productivity and the Dorset's 'out-of-season' breeding characteristic you have a winner - a sheep that breeds more frequently and when it lactates is produces three times the normal milk supply. And that is exactly what we aim to do.

Its not all Brie and Crackers

2008-05-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

We're extremely thankful to the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project for their article on up-and-coming cheese makers that featured Catesby Farms this week. I consider it to be the number one blog on cheesemaking and is always packed with fascinating and informative news. The article captured exactly what most people who look at this from the outside, or those looking to start cheesemaking, don't necessarily realize - that the cheesemaking itself is just the icing on the cake and that the steps required to get to that point are many, and riddled with both humor and frustration.

We were fortunate in that we went into this venture with our eyes wide open, knowing exactly what was involved and ultimately how much time and money it was going to cost us before we would be seeing our packaged product on store shelves.

Of course there is an easier way to do this - you simply buy the milk in large quantities and forego the entire livestock operation, but then you miss out on so much and ultimately have less control over your final product than you would imagine. What were the animals eating? Were they housed in a building that would stress them? Were they organically raised? By being able to control the entire process from animal birth to what they eat, you have total control over your final product, and that to us is critical.

This week is an important one. We not only have our engineers doing their site evaluation and preparation for our new lagoon, but this coming weekend we will be selling off a good number of our lambs and hopefully getting things ready for haying. Reducing the flock will enable us to better manage what we have, plus we need to undertake the next round of worming, etc and its easier to do 50 sheep than 135 of them!

The dam went in at the weekend. The creek that runs alongside the house (Morgan Creek) has a dam (Yoder Dam) that can be constructed and deconstructed seasonally that raises the water level about 4ft for irrigation. We have rights to pump water and irrigate our pasture which means we are able to get a second and third hay cutting on some of the fields.

Catesby Farms Web Site Launch

2008-05-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Over the next couple of weeks I will be working in my spare time on the Catesby Farms Web Site that will be located at http://www.catesbyfarms.com. At present it only has an advert for the puppies but eventually its first incarnation will include sections on the farm, projects currently underway, our sheep, and early next year our cheesemaking.

I am hoping for it to also become something of a repository for sheep and cheesemaking (as it pertains to sheep milk). The blog will still exist, and as it does at present, include my own personal observations and perspective on the whole operation.

Pits, Puppies and Potatoes

2008-05-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest issues with owning a livestock operation is manure and having a plan in place to effectively manage it. With the added complexity of a milking facility, an eventual cheesemaking room and the liquid waste water generated by all, having a method of collection and removal determines pretty much everything regarding how Catesby Farms is run.

As the farm was originally a dairy farm, a lot of what we need is already here, it just needs bringing back up to an operational level. The 'pit' is one of those things. It's a 10ft deep, 20ft x 20ft concrete hole that will collect all of our liquid waste and a small amount of solid waste, with the liquid waste being pumped off and spread as 'fertilizer' around the paddocks. Until this week the pit was full of 25 years of solid waste.

Environmental laws now in place mean things need to be done radically different to 25 years ago when the tank was built. Back then it didn't matter that the bottom wasn't concrete and that the pit wasn't sealed. Today it's the law. In the next few weeks the bottom will be concreted in and the tank fully sealed. After that we will either dig a secondary lagoon to pump liquid waste to (from the pit - and prior to spreading around the farm) or we will build another pit. This will take care of all of our waste water issues bar one - the need to connect the septic tank (the one without the drain field) to the pipe that drains into the pit. As the waste water from the septic will only contain wash water, we do not need the expensive septic system we had originally thought. Instead the cost of building it will go into the new pit. Swings and roundabouts really - but it gets us the ODA approval we need.

Once the manure management plan is in effect the Milk Barn construction can continue. The reality is that this solution will cause us the least aggravation.

On Friday we moved into the next phase of our operation regarding the sheep as well. Our 25 lambs and yearlings from Vermont Shephard arrived. We have decided to sell all but 3 of our lambs to slaughter (we will slaughter a couple for our own freezer, but the three we will keep are the little one we hand reared, and the two named by Jordanna and Zoe, my two girls - thankfully 2 of them are ewes so we should profit from them down the line). Of the ewes we will keep a dozen, which means that from mid June we will be down to 25 East Freisian ewes, 12 Dorset/Hampshire ewes and 3 cross-breed lambs - for a nice round 40. In February next year the 12 ewes and the 12 yearlings will lamb, adding approximately another 35 sheep (a far more managable number than the current 135.

The puppies continue to do well. All 4 are now very active and are looking to explore their new world. Both Othello and Gizmo are proving to be extremely good parents and it will be difficult to sell the puppies, although we have had interest already.

The last few days the weather has been wonderful and we have extended our vegetable garden yet again with corn, cabbages, carrots and lettuces. Both the strawberries and potatoes are doing extremely well (maybe it was adding some of the 'fertilizer' we dug out of the pit that did the trick).

Look how sweet we are. Don't you want to own us?

2008-05-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

The puppies are 17 days old now, all have their eyes open and are starting to play with each other and interact with their world. Next week we will start getting ready to advertise them for sale. It's tempting to keep one but with 5 dogs already thats a bit too much for us to look after.

Looking out on the World

2008-04-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

Two of the puppies opened their eyes for the first time today to take a look out into the big wide world. We also moved them and Gizmo from the back room into the office. Gizmo has been chomping at the bit to have company once again so now she feels she is once again part of the family.

We've had nice weather for the last couple of days and have made the most of it, repairing fencing and replacing a whole side fence next to the lambing barn. Yet another skill we can add to the CV. Over the next few weeks we intend to replace and repair a lot of the fencing around the property. In some places it seems to have been cobbled together (for want of a better description) and while it gives the appearance of a fence, would scarcely keep anything penned.

During the week we also came to a gentleman's agreement with a local farmer to cut and bail our hay for us. He supplies all of the machinery, bails and stacks it in our barn and we split the hay 50/50. According to the previous owners there should be plenty that we will likely end up selling some of ours, especially as we will get a second and possibly third cutting from it.

Jen spent the day in the garden planting more vegetables and tomorrow we will cultivate some more ground for the next batch - corn. Monday we pick up our new Bobcat, and later in the week we've even planned on making some more cheese! Yes, that funny yellowish stuff that all this is really about...

We got a New Toy!

2008-04-24T08:12:00.000-07:00

It will certainly make life easier around here that's for sure! With an 800 lb capacity and a backhoe attachment, we're going to get a lot of use out of this new toy.

It's been a good week all around

2008-04-19T17:39:00.001-07:00

Funny how a bad week can be followed by an extremely good week. Of course the puppies were the highlight of the week and they continue to do well. We took them to the vet on Thursday and they all got a clean bill of health. Gizmo has finally decided that she wants to spend 10 minutes every couple of hours racing around the back yard to give herself a break.

Today we put together a whelping box for her which gives her much more room and there is less chance the puppies will get squashed and scream when she moves around.

Other news included a possible solution to our septic tank problems in the Milk Barn. The farm has an old lagoon that can be restored, and all the liquid waste directed to it from the milking room. As for a human toilet, the PMO allows us to use a chemical toilet, so we might be able to do everything for the cost of some drain/pipe laying and the acquisition of a pump. More on that as we get info.

First up we need to get the old lagoon/pit emptied so we can see if any of the original pipes drain into it. Hopefully thats a simple enough job we can have done next week.

36 Hours Old...

2008-04-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

36 hours old....

Welcome to the World Iago, Macbeth, Mercutio and Portia

2008-04-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

Yes we're still in shock. This morning, between 9.00am and 11.00am Gizmo gave birth to four little puppies. What is most surprising is that until it happened, we had no idea that she was even pregnant. Yes we had tried a couple of times before and thought the last time was another failure but it goes to show that one just never knows.

There are 3 little boys, all silver/black and one little girl who is pure black. All appear to be doing really well, feeding properly and making little squeaking noises.

More news to follow...

Anti-Septic

2008-04-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

Another week has flown by during which we received some not so good news. It appears that the septic system in the Milk Barn, while actually collecting and dispatching effluent to the tank in the vegetable garden as it should, lacks one major component - a drain field. The upshot? We need to have a drain field layed out and then buried in the garden somewhere, and not just anywhere. It has to be somewhere that gravity can feed it as well as complying with all the rules and regulations the County and the State want to throw at us (including set distances from things like boundaries, fencelines, wells and swales).

So, considering the tank is old, concrete, and probably cracked somewhere (after all that water has to be going somewhere right?) we are going to get a new tank installed at the same time as the drain field is done. This way we can comply with the ODA regarding whey disposal as well as regular effluent.

There is some good news though, it seems we can bury the drain field in the end of the vegetable garden in the 'orchard'. More bad news is that the ballpark cost is $7,500 - $15,000 depending on what needs doing. The higher amount is a worse case scenario that involves pumps and a non-gravity system, the lower amount is if no additional work needs doing other than a straight install. Once its done though, the rest of the renovation will be the easy part as we'll have water and septic and of course the new roof. I can hear the bank account sighing at last.

Today is a lovely day to cap off the week, 88 degrees at the moment (29C for those of you on metric) and we've spent the day roto-tilling the vegetable garden, planting potatos, and mowing, and I got a tan to boot! During the week its been all go, water blasting the barn area and moving manure.

It also appears that our 24 sheep from Vermont Shepherd will be arriving a lot sooner than we had expected, the end of this month to be exact. In order to reduce the size of the flock then over the next couple of weeks we'll be retiring some of the sheep and filling the freezer with.....well, meat.

Milk Barn - The Internal Workings

2008-04-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd begin the next stage of the renovation of the Milk Barn with a brief explanation here as to what is currently there, what we intend to do, and ultimately how we envision it looking when its done.

This is what we are faced with at the moment. Apart from the front 2 rooms (where the previous owner made honey), it hasn't been used for close on 25 years and was originally designed for cattle in a 5x5 herringbone configuration that could milk 10 cows simultaneously. All the original stanchions remain and much of the transport piping is still in place. The steel needs cutting out and the concrete herringbone over the pit needs to be redone so the pit is properly rectangular. Of course the entire ceiling needs replacing, new walls need constructing and the floor needs to be relayed (thankfully it appears that thr septic system piping is still working after all these years).

The above plan (click on the image for a larger picture) shows what the final layout will hopefully look like. We will be limiting our initial milking process to a maximum of 6 sheep simultaneously although the equipment we will be purchasing does allow for expansion by units of 2. Depending on the eventual size of our flock (yes we are still discussing it) and our production figures we may switch from bucket milking to a basic vacuum pipeline, but the bucket units themselves will be fully integratable into a vacuum system, so no additional costs other than constructing the pipeline and buying the vacuum pump are involved.

The Milk Barn has a New Roof

2008-04-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

As predicted we had four wonderful days of sun this week. The roofers from Hunts Roofing and Construction arrived early Monday and inside three days did a great job in removing the old tin roof and replacing it with a tar shingle that matches the house. The plumbers came back at last and installed all of the plumbing, so we now have water in the back barn and capped piping in the milk barn area.

The next stage is to get inside and gut the place by removing all of the old stanchions, the ceiling and the wall coverings, then to begin the process of firstly cleaning all of the studs and then changing the locations of the doors and windows. With that done we can look at outside covering.

Thursday we completed the second half of the flock check up. We actually managed to put everyone through the tilter this time thanks in no small part to the weather and the lessons we learned last weekend. So all the sheep are tagged and wormed, and all the lambs have now been given their vaccination booster. We intend to do the run through about every six weeks in order to check for things like hoof rot, but after Thursday we have a lot more confidence in our ability to get the job done in a single day.

We also heard from David Major at Vermont Shepherd. He will be personally delivering our 12 yearlings and 12 lambs in June, sometime after we have thinned our current flock to 20.

Come Hail or Shine

2008-03-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-03-28T22:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-09T11:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

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.

The Cheese Test Bed Facility

2008-02-29T17:48:00.000-08:00

Stage 1 of the "grand plan" is remodelling the second kitchen we have at the back of the house. Once this has been completed we can recommence our cheesemaking endeavours and start honing our cheesemaking skills. The Test Bed Facility is now about half complete and we should have it operational sometime next week with a last concerted effort. General farm duties will of course slow the process but we believe lambing is now done (we have 4 ewes who have shown no signs of pregnancy so later next week we will turn them out into the main flock).

The little lamb we saved whose mother died soon after he was born (we have named him Ram-Bo because he's a little fighter) is doing extremely well and is now fuller and healthier looking than many of the other lambs. We'll keep him after the effort of saving him. In the jugs at the moment we have another runt. She was born on Feb 23rd the day after my birthday. Both her and her brother (who unfortunately died) were bags of bones and it has taken a full week for her mother's milk to finally come in. We fed her a couple of bottles to get her going but she's now much more active and feeding well.

On March 15th there is a cheese festival down in Central Point at the Rogue River Creamery. Should be a great day and an opportunity to get to meet some more local cheesemakers and learn.

This is just so cool:

The Good Life

2008-02-24T16:20:00.000-08:00

Today we began the cultivation of the acre or so that will become our vegetable garden. The previous owners had used it for the same purpose and the fenced area has several apple trees, pear trees and a cherry tree as well. It has remained unused for a season now though and it badly needed weeding and tilling. Thanks to our Roto-Tiller the job will be much easier on the back.

Jen has already begun the planting with onions, and this week will see the addition of peas and spinach. The soil is rich and dark and a far cry from the manufactured beds we created in Arizona.

Apart from the cheesemaking, the prospect of becoming virtually self-sufficient was one of the factors that influenced our decision to make the move to farming. One bonus to all of this is that the farm hasn't used pesticides or chemicals for many many years and there is an extremely good chance we can get ourselves registered as organic which might be yet another avenue for us down the track.

The irony isn't lost on me

2008-02-24T16:16:00.001-08:00

In the last few years my mother has been doing a lot of genealogical research on her family name. The name SHIPWAY is derived from the term Sheep Way - a path that the sheep farmers used to drive their flock to market along, and our forebears were firstly Gloucestershire sheep farmers, and then worked in the cloth trade. In a way you could say I've come full circle and the irony hasn't been lost on me.

The Vision: Clarity at last

2008-02-23T18:42:00.000-08:00

We have a long journey ahead of us, the plan of which I thought I would share with everyone so they know exactly what it is we're doing, and where we hope to end up.

Stage 1:
Completion of the second kitchen in the house. Yes we're lucky enough to have a second kitchen. We are presently renovating it so we can turn it into our "test facility", that is we can recommence our cheesemaking activities and use it to hone our skills and our cheeses.

Stage 2:
We intend to sell all but a half dozen of our current crop of lambs in order to finance the acquisition of a dozen springer (pregnant) ewes and 2 rams (East Friesian/Suffolk crosses). We have sourced a breeder in California who I will likely visit in the coming week.

Stage 3:
Completion of the milking facility. This is the first part of the construction phase and involves the reworking of the existing milking parlour into something that will accomodate sheep rather than the cows its currently sized for.

Stage 4:
Completion of the cheese facility. Phase 2 of the construction involves building the cheese room, the bulk storage room, the anti-room/entry, and the upstairs office into the old milking parlour.

Stage 5:
Breed our Dorset ewes with the rams we get this year to produce good East Friesian/Dorset crosses. Sell the other lambs and the older ewes from our original flock that we no longer need and as per stage 2 use the money to acquire another dozen springer ewes. This will give us a working flock of at least 24 East Friesian/Suffolk ewes, approximately a dozen Dorset ewes and up to 24 lambs, the rams of which will be sold as stud animals and the ewes probably kept.

Stage 6:
By this stage we will have been milking for some time and making farmstead cheeses. At this point (or possibly earlier) we will make the move to properly commercialize our venture.

Of course while all of this is going on we will be repasturing at least 2 of our fields, upgrading some of the farm's other facilities (including the one bedroom "apartment") and looking into some other ventures including hay sales and growing mushrooms.

Cheesemaking 101: Basic +

2008-02-23T17:39:00.000-08:00

I returned from Portland on Thursday evening after my three day cheesemaking course at Oregon State University. The course was fantastic and crystallized a lot of what we want to do in a way that I know is now achievable. Full credit to Marc Bates and Dave Potter who did most of the coordination, and the teaching staff of OSU, particularly Lisbeth Goddik.

The course covered everything one could possibly need to know to start up their own cheese making venture, from construction of the site, to marketing the final product. There was even a field trip to two farmstead cheese makers to further clarify everything presented in the course. The balance between the chemistry and the technical detail, and the hands-on side of things was handled well, certainly well enough not to discourage people.

I now have a decent list of contacts, both fellow cheesemakers and USDA and OSU people willing to answer questions and help out where they can. It's a small community, but certainly one where advice and help is easy to come by. I look forward to tapping these resources in the future and keeping in touch to see how my fellow cheesemaking students fare in their own ventures.

Job Description: The Shit Shoveller

2008-02-16T18:43:00.000-08:00

There's something about waking early, barely able to see through the fog, bitterly cold hands you can't feel fumbling with gates and a frost on the ground that crackles as you walk through it. The water in the feeder hoses has frozen, and the thawing dew is dripping through the roof onto your head as you feed a ravenous flock of sheep and their progeny, followed by the hauling of 50 gallons of fresh ice cold water.

For someone who has lived in either a sub-tropical or "arid" environment for the last 20 years where there were two seasons, summer, followed by a cooler summer that people claimed was really winter, getting back to a real winter has come as a shock to say the least. While the snow on the surrounding hills has all but gone now the morning's are still below freezing and it's afternoon before our new world finally warms up. Thankfully we have coffee, the wonder drug that revitalizes and refreshes.

The days of incessant rain before we arrived and the sheep imprisoned in the barn and feed area had left the place a veritable sewer. Yesterday we cleaned it. 20 years in IT, and I'm now shovelling shit for a living. In some places the straw and the manure were so thick and trampled it was like lifting carpet, wet shag-pile carpet. But the end result was satisfying and even if the sheep didn't acknowledge the effort, we were pleased with our efforts.

Our daily runs to Lowes or Home Depot are beginning to cost us less finally. Yesterday we were at the DMV as well changing the titles over on all the farm equipment (including the 1955 Chevrolet Truck we got with the property).

Jumping in at the Deep End

2008-02-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

Someone described us once as never doing anything by halves, and we're not about to change either.

We arrived at the farm on 1st February, right in the middle of lambing, at the end of a cold snap and just as the rain had broken after more than a week. The fields were sodden, the sheep had been cooped up for days, and the jugs were full of new mothers. There was no time to "feel our way", no grace period, and certainly no time to sit back and enjoy the peace and tranquility of life on the farm while we eased into things.

Jen is a bookworm. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders know us well. She'll read a dozen books and digest every word so she knows what's supposed to be done. Me, I'm a "dive in get your hands dirty and learn on the job" person, so we complement each other well. Running a farm requires both types of personality. We learned that on day one.

So there we were, feeding, docking, cutting tails, castrating, worming and moving newborns around all on our first morning, and loving every minute of it. Things have settled down now that we know what we're doing and there are only a half dozen ewes left to lamb. We have our goals set for the coming weeks which includes constructing a proper examination chute, replacing some gates and fencing, and I'm off to Portland next week to do a short course in Cheesemaking at Oregon State University.

We have a long laundry list of things we want to buy and we've slowly started to redecorate the inside as well. Everything at the moment seems to be a "work in progress" as we try and divide our time equally between all of the things that we want to do and that need doing. We've had a couple of neighbours drop in already as well and it seems that our intended exploits (the cheesemaking) have already got the locals talking.

The Seachange

2008-02-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

Everyone thinks we're crazy but I know they harbor a secret desire to be able to do the same. A belief in whether they can or not is all that holds them back.

Hi, I'm David. I'm what you call a British-born ex-pat Australian, now living on a 50-acre farm in Roseburg, Oregon with my wife Jennie. We've both lived and worked all over the world. I was in IT for 20 years, Jen was in printing, advertising and then IT for longer. After burning ourselves out working in Florida, we moved to Arizona to contemplate our next move, and now here we are in Oregon, sheep farming and starting on the path to become cheesemakers. Yep, you read that right, we've gone back to the land and are forging a new life away from suburbia, away from the rat-race, and away from the grind of 9-5, or in our case 6-midnight.

The purpose of this blog is two-fold. It will keep everyone interested in our pursuits updated, but it will also serve as a record of our achievements and failures, of which I am sure there will be many, for those who choose to follow us and learn from us as we in turn learn from others.

So, welcome to Catesby Farms.