[Jacob-list] Keeping Sheep from a Distance

[Thomas Simmons]

Trish,

In addition to the great times (watching newborn lambs, wonderig how they'll
turn out, getting friendly with the ewes, playing wth your fleeces after
shearing, etc), there's down time, too:  broken fences and horns tangled in
wires and sickness and problem births and ticks etc. While I have never
raised sheep "from a distance," I have to honestly say that you would have
"all the negatives" (multiplied because of distance and travel time) and you
would lose some of the positives.  I would think this could get very tiresom
very quickly, and really sour you on a great "home occupation."

In the winter, I have *no* pasture at all.  It is decimated every summer, as
I only have an inch of dirt on top of hard granite.  The electric fences
aruseless in the winter.  That means my sheep eat hay all winter, and are
confined to the barn and a *tiny* barnyard ("courtyard" is probably a better
term for it!), and they do fine.

Have you considered "wooded" property?  My original pasture (5 acres) was
overgrown and "taken back" by the woods after use of non-use when we bought
it.  It was full of maples, birches, sumacs, apples, and brush chst-high.
The Jacobs decimated it the first season!

Anyway, that's my .02.

thom
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