Our Farm
The PNW is full of evergreens, rain, and small homesteads in the woods. Our farm is one of those small homesteads, sitting at the bottom of a dell...yes we are truly a farmer in the dell... On our small farm we have a menagerie of livestock. We’ve tailored our livestock and produce to our short growing season, persistent rain, and our small acreage. We concentrate on a natural system in which no chemicals are used on the farm. To do this we ensure that everything on our farm has multiple functions, thrives in our climate, and is relatively maintenance free. We maintain a biosecurity system and implement a proactive instead of the more common and modern reactive method. By maintaining great soil, nutrient dense foods, ensuring all animals have optimum diets, testing, and selective breeding, we are blessed with healthy stock and family.
Our Kinder goats provide meat, milk, kids, and weed control (not to mention hours of entertainment). If any of you have raised goat kids, you know what I mean. They have a great personally; gentle and relatively quiet (except breeding season and weaning season). They do great on pasture or hay in the winters. We’ve bred for better feet in wet conditions, higher resistance to parasites common in PNW, high milk production, and a good meat to bone ratio with a quick grow out on wethers.
Our Kunekune pigs keep the grass down, provide pest control in the orchard, as well as keep us in meat and piglets. Their smashed faces and round fatness is too cute, plus they are calm enough to wander around the yard like a dog. Seriously. They are the nicest, easiest pig breed we’ve encountered, and we’ve gone through many. My boar will sit at feeding time and my sow is always up to lay in your lap or ask for a belly rub. Another benefit is that they do not tear up my pastures like all other breeds we’ve had. They are easy on the land and the buildings.
Our Angora rabbits provide both wool and meat and dog food. Our chickens provide, pest control, manure spreading services, eggs, meat and dog food. The ducks keep the slugs off my garden and give me eggs. Everything gets composted. Nothing is wasted.
The land is managed tightly and by ru
nning systems such as livestock-stacking, we are able to break parasite cycles, fertilize, maintain vegetation, keep our imports down, and grow the soil to ensure that all the vegetation is nutrient dense – as well as all we eat here as a result.
Along with the garden and the fruit trees, that are cultivated for our PNW climate, we successfully provide and freeze dry our own food and enjoy our homemade soap, yogurt, butter, yarn, medicines, and more. Since then, we’ve noticed a significant improvement in our health and well-being.
My days were eaten up by moving sheep, goats and pigs from paddock to paddock. Rounding up goats for milking or sheep for shearing. Animals escape (particularly buck goats!!). I needed something to help put them away and watch my back as I mended fences. My children were so young, though they tried to help… there were days I would’ve given my left arm for a babysitter... We were beginning to be over-run by rats and the crows were eating our produce before we could harvest it. Raccoons found the chickens, a neighbor was seeing a young cougar on their game cameras, and there were bear prints behind the woods getting uncomfortably close to the bee hives. Enter my savior – The English Shepherd.
They raised my children in the woods, eliminated the crows and rats. Not a raccoon, cougar, coyote, or bear is brave enough to c
ome around the farm. Livestock rarely gets out, but if they do, they are chased right back in. Because my shepherds basically trained them, it only takes their simple presences to get the goats to freely move from paddock to paddock and come to the barn for milking. I constantly say I couldn’t have the animals I do without my dogs, and I mean it. The farm works now like a well oiled machine.
...now I’m thinking we need more land and more livestock...
The English Shepherd
“English Shepherd breed founders were the multi-purpose shepherds of the British Isles, brought to North America beginning in the 1800s. Over more than a century, these stocks became so widely distributed and consistent in type that they were the archetype farm dog celebrated by the artist Norman Rockwell. As dogs, English Shepherds were shaped somewhat by the natural environment and even more so by selection for the agricultural niche where they worked. Farmers needed the English Shepherd for several important farm jobs. This need created a consistent dog with an optimum range of size, weight, athletic ability, intelligence, and a strong sense of intuition and partnership with their owners. There were always regional variations based on climate, type of stock worked, and farmer preferences, with many localized groups as the result.” -Breed Conservation for the English Shepherd
Today English Shepherds are one of the few remaining breeds never bred for the show ring. They are bred for their working traits. Like our ancestors before us, we breeders select our dogs for health, temperament, intelligence, and working abilities, rather than appearance.
English Shepherds were created for use in a small farm/homestead situation where the dog is only called upon to work intermittently. Though they require daily exercise, they do not have excessive energy or work drive so this intermittent work does not present an issue or lead to destructive behavior.
Just as happy laying on your feet as herding in the field, English Shepherds are highly suitable for life in suburban situations provided they have adequate time with their family to fulfill their social needs and receive regular exercise.
Although selected for their working traits, as versatile and capable farm hands, the extreme intelligence, and calm, loving dispositions of English Shepherds make them ideally suited to both farm life and active urban life. English Shepherds excel at flyball, barn hunts, agility, trick competitions, sport hunting, Search and Rescue, scent games, therapy, obedience training, and the active outdoor enthusiast.
Living with an English Shepherd is a unique experience without measure. Their intelligence makes them tricky to raise. It’s always the smart ones that are the most difficult to raise, but most worth the effort! There is nothing more fulfilling as raising your puppy into an excellent farm manager that is your best friend, your heart dog.
I want to give others the chance to fall in love with these dogs like I have. I want to give others their experience without measure. I want to give others their best farm manager, their best friend, their heart dog.
Comments