We had a very simple plan when we decided to add sheep to our farm. First, build a house and pens so we can have a farm. Second, buy goats. Third, maybe chickens.
But… best laid plans of farmers and sheep. We were living in a trailer, waiting for paperwork to come through to own the land, let alone build upon it when we bought goats. For my wife, Molly. Her dream. I spent time leisurely browsing Craigslist and Facebook groups on farms and homesteads. What was I looking for? Nothing. I promise. I am not lingering over ads of these gorgeous horned sheep. I have not researched them already to know they’re tri-purpose. That’s 2x the purpose of the goats (nope, not going to eat a Nigerian Dwarf).
One night I casually mentioned to my wife that I would like to get sheep. Icelandic sheep in particular. As a debate coach I was ready. I had evidence laid out, counterarguments, appeals to logic and emotion.
“Sure”
Before I even laid into my case, Molly agreed. Sheep would be fun. Maybe we could “do something” with their wool. Great! So after searching, more researching, searching-we found 2 ewes and a lamb available for a reasonable price. We drove to a small farm near Great Falls to pick up our three new beauties: Freya, Freida, and Valkyrie.
The end.
Of course not. 3 Sheep? Who could do that? Well, not us. After our first semi-successful go with Goat breeding, we decided we needed a ram. Lambs are adorable. We could have more sheep. We could sell them. Eat them? And of course, we could “do something” with their wool (Note-at this point we had three fleeces in bags sitting untouched). Enter Oden, our beautiful ram. We now had it all. No need to expand, after all we still had that wool to make….???
Soon we had added more sheep-but just Icelandic. Magnus, our first animal ever born on our farm; Hogun, his cousin who had amazing fleece colors; Erika, blind in one eye and ornery, still a favorite.The plan was working. We had sold some sheep (less than we bought, but who's counting). We had bags of fiber; we bought a hand carder. Yippee! What do we do with a hand carder?
We sold our first fleece that year. We joined the Spinners and Weavers Guild in Helena. It was time to be serious about fiber. Should we spin it? Mill it? Felt it? Weave it? All of the above? But wait-We only have one type of fleece. We need more sheep.
Back to research mode. What is a breed that is somewhat uncommon, compliments Icelandic, is still a heritage breed, smaller size, not ugly.
Finn. Finn sheep are a soft wool. Single coat. Small in stature (we can laugh now that my Finn Ram is the size of our CVM wether). More research, found a pair of yearling ewes and an unrelated yearling ram.. Reasonable price. Off we headed to Billings to get our new babies, and , after chasing them over several acres, choosing, chasing, choosing, almost running out of gas, we returned home with Aria, Keesa, and Yanis.
Our little herd was complete. We would harvest fleece, milk, and meat from these sheep and their babies-just these sheep-just their babies. The end… Or to be continued