Farm Update!

We're back with a blog update after some time away. Beth and I have been through some recent changes since 2010 when we began running a commercial sheep and egg operation, and selling our goods at the Athens Farmers Market. 

In 2020, I fell ill with ulcerative colitis and had to be hospitalized multiple times. This coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it difficult for Beth, a school administrator, to manage the farm. So, we sold our flock of 60 ewes and about 110 lambs, kept only 20 ram lambs for meat sales; but this ended as our inventory sold out quickly during the pandemic.

Due to my worsening health, I had surgery in August 2021, resulting in my colon being removed and having an ilostomy. To accommodate my recovery, we pivoted and decided to return to our homestead focus, household food production. 

In March 2022, I had my last surgery and began the full healing process. Beth stepped away from her school administrator role and returned to being a state consultant, which gives her more flexibility on the farm. This past summer, I worked on a few small farm projects, including improving a washed-out culvert and building a Gabion wall to protect the foundation of an outbuilding. We'll provide a narrative to each in a future posts. We also continue to maintain our HipCamp campsite, which has remained steady with campers since the pandemic and we expect a slight increase this year.

At the moment we are clearing old fence-lines for new high-tensile wire to be installed and improving our pasture grazing management. We previously used mobile nets for sheep containment but with my illness, this became difficult to do. Our plan is to set up permanent pastures with high-tensile electric wire and subdivide using our existing nets for more efficient grazing during prime months.

Additionally, we've been clearing fallen trees and invasive species from our pastures and cutting firewood. I've hired a farm hand to help with this and we've been able to significantly increase our firewood inventory for this winter and into the fall.

We hope this update gives you an idea of what's going on and our plans for the future. We plan to share lessons learned from our small-scale farming journey, especially as we turned 60, to help others avoid pitfalls.