April 1st. That’s the evening that we lost three of our outbuildings to fire. This included our barn, our newly refurbished cidery and the hen house/sheep shed behind the barn. Most devastating to us, however, was that we lost our two Katadhin sheep Laverne and Shirley and their five new lambs. We got these two sheep as lambs themselves – in July of 2017 – before we even had a house to live in on this property we had purchased the previous year. They came from Waldoview Farm in Maine from Tom Hodgman who we had met at MOFGA’s Common Grounds Fair. Neither Jeff or I had ever raised sheep before – but we decided to go for it. We had a farm now and thought that having sheep would be a great way to mow our orchard. And, it was. Laverne and Shirley were not livestock to us – they became part of our family.
We did end up breeding them in 2018 – and every year since. They each had 2 or 3 lambs each year which we sold – all but Ernie, who was one of the rams we had that first year we bred them. Ernie survived the fire with some burns – but the vet told us that we could save him so we did! We were blessed with being able to borrow two Joshua sheet from a farm in Delanson so he wouldn’t be alone. He is now thriving with his new friends.
With the help of some great friends, the mess has been removed and we are working on getting one big metal building put up which will house our cidery and sheep shed, hay storage and machinery storage. More to come…