Asa is sizing up the lamb herd for the 2007 growing season.We made a visit to a sheep farm up in Hyde Park, Vermont. A young couple has been raising sheep up there for nearly a decade. We went to see the quality of their lambs for a possible purchase this spring. They have a nice healthy group of animals overwintered in a large coverall barn (think large hoophouse).
We don't have our own breeding flock of sheep, so we purchase lambs in the spring from Vermont sheep farmers to raise on our pastures during the summer. In past years we have bought lambs from a few different farms, this year we will likely purchase all from one farm. Vermont farmers supporting Vermont farmers - makes me feel good!
Asa is drawn like a magnet to tractors, so we put him up on a nice little Kubota tractor at the sheep farm and he had a good time pretending to drive the fields. It won't be long before he can reach the pedals. Then my tractor driving days will be numbered!
3 comments:
Mark,
I read your post about lard. We tried to do some lard this fall, but had to abort due to the smell... we all almost puked.
Curious if this was an issue for you? Did you render outside? Or??
Thanks
Ben,
We make lard outside in a metal pot on a propane burner. Chop up or grind the lard as small as you can, quickens the rendering process. I am curious if you rendered fat from a homegrown pig? Or did you by fatback from a butcher? How they were raised makes a big difference in taste and smell. Ours was a very pleasant smelling rendering process. The fresher the lard the better, though we have thawed frozen backfat to render with no problems.
Mark
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the reply; I thought I'd replied a couple days back, but it musta not gone thru.
anyway. Yes, the fat was from homegrown, pastured pigs. However, it had been in the freezer for a year... perhaps that had something to do with it? Or maybe we just need to suck it up. But man. That was gnarly-smelling.
Anyway. Keep up the good work. Your farm looks great. We just added a few Jacobs sheep to our small herd (does four make a herd?) of cattle, flock of layers, and the three turkeys I need to get around to butchering...
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