Ten years ago I got my first flock of sheep. The country had just plunged into the housing debacle and some congressman thought giving us a bit of money would stimulate the economy. I guess it depending on different factors, but with my $600 stimulus, I bought (4) sheep and some fencing. Yep, only (4) Montadale sheep. That was 10 years ago. Today I was supposed to start a class on Sheep Farming called Sheep: For Fun and Profit, but tonight's class is cancelled due to the storm. But I have been getting ready for the class which will now start on Thursday. So much has happened in 10 years, not all of it good, but I have really grown. 1000's of sheep have called this farm home since then, not counting the 300 alone that have been born here. I am not sure where other people's stimulus money has gone, but for me the return on investment has been significant. Because I actively farm, we have gotten grants, farm loans and done numerous improvements to this farm that make things practical. Roads, barns, swales and other conservation measures have all been put into place to make this farm productive, and I am glad to be able to share those ideas with my neighbors. Last year the farm hit its stride when we hosted "Rock the Flock", hosting 3 bands atop of our hill, 350 people in attendance, raising $3000 for Teen Challenge, a Christian drug rehabilitation program with a 87% success rate. For its first year, we were elated; (2) decisions for Jesus, and 11 baptisms...who ever would have thought, little white balls of wool, eating green grass, pooing black pellets and somehow producing red meat would do so much for a tiny farm in Maine...do so much to honor God? Rock the Flock August 12th, 2017
This post is excellent!!!! Praising God, helping children, and farming sheep!!!!! You sir, are to be admired in my book, keep up the good work and more good things will come to you!! I also farm a few sheep and cows, also training my first stock dog( hopefully) border collie to work both. Hope you are continually blessed,woodcutter68
Very cool! Do you sell the sheep for meat? Or sell their wool? Or sell lambs to other people/farms? Or maybe a little of everything? I'm always interested to hear how small farmers make money with livestock, I'd love to make a few bucks raising something someday.
WOW! I'm always interested in your sheep stories. Nice to see some more about your operations. Someday, I'd like to here more about the "for profit" side of sheep farming. As you know, about a year ago we started a small flock of Icelandics (2 ewes, 3 ewe lambs, 1 ram lamb and one wether). So far we have been enjoying the "for fun" part quite a bit, with a few ups and downs here and there. We'll never be able to do the volume that you do, since we only have 16 acres of woodland with about 1 acre of pasture, so we are going to have to get creative on developing "value added" products like fleece, dairy, etc. in addition to meat.
We don't do a lot of wool sales, but sell a lot for slaughter, a lot to 4H kids, some to other farms, but most go on the National Food Chain. Sheep have really helped us get to where we are, enabling us to buy quite a bit of land a few years ago which was nice, cash flow when we need it, property taxes, etc. We have slowly cleared land too, having an additional 20 acres of land that was once forest, and now working on 70 more acres we want to put into fields. We really want more sheep, but need more barns, equipment and fields to feed them first. So it is a long process, getting the farm where it needs to be. But this is how it works in life. You put the work in up front, then yield the return.
Thats really cool, I'd love to get to the point where I have a little bit of side-income from some livestock on my land. I've only got 38 acres total, so it would never be a huge operation. We recently bought 12 of the acres and its all forested out behind our house, I'd love to slowly start opening that up into fields. Just seems so daunting turning a rocky New Hampshire forest into a smooth grass field. You should post more pictures of your sheep operation!
LodgedTree , If you don't mind, would you touch on your decision to schedule F or LLC for tax purposes and running the business? What were your deciding factors, and at what point would you choose one over the other? I think a lot of us are on the 10-20 acre size operation, and would be curious to hear what your thoughts were and continue to be.
We talked about this in our class last night, and in a lot of ways I am not the person to ask. I am not being coy; this is a 9th generational sheep farm, so my farm has always enjoyed farm status. There was one guy that was trying to make this choice, but unsure if he should because if the farm failed he would have to pay back the avoided taxes; with simple interest, but still it would have to be paid back. The interesting thing about farming is, unlike other businesses where failure to make profit in 5 years means the business is automatically eliminated, farms do not fall under that rule. In fact a person can own NOTHING and still be a farmer. They could rent an apartment, rent their land, rent their equipment, and even rent their animals, and still be a full-time farmer. Granted it would be difficult to do that, but it could be done legally. To be a considered a farm, a person must TRY to make $1000 per year from farming, and that is pretty easy to meet. There is talk of this going up to $10,000, but that will never happen, it would mean political suicide for any politician that ever tried. Can you imagine their political counterparts accusing them of trying to harm the small scale farmer? My decision to start filing Schedule F's back in 2008 when I first got sheep was because I watched my Grandfather constantly try to fly under the radar. He buried a lot of earned money, but he lived in constant fear too that it would be found out. Me, I vowed to do everything by the book, and while it is very difficult to do that...more so then I first thought...it helps because I have nothing to hide. This farm is better for it because with several grants and loans, it has been greatly improved by roads, fencing, barns, swales, more sheep, etc. As for the decision to raise sheep: it was NOT based on us always having sheep. Rather I used what I called a "Matrix" to make the decision for me. Basically it was just a chart of columns and rows. In the rows I listed every possible farm commodity I think I could raise...potatoes, broccoli, beef, broilers, sheep, etc; and in the columns I listed the stuff needed to raise them. In that case it was soil, equipment, storage, barns, etc. I chose sheep because it MATCHED the farm. Sheep require modest housing, New England has the best pastures in the world, we had plenty of feed I could get from the dairy farm, sheep have the most pound of lamb per acre, etc. Farm history only played into my decision to reintroduce sheep because they had done so well here over such a long time. I really wanted to get into raising broccoli, and while I have the proper soil, I lacked the equipment and storage facilities, so it made little sense to invest so much up front. How can a farm possibly make money if it is deeply in debt before it even starts? (As a side note: potatoes in Maine used to be a staple of Maine Agriculture, but broccoli farming in Maine is quickly taken over. The largest broccoli farm east of the Mississippi is in northern Maine)
Land clearing is daunting, and really it takes a sort of vision. Kind of like how some people walk into a house and see what it can be, and some just cannot. From years of land clearing, for myself and being paid by others, I can just picture what a site will look like without trees upon it, what the terrain is like, how it can be reshaped, and ultimately get an idea of what it will look like when it is done. Clearing land is daunting, but also dramatic. What looks like incredible carnage, means after the stumps are ripped out and the site regraded, the change is profound! I did a land clearing job last year; 18 acres on a mountainside, and one guy commented that it would take 5 years to look good. We were finished in 5 weeks!! It is not cheap, equipment, fuel and time all takes money, but once the work is done, the rewards can be had for many years.
