![]() ![]() And I think we should face what we're doing head-on. But if we are going to eat them, then I think we should raise them. So we're able to give them a life here that is stress-free as much as we can, and then we give them as stress-free of an end as we possibly can.ĬATHER: I know that as a livestock farmer there are people who disagree with kind of the fundamental premise of eating animals and raising animals for meat. Often, we get the question from people, how can you eat animals that you raise and you know? And at this point, I don't eat animals that I don't raise because I feel like I owe them the honor and respect of knowing that their life was a certain way. You know, we're not religious people, but a blessing is not too strong of a word for what we send them with - and gratitude, just our intense, intense gratitude for their lives. It's always a hard day, no matter how many times we do it. That day that we load the lambs is always hard. We'll raise them until they're 10 or 11 months old, and then we'll take them to a butcher shop in Pennsylvania that does our butchering for us. And then I went to do an apprenticeship on a farm and got to drive a tractor and met my first sheep, and then it was all over.ĬATHER: So these lambs, they'll either be kept on the farm for breeding stock, or they will become butcher lambs. ![]() The first year I tried to plant anything, I didn't know a plant from a weed and weeded up all of the carrots that we had planted and just had, you know, a learning curve. And then it came together for me really strongly in my junior and senior year of college, to the extent that I came home and told my parents I wasn't going to go to medical school after all. We lived in an agricultural community, but I never really saw value in it as a kid. She seems pretty calm, and I think we'll just give her some time.ĬATHER: I grew up in southern Maryland and watched my dad work so hard outside at his small business, work every day, work every weekend and swore that I would never do that. And see, she's got her flanks are all hollowed out. She's going to probably paw the ground in that nesting behavior. She honestly wanted to be by herself for this. We check at 2 and 6 and 10 and 2 and 6 and 10 in this regular rhythm, just to make sure everyone is fine and just making sure that everyone is stable.ĬATHER: So we see a ewe lying down by herself away from the rest of the flock, which is unusual. We check every four hours during lambing season. This is lambing time, and that's the time of year when our ewes, who have been gestating their lambs since September, are supposed to deliver the lambs. It's a decade, but in the life cycle of a farm, it's a blink of an eye. This is our 10th year on this farm, so it feels like a long time. I'm Amanda Cather, and I'm the - one of the owners and operators of Plow and Stars Farm in Poolesville, Md. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer Avery Keatley caught up with one shepherd in Montgomery County, Md., as well as the newest members of her flock and also her three sheepdogs.ĪMANDA CATHER: This is Nash (ph), Arlo (ph), Jenny (ph) (laughter). That means long days of caring for pregnant ewes as they give birth, then monitoring the health of their little lambs, and hovering above it all, there are constant reminders of the cycle of life and death. In the U.S., farmers usually arrange for new lambs to be born from late February to early April. If you're a farmer of sheep, it's the busiest time of the year - lambing season. ![]()
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