Pasture improvement is slow and steady

This used to be a massive blackberry thicket.

Grey and Ripley love hanging out up here in the shade. I wouldn’t enjoy sticks under me, but I’m no sheep.

You can really see the slope and how they tore into the blackberry here.

This was much more brownish-yellow before the sheep got to it.

Now that’s the start of some soil fertility.

Not a golf course yet, but maybe someday? Hehe.

Miracle or mundane?

The sheep are doing a pretty decent job.  As much as we fret about how terrible and sparse our pasture is, right now the sheep cannot eat as fast as new growth comes in, and that’s from all their stompyfoot and grazing and pooping.  So it is getting better, but the process is years-long no matter how hungry the little sheeps are.  (The older kids call them “sheeps”).

 

Fencing update

We’re going with a pretty electric solution and doing the entire boundary of our property this year, but the specifics haven’t been settled yet, as the boundary remaining to be fenced is not flat, which makes cheap+easy not possible.  In hindsight, this is likely one reason it was always cows up here for the early settlers rather than sheep, which was still a utile option 120-150 years ago.  The sheep don’t care, but fencing them before electric fencing was likely a challenge in this part of Cascadia, as opposed to the distinct flatness down in the Willamette Valley (which is full of sheep).  Funny to think about such things and the ongoing march of technology.