The Process

Well people ask "why sheep"?  Or "Can you milk sheep", "How did you decide to do this?   Well it all started in 2008 when Joe decided he wanted to get some goats and raise them and sell them.  Well 5 goats over the months turned to 50, then 50 to 100.  During this time I was feeling quite overwhelmed on why we had to have so many. Then the wrench was thrown in.  Joe mentioned he wanted to start a dairy. Half goats and half sheep, 150 of each.  Well then the quite overwhelmed feeling went to a bit frantic.  I had never even been to a dairy. I first off was not sure how I was going to be able to handle having so many animals and not all of them pets?  Well the early mornings started.  Every goat Joe got had to be bottle fed.  His mornings started early 4:30ish before having to head to his job at Arolo Company. Then home family dinner normal family time then back out to bottle feed again and goat chores.  We continued growing our herd of all goats  for the past two years (special thanks to whitewhale farms in petaluma for such amazing adorable dairy goats).  During this process we realized how difficult it is to find the proper dairy sheep in the US since the dairy breeds originated from Germany and France. During this whole process Joe was working on a goat contract and realized that is harder than he thought.  He finally found some dairy sheep to purchase, in Idaho and Nebraska.  From that day on things seem to have fallen in place.  He decided to go partners with his dad who owns a successful dairy equipment company in petaluma called  Arolo Company http://arolo.com We purchased our first 200 dairy sheep from Nebraska  Irish Cream Sheep Dairy http://irishcreamsheepdairy.com/index.htm  and 100 from Blue Sage Farm in Idaho http://bluesagefarm.com Well the decision was made to go strictly with sheep and to sell the goats (minus Billy who is our pet now) then the day finally came for the sheep to arrive, mind you all before we had signed the lease on our current ranch. Overwhelming, yes. Well lets just say  I have wonderful in laws to house all of our animals.  Well, things just kept falling into place like they should.  I told Joe someone is really looking out for you on how things are supposed to be they are just happening. The next step was our milk contract with Bellwether Farms http://www.bellwethercheese.com in petaluma. The process just kept continuing the ranch contract was signed to our current home in Bloomfield.  Well I titled this post The Process, little did I know what work we were in for.  The ranch was in complete shambles, no milk permit and needed to be completely renovated.  The house well that is another story....awful about sums it up also needing to be completely renovated as well.  On we went moving in with my inlaws for 4 weeks, and renovations began day and night working inside and out all to start with the largest grade A sheep dairy in California Haverton Hill LLC.

Special Thanks for all of those who pitched in on renovations