Wool and meat have traditionally complemented grain production and farm income. Over the last few decades, farmers have been gradually decreasing sheep numbers. We have retained them to ensure an income, eat the stubble from the previous year’s harvest, and reduce the need for extensive and expensive chemical spraying. In the last few years, they have brought in good money, in wool and meat. Today, there were some interesting emotions involved as we sold the last of the sheep.
We mourned the end of an era. It was also the end of a successful breeding program, shearing, drafting, ear tagging, treating fly-struck sheep, helping ewes give birth, pulling them out of dams, and treating their various illnesses. For The Farmer, it signals the end of many years of hard, physical work, and tonight, we are quietly celebrating our sheepless farm.
Selling our last sheep means severing a daily commitment to being physically on the farm. We don’t need to go back to the farm and check them amidst our annual, seaside holiday.
stress and sheep
We won’t be getting phone calls in the early morning hours, on our short city break, reporting that our fences are down due to reasons beyond our control. One incident related to a car accident where the car rolled and ended in the paddock. Another was the result of a domestic where a couple was fighting over control of the steering wheel. This incident ended with the car careering through the fence where the sheep were grazing.
We won’t be chasing sheep through the cemetery late at night with neighbours whose farm borders the cemetery boundary. We won’t be wondering who is out on the road lighting fires and burning down fences in a methamphetamine-fuelled rage.
Soon after, we discovered that the sheep were going to another farm several hours away. That is some consolation because we had originally thought they would be going to the abattoirs.
