![]() ![]() I knew each of them by name since they had to be registered with their pedigree in the official registry. We would bring them into the barn to provide shelter during a storm, examine them for injuries or disease, or to fleece them. Since we had a lot of additional pasture land that could be rented out to other farmers, we had an agreement with the owner of the land to barter some of the grazing pastures for about 20 of his ewes in exchange for some lambs born the following years.Īs it happened, most of the births were female twins so pretty soon we had a sheep herd of our own without any effort on our part, since most of the time in the summer they stayed out at night during the good weather. My brother and I did everything manually, from milking 20 goats each, morning and evening, to making the cheeses in the special air humidity and temperature-controlled room whose environment requirements left very little tolerance for errors. When I came to the farm, we had a small herd of goats which grew to a good size of 40 after 2 years of selecting the best milk producers from the kids born on the farm. So the farm environment was ideal and conducive to my perpetuating the family tradition of farming and raising animals, since my French ancestors on my father´s side were farmers in Southern France until they immigrated to Algeria. Having a melancholy nature prone to enjoying solitude and meditating, observing nature, animals and people have always been one of my favorite pastimes. The rewards were not material but the lessons learned, the perspectives and insights gained from the simple life of a shepherd, animal husband, gardener, cheese maker, and all the farm functions and activities taking place around the seasons proved to be an invaluable help in my own and others’ spiritual growth. ![]() Looking back at the hardships, it feels a little bit like the episode of Jacob working for his uncle Laban. I had strayed away from the Lord, the Bible and the church after graduating from college in the US and was about to experience the unpleasant and painful discipline of my loving Heavenly Father which, as all of us former backsliders know, is for our own good and in the end brings a harvest of righteousness. The Lord had his reasons to let me take a detour at that point in my life which I was to understand years later. Being born and raised and having lived all of my life in cities, I hardly could tell the difference between a carrot top and a potato leaf. In 1972, I had the privilege and the blessing of living on my brother´s goat farm for 3 years. About Sheep and Goats: Lessons from the Farm ![]()
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