Welcome to our inaugural blog post! We are Fiona and Susan, two tired moms on a tireless journey to create a home for our never-tired sons and their future house mates, so that we can retire and sleep!
Our vision is not just to house our adult children, but to also create a home that is close to nature, filled with joy and wonderment, with lots of activities to provide engagement which are therapeutic as well. How does living on a farm sound? We think it would be amazing! And so begins our journey of exploring, visiting and meeting with people who actually know what they are doing!
We recently met with sheep aficionado Sarah Keiser. If you want to know everything about sheep, she’s the gal for you. But of course her expertise goes beyond that. Sarah has her own farm in Penngrove called Wild Oat Hollow.
We reached out to her to guide us through the process of acquiring sheep, planning for their shelter, vet care and animal husbandry needs. Sarah met us at MCC, and was brimming with ideas and information.
Her enthusiasm for sheep made it difficult to stop from blurting out “Can we get sheep right now?!”
Our vision is to have several sheep that call MCC home, to graze the land and provide that calming presence that sheep effortlessly bring. Our special needs young men will benefit from their zen presence. In addition, managed grazing is a sustainable way of controlling fire fuel load on the land and increasing carbon sequestration into the soil. It also improves the soil, encourages deep root growth and increases plant diversity.
But why just have sheep when you could have a Flerd?
A Flerd?
What’s a Flerd?
When you have a flock of sheep AND a herd of goats, you get a flerd!
Both sheep and goats work synergistically when grazing together, to the benefit of the land.
This brings us to our meeting of friendly goats at Suzanne’s house in Petaluma. Suzanne is the neighbor of our landscape architect, Ann Baker. Goats, we soon learned are very social and mischievous. Fiona’s shirt was apparently quite tasty and one attempted to nibble at it several times.
Why stop at goats when you can have alpacas! Alpacas just have a face that makes you smile, even on your grumpiest day. Suzanne’s alpacas are a bonded group of three. They make great security guards for the sheep and goats from predators like coyotes.
Meeting with these wonderful people and their animals was our big first step towards making Mustang Acres Farms at MCC a reality.
Do continue to check back at our blog for more farm journey adventures with us.
We will end with a question to ponder – if one geese is a goose, why isn’t one sheep a shoop?
