Looking Back on 2020
I don’t know about you, but last year felt more like a decade to me. Shearing was caught up just in time for Christmas and we took the rest of the year to do very little. That appropriate little period of relaxation was hard for me. 2021 is bringing on a momentous list of “to-dos” for the farm and I can’t wait to dig in. Colin’s good for reminding me that I can in fact overwork myself though (even if I’ll never admit it) so I partook in this “break” anyways. I also took some time to look back through pictures from the year and realize, for the first time, how much we’ve grown. As individuals, as a partnership, and as a business. So, before I start tearing up again, let me share with you some of the highlights.
January was our anticipatory wait at the start line. Back in November Colin left his dairy farm job to start the transition towards self-employed while I finished out my last few weeks of college. The cold, still weeks that followed were powerfully injecting all my thoughts with angst. Warnings and discouragement are plentiful to young entrepreneurs, especially those in the agricultural realm. I’d rather not relive each of the comments by documenting them here. But trust me…you’d be shocked by the amount of decided concern others had for us. No matter what anyone else thought, Colin and I were all in and didn’t reach that position in a rush. We both spent most of our adolescence testing out the waters. Years spent on butchery, shearing, rearing livestock, progressing breeding programs, studying. Both of us, separately, also considering leaving it all behind at least once. Approaching the future as a two-person team we negotiated, debated, and ultimately decided to give this dream a chance. So, January set the stage.
February was all about lambing, although our first lambs didn’t come until the end of the month. Lost sleep as the result of premature midnight lamb checks were put to use as I built our website and planned the announcement of our new farm. (For those of you who are new here, Colin and I each owned small farms before we met. 2020 was the year to bring it all together.) Here was the final nudge I needed to close the curtain on my very independent start as a shepherd. Yankee Rock Farm was born right alongside our first lambs of the year.
March meant nonstop lambing and I was in my glory. Neither of us had ever experienced a lambing season without the additional regimented responsibilities of school and off-farm jobs. I lost track of what day it was, flipped my sleeping schedule on its head, basically lived in my winter bibs, and ushered in each new member of our flock in a blissful state. We didn’t feel much of an impact from the pandemic shutdowns. We were living in our own little shepherding quarantine already. What a perfect distraction, huh?
Don’t ask me how we did it, but we ended lambing and began the busiest shearing season seamlessly. Talk about a rush. April is an absolute blur and May must have happened in there somewhere. Oh, I graduated! There was no ceremony because of you-know-what but my diploma showed up in the mail a few weeks later. To be completely honest, I would have seriously considered skipping a ceremony anyways to schedule in more shearing. Sorry, Mom.
June and July screamed “drought” all day every day. I barely managed to keep the flock fed on fresh pasture and the dread of finding enough hay for winter began to sink in. One physically distanced sheep show was put on in July. That event pulled me off the farm for a long weekend just in time to save my sanity. Up until that weekend away I hadn’t allowed myself very much room for plain happiness. Every task had to be “work” and meet my high standard of productivity. Once I got myself and a handful of my sheep to the show in Massachusetts, there was no way for me to meet those silly requirements of mine. Instead I finally allowed myself to simply enjoy the tasks at hand. While running a farm, you will find many intermediate tasks that don’t exactly qualify as work for the business side of things but are not entirely removed from farm duties either. This was one of those that also happened to reminded me it is acceptable to have some fun.
August was a thrill when Colin and I took a trip to shear a few sheep but mostly swap around rams. Having sold some of our own, purchased two, and knowing friends who were also selling and purchasing across the country we set out to move lots of sheep between lots of states. Being sure to return home in time for early fall lambs from our Finn yearlings.
By September our first ever farm yarn was spun and ready for the world! We launched our collection of 100% wool breed-specific yarns and were humbled by the support you all showed. The journey into yarn producer has been a whirlwind but one that welcomed me into the kindest crafting community I have ever known.
October brought on a full flurry of fall shearing again. Colin and I split up the work to tackle more while things also picked up on the farm. Our shearing territory expanded from an island off the coast of Rhode Island to the wilderness of Maine and back out to Wisconsin. Shearing has granted us an amazing opportunity to travel during this unusual time. I can’t express how fortunate we feel for that. All the while, the last of our lambs were processed and our meat inventory was restocked. Whew.
At the beginning of November, I participated in my first virtual fiber festival! It was an absolute honor for us to be vendors at the online Botanica Yarnfest. Best of all I did a live shearing demo watched by viewers around the world! The rest of the month was dedicated to prepartions for winter. Mostly tracking down hay and figuring out everything that goes into a limited liability corporation. Fun, fun.
December came out of nowhere. A big load of (expensive) hay was delivered, brood ewes were scanned, our new business formation finalized, shearing wrapped up, and I found myself looking straight at the holidays exhausted. So, we slowed down. We completed a puzzle and played cards. I baked way too many desserts, picked up my knitting, and enjoyed time with the flock during the calmest season on the farm. I want to sincerely thank each of you for being here. Customers, family members, social media followers, strangers who stumbled upon this randomly, thank you. Last year was a good one but this year’s looking even better on the farm. We have so many projects in the works and I can’t wait to share them with you.