A big conversation around here the last few months has been sheep. My boyfriend is British, and sorry to make a gross generalization, but is therefore obsessed with the tidiness of his lawn. As such, he spends an inordinate amount of time mowing the lawn, pondering the lawn and talking about the state of the lawn. When the lawn is messy it makes him feel out of control, but he doesn’t always have time to keep it up. There are other more productive ways he would rather spend his time. Hence my (rather practical, I thought) suggestion of sheep. They’re cute, they create wool and sheep’s milk (two things I’m rather passionate about, particularly when the latter is in the form of cheese) and they’re efficient little lawn mowers.

After months of persuasion my boyfriend finally buckled and 2 weeks ago we added a little sheep couple to our brood which already includes two dogs (wolf dogs) and 7 chickens. Yes, we are the crazy people who have wolf dogs and sheep in the same yard. Somehow it’s working…for the moment anyways.

Ali Bah Bah, a fine specimen of a ramPrincess Jasmine, aptly named as she is a total diva

But it hasn’t all been a fairy tale. The little girl is a little too bavard (chatty). A lot too bavard actually. For the first 2 weeks we had her, it was a constant bleat fest. She sounded like a little devil. And it isn’t a cute, quaint little bah, but rather like an emergency siren and a fog horn had a love child. For such a little thing, she made quite a racquet. It was all the more alarming because sheep aren’t supposed to be chatty really, other than when they’re about to be fed pellets or some other special treat or when the lambs are being weaned or separated from their mothers.

In all fairness to Jasmine, she had just been weaned right before we got her and it must’ve been traumatic to have been separated from her mother and her flock of 8 sheep and be put into an enclosure with just one horny little male. But from everything we heard the transition wasn’t supposed to be quite this rough. All night her bleats pierced through my sleep, each one making me more anxious than the last. Luckily we have nice neighbors who all have double-glazed windows.

As of yesterday, exactly 2 weeks after she arrived, Jasmine is finally feeling at home and settling in. She’s still a bit bavard, but we love her anyway.

Stay tuned for tales of fresh sheep’s milk cheese in the future…