Originally, I bought five Southdown Babydoll Ewes to work in our vineyard. I was told they excel at leaf stripping. Each season we spend an inordinate amount of time plucking leaves away from the grapes to expose them to sunshine and breezes. It helps the fruit dry quickly after rain and fog, preventing rot. The warm summer sunshine on the grape skins encourages ripening. But the job is tedious, time consuming, and back breaking — the leaves to pull are at knee height or lower. Enter the sheep — they are the perfect height to comfortably strip the leaves, and since sheep love to eat leaves all day, the perfect animal for the job.
Unfortunately the sheep’s utility in leaf pulling seemed to be a vineyard myth. It wasn’t long before we learned that sheep are difficult to keep focused on task. They would graze the vines a bit, then wander off to graze our flower beds, then the neighbour flower beds. Before we fenced in a paddock, we spent a lot of time chasing sheep around. Keeping them on the leaf pulling job required full time shepherd supervision or special mobile cages. We had neither available.
Could we use the sheep for milk or wool? Milking babydoll sheep is a non-starter — they only produce a tiny amount of milk. And when we sheared them, our bags of soft wool were unwanted by local mills. It seems that babydoll wool, while high quality, is shorter than other breeds and difficult to process.
Everyone on the vineyard needs to pull their own weight. The chickens faithfully produce my breakfast every day. So we decided to pivot and bought two rams to help the sheep produce something. In this case, even more sheep. Since Southdown Babydoll Sheep are a registered breed we can sell lambs to other farmers. Last year I conveniently forgot to advertise sheep for sale and suddenly our flock has ballooned to twenty six animals — way too many for our small fields.
Each Spring is a miracle of renewal and rebirth, as cute little lambs appear to frolic in the fields with their happy moms. They are very attractive, gentle animals, they keep the pastures tidy and our customers like to meet them.
I am hopeful that this is the year the sheep fulfill their promise of working in our vineyard. Meanwhile, would anyone like to buy a sheep?