31/05/2025
We started in 2020 during COVID with our friends at Resisting A Rest Farm in NJ, our home state. When we moved to CT, I shipped up some ram lambs and the best of the bunch caught my eye, so I said… maybe I’ll breed my own now. Always a wool breed person, I stumbled into Katahdins, and then accidentally fell into the deep end of hair sheep genetics and hybrid genetics. Every sane sheep person I spoke to said, Hamps are cool and Katahdins are cool, but why cross them? I was starting to realize that what my customers want from meat, what my land needs to stay healthy, and what my husbandry ideals are as a farmer, might all be attainable according to some very, VERY niche hybrid hair/wool cross articles. For two years now I have produced Hampshire Katahdin crosses and they make me so proud. They have excellent lambing ease, stand in 2-3 minutes, suckle in 6-8 minutes. They wean at 4-5 weeks and don’t need grain or hay all summer. I’ve never dewormed a single one. They finish out with long loins and a tender, mild taste. They don’t see the inside of a barn once they’ve left the nursery. I thought these lambs, with their cookies-n-cream fuzz and their big stature, probably weren’t appealing to anyone but me. But a little over a month ago, my favorite client to this day, Kim fOut of Sight Alpacasacas called to say she wants to start her own flock and would I ever consider parting with some ewe lambs? I never foresaw this, and one of the reasons I raise meat animals is because I didn’t think I’d ever trust another human to raise an animal that I was responsible for putting on this earth. Until Kim of all people called! So I rounded up the nicest hybrid ewe lambs with the best traits and put them in her truck. I am so proud of them and can’t wait to watch them grow into adulthood. Here, at 5 weeks old, is Mint Chocolate Chip, a twin from our Katahdin ewe Ice Cream and our exceptional Jersey bred Hampshireire ram Marty, getting loaded onto the truck by Kim, who without hesitation is the best farmer to trust with my best girls.
