Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Winter ewes at Badwater

The Farmer's Almanac advises us that this coming winter is to be a relatively mild one. We have to factor in the big snowmaking machine to the north of us on Battle Mountain, but still it seems to be Actually Winter. Today we sorted our ewes, who have trailed to the Badwater Pasture. This is the pasture about 15 miles south of I80, where we hang out until we have enough snow to go to our winter pasture on Cyclone Rim and Chain Lakes, about 40 miles north of I80. We hope this coincides with our BLM on-date of December 1st. Why is this important? We have almost no natural water on our sheep wintering grounds. Sheep are a miraculously hardy animal, and can, and do, survive the winter by eating snow, along with last summer's leftover grass and forbes, and soon, corn.

I want to add that Badwater, and the Cyclone Rim and Chain Lakes BLM allotments are WAY north of the aforementioned snowmaking machines, so the wintery scenes you see here are all attributable to Mother Nature. We are sorting the ewes ahead of putting in the rams in mid-December. We want to make sure that the ewes with the finest wool have a romantic liason with the best, fine-wooled Rambouilllet rams, while the others are introduced to our good Hampshire bucks,with their meat producing traits.

In either case, it was a cold day for our crew as we sorted the ewes in the Badwater pasture.

Cicero and Antonio bringing up the ewes

Pepe and Pat at the cutting gate

Guard dogs not at work

Encampment at Badwater

Jose and Salomon, dishing up lunch
photos by Sharon O'Toole