Shepherding

I spent the last two weekends at Juniper Moon Farm near Charlottesville, VA. I've been following the farm blog for more than a year, but this was my first chance to see it in person. The countryside there is gorgeous and the farm feels so peaceful.

Here are some of the sheep grazing in one pasture:

And here's the barn and chicken coop:
Although it's primarily a fiber farm, raising sheep and goats for their wool, there are also some other residents like these cutie-pie piggies! (Charlie is on the left, with the white spot on his forehead, and Churchill is on the right):
And the resident miniature horse, Leo (friend of Aberdeen, the resident Mule):
Here's a closer shot of one of the goats -- as you can see, this is before the shearing last weekend. Goats grow fiber very fast (I don't know how they manage to see through those locks!), so these guys are shorn twice a year:
As some of you already know, this is not a blog post about a couple of fun trips I took. This is a blog post introducing you to my new home. I am moving to Juniper Moon Farm next week to become one of their new shepherd's apprentices. I hardly know what more to say. I'm excited and nervous -- it's such a departure from what I've done in the past. But it's calling to me like no job ever has before.

The apprenticeship will last 6 months to a year. I will be learning everything involved with tending the animals and running the attached yarn/fiber business. At this point it seems likely that I will continue to work at the farm after the official apprenticeship ends, but of course we will just have to see how everything goes. Jacob will remain in Pittsburgh to continue his teaching and dissertation work until May, but after that we hope to get him down to VA. We're not the sort of couple that looks forward to time apart, so this will be challenging -- but I think that we can make it into a beautiful time of exploring new sides of ourselves and each other.

From what I hear, the internet connection at the farm is shaky enough that I may not be able to post lots of pictures or do any skyping. We'll see. I do hope to get into a regular pattern of blogging (what else am I going to do on those long lonely nights after the animals have been fed?). Farm life may not be as sexy as tales of India and Europe, but I do hope you'll join me anyway. With love to all my friends for the journey, here's to a new adventure!