I really appreciate all the safe travel messages & overall interest in my most recent adventure to California. Most questions centered on ‘how?’ & ‘why?’ so I’ll begin there. The how is straightforward: a 30 ft trailer borrowed from friends in Colorado & an amazing husband, who due to high winds, did nearly all the driving. In total, we covered nearly 5,000 miles round trip in mid-90 temp. It’s not something I would have ever envisioned doing, which leads to the why.
I visited Susan of Alder Creek Ranch in Califonia for the first time in 2022. There was something I immediately loved about this soft spoken veterinarian living on a ranch bordering the Pacific Ocean. We connected & stayed friends.
Not only did I appreciate her friendship & calm demeanor in literally all situations, but her flock opened my eyes to what a decade plus long quest could produce, using strong dairy lines descended from a successful Icelandic sheep dairy that closed many years ago in NY. The deeper I dug into her flock the more blown away I was. She still had a ewe born in 2009 to Susan Webb, the woman who originally imported Icelandics to the US. This ewe was incredible & still conceiving with AI at 10+ years old. The more I looked, the more stories like this I found. Not only was longevity & fertility incredible, but Susan had spent years carefully blending AI breeding (the sires in Iceland are often large & chosen for carcass traits) with the dairy lineage she’d inherited. The mix was enhanced through her careful selection. Many of her sheep were the last of lines dating back to the early 2000s.
The Alder Creek flock set me off on a year of visiting large established flocks in North America. This included OR, IL, WA, CO, VT, & Quebec. It was a mixture of farms/ranches raising Icelandics for 10-25 years. I still have a few on my wishlist in the Northeast & SD, but overall my ‘grand sheep tour’ gave me insight into where the breed stood & the impact individual breeders were having. It helped me to clarify my long term goals. It also confirmed my initial impression of Alder Creek. The shepherdess on the far edge of the country was producing very unique sheep. I purchased four of them last year & continued to be impressed as they handled a hot humid Midwest summer beautifully. The easiest transition I’d ever had with Icelandics switching regions.
So when Susan was faced with some unexpected life changes & she approached me about taking her sheep, there was no choice in my mind. I couldn’t take them all, but I could make room for 25. We carefully pored over her flock lines, spent countless hours trying to decide how to best safeguard her progress in not just carcass & dairy, but also wool. Susan kept some very nice ewes & will be continuing her breeding program in California. The Alder Creek flock has some of the softest fleeces I’d ever felt & Susan has been ribboning at the California National Wool Show for years.
Naturally I had to complicate the process by interjecting the social factor. I feel strongly that sheep grow best when you maintain harmony. My experience is that a calm herdsire & a strong network of maternal ties is the key to achieving this. So carefully we selected ewes & their lambs so that no one arrived alone. I feel this has helped with transitioning, but regardless, it’s been a big undertaking. Relocating 25 sheep to a drastically different climate is never easy, but they’re doing well. I am honored to be trusted with safeguarding a friend’s flock. They’re beautiful sheep & they’re coming to trust me more every day.
There are so many new faces to introduce & I’ve taken nearly no pictures. I always transport new arrivals myself, but moving 25 (actually 27 because 2 will be moving on to VT) 2300 miles in high heat, then acclimating them… is new territory to me.
I’m pretty sure they’d vote to be beside Hwy 1 right now, but I can’t say I blame them! Coastal breezes from the Pacific are lacking here, but I love them already, they’re gorgeous sheep & I’m sincerely hoping they acquire a liking for the shade of towering oaks, a wide creek & acorns.
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