The Farm Chronicles

There's a few polled ewes still available!
https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/sale-barn-sheep
We've been working on nice udder conformation and correct fleece in our flock for a number of years now, and have loved where our flock has gotten so far. Our first time mamas from this spring freshened with large and well conforming udders, and the rooing traits we've been selecting for have improved drastically. If you're looking for udder, rooing, or fleece improvement, we've got some great options. Reach out (DM or text 303-349-5514) and we'll see if one of our girls is a fit for your goals!
The whole flock was biosecurity tested last winter/this spring, and either is or can be registered.

You can see our flock (and more available sheep) at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/sale-barn-sheep.

A note on pricing: the price scale for our sheep is listed on the sales pages. They range in price from $450 to $700+ depending on the individual.

We can help with transport for $0.50 a loaded mile, but when winter comes, travel gets hard. September is filling up, so get in line early!

After ending up evacuating most of the animals for a weekend during the fire, and then having half our crew leave to a camping trip the day after we brought them back home... we're grateful to be getting back to our usual routine again! Farming is never easy, but wow, you'll never lack for stories to tell!
https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

We've been blessed that the Pleasant Valley Fire near Hartville has avoided us so far, but I'm so grateful for such an incredible team to help us prepare just in case! Mowing, watering, and preparing in case we have to pull animals out of pasture... We're all a little exhausted.
This picture was from Tuesday night, and while the fire is closer now, it's moving slower and we're mostly dealing with a ton of smoke.

Reading through one of our previous newsletters (you can join our mailing list to hear more at https://peacefulvalley.myclickfunnels.com/ ;), I was reminded of an important saying we've seen proven accurate over and over again: If you want to go fast, go alone; If you want to go far, go together! I’ve pondered that quite a bit as we’ve been involved in this grand adventure aat Peaceful Valley, and it is very true. I’m not sure it’s really even possible to succeed at this thing called Earth Stewardship without a team. Three cheers for the Team!!!
Go Together! Go Far!!!

We've got a couple of ewes available in SE, WY.
Polled, registerable (or registered, depending on the ewe), biosecurity tested last fall/winter, and from very nice dairy and fleece lines (including rooing, if you're interested in bringing that into your flock ;).

PM or text (303-349-5514) for more information.
Can help transport for $0.50 a loaded mile.
You can see our flock at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

Snakes are an interesting part of living here in SE, Wyoming. Rattlesnakes are the type that everyone jumps to when thinking about snakes out here, but we also have bull snakes, racer snakes, hog-nosed snakes, and milk snakes. Most of our snakes are small, maybe (maybe!) reaching a foot and a half, but bull snakes are our largest snakes, ranging from 4 to 6 feet long! This big guy was by the barn, where we currently have a bunch of baby chicks, so he was moved to a different spot on the property (using a bucket and snake tongs).
Snakes play a really important part in the food chain here, because a big part of their diet consists of rodents. Learning to live in symbiotically with them is important to keep the balance of rodents to the rest of local animals at a good level. Since we much prefer working with non-poisonous bull snakes to the poisonous, although more reclusive alternative, we like keeping the bull snakes around as much as possible.

In a college sculpting class, I learned about loosely holding the chisel so that more of the force of the strike went into the chisel and then the stone, rather than being absorbed by my arm. Fast forward quite a few years and there I was hitting other things with a hammer, only this time it was a dead blow hammer and I was setting up electric net fencing for our sheep. I distinctly remember the moment when I was holding onto that fence post and wanging away with my hammer, when I just about heard my professor’s voice in my head, “your hand is just a guide.” So I released my grip, gave the post a little bit of space and tried again. Lo and behold, the knowledge I’d learned in a sculpture studio in Provo, Utah, applied just as effectively in a grassy pasture in Wyoming.
Sign up for our newsletter (https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/) for the rest of this story, and other great life lessons!

We've got a number of polled (all of our horned stock is either reserved or retained) ewes and possibly a polled ram or two available in SE, Wyoming.
Biosecurity tested flock, and everybody is either registered or registerable.
Nice fleece with easy rooing genetics and a good tog/thel balance, fairly nice frames, and very impressive dairy genetics with a focus on hand-milking ease and udder conformation (they produce well, but they're tri purpose animals, so they don't produce as much as a "dairy" sheep).
We've focused primarily on fleece and dairy in our flock, so if you're looking to improve or start a flock with either of those traits as a highlight, please reach out!
You can see our flock at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/
Not all available ewes are shown below.
Can help transport for $0.50 a mile.
PM or text (303-349-5514) for more info or pics.

You spend tons of time, effort, and money on nice nests, and the chickens are like “mmmm… I’m gonna stick with my rock filled five gallon bucket.”
Crazy birds! The lesson? You don’t need to spend tons on really fancy nesting boxes. Make them nice enough that your sense of aesthetics doesn’t scream everytime you walk into the coop, but broken heated water buckets, five gallon buckets, or some plywood and screws make the chickens happy campers. Although, whatever you do, you shouldn’t count on all your eggs suddenly being laid where you want them! It’s best to leave your new nesting boxes in the coop casually, like you just forgot the new bucket in the coop. If they think it’s “official”, they’ll shun it for a corner under a tarp.
You can see our collection of our crazy poultry on our website: https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/poultry

We have a saying that goes, “No plan survives contact with reality!” It was proven true again just recently:
We’ve been trying to get out to evening animals earlier so that we have more family time afterwards, and a couple days ago we actually managed to get out at 5pm! Everything was going great, until a lightning storm and deluge broke out right as we finished the pasture and began moving the animals into it, which required making a jump across the road with no extra fences to spare. Long story short, attempting to get them into the new paddock whilst in the middle of a downpour led to everybody escaping. The dogs sped off down the road, the sheep fanned out everywhere, and the calves tore down the gully. The sheep and dogs went back in easily, but the calves ended up down at the milk cow paddock, which instigated cavorting among the mamas and led to three of the four older girls getting out. Calves careening around is one thing, but big, adult cows? That’s a whole different story.
Sigh! We did eventually get everybody back in, and our relaxed evening was much shorter than planned, but guess what? We had a ton of fun and a great bonding experience! To be entirely honest, the fun was in looking back and laughing at the whole experience once everybody was back in their appointed paddocks and the rain had stopped. As far as the relaxed evening goes, nothing is quite as good as Herbal tea and hot chocolate when you are soaking wet and wrapped in a blanket with a book!
Hurrah for life never being boring!!!
https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

Really loving these two yearling ewes out of PFVL Heidi and PFVL Smoky! Flat backs, very nice, wide, back legs; and are heterozygous polled Glacier granddaughters to boot (if you remember my post about our Glacier-horned line project)! We'll be retaining at least one of them for our breeding flock.

You can see more of our flock at
https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

We retired a bunch of roosters last week, and I was reminded of how grateful I am for my eight year old, awesome Easter Egger rooster: Parrot. Sometimes finding the right rooster for your flock as far as a balance of conformation and temperament can be hard. We’ve found that the most effective method for us is to get quite a few roosters (if we’re ordering online), and watch them mature. Whoever has the right balance is the one you keep. With a roughly 50% rooster to hen balance, the same is true of the roosters we hatch from our cross-breeding. We almost always have enough roosters for a comparison.
Parrot was the one who topped the selection eight years ago, and he’s been my main flock rooster ever since. I have other roosters in the flock as well, but Parrot is still holding his place as well as any younger boy!

A trick for finding a calm boy: listen! The rooster who starts crowing last will generally be pretty chill. Those boys who start crowing really early? Crazy!!!

You can see our flock at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

You know your trees are doing well when you can use them to take sunset pictures! We planted this maple last year, and feared that it had died over the winter. Thankfully, it didn’t!
Our local native forests are taking a long time to recover from the fire that went through a number of years ago. It killed a lot of the old parent trees, hence removing the shade baby trees so desperately need during the hot summers. Drought and, to a certain extent, Pine Beetles have also caused issues, so we’ve been working to replace the population with pines, but also with tree varieties that won’t struggle with the beetle issues and will diversify our plant population, be more fire resistant, and provide food for ourselves and our wild neighbors: Fruit trees, maple trees, pine trees and nut trees are now leafing out by the house and down the hills. It’s a work in progress because it takes a lot of effort to get them started, but hopefully we’ll have a much better tree density within a couple more years.
You can learn more about us at
https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

This year with our goats, we’ve tried a couple different crosses to hopefully find the same happy medium we’re looking for in our cow cross. A good dairy animal who thrives on rough pasture without a ton of supplemental feeding, handles the crazy weather, and has sturdy kids that don’t need coddling to make it through the first couple days after birth. We’ve had straight Nubian, and straight Spanish, now we’re trying Spanish doe x Nubian buck, Nubian doe x Spanish buck, Nubian doe x Nigerian buck, and Spanish doe x Nigerian buck. Hopefully we can do some further experimenting with the Nigerians this coming year! So far, we’re really liking the Spanish x Nubian kids.
You can see our herd at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

Everyone is out to pasture!!! While we all appreciate the easygoing chores in the winter, it’s relieving when they finally head out in the spring.
It’s taken a while to figure out the best system that works for rotating these guys at Peaceful Valley, because it comes with challenges we hadn’t foreseen: the ground is so dry in the summer you can’t easily use step in poles, it’s too rocky to put in 3’ grounding stakes, we have to move frequently enough that we need lots of fencing (which can take an exorbitant amount of time to set up), and mobile shelters that are heavy enough not to blow away in Wyoming wind, but light enough to be portable. Needless to say, it’s been a work in progress, but at least progress is an accurate word. Looking forward to how this year goes!
You can learn more about our farm at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

Into goat kidding! Currently sitting at two bucklings and a doeling. The rest are due after the 20th!
You can see our herd at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

In past years, with different LGDs in the mamas’ pen, we’ve been worried about the dogs and the lambs: worried about them stealing lambs from the ewes, being too interested in afterbirth, getting aggressive towards defensive mamas, or showing a tendency to play with lambs. This year we mixed up the dog teams due to some compatibility issues (which all worked out incredibly well), and that put Chester by himself in the ewes’ pen. That meant he had to be fine with babies, gentle around mamas, and, to top it all off, good with the poultry who insist on living part time in the barn, rather than their spacious coop. Well, we’re incredibly impressed with Chester! He’s been a dream come true, and we’re really grateful for his laid back and gentle attitude. The lambs love him, the mama’s respect him, and the poultry coexist happily with him. He is a mama guardian extraordinaire!!!

You can learn more about our livestock guardian dogs at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

So grateful to the Taliaferro's for letting us breed Autumn to Houdini last year! She’ll calve at the end of August, and we’re really excited for her calf: a Mini Jersey x Lowline Angus, who’ll be stocky, milky, and hardy!

You can see more of our herd at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

Loving the udders on the freshened ewes from this year!
We’ve been focusing on breeding for good udder conformation in our flock, and it’s definitely starting to pay off. High attachments, great teats, rounded shape… Even though their production may not be as high as ewes from a dedicated dairy breed, they sure look nice and produce well enough for our needs!

Check out our flock at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

Freezing sheep milk to sell (this is not a sales post, the milk is already sold)!
Did you know that sheep milk can be frozen? Unlike cow milk, sheep milk can be frozen and thawed without much detriment to the milk. It’s not 100% the same, but it’s still really good. This means that even though sheep don’t produce as much, you can save up their milk without using all of your fridge space. Sheep milk ice-cream in the fall, after they’re done producing, is delicious!

We got a bunch of Air-Pots years ago, and our first attempt at using them was a disater. We are now ready to try again ... and this time, we are using better soil and have a better watering strategy. The first evergreen seedlings are potted. The hope is to have them ready for transplant this fall or next spring.

The dynamics of the goose flock are hilarious to watch. Breeding season makes the individual breed traits stand out even more, especially as we have such a high population of ganders at the moment. The Chinese are very willing to walk across the entire pasture to check out what you’re doing and ensure that you aren’t planning on coming over to pester any of their flock members. The Embdens are definitely more willing to ignore you, only hissing at you when you come within … oh about 20 feet of them (water trough, feed bucket, or even a wheelbarrow of compost, you’re definitely a threat, lol). The Toulouse are by FAR our most laid back geese. Occasionally they hiss at you, but that’s very rare. As I mentioned before, breeding season makes the aggression of the ganders pop out even more, so while we sort of see this behavior at other times of the year, the testosterone levels are at an all time high at the moment.
Check out our website at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

If you’ve been feeling driven to be more self-reliant and/or live in a more regenerative, symbiotic relationship with the earth, you might be interested in joining THE FOLD, our membership/mentorship program to support families on that journey. The opportunity to become a founding member of THE FOLD will close tonight, April 27th, at midnight MDT.
Check out the details at https://buff.ly/4cX9hCu

Only one ewe left to lamb! Here are a few pictures of our awesome new little friends. We’ve had a ram bumper year, and are watching quite a number of possible breeding prospects. Let us know what you’re looking for, and we’ll see if we’ve got someone that will work! We’ll do our first down select in the fall and then another cull next spring once we know how everyone handled the winter and what they really look like underneath all the fluff. We can help with transport for an additional fee.

Check out our flock at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

While lambing is incredibly satisfying, there’s a more nerve-wracking side that people don’t generally talk about. Arya went into labor about 9:00pm, and since she’s an experienced mama, we figured she’d be all done in an hour or two. After the first water bag, there was… nothing. She didn’t lamb until past midnight, but everything was perfectly normal and she had both out within half an hour of when we first saw hooves. The lesson? Don’t rush it! Let nature run its course, and more often than not, everything will go just fine. Ciaran and Aiden are happy and healthy, and none the worse for being in Arya longer than we thought they should be (If you’re interested in the blow by blow, it’s in our newsletter that will go out tomorrow).
Check out our flock at https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/

Something as “easy” as picking a chicken breed can result in incredible information overload. We've learned a lot about picking chicken breeds and answering “simple” questions like this one is part of what we help people do in THE FOLD. Find out more about becoming a founding member of THE FOLD at https://buff.ly/4cX9hCu

We’ve been thinking about how our farming journey started and there was a lot of craziness. We were swamped by information, stuck with problems and no solutions, afraid to move forwards because we didn’t know everything … It’s hard to get going when you aren’t the expert… and there are SO many experts out there ready to tell you how to do everything THEIR way, and that everything and anything else is wrong. What we wanted was answers for our situation, our animals, and our farm, not to be force fed somebody else's success story.

Through all of the craziness there were two big things we learned:

First: our biggest asset was our family, our team. Our family is incredibly supportive of our craziness, and they have a pretty incredible diversity of skills and interests that have made this journey possible.

Second: any system, no matter how different from our farm, is based on principles that do apply. Parse out the principles and you have something valuable.

Now, after having taken countless classes and courses, and talking to lots of good mentors, we’ve learned to put the pieces together to come up with a system that works well for us. Not a cookie cutter farm that worked for someone else. That is something we’d like others to have. We’ve been fiddling with this idea for a while: What if we could be that “support team” for other people? No sorting through tons of tips and tricks, no one size fits all situations… just good principles and a team of incredible problem solvers. And now it has a name: THE FOLD.

We’re doing a founding members launch over the next two weeks. Checkout the opportunity at https://buff.ly/4cX9hCu