Milking and Shearing Sheep for the First Time

it got a little awkward for everyone

Hello my friends,

I milked my sheep for the first time a few weeks ago. This may be the only time you’ll read a sentence like this, but let me just say: Sheep teats are so tiny!

After a decade of milking a cow, whose teats are typically the same length as the width of your hand, trying to milk the sheep by hand was much like taking on a new lover.

Awkward for everyone.

By the way, you’ll see me using a milk machine in the video. I ordered this one and am very happy with it. Perhaps the best part of using machine, which our small farm has never done before, is how clean the milk remains.

Stuart Elliott

and I also managed to give our dairy sheep perhaps the worst haircut that’s ever been given to a sheep by their shepherds (and catch it on film for your viewing pleasure!). Professional shearers, we are not. A few minutes in, I managed to clip the tip of my finger off and proceeded to spend the next two hours trying to stop the bleeding while simultaneously helping Stuart to hold and shear our two new dairy ewes.

Yes, it took us two hours.

(For perspective, a professional shearer can accomplish the same task, with much better results, in less than 2 minutes.)

That may sound like some categorical failures, but it’s all part of the learning process for us as homesteaders. We set a goal, we figure it out. Come small teats, lost appendages, bad haircuts, or anything in between.

As we talk about in this week’s video, our sheep are one of the greatest assets to our farm. They provide us with fertilizer, meat, milk, and lambs for bartering/selling/harvesting. They’re small, manageable, and can be very well tempered.

It’s no secret, I delight in them.

So this week, we’re taking you through not only milking and shearing for the first time, but also delighting and remembering some of the incredible dishes that we’ve been able to enjoy over the years thanks to our small herd of Katahdin sheep. In particular, we’re making Corned Lamb Leg - a wonderful and simple collection of salt, sugar, and pickling spices.

As I share in the video, I get a pickling spice in bulk each year from Azure Standard. This is my standard pickling spices for all the pickles I make throughout the season - and in this case, is just as delightful paired with lamb. This is where the “corned” comes from, as many of the pickling spices used (allspice, cloves, peppercorns, etc.) are roughly the size of corn kernels. The lamb leg will brine in the refrigerator all week before being boiled until fall-apart tender. It’s heavenly!

For those of you who are serious about learning to cook from-scratch or stocking your kitchen with valuable, organic ingredients, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to get set up with Azure Standard. Find a drop near you - or get set up to become your own! I’ve relied on them for years (in fact, I think I’ve been ordering monthly for over a decade now) to help me stock our from-scratch, farm kitchen with many of the essentials that we need to keep this ship sailing. If you’d like to get started as a customer with Azure Standard, you can do so right here and use code ElliottHomestead10 for 10% off your first order.

I hope you enjoy our time together today, shearing, milking, and cooking. It’s a good life.

Cheers,

Shaye