What Betty is Doing Now October 2026

 The Growing Season Is Winding Down

Fall is in the air. There’s a little less mowing, watering and garden care, and I have to admit I’m looking forward to some winter rest.

The sheep are still on pasture. It was a good pasture-growing year, but I expect I’ll be moving them off pasture in a few weeks. I still need to harvest the long-neck pumpkins and sweet potatoes. The garlic is planted, and soon I’ll prepare the rest of the garden for winter.

Things aren’t exactly quiet yet, but everything is starting to button up for winter.

Heartbreak

The hardest part of this summer was losing Biscuit. She was the first foal I raised since my teenage years, and we were together for 23 years.

She wasn’t my best riding horse, but that really didn’t matter. Losing her was devastating. It has been about two months since I said goodbye, and I’m finally starting to feel like I’m getting my mojo back.

The New Chicken Coop

My new chicken coop is awesome. I designed the project around a few priorities: ease of maintenance, longevity, predator protection and matching the other buildings on the farm. I wanted something that should last for decades.

It has easy-to-clean floors, pull-out bins under the roost bars, a clean-out door, an automatic chicken door and an attached run. I can leave home knowing the chickens are safely self-contained.

The chickens seem to love their new home. This week I added a roll-up shade cloth to the south side of the run, too.

What My Sheep Data Is Telling Me

I keep a lot of data on my sheep, and after a few years, the numbers are starting to tell me some interesting stories.

One is about carrying capacity. How many sheep can my pastures actually support? This was a good growing year, and I’m still wondering whether I’m planning to breed too many ewes for what the farm can comfortably support next year. I’ll adjust as the data tells me more. My goal isn’t to maximize the number of sheep. I want a flock the land can support without relying too heavily on hay and barn feeding.

The data is also starting to show me which ewes perform best. Interestingly, two of my smallest ewes are raising some of my biggest lambs. Meanwhile, my biggest ewe is raising one of the smaller lambs. I wouldn’t necessarily notice those relationships without weighing the sheep and keeping records.

Parasites are another interesting piece of the puzzle. Two of my biggest, best-performing ewe lambs had higher parasite loads than some of the smaller ones. FAMACHA didn’t identify the problem, but fecal exams did. Now I can watch those lambs over time and see whether treatment was a one-time need or whether parasite susceptibility becomes a pattern.

The numbers are also helping me decide which ewe lambs are ready to breed. Instead of relying only on age or appearance, I can compare their weights with their mothers’ mature weights and make a more informed decision.

None of these individual numbers tells me everything. But put together over several years, they are helping me understand what kind of sheep perform best on this particular farm and how to build a flock that fits the land rather than asking the land to fit the flock.

Pasture Walk

The Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition is holding a Pasture Walk at Bluestem Springs Farm on November 14. We’ll be talking about grazing, silvopasture and CRP.

If those topics interest you, come join us.

If you're interested in working together or have any questions, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bettybrennan/

bettybrennan@pm.me