Category: St. Clair Agriculture

Rental ruminants help clear kudzu from Ashville farm

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Cindy Massey took more than a casual look at the kudzu-covered cliffs that surrounded her Ashville farm and knew she had to put a stop to the invasion.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, describes the invading kudzu as climbing, coiling and trailing perennial vines introduced in America from Asia in the 19^th Century. It’s even earned the infamous reputation as ‘the weed that ate the South.’ But never mind the lore behind it. All Massey knew was that it had to go.

She had kept it under control for years through a treatment process. But when that process was skipped a couple of times, the vines enveloped the hillsides and rock formations – top to bottom – that form a natural, dramatic backdrop all around her expansive valley acreage. That is, when you can see them.

She asked her landscape architect, Rodney Griffin at Gardens by Griffin, for advice, and his answer would set in motion a solution not seen all that much around these parts. “Why don’t you rent a goat?”

It was no time for conventional means anymore, said Massey. So, she turned her attention to the internet and made a discovery that’s catching on around the country – renting goats – and lots of them.

She found a company in Tennessee – Rent-A-Ruminant – that would bring a herd of goats to Alabama and let them do what goats do best. And on a warm, sunny day in August, kudzu started tumbling down like a row of dominos given a mighty thump.

 All across Massey’s 135 acres, one by one, members of the herd of 47 goats made their way up and down and all around the hillsides, craning their necks to reach their ‘gold.’ Some stood on hind legs to get an extra boost toward their target. They tracked, tromped and chomped on one hillside and then headed to the next course at Taylor’s direction.

If one man’s trash is another’s treasure, the same holds true for goats. According to Rent-A-Ruminant owner Jax Taylor, kudzu is like the “golden corral” to them. She compared the bottom to broccoli, the next layer to a chocolate fountain and at the very top, they strike gold.

As Maddie, an Anitolian Shepherd, Great Pyrennes mix herded the goats, keeping them inside temporary netting that encloses each section designated for their clearing prowess, Taylor talked of how her story began.

Now a veteran, she was in Kuwait, about to be deployed to Iraq. A library in Los Angeles had donated out-of-date books to soldiers, and she picked up one on suburban homesteading. For the next 15 months, she would read that book over and over again and became “intrigued” with the concept of self-sufficiency and homesteading.

She decided when she returned home, she would buy a goat. And that she did. Her first was a Nigerian Dwarf, Becka, and you might say that goat cleared the path forward for her in more ways than one. After a second tour, this time in Afghanistan, she decided that when her Army career ended, her next career would involve goats. She had already started her farm and had moved to standard sized goats.

Her herd has grown sizably since then, and so has the territory for Rent a Ruminant, a franchise company begun in 2004 in Washington State. Besides Taylor’s franchise in Tennessee, there are others in Louisiana and Texas.

This was Taylor’s first time to herd in Alabama, and she settled into a loft apartment above the barn on Massey’s land for the two and half weeks she was there with the herd. She and her goat caravan have traveled to parts of Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky clearing property and taking care of the environment.

“We try to run the business like animal lovers would run the business,” she said, noting that most are rescues. She calls them by name if they venture where they’re not supposed to go as if they are wandering toddlers.

There are three generations out there, she said, proudly pointing to each. Becka is the matriarch. Fiddle is her first kid, and Banjo is Fiddle’s first kid.

How do they get their names? “Sometimes, they just come to us. Pineapple is “off the wall.” Morgan is named after a niece. Sir Richard? He’s their “problem child.” He jumps the fence. “They do something that gives them a name,” she explained.

Taylor likens their approach to clearing the kudzu to the atmosphere of a Jurassic Park – “like dinosaurs attacking.” 

And when they were done, Massey’s property was cleaner that it had been in years. By the end of their stay and multiple work days, Massey was calling the goats by name, too.

“I saw firsthand that running a goat rental business is not for the faint of heart,” Massey said. “Some of our terrain is quite steep and while it was no problem for the goats, Jax and her husband, Mathhew, had to clear brush and install fencing to contain them.

“I love the fact that they demolished a lot of kudzu, and no chemicals were used. I try to be mindful of the wonderfully diverse ecosystem we enjoy here. The goats neutralize seeds in their gut rather than broadcasing them as with a machete or Weedeater.”

She noted that the goats were extremely efficient and worked quickly, returning her property to the picturesque landscape she first fell in love with.

“The goats and the Taylors were a delight,” she said. “I missed the sounds of tinkling goat bells and ‘baaaaah’ after they left.”

This ain’t your granddaddy’s Extension System

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

Perplexed about when to plant kale or collard greens? The Alabama Cooperative Extension System has a workshop for that.
Want your teenagers to learn money-management skills or more about healthy eating? Alabama Extension has programs for that, too.
Need to touch up your job skills? Alabama Extension can help you do that as well.

Many folks remember St. Clair County extension agents coming to their farms to advise gramps about those pesky weeds in the cow pasture. They may recall home agents telling grandma that to safely can her green beans she must use a pressure canner not her hot water bath canner. But money management and job resumes? Clearly, this isn’t your grandparents’ extension service any more.

“Most people know us simply as the Extension Service, but our name officially changed from service to system in 1995 after a landmark federal court ruling, making ours the nation’s first unified Extension program,” says Lee Ann Clark, coordinator for Alabama Extension’s St. Clair County office since 2005.

“Originally, program services centered primarily around agriculture and home economics-related topics. The 4-H Clubs, which began in 1909 as Corn Clubs (for boys) and Tomato Canning Clubs (for girls), laid the foundation for today’s 4-H program. It is still one of our flagship programs, but we’re so much more today.”

For 90 years, the bulk of extension programs were carried out by county agents—generalists who kept abreast of many different subjects and delivered a wide-variety of programs.

By the onset of the 21st century, there were fewer farms, changes in public expectations and the World Wide Web, which changed how information was being delivered. In 2004, these changes prompted a reorganization and switch from using the generalist agents to regional agents who specialize in one of 14 extension program priority areas.

Regional agents now cover several counties, advising third-generation farmers and the newcomers who just moved out of the city. However, despite the growing emphasis on regional agents, Alabama Extension continues to operate offices in all 67 counties.

Funded by federal, state and county governments, Alabama Extension is an extension of land-grant colleges, according to Henry Dorough, extension coordinator for Talladega County and a former regional agent for animal science and forage in St. Clair County.

Land-grant colleges were established by the federal government under the Morrill Act of 1862, which granted 30,000 acres of federal land for each member of Congress each state had. Southern states were prevented from participation until after the Civil War. The Hatch Act of 1887 established agricultural experiment stations in conjunction with the land-grant colleges. In 1890, the second Morrill Act extended land-grant status to black colleges in the South, which included Alabama A&M and Tuskegee University.

Today, there are 16 research centers in Alabama, along with Auburn University and Alabama A&M, that feed research-based information to Alabama Extension.

“The basic premise for Cooperative Extension actually began at Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University,” Dorough explains. “Dr. Booker T. Washington, the university’s first president, mandated that all professors spend time out in the community educating the public, especially the poor and in rural areas, teaching citizens where they lived. He coined the phrase, ‘taking the university to the people,’ which is what Alabama Extension does.”

 
Early days

The roots of the county extension agent go back even further, to the ‘movable school’ George Washington Carver established through Tuskegee University in 1906. Named after Morris K. Jesup, the Jesup Wagon was a horse-drawn demonstration wagon used by Thomas Monroe Campbell, who later that year received a federal appointment as a farm demonstration agent.

The same day Campbell got his assignment (November 12, 1906), William Crider Stallings of Texas became the first extension agent to serve a single county. “The way I see it, the sun rises in Tuskegee before it does in Texas, making Campbell the first County Agent,” says Dorough. “I think it’s significant that a black man at a black college in Alabama was the first extension agent in the country.”

Tuskegee is a private land-grant college with its own extension program. “Tuskegee opted out of Alabama Extension to preserve its history and unique identity, but they are a partner in the system,” Dorough says. We call on each other and work with them, even though their name isn’t on our letterhead.”

 
Casting a wide net

The regional agents covering St. Clair County go far beyond what Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver could have imagined. Angela Treadaway, regional agent for food safety, preservation and preparation, heads up the ServSafe program, a certification class for restaurant workers and owners required by the county health department. Her class on cottage industries keeps people who want to sell foods from their own kitchens from running afoul of the health department.

Vikki Blalock of Lincoln learned some jelly-making techniques at a recent Jams and Jellies Workshop hosted by Treadaway. “These new techniques will save me time and will produce a better jelly,” she says.

Sallie Lee, urban regional extension agent for home grounds, gardens and home pests, has lots of programs for older folks, like Grow It to Eat It, a catchy name for container gardening. Emily Hines, regional agent for family resource management and workforce development, conducts workshops and advises individuals on budgeting and finance, along with job preparation skills like resume writing.

Nancy Graves is the 4-H Foundation regional agent, while Becky Staples serves as a 4-H agent assistant for St. Clair County. Staples goes into local schools with various programs like Skins & Skulls, a science program that gives fourth-graders an up-close-and-personal look at the structure of wild animals in the woods of St. Clair County. She also conducts a Classroom in the Forest program and takes a group of kids to 4-H camp every summer. Graves is in charge of all volunteer-led clubs, including the 4-H after-school club and specialty clubs that focus on horses, archery and shotguns.

Through the 4-H Innovators Program — the only one of its kind in Alabama — Staples uses STEM-based (science, technology, engineering and math) projects that expose kids to critical thinking and teamwork. Spaghetti Towers, for example, gives students 18 minutes to take 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti noodles, three feet each of masking tape and string, and a marshmallow to build a freestanding tower that will hold the marshmallow.

 Donna Shanklin, regional agent for human nutrition, diet and health, holds workshops on diabetes education and various other health and nutrition-related topics for the general public. She also works with soon-to-be released prison inmates, providing them information on nutrition and public health.

Bethany O’Rear, regional agent for home grounds, gardens and home pests, conducts classes on gardening, landscape and rain barrels. Every other fall, she teaches the 12-week Master Gardener course, which will be available again in September 2018.

Joan Belzer attended O’Rear’s Fall Gardening Tips lunch-and-learn workshop in December 2017. “That was the first one I’d gone to,” says the Steele resident. “I made notes about what I needed to do, and one was about the care of equipment before winter. I also made notes about how much rain and mulch new plants need and how to get my soil tested through Auburn. I’ll probably go back to other events because I learned enough to make it worthwhile.”

As forestry, wildlife and natural resource agent, Norm Haley hosts workshops on invasive plant control and pond management and creates and posts videos on the Alabama Extension YouTube channel, focusing on wildlife management, trapping and drainage control.

If military veterans need assistance in accessing their benefits, they can call Wayne Johnson, who heads up Veterans Outreach, a pilot program developed in St. Clair County. “Many veterans don’t know what their benefits are,” Johnson says. “I go to different events, visit the veterans home and churches, spreading the word and touching base with our vets to see what they need. One of their biggest needs is where to go to access their health and other benefits, but they are also looking for support groups and assistance with job training.”

 The Extension office has two vehicles to help vets get to and from medical appointments and sponsors a support group for PTSD victims. “I’m finding a lot of the older veterans don’t have any family or close friends around,” Johnson says. “We also help our homeless vets. Right now, I have two families I’m helping to find housing.”

 
New to the job

Cori Harris and Alex Tigue are the two newest agents who serve St. Clair County. Cori is a SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps) Educator. She goes into qualifying St. Clair County schools using an iPad program called Body Quest to teach kids about making healthier choices. To promote fruits and vegetables, youth participate in weekly Warrior Tastings, where they taste a variety of crunchy fresh produce. Physical activity, sleep hygiene and family engagement also are promoted with recipes provided for parents to try at home.

Tigue works with farmers as an animal science and forage agent covering St. Clair, Jefferson, Marshall, Blount and Calhoun counties. One day he may be in Ashville or Guntersville, another day he’s working with a cattle producer in north Blount County or helping other agents conduct a workshop at Auburn University for backyard poultry producers. “All of our agents are like this,” he says. “We’re wide open all the time.”

Seventy percent of the calls Tigue gets are about weeds taking over pastures or bugs eating up someone’s field. “People go on the internet and aren’t confident about the answers they’ve found,” he says. “They want someone who can tailor an answer to their specific problem and not a one-size-fits-all. Our specialty as Alabama Extension agents is finding individual answers for individual people.”

 
All about learning

A couple of years ago, Emily and Mark Taylor of Ashville attended a hay and forage workshop, a four-class series held in different places. Emily is a member of the St. Clair County Farmers’ Federation board of directors and chairperson of its women’s committee. She and Mark raise cattle on acreage once owned by Emily’s parents. “I’ve been to several of the lunch-and-learn workshops for gardening and fruit trees and fermentation,” she says. “Those things are very helpful to your farm and household.”

Lee Ann Clark, whose enthusiasm for her job shows in her animated conversation and the 4-H memorabilia in her Pell City courthouse basement office, uses several means of getting the word about Alabama Extension programs and services out to the public it serves.

The St. Clair office has two Facebook pages (St. Clair County, AL, Extension Office and St. Clair County, AL, 4-H); a web page (www.aces.edu/StClair); writes a weekly column for local newspapers; and offers a free, bi-monthly newsletter. Anyone who wants to get on the newsletter mailing list may call the Extension Office at 205-338-9416.

“Currently, we have more than 1,800 families on our mailing list,” says Clark, a St. Clair County native and former 4-H’er who has worked for Alabama Extension here since 1998. “The newsletter is available on our web page and via an eNewsletter, but we realize that not everyone has internet access or prefers to read it online.”

In addition, Clark spearheaded a project that put kiosks about Alabama Extension outside her office door and at the Moody and Springville libraries. Her goal is to place one in all other libraries and the courthouse in Ashville. Born of her idea to create an information center based on the Red Box movie rental-type box concept, the Extension kiosks — the first of their kind in the state — provide all a person needs to know about the county Extension office in one easy-to-access place. “I believe that our tagline on the bottom of the kiosk, ‘Cooperative Extension. Extending Knowledge. Changing Lives,’ quite simply sums up what we do,” she says.

Clark’s current project is setting up an aquaponics class in St. Clair County. Why aquaponics? “Because people have requested it,” she says. That’s reason enough for her. 

Deer farm in Odenville building a brand, bringing visitors’ smiles

Story  by Carol Pappas
Photos by Susan Wall
Photos courtesy of Backwoods Whitetails

Drive through the gates of Backwoods Whitetails in Odenville, and you can’t help but sense you are about to witness something very special.

Wind through the property of rolling pastures, a canopy of towering trees lining both sides of the rocky road and pull to a stop at a nondescript barn. Fencing surrounds this farm, and it looks like most others around these parts, but instead of rows of crops growing all around, a hundred pairs of eyes are focused on you.

Fawns, bucks and yearlings wander through fenced pastures, their almond eyes trained on the strangers who have just arrived. Treats thrown in their direction bring them closer, and closer still.

At Backwoods, it’s all in a day’s work – raising prime stock deer from bottle-fed newborns to majestic bucks with racks wider than the length of your outstretched arms.

Owners Dane and Katelyn Dorsett and family are not your typical farmers, they breed deer, which now number 140 head, including fawns. And they sell to other breeders and owners of huge hunting enclosures around Alabama, fetching $4,000 and up each.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, said Dorsett. “It’s a big gamble. I tell people, don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose. One straw of semen to artificially inseminate in hopes of breeding prime stock can cost $15,000. And only 75 percent – “sometimes less than that” – take.

You might call this a family farm business. And you would be right. Dorsett’s wife, Katelyn, assistant principal at Odenville Intermediate School, bottle raises many of the fawns each year for the business they started in 2011.

Her father and three others help Dane with the daily chores of running an expansive deer farm like this that contains 10 pens stretching over multiple pastures.

Macy, the Dorsetts’ dog, hops aboard the all-terrain vehicle, keeping an eye on things and getting out at every stop. “She goes in every pen with me,” Dorsett said. She’s even been known to ‘kiss’ a deer or two.

The Dorsetts’ two boys — Hayes, 3, and Bryce, 1 — play nearby. It’s just another day to them as they round out the picture of this family affair.

“I am looking forward to next year, when I don’t have actual babies and deer babies we’re raising at the same time,” Katelyn said. “I am glad the kids get to grow up around this. They like being outside.”

When her “deer babies” are born, she starts bottle raising them in individual stalls located in the barn. Meanwhile, a ton – yes, that’s 2,000 pounds – of custom deer feed a week keeps the rest of the deer satisfied.

This all takes place on 40 acres in rural Odenville. Dane said the farm’s name came from its location – “the middle of nowhere.”

But around Alabama, it’s quickly making a name for itself, producing superior class genetics in its stock. According to its website, the Dorsetts have been on a “strategic breeding plan using Northern and Texas sires to create a range of genetic crossings.”

And farm visits are welcome daily. August is the busiest time of year when breeders are coming in and out, they are moving bucks and getting ready for breeding, said Dane.

This time of year is a little slower, and the deer actually seem to enjoy the company of admirers passing by on a Saturday morning. Realtor Lyman Lovejoy was among that group. He had brought his stepson and grandkids to experience it.

“This is unbelievable that we have something like this right here in our own backyard,” said Lovejoy. “These majestic animals are a sight to behold, and it’s heartening to know that a young couple can not only make a living but put St. Clair County on the map with this farm. What they’re doing is really impressive – the whole operation.

“And my grandkids see these beautiful deer, and their smiles tell me they think it’s Christmastime and Santa’s on his way!” l

 

From tomatoes to cattle, Cash brothers eyeing success

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos by Susan Wall

Among the numerous farms along St. Clair County Road 33 is one reminiscent of Wyoming’s countryside.

Its great expanse of grazing land is bordered by gently sloping, tree-lined hills. Artesian-fed Beaver Creek winds through the 471 acres, tumbling over a rock ford at one point.

“It’s a little piece of heaven,” said Andrew Smith, who gets to enjoy the view every day in his job as farm manager.

“It’s gorgeous,” said Joey Cash of Ashville.

From 1972 until recently, this property belonged to Dr. Jim Faulkner. It was called Faulkner Farms.

Not only was it known for its beauty, but also for the registered Simmental cattle from Europe that Faulkner raised right there in St. Clair’s Beaver Valley. The annual cattle sales at Faulkner Farms were popular events that drew people from as far away as Montana and Canada. They came to buy livestock, of course, but also to delight in the barbecue and fellowship those occasions offered.

Joey and his brother Brian purchased Faulkner Farms early in 2017.

The two had admired the farm from the time they were lads.

“I always recognized it more for the abundant wildlife,” Brian said. “There were always turkeys and deer out in the front hay field. I never dreamed we would actually own a piece of this beautiful place.”

When the Cashes purchased it, the farm already had a well-established infrastructure that included a tack room and office, four barns, a farmhouse, where Andrew and his family now live, and a two-story log cabin with an incredible view.

The Faulkner Farms property possessed something else of importance, namely its previous reputation as a purebred operation.

All of these made it the “perfect” place for the Cash brothers to establish their cattle enterprise.

“We pretty much want to carry on Dr. Faulkner’s legacy of being a well-known cattle business,” Joey said. He and Brian want to raise “the best Angus cattle in the business.”

They plan to construct a large barn and roping area for holding sales similar to the ones Dr. Faulkner hosted for many years, Brian said.

This cattle venture is an entrepreneurial detour for Joey and Brian. For many years, they have been farming tomatoes on 400 acres the family owns atop St. Clair’s Chandler Mountain. Their tomato business currently under the name Cash Cattle Co. – previously was called Burton Farm and has spanned 85-100 years. The Cash brothers represent the fourth generation of tomato farming in the family.

Burton Farm was the largest tomato farm in the state for a time, Brian said.

Joey added that, through the years, it also was an innovator in the business.

“The tomato business has been great to our family,” Brian said.

It allowed the brothers to be financially able to purchase Faulkner Farms and the prime Black Angus stock to put on it, Brian said.

They sold two tracts of their tomato-farming land and put the resources into the cattle farm, Joey said.

They acquired the last line of top-pedigree embryo-transplant heifers from Bobo Angus Farm in Huntsville, “one of the biggest and best purebred businesses in the country,” the brothers said.

“It would have taken us 10 years to breed up to the kind of animals we bought off the bat,” Joey said. “… We bought our way into the (cattle) business as big as we could, and tomato farming allowed us to do that.”

Currently, the herd has about 300 head. Two hundred are brood cows, while calves and bulls account for the other 100. One bull – at 2,600 pounds – thinks he is a pet.

For two years, the Cash brothers have been acquiring female cows and keeping them on leased property on Chandler Mountain. Ultimately, the Cashes plan to limit the brood population to 250 and the total herd size to about 500 to avoid overworking the land.

Joey noted theirs is a purebred seed-stock business. In other words, their cattle are for breeding purposes, not for consumption.

Added Brian, “With the genetics we have acquired, the females will pretty much sell themselves. Our emphasis has to be on selling quality, sound bulls to commercial operations. We are going to offer a lot of ‘value added’ options with the sale of our bulls.”

Among the options Brian listed are providing Angus Source perks for buyers seeking to market cattle sired by a Cash Cattle bull, guaranteeing bulls sold by Cash Cattle, and offering free delivery in certain instances.

“We want to be an asset to commercial cattlemen in the area” by providing stock and services that allow Cash Cattle customers to market their own animals at a higher price, Joey said.

The transition out of tomato farming into cattle farming has been exciting, but came about through “a lot of praying,” said the brothers.

“We are thankful for the help, support and prayers of our families and many others in this venture,” Brian said.

This family cattle business also involves the efforts of Joey’s wife, Tracy; and daughter Jacie, 12; as well as Brian’s wife, Paige; and sons Corbin, 9; and Cylas, 4. Already, the dads are teaching the younger generation of Cashes to round up, deworm, rope and vaccinate the cows, record pertinent information and search the fields for new calves.

“We want to instill … in our kids … work ethic and pride for the animals and the land that God has blessed us with,” Brian said. “I want to build a business that my children, one day if they so choose, will be able to carry on and be successful in.”

 

Sheep-shearing, cheese tasting at Alabama’s only sheep dairy

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Susan Wall

It was like a cross between a fiber-arts convention and a school field trip. Some came for the free fleece, some to see the sheep, others to taste the cheese.

Sheep-shearing is an annual January event at Dayspring Dairy in Gallant, but this year was the first time it was open to the general public. “It gives us exposure and drives traffic to our products,” said Ana Kelly, who, along with husband Greg, opened Alabama’s only sheep dairy in 2013.

Their products are the cheeses, dips and caramel spreads that they sell at farmers’ markets in Birmingham (Pepper Place), Atlanta (Piedmont Park) and Huntsville (Madison City), and at their small farm store by appointment — or when someone drops by and tracks them down in the milking barn. Many people at this year’s event were regular customers from Birmingham who wanted the back story to the Dayspring products they buy. “Millennials want to know who makes their food and how the animals are treated,” Ana says. “About 150 people showed up. It was a great success.”

The Facebook “open house” invitation said 9 a.m. – 2 p.m., and by 9:30 cars and trucks were lined up on both sides of Dogwood Road to its intersection with Gallant Road. Both the barn and the small farm store quickly filled up with gawkers and tasters. Folks were wandering around the farm, some going into the pasture where the sheep, who were too young to be shorn, alternated between cuddling up to their visitors and cavorting like grade-school children at recess.

Folks had cameras around their necks and children in tow. The sounds of sheep bleating and chickens clucking mixed with the squeals of delighted children, while a shaggy white great Pyrenees strained on his chain in an effort to get some of the attention. Pecorino, Pec for short, has to be restrained around visitors until he learns some manners, such as not jumping up on people. Two other great Pyrenees, Brie and Camembert, were friendly but not as rambunctious.

Visitors came from Birmingham, Leeds, Pell City, Jasper, Calera, Madison, Goodwater, Atlanta and who knows where else, many of them spinners, weavers, knitters and crocheters who volunteered to help so they could get a share of the wool. They had to make their way past the farm store via a dirt path, carefully stepping over the cattle grate left behind by the former farm owners.

In the barn, the unsheared sheep waited their turn in a holding pen, temporarily crammed together so tightly they looked like a sea of fleece with bobble-heads. From there, Alex Bowen, a 17-year-old home-schooled kid who works part-time at the dairy, pushed them into a line between a wire fence and the back barn wall, then into a tip chute. The latter is a wooden platform with a side that drops so the shearer can grab them. The ewes strained against the fence, confused by all the commotion.

Daddies hoisted their toddlers onto their shoulders for a better view of the shearing process that took place in a large stall. Nibbleton Fuzzy was one of the “victims,” and master shearer Stuart Mathews wrestled her to the ground on her back, using his legs to hold her in place. Once shorn, a brown spot was revealed on her back. Close examination convinced Greg Kelly it was lice. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. He tossed out Nibbleton’s fleece, and that of several other sheep that turned up with lice. One of the volunteers said that sheep lice won’t affect humans, and will die when the wool is cleaned in hot water, but no one really wanted to deal with it.

What’s in a name?

“I name them when I have a reason to,” Greg said, when asked whether he named each of the sheep. “Valentine was sickly when she was born, and we raised her at the house and she turned around on Valentine’s Day, so we named her Valentine.”

Eager volunteers hung on the door of the shearing stall, ready to grab their share of fleece. They laid it on a piece of wide-web pasture fencing stretched between two metal saw horses, where they picked out debris. A large pile accumulated beneath the makeshift “screen” as dirty pieces dropped through the holes. The good stuff was packed into garbage bags to be taken home, washed, carded and spun or woven.

“It’s not the best wool,” Greg said. “These are dairy sheep, they aren’t raised for their wool.” So, why shear them in the first place and why in the dead of winter instead of spring? “I should get a sign made,” he said, with a roll of his eyes that told you he’s answered that question umpteen times already. “Almost all of these are pregnant, and it makes for an easier birth,” he explained. “By shearing them in January, it allows them to re-grow their wool before the biting insects appear in the spring. The winters here are very mild, but this is also done this time of year in the North. We leave about 1 inch of wool, which is enough to keep them warm.”

After shearing, Greg and Jimmy Mays, who helps out on shearing and lambing (birth) days, dragged each ewe into a hammock against the wall, where they trimmed their hooves and vaccinated them. Everett Kelly, 14, son of Ana and Greg, prepared the syringes. The immunization is passed on to lambs in colostrum.

The spotless milking parlor is in the barn, where milk is pumped from the ewes and flows through stainless-steel pipes into the cheese-making room. That’s where Ana shines, and where daughter Sofia, 10, often helps by putting labels on the packages.

There was no milking or cheese-making going on during shearing time, but there was plenty of tasting and buying. Lilly Poehler, the Kellys’ goddaughter, helped out in the farm store, frying and browning tiny squares of the farm’s Halloumi, a Mediterranean-style cheese. Folks were leaving with sacks full of cheeses, dips, jellies and a caramel sauce that’s a lot like the milky-rich Dulce de Leche so popular in South America. Cheese with names such as Ewetopia, Shepherd’s Tomme and Angry Ram (a hot pimiento cheese) also jostled in their sacks, along with packs of Halloumi the Kellys gave away because their sell-by date was so close.

In another life

Prior to buying their 33-acre farm in 2011, the Kellys knew no more about sheep or cheese-making than their visitors. The family lived in Birmingham, where Greg held a high-pressure IT job. Ana, a trained chef, had worked in the test kitchens at Southern Progress, then became a freelance food stylist after Everett was born. A few years later, they adopted Sofia from Colombia. They grew tired of suburban and corporate life and wanted something different. After visiting a goat farm in North Alabama to sample the cheese, the idea of becoming cheese-makers was born.

“We had a feeling we just wanted to start some type of cottage industry,” Ana said. “We had taken a little trip and stopped at a cheese-making plant in Elkmont. We discovered that they didn’t raise goats there, but bought the milk to make their cheese. We figured we could do it better by raising our own animals.”

There was already lots of good goat cheese being made here in Alabama, according to Ana, and cows were too big a leap. “Sheep are docile creatures,” Greg said. “They don’t smell, either. Sheep produce less milk than goats or cows, but its milder and richer.”

Greg trained at the Sheep Dairy School in Wisconsin, while Ana studied with cheese makers in Kentucky and Vermont. “He focused on the animals, and I focused on the cheese,” she said. Greg also went to shearing school in South Dakota. Why so far away? “Do you know of any shearing schools in the South?” he quipped.

Dayspring’s milk production resulted in 8,000 pounds of cheese last year, and the Kellys are shooting for 10,000 pounds in 2017. Their flock is a cross between East Friesian, the dominant dairy-sheep in the United States, and Gulf Coast Native, a breed that has adapted and thrived in Florida since the Spaniards brought their ancestors here in the 15th century. Lambs breed between the age of one-and-a-half and two years, and have a five-month gestation period. All the babies are born within a very busy, one-month window from mid-February to mid-March. “We had about 150 lambs born last year, and will probably have 200 this year,” Ana said.

Most of the boys will be sold, and eventually, the girls that don’t produce much milk will go, too. “We keep a milking flock of 100-125, but we may end up with 80-100 this year,” Ana said. “We have three to four rams, and each can cover 25 ewes, which only come in season one time a year.”

Their sheep graze all seasons on pasture untouched by pesticides or commercial fertilizer. The sheep are never given hormones, and the Kelly’s believe this combination makes healthier cheese.

“We milk our ewes from February through September, which provides subtle flavor changes throughout the milking season depending on the grasses growing in our pastures,” Ana says. “The rolling pastures of our land, along with our mild climate, give our cheeses a sense of place.”