There are so many reasons why people enjoy a great outing to Amherst Island. It’s beautiful, with bountiful nature and water on all sides. It is a warm community, with an ‘old-fashioned’ feeling of people mutually supportive and closely interacting. There are many stimulating, interesting events taking place, places to go, a choice of accommodation, […]

I’m writing with a shivering lamb on my lap. Soon he will be one of the gang for family outings to visit lambs. A lamb can lose its mama for many reasons. Triplets may be born, and the ewe may have only enough milk for two. The ewe might seek shelter in a storm, and […]

Our Wool Shed which sells natural wool products is in a small, gently aging ice house/milk house. It is almost at the end of a dead-end gravel road, on an Island. Not the ideal location one might think, for drive-by traffic. We’ve been, as one customer said “a well-kept secret”. But increasingly, we are not […]

Fortunately wool is warm and waterproof. The December ice storm descended on the second day of breeding season.  The lamb count next spring will tell us whether the breeding action was affected. We suspect the rams’ footing might have been dicey.  Otherwise, the sheep seemed content, with their ice-coated coats clanking like out-of-tune bells.  But […]

  This time of year is dominated by two activities on a sheep farm:  keeping track of the readiness of each lamb to go to market, and preparing the breeding cycle to start again. All species yearn to procreate.   Shepherds just learn to manage that urge.  We want each lamb to be born in […]

Our parents were kids during the Depression, and the examples they set fit right in to today’s philosophy of recycle and reuse and don’t waste. Sometimes we do that on a fairly large scale.  Our men were offered the job of taking down the two story grain elevator in Emerald in exchange for the wood.  […]

The barn at Topsy Farms was built in three stages, starting a long time ago with the most recent work done in the 50’s.  Over the past half century, the concrete foundation at the N-W corner has shifted outwards because of inadequate weight-bearing base and possibly, the pressure of the materials inside, pushing out.  The […]

Lambing this year resulted in a foster lamb then lots more. At Topsy Farms, our official count was 1457 lambs, born in May and early June to about 1100 ewes.  Despite very regular checking of the 6 groupings of birthing ewes, perfect parenting does not always occur. We often have triplets, and some mamas just […]

We did pregnancy testing for our ‘ewe lambs’, those who were born May, 2012. Among the approximately 1400 lambs born last spring, we chose the 300 best females to be put to the rams in December.  However, we know not all of them have been bred.  We want to keep only those females who are […]

I was asked what I’d do if I won the lottery. The answer came readily – I would find life’s balance by continuing to live and work at Topsy Farms. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.  The land, animals, and very air are as much a part of me as my skin and fingernails. Driving […]