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Posted: 2 April 2009
1 April, 2009
Spring is arriving even here in the northern reaches of Worcester County. Most of us have long finished lambing, I on the other hand have not. As most of you know, this has been a difficult winter for being a farmer/shepherd. Record cold weather, an epic ice storm for some of us and several “mud seasons” have made this winter seem one of the longest ever!
On the other hand, who among us doesn’t feel the renewal as each lamb hits the ground and gets up to nurse for the first time? Andrea always tells everyone that I can tend to the lambs during the day in half the time as at night. It never seems quite as cold in the barn at night and sitting on a bucket watching that “renewal” seems all that more real at such times.
This next Tuesday is our annual planning meeting……..bring your ideas and suggestions to the meeting. If you can contribute to only one meeting a year, this is the one that is the engine for all of our upcoming year. Please review your “notes” from this year and make your desires for programming known on Tuesday the 7th.
I am committed to keeping this web site up-to-date this year and for now have replaced the “Events” tab on the Home Page with one for our Massachusetts Blanket Project. There you will find the great brochure put together by our Baaay State Blanket committee. If you did not participate this last year, do so this year. If you did have blankets made and are perhaps wondering if you can do it again seeing as you have blankets left to sell, do it anyway. You are not going to see the new blankets until very late in the year and by then, you will be looking for blankets. What we can all do to make this project work better is to volunteer more time to help. (That includes me as well.)
I am humbled to report that I was elected to represent the states in Region I for the American Sheep Industry as our representative on the Executive Board of ASI. Region I is all six of the New England States along with NY, NJ and PA. I will continue as the Vice Chair of the American Wool Council and have chosen to become a bit more involved with the Predator Management committee as well. Because we have not had a significant predator problem in our Region, as compared to the rest of the country, USDA has only one Wildlife Services representative assigned to the southern New England Area and we are excluded from the table when discussing USDA funding. I think we should do a better job of documenting our predator issues and take that data to the table when next ASI looks to USDA for help. As an adjunct, ASI is currently on record with both the House and the Senate in opposition to a bill introduced to eliminate the Wildlife Management portion of the USDA budget. The bill is sponsored by several animal rights groups and has some support in the new Congress. Controlling predators is only one of their functions, airport safety in the name of birds, deer and other wildlife is a larger function and is at risk. See you Tuesday, Tom
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