Sara Cannon

My average day is pretty routine. I wake up at 5:30 because I like to read while I drink my coffee before I start the day. That’s how I ground myself. And then at 7, my sister and I meet to begin milking. We’re currently milking 41 ewes, soon to be 56 ewes. We get about 10 gallons of milk a day from that amount of ewes. Milking takes about two and a half hours with the chores: set up, clean up, all of that.

Then we move to the greenhouse to open it up as the day gets warmer. We water, we do a little seeding. This is where we start all of our plants that we move out to the field once it’s warm enough. It’s sort of the nursery for all of our plants. Then at 3 p.m., we milk again. That takes another 2 hours, then another hour after that to wrap up all of our chores, feeding all of the animals. Because not only are there 56 ewes to feed, but we have 84 lambs that are now on grain and hay, and they need fresh water and all of that, and health checks. Then we have three rams, a lama, three horses, 25 chickens, and 22 yearling ewe lambs that will be replacement mothers after we cull some of them for meat.

Once we’re out in the field growing all of our vegetables, we spend the entire day out in the field. Monday we designate for planting and weeding and any tractor work that needs to be done. Lana will be making cheese. She makes small batches of cheese every week. She makes feta and a chef-style and a Greek-style yogurt. And that’s when I’m on the tractor. I drive the tractor, she makes the cheese. That’s how we separate that work. On Tuesday, that’s a harvest day. We will be harvesting for our restaurant clients and our Wednesday market, which is in Portland. And there we sell fresh vegetables, herbs, cut flowers, frozen lamb meat, our cheeses, maple syrup, eggs, and sheep skins and yarn.