The workers at Topsy Farms very much include its dogs. They are members of the team who work to care for and protect our flock. At present we have one Border Collie and 8 Guardian dogs. We’ve had several beloved collies over time. They utterly live to work the sheep. Unfortunately, they aren’t needed often […]

At Christmas, long weekends and other holidays, farmers don’t take much time off. The animals need daily attention. Always. On Christmas Day, two men each spent about 2 ½ hours in the morning doing chores, then 3 men worked in the barn in the afternoon for a few hours too. We don’t resent it – […]

One of our survival secrets at Topsy Farms is that we don’t purchase new and efficient – and expensive – farm equipment. We make do and recycle the old. That translates to all the workers, but especially Christopher who has most machinery know-how, spending hours and hours patching and rebuilding and scavenging parts to eke […]

Leah, Ian and Randi’s daughter, is probably the reason our history began. When she was on her way, her parents wanted her to be raised by an extended family; by a tribe. However, relatives were scattered, and they had other friends who were interested in living communally, so on December 31st, 1971, some of our […]

Our two-and-a-half story “Frame House” at Topsy Farms is heated primarily by a wood furnace in the basement. That’s a huge improvement over the early years, when we had only one wood stove in the living room, where everyone and the laundry hung out. Each time we filled that less-than-airtight stove, it would belch ash […]

It is breeding time at Topsy Farms – the boys go in with the girls. We have 4 teaser rams (those with vasectomies), 5 very young Suffolk rams of our own breeding, and 22 rams in their prime. We have 413 first year ewes and a mature flock of 820. We don’t want to put […]

In the “good old days”, we had a card for each ewe in the flock, recording the number of lambs she’d had all her breeding years. It involved a lot of labour and trying hard to minimize human error while completing the card information during long tiring lambing days. We used to lamb using the […]

When our flock is shorn each spring, the skilled shearers follow the same routine with each sheep. First the ewe is positioned on her bottom, leaning back and looking very relaxed, while the electric shears clean off her belly wool and the area around her udder. That wool tends to be contaminated by fecal matter, […]

November 9th was positively balmy. Ian left on the 7 am ferry, headed for Queen’s University Farmer’s Market. Don was watching the weather reports before heading out to do chores; Christopher was dealing with Ontario Sheep Marketing business. I went for a walk with my grandsons’ dog, Diego. There were flocks of ducks and geese […]

At Topsy Farms, we are caretakers of our land. We work in many small ways to save resources and protect animals, people and the environment. You’ve already heard the story of changing tractor tires, and of our old Allis-Chalmers tractor, rebuilt from many scrounged bits. Here are some other miscellaneous activities. Living and working as […]