[sprocket]

I worked full time as a software dev from about 1999 until 2010. It was never really all that fulfilling for me, although I was pretty good at what I did. I was laid off in 2010, and spent the rest of the year milking goats and sheep, and making cheese in France and the UK. When I returned home in late 2010, my wife and I moved to a more rural location, bought a small herd of goats, and started building a cheese plant.

We've been making cheese going on 8 years now, and have expanded into sheep and cow's milk production, in addition to our goat's milk varieties. Unlike most of the cheese producers around us, we focus on raw milk cheeses with natural rinds. Many of our varieties are inspired by cheese I encountered while working in Europe.

  Here's a small gallery of some of our cheeses: https://imgur.com/a/zg0eaTz

We're just emerging from our kidding season and heading into lambing. It's the most challenging period of the year, as we'll have 150+ kids and lambs arrive over a couple of weeks.

  https://imgur.com/a/USmPghf 

The shift has been fulfilling overall, and I still do work on some tech related projects which has been great. I have to some degree begrudgingly watched my peers' income shoot up dramatically over the last 12 years, while I have to work twice as hard to bring home the same amount.

Overall though, it's been net positive for my family, and while I've tried to quit farming at least half a dozen times, I was never able to bring myself to make the break.

[sixstringtheory]

I haven’t left the industry but do live rurally and have considered getting some sheep for personal cheesemaking. Do you also shear them on any regular interval? Is that even necessary for any reason? If you do, do you sell the wool? I’ve seen it going in farmers markets for quite high prices, although I’m not familiar with the processing requirements.

[sprocket]

I usually shear just before lambing, which is right now for us. Whether or not you need to shear will depend on the breed of sheep - some can lose their coats on their own, some will not.

For us it's necessary as our sheep get a 2"+ thick coat, which during our summers (last summer we hit 42C/108F, normally we peak at around 35C/95F), and having a thick coat can be deadly.

I put the fleece in the burn pile. I don't have the time nor inclination to clean and card the wool to prep it for sale. I imagine some people would take it to do it themselves, but at this point, I need one less thing to do, not one more. :)

[nouveaux]

"as we'll have 150+ kids and lambs arrive over a couple of weeks."

Holy cow can you give more specs on your farm?

[sprocket]

In the grand scale of things, we're pretty small. We milk just under 100 dairy goats, and have about 150 goats total on the farm (the other goats being a couple of breeding bucks, and some kids of various ages that will be milked in future years.)

I'm somewhat smaller than I was two years ago - we scaled back a bit in 2020, as the pandemic seriously killed cash flow for a couple months.

We produce our own sheeps milk too, but on a much smaller scale. We also pick up cows milk from a neighbouring farm. I'm expecting this year to process around 100,000 liters of milk, producing around 10-12 tons of cheese.

[b20000]

i applaud your move and glad you pursue your dream. when you made the career change, what was your net worth?