Heatherhope Years

Sheep, and Sheepdogs at Heatherhope

In 2002 Connie and I thought that we would try to live with the land in a way informed by our love of nature. But we also were drawn by that very human side of nature that we call “folk knowledge.” This is what the people who are wedded to the land know about the land, and about the land as resource for survival, but cannot be written in books.

Dogs dragged me into this. I grew up with them and loved and was loved by them all my life. Our family had a lovely Irish Setter when I was young, and my first wife and I had a couple good ones when we were first married. But we learned that the breed was typical of  many of those AKC dogs who were bred for conformity of appearance rather than brains. All the Irish Setters we saw were high strung and resistant to training, so I researched breeds and learned that the most biddable and healthiest, and least closely bred dogs were the Border Collies.

We had Maggie, our first Border Collie for 16 years. She never herded a sheep, but she used her inbred sheep sense to herd children—ours and everyone else’s. And she took us to a couple herding dog trials that absolutely amazed me. I had never seen such speed, stamina, intensity, devotion to a task, and mania to please a human partner!

So after Maggie died, we were living in Oak Park, across the street from Chicago, but I fell back on my desire to flee the city and sought out another Border Collie and a sheep man who could teach me how to train it to herd.

That is when I fell in love with folk knowledge. I found a sheep rancher who had learned from his parents and from other sheep ranchers, and even from shepherds from England, how to raise sheep with the help of sheepdogs. Now there are books about sheep and sheepdogs. There are videos. Nowadays there are hundreds of YouTube videos. But there is nothing that can compare with walking with a shepherd or a sheep farmer. Walking and observing body language and getting a feel for the noises and sometimes the words. Every sheep is different. Every dog is different. Every season of the year and time of the day is different.

So, this folk knowledge, that can’t be recorded or written down, but only passed down by living with it, is a way of life.

Because of this I have resisted putting my shingle out as a teacher of sheep herding with dogs. Oh the landscape is full of people who market themselves as teachers and trainers. Many of them have only a few dozen hours or a year or two of experience, and they are already instant experts.

For years, every time I passed an expanse of grass in the suburbs where we lived, I told Connie, “Wouldn’t that be a great place to raise sheep.” In the autumn of 2002 we took the plunge and bought the 43+ slightly hilly land in DeKalb County, and named it Heatherhope, for another farm whose shepherd we met in a pub near Yetholm, Scotland.

For many years we tried to make Heatherhope a place where people could start to walk with and observe and absorb the folk knowledge of the shepherding way of life.

We have had many dog training clinics here, and we have been blessed by having some of the absolute best shepherds and dog handlers in the world show us the way.  Here is a list:

·         Peter with Molly Hetherington, Scotland

·         Jim and Shirley Cropper, England

·         Stuart Walton, England

·         Carl Magnus and Lotta Magnusson, Sweden and Scotland

·         Bobby Dalziel, Scotland

·         Aled Owen, Wales

·         And especially, Gordon Watt, who put on two multi-day clinics here for many years, moved from Britain and now lives just an hour away, and continues to be a close friend, along with his wife, Kerry, and daughter, Sophie Hemmings.

Connie and I have had to privilege of visiting and learning from many of the top handlers from all over the British Isles and Ireland. The ones we visited the most, and even bought dogs and bitches from, include:

·         Ken Gwilliam, England

·         Jack Chamberlain, England

·         Bill Elliott, Scotland

·         Gordon Watt, England (formerly of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man)

·         Matt Watson, England

We also visited Dick Roper of England, Richard Millichap and Kevin Evans of Wales, Bob Shennan, Julie Hill and Bobby Henderson of Scotland. So Connie and I have been blessed to know and learn from two generations of the very best shepherds and sheepdog handlers the world has ever known—winners of countless National, International, and World sheepdog competitions as well.

Also, for many years, besides competing in sheepdog herding competitions, Connie and I would often fill a stock trailer with sheep, load up chairs, a cooler of drinks and sandwiches, a public address system, and four or five dogs in their kennel boxes, and travel to parks and historic farms all over the western suburbs of Chicago, and as far away as the Lincoln log cabin historic site in central Illinois. There we would put on herding demonstrations, try to help people appreciate the ancient grace God built into Border Collies, and share the folk knowledge of shepherds and farmers that helps all of us become better partners with our pets.

Our top dog, Cap, sired about 45 pups, and many of them have been top competitors in national and local herding trials. But we bred our own bitches sparingly, and only when we wanted to keep one or pups for our own.

New and Old Hope for Heatherhope

For 20 years we lovingly cared for our beautiful flock of up to 100 North Country Cheviot sheep, but the lambing got to be a bit too difficult for Connie and me. So a couple of years ago, with the help of Graham and Margaret Phillipson of Richland Center, Wisconsin, who were the source of many of our first ewes and all of our replacement rams, we sold off our own stock. Since then we have continued to graze the sheep of friends from spring to early winter. This helps our dogs to stay sharp, keeps Heatherhope Farm as a place to practice ecologically sound animal husbandry, and allows us to share the spirit of a healthy farming way of life with our guests.

It was actually a bit heartbreaking to give up our beautiful and healthy flock of Cheviots. But, knowing we would have some extra time and energy, we endeavored to increase the biodiversity of Heatherhope. We had already won an award from the soil and conservation district for nurturing margins around the farm and maintaining the “natural” tree line that included the old growth hedge apple, or Osage-orange. But we have now set aside two areas of prairie restoration/pollinator plants, allowed a bit more land to grow wild, and have put more effort into attracting and feeding birds year-round. We are endeavoring also to become better acquainted with the flora and fauna that seems to be constantly changing—sometimes for the better. We have logged fifty species of birds here, including  Dickcissel, Meadowlark, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow, Nighthawk, Coopers, Sharp-Shinned, and Red Hailed Hawk, the occasional Northern Harrier, and, yes, the super-abundant and cleverly adaptable Starling, House Sparrow, and House Finch.

In his marvelous 2002 book, A Natural History of the Chicago Region, Joel Greenberg writes,

Over thousands of years, the great forces of glaciations, climate, and fire had created a seamless mosaic of waters, wetlands, prairies, shrublands, and woods. But the arrival of the Europeans set in motion a new force, one with the power and will to impose upon the landscape a uniformity that is now virtually complete. While this process has diminished our natural heritage to a sorrowful extent, it is a tribute to the resiliency of nature and the efforts of a few farsighted people that so many native plants and animals have managed to survive, albeit in ever shrinking refuges.

Connie and I hope and pray for the God of wisdom to grant us such farsight that we may work with nature’s resiliency and not against it. We pray we may help make Heatherhope one of those refuges for plants and animals. Though we are surrounded by corn and soybean monocultures, we feel we are also still surrounded by the wonder that nature’s God breathes upon us all. We still are inspired by this wonder to write and teach. And we pray that Heatherhope continues to be a spiritual home place that we can joyfully share with others.