Appletree Farm: The Shadow of Grief, Part 2
WORDS AND IMAGES BY JO ARLOW
THIS FARM IS MY HEALER: SHEPHERDESS STEPHANIE SCHIFFGENS RAISES GOTLAND SHEEP, BUILDS A LIFE OF PURPOSE ON APPLETREE FARM.
“You cannot farm like this unless it is bound up as your way of life, especially when it’s this small scale and specialized.
It requires intimate, continuous involvement in every aspect of farming and sheep rearing for it to make financial and practical sense, which it must, as much as your heart is in it.”
Stephanie continues to educate herself on Gotland sheep genetics and how to improve her flock and the breed. She has learned all intricacies of artificial insemination (AI) and embryo transfer (ET). “AI has represented for me the best chances of advancing my flock for quality. Using semen from 100% Swedish Gotland sires is economically more feasible and adds quality.” AI is successful but intensive and works similarly to that for humans: Stephanie and her husband synchronize the ewes (with hormones) and then a technician or veterinarian comes to the farm to do the procedure of inserting semen into the ewes. It generally has a success rate of between 50-80% which leaves a lot of uncertainty in an already tight operation. She feels fortunate to have an appropriate “teaser ram” that helps bring the ewes into heat for the insemination. Through this method they have had successful AI births every year since they began.
The 2020-21 breeding season was first year she used embryo transfer and the only method used that season. ET can be more complicated than artificial insemination, requiring a Swedish Gotland Embryo Import Team and strict oversight of genetics. Embryos formed in genetically superior ewes are transferred into gestating historically successful ewes on Appletree. Two ewes held their embryos and delivered three lambs in the Spring of 2021: Ana, Ada and Agnes. And in 2022 both AI and ET were used with one lamb born from transfers and three from AI. While costly, ET has enabled Oregon to have its first 100% purebred Swedish Gotland sheep across four other small farms.
With the sheep fed and a moment’s pause in the doorway of the barn, she motions for us to head to the large hoop-house where a summer garden grows cabbage and cauliflower, kale and early-season snap peas that she gets to harvesting. She plants lettuce and then waters, my camera framing her against the perspiring walls of the hoop house as I move between the pea vines. “You cannot farm like this unless it is bound up as your way of life,” she says, “especially when it’s this small scale and specialized. It requires intimate, continuous involvement in every aspect of farming and sheep rearing for it to make financial and practical sense, which it must, as much as your heart is in it.” Towards these fiscal ends Appletree farm sells a variety of products from sheep’s wool, their meat, and ewes for breeding or as fiber pets. They participate in CSAs with other local farmers to offer greens in early June, then tomatoes (“Which everyone adores!”) and in the fall potatoes, onions, winter squash and some root vegetables. Plenty is left over to feed her family. She is strategizing how to mitigate the intensity of the summer gardening so as ease travel to France for annual visits on the family farm, still run by her brother and parents.
As she continues to weed and water, Stephanie paints a picture of her seemingly idyllic girlhood on a large produce farm which has more recently modernized from industrial to partly organic under strict European regulations. Growing up in the 1970s and 80s she helped harvest produce, riding the tractor alongside her father who has been a farmer all his life. Her family kept Anglo-Arabian horses and as a teenager she rode competitively, something she misses, though she has recently returned to riding simply for the joy of it. She speaks of her father, whom she describes as her hero, as having been an unrelentingly hard worker on farms his entire life.
“I found myself at the edge of a steep cliff where I could die or live, and I chose to live.
This farm... represents the work we started together with Romain and Elari, and now continue with Romain and Peter. This farm is my psychotherapy, it is my healer and each animal and each plant represents a daily healing practice [and] makes my grief bearable…”
The sun begins to show itself and the late morning warms. Stephanie and her family came to Appletree in the shadow of deep grief which can still accompany her as she spends her days moving fences, cleaning sheep stalls, hauling water, collecting eggs, weeding, and minding her family. In the years before settling here, Stephanie and her husband Paul lived on a small homestead near Eugene with Romney sheep and hens while Stephanie worked as an administrator and teacher and cared for their son Romain. Soon their daughter Elari was born and Paul returned to studies to become a veterinarian. Their life was good, and Elari in particular delighted in their sheep and dog, showing an early affinity for animals. Then, in 2010, when Elari was three-years old she was taken from them, killed by a criminally reckless auto driver.
About a year and a half after Elari died they moved from their smaller rural property to a home in town, and then to Appletree farm. “From the place where the accident [that took Elari’s life] happened, I could see my house. I could see the fire in my stove that I had left through window. I could never go back. So we sold it.” Stephanie has shared about this tie between her unfathomable loss and the farm on her website blog: “I found myself at the edge of a steep cliff where I could die or live, and I chose to live. This farm... represents the work we started together with Romain and Elari, and now continue with Romain and Peter. This farm is my psychotherapy, it is my healer and each animal and each plant represents a daily healing practice [and] makes my grief bearable…” I stand with her in the presence of her grief. We talk about my own loss: my husband, Greg, a veteran, died by firearm suicide in 2011 after becoming physically disabled from chronic pain and service related mental health issues including moral injury. “It is so engulfing,” I respond. “Did I invent him? Sometimes it feels like that.” “Sometimes if I am honest when I was in the thick of the loss of her I would think can I just forget that it never happened, “ she says quietly. We both acknowledge how although time passes and life moves forward we live close to the shadows of our losses.
Continued
Appletree Farm: Finding Contentment, Part 3
Appletree Farm: Building a Life of Purpose, Part 1