Snapshot Farms—an apt name for the picture-perfect farm I visit on a bitterly cold February day. The brightly colored out-buildings, from Premium Portable Buildings, are neat as a pin. The fences are all in tip-top shape, dividing the fifteen or so fenced acres into four very large and two smaller pastures. I don’t see any of the junk piles or old machinery that one often finds on farms. And it has just snowed, so everything is sparkly white. That’s not how it began according to farmer Jason Mandich who bought this place seventeen years ago. It was a dump, he says, a REAL fixer upper. But it was close to family and work and allowed him to have all the animals that he couldn’t have in town. So, he bought it and got started.
This isn’t a specialty crop farm with fields or large gardens for growing produce. And that’s a little bit unusual. This is a farm with a mix of animals, some pets, some for food, and some for breeding. The unobtrusive fencing runs all the way to the highway to the north and backs up on the remainder of the eighty acres full of red pine to the south. The dogs run free and on nice summer days, the Olde English Babydoll Southdown Sheep and the miniature donkeys graze in the front yard. The donkeys are pets really. I asked, “why donkeys?” It turns out that, in the beginning, there was a large, fenced area full of brush and four-foot-high grass that Jason wanted to clear. A friend brought her goat and miniature donkeys, and they made such quick work of it that Jason decided to try out donkeys.
Miniature donkeys eat just hay and grass. But, turned loose to clear brush in an area, they eat shrubs and can even devour a four-inch diameter tree trunk. Domestic donkeys interact well with other livestock and form close attachments with their owners and their companions. The Olde English Baby Doll Southdown Sheep started out as pets, too. I have to say they are cute. Jason has ten, including a ram, and four of the ewes will be lambing this April. He plans to buy a few more and raise some for meat.
The Southdown breed originated in the South Down hills of Sussex County, England. They are hardy animals, well suited to winter. The Babydolls are the original miniature sheep variety, distinct from the modern Southdown which was bred for larger meat cuts to please consumers. Their wool is in the cashmere class, loved by hand spinners, and valued for its ability to blend with other fibers. Jason’s sheep are shorn every spring. In some areas of the world, Babydolls are valued as organic weeders, used in wine vineyards and fruit and berry orchards. They graze the weeds and don’t harm the fruits at all.
Karen is a ten-month-old exceptionally large white Maremma sheep dog. Her job this summer will be to keep predators away from the fowl. She has a companion arriving soon, a younger puppy. Two other dogs help to keep the place safe and secure. Right now, the fowl consist of laying hens and several geese. But in the summer, Jason raises meat birds, about eight hundred of them, in three batches. They spend their first three to four weeks inside and then graduate to the six large chicken tractors that move all over the property. Jason moves them twice a day to ensure fresh grass and bugs. Their regular feed comes from Floodwood Farm & Feed, a local supplier that I’ve profiled in a previous column.
The first batch will arrive at the end of April. Each batch takes eight weeks to finish and then is processed at Lake Haven Meats in Sturgeon Lake, a USDA processor. Jason sells to family and friends and last year to AEOA for Bill’s House and local food shelves. This coming year, he’ll be selling to Mesabi East Schools as part of the Farm to School program there. Jason has a day job, as most farmers do. And it takes all his vacation days to tend to the meat birds, he says. But, from the time he was very young, he wanted to be a farmer. And now he is.
We walk out past the chickens and donkeys and sheep to the two heifers who eagerly await the treats Jason brings. Jason plans to have them bred later this year and will have calves next summer. He plans to raise the male calves for meat. All the animals here are pastured, meaning that they graze, in rotation. The donkeys and the heifers graze one pasture, then move on to a second and the sheep finish grazing the first, followed by the chickens. So, each pasture is grazed in succession, then allowed to rest, and the cycle begins again.
Jason doesn’t grow his own hay, and, as most readers know, finding hay last year was a challenge. But there’s enough here for the winter and, with all this snow, spring might just sprout some nice green grazing material. There’s no shortage of land here, with the wooded sixty-five acres outside the fenced area. It used to be a tree farm, at least there were tree farm signs in the crumbling buildings when Jason bought the place. But for now, Snapshot Farms is just the right size for a guy who always wanted to be a farmer.