‘Sheep Shangri-La’: Animals sent to graze, find refuge on Newfoundland island

Garrett Barry has the story of a flock of lucky sheep living its best life on a small island in Newfoundland, free to graze in the open air.

By the time Keith Morry and his herding crew arrive in boat on Ship Island, many of the island’s flock are already in motion.

Decades of repetition appears to have set in for the group. Morry gets the sense that by now, the sheep and lambs know the drill: It’s time to gather for another trip across the bay.

“The sheep that come here year after year, and some are leaders, and they know the routine,” Morry said.

“Sometimes… as soon as they see us coming up over the bank, especially in the fall of the year, the animals come running to the chute because they know it’s time to go home.”

The flock from Morry’s Heritage Farm spend their summers living freely, grazing on a pair of islands off Newfoundland’s southern shore.

The animals are shipped in a small fishing boat into the bay in June, usually, and hauled back in October to spend their winters on the mainland.

It’s sheep Shangri-La, Morry jokes. On Sunday, Morry and a few other farmers made their monthly trips to Ship Island and Isle aux Bois to check on the flock and move any sick animals back home for further care.

It’s a co-operative of sorts: Morry shares the island with a handful of other farmers every year where they share the benefit of the free grazing and the labour of upkeep.

On Sunday, that meant a quick rebuild of the island’s sheep pen — the only sign of human intervention on the island — before the herding of the animals.

“For our family, it started back in the 50s,” Morry recalls. “My father used to start bringing them out here with some of the locals from the communities back then.”

Then, it was to avoid roaming dogs. Now, Morry said, it’s because of the coyotes.

“They’re getting bolder all the time, they’re out in the middle of the day,” he said. “For us, this is a godsend, having this safe haven, a place to put them all summer.”

Sunday’s check-in was mostly good news. Only one sheep showed signs of a worm parasite that needed quarantine and intervention.

But three more made the trip back across the bay: A mother and two newborn lambs, umbilical cords still attached, that were likely only days old. It wouldn’t take much for those lambs to get separated and left behind on an island without some human oversight.

“It’s pretty cool to see that she had a set of twin lambs, healthy twin lambs out here… with no human intervention at all,” said Matt Murray, Keith’s nephew. “You know it’s probably a much healthier environment than being in a barn somewhere.”

Matt, along with Keith’s son Liam, are part of the next generation of farmers that will inherit this tradition.

Liam says he’s been out taking part in the herding of the flock for years.

“It was just the way of life, you know? [Being] committed to take this over is how it’s always been,” he said. “It’s in my blood.”

The job is getting lonelier, though. Liam acknowledged that fewer and fewer of his peers are interested in farming.

“When I was a little boy, you know, we’d always get 20, 25 people come out with us to help us out. And now it’s just — we’re lucky to get just enough to scrape by.”

The methods have changed over time. Before the pen and fencing and chute were put in, farmers used to have to corral each sheep individually, with rope, to coax them into a boat and head across the bay.

It was a labour-intensive process, Keith Morry recalls, taking 20 people or so a full day to do. The biggest challenge now is finding a crew to help herd.

“I’ve been coming out to this island for about 50 years now,” he said. “So, there’s not much of this island that I have not walked over at one point or another.”

It was hard for Keith not to feel a little solemn on Sunday.

In May, his close friend and long-time colleague in the sheep herd Steve Coady died at 86.

“He was the skipper of the boat, and he kind of ran the show,” he said. “We kind of miss him this time around.”

The monthly check ups are relatively easy, when compared to long process of transporting sheep across the bay in a fishing boat.

They’ll move, probably, 14 or 15 at a time when the farmers return to bring everyone home in October. That’s at least ten trips — maybe more.

Farmers here believe it’s worth it. Not only will the sheep eat for free, but it will let the farmers back home find another use for their fields during the summer months.

“Most of us, we’re small acreages. We’re operating off 10, 20, 30 acres each,” Matt Morry said. “That allows us to grow our forage homes, that would be our hay crop…so we get the dual use of our grounds.”

The salty, windy weather off of Newfoudland’s southern shore is a help too: Keith Morry said it gives the lambs he produces a very distinctive flavour when the animals wind up on a plate.

His customers love it. But it is hard work.

“We gotta try to do more with less all the time,” Keith said. “But our heart’s still in it. We all still, very much, will keep up this tradition for as long as we possibly can.”