River Oaks Farm & Studio
Shetland & Bluefaced Leicester Sheep, Fleece and Heritage Crafts
All text and images on these pages are copyright Becky Utecht, Mora, MN USA.
We are Stan & Becky Utecht. We’ve lived in Mora for 30+ years.
We have a small flock of sheep, three hens, two cats and an Australian
shepherd named Ozzie. We live on just under 5 acres, but we have 40
acres of hay and pasture land 14 miles away in Ogilvie, MN.
After years of raising poultry, we got our first two sheep in 2001. Having
never raised a hooved animal before, we had a lot to learn. So we started
out with unregistered stock -- a Shetland ewe (bred) and a
Shetland/Border Leicester cross ewe lamb. We had our first lambing
in April, 2002 -- twin ewe lambs!
The Shetlands have proven to be hardy and prolific despite our inexperience.
We’ve had 70+ lambs born here in our first six years of lambing and haven’t
lost a single one at birth (knocking on wood!). In 2006, we had our first and
only bottle lambs and an assisted birth. Not bad, considering we had several
older ewes lambing who had not been bred for years.
Our sheep are friendly and personable. But we can’t keep them all on our
limited acreage, so some are sold as breeding stock, fiber pets, or used for
meat and hides. We have found that we love the taste of Shetland lamb, especially grilled lamb chops, steaks, and lamb stew.
We may eventually build a new farm on the 40 acres we bought in 2004. That parcel has 15 acres of hayfields and 20+ acres of pasture. We put up a pole shed there in September 2004, but it and our entire hay crop burned on July 15, 2006. The fire started 1/3 of a mile back at the deer stand and with the strong winds that day, it quickly burned the fields and then our two full hayracks and one end of our pole barn. We decided to salvage the pole barn and shorten it up a bit. Thanks to the Minnesota Shetland Sheep Breeders and Shetland breeders from all over, we were given funds to purchase enough hay to feed our flock all winter. What a special group of people Shetland breeders are!
Pole barn after the fire in July 2006 which burned our entire hay crop for the year.
Thank heavens for our fellow Shetland sheep breeders who came through with a fire benefit that raised enough money to buy hay for our flock . What a relief that was!
By late fall that year, we managed to repair the pole shed (shortened it up and replaced all the trusses, etc.).
Now we can use it for storage again.
Here’s a view from the back pasture showing
Stan’s deer stand before it burned in the fire July 2006.
Snowball and Rainstorm,
our first ewes
Our pole barn before the fire, driveway and front hayfield..
