Dawn Newman
Published 5 June 2026
I had no idea about agility… and then I became an accidental farmer
Becoming a sheep farmer definitely wasn’t on my bingo card for 2019, not even when I sent a message to my local city-farm asking if they needed a hand.
I’ve got a customer, marketing and engagement background, so when I noticed that things had gotten quiet at the farm, I got in touch to ask if I could help. I thought maybe I could do some free marketing or fundraising… but I got a message back asking if I’d like to learn how to look after the sheep!
The farm had fallen into difficult times and, as a result, there were no paid staff left to look after the farm and the trustees were struggling to keep up with the demands alone. Only one of them lived close-by and none were time rich – all had jobs that needed them. So, whilst definitely not what I’d had in mind when I first got in touch, I jumped at the chance to find out more.
At the time, I really wasn’t sure that I’d enjoy (or be able to do) ‘outdoor work’. I’ve always been a bit of a ‘pale and interesting’ type. A bookworm who’d rather be in bed than outdoors, but the farm had existed for my whole life and I couldn’t imagine it disappearing. That would be sad.
So.. I learned how to look after sheep. And geese. Then pigs and chickens. Small animals became a part of the mix and soon I was at the farm most days. I fed, watered, mucked out and helped the more experienced farmers to conduct health checks before slowly learning to have a good feel around for myself.
I learned the weird little signs that something isn’t right. Learned how animals communicate, first by breed but then individually. “That sheep always does that” ,“She’s looking at me like she wants something”, “That tail is twitching a bit much for my liking”.
I read books and did courses but I never felt confident calling myself a farmer. I just ‘volunteered on a farm’. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with a farming academic who taught me as we worked with the sheep, both helping me to learn and inviting me to help make learning materials for their students – me holding the camera whilst they demonstrated proper technique for raddling, dagging and checking nutrition.
I learned the most by doing.
If farming has taught me anything it’s that there’s no way to ever really feel like you know what you’re doing. Every single situation is different. There is never a way that your learning will be able to be applied ‘as textbook’ when you’re in real life.
Farmers are magic.
For the first few years of farming, I marvelled at how incredibly easy my more experienced colleagues made everything sound. ‘Just lock the gate when you’re done’ sounds like a simple instruction, until you realise that the padlock is rusted shut and you no longer know the first thing about getting the gate open – let alone how you’re going to get it closed again. ‘The goat just needs milked’ is easy when you know how, but when said goat has mastitis and doesn’t want to be touched… well, good luck with that!
In my ‘real life’, these barriers might have led to me abandoning my project, or handing it over to someone who is more able… but that’s not something that’s available to me with farming. Those sheep need out of that field, so that gate has to be opened. That goat needs to be milked today, or she’ll become unwell.
And so I had to figure things out.
Can I jiggle the lock a certain way? What about giving it a little tap? I’ve seen Ryan move the key around like this. Will it open if I warm it up a bit?
Can I get Jellybean to come to me with a bucket? I shouldn’t let her get the treats because then she’ll make more milk. Maybe if I hold her sides instead of her horns she’ll be calmer? Can I use the other goats to my advantage?
Slowly, my image of myself as a farmer changed. Instead of feeling ‘less than’ for never knowing the answer straight away, I started to recognise that all of the farmers I admired were problem solvers too. Experience is what gives us the tools that we need to adapt our textbook learning to real life problems.
Then, one evening a couple of year ago, I got a phone call. Someone had purposefully knocked one of the farm’s fences down in an act of vandalism and 43 sheep had been chased from their field and down towards the river at the bottom of the bank where the farm is sited.
None of the ‘real’ farmers were close-by and I was the only one who could get to the sheep in an emergency. And this was an emergency. Sheep aren’t very good at survival and, if one fell into the water, it was likely that more would curiously follow.
So, I ran down to the riverside, shouting instructions at my husband and teaching him how to herd sheep as we went. My only mission was to get the sheep back to the farm and lock them up for safety. The problem was that I had no idea how I was going to do it.
I figured it out incrementally.
Find the sheep, Realise the sheep are scared and panic that they’ll run into the river. Go back to the farm and get a feed bucket whilst employing husband as a roadblock. Get back and shake the bucket, realise that the sheep don’t recognise you in the dark, shout ‘sheep sheep sheep’ in your best farmer voice so that they know it’s you and then run up the hill being chased by a flock of horned sheep. Realise your bucket is too low when a sheep jumps at it. Raise the bucket above your head and keep running. Find a field. GET THE GATE OPEN. Try to get the sheep in the field. Remember that sheep have no depth perception and realise they can’t see the open gate. Try to show the sheep where the gate is and spook them. Shake your bucket again and get the sheep in the field. Spot that one’s still outside. Try to catch it for ages before giving in to the idea that you can’t round up one sheep because it’s too scared. Let all of the sheep back out of the field on purpose and worry that this might be a really bad idea. Shake your bucket again and run into the field, sheep following. Get husband to run behind them waving his hands. Get the gate locked. Small celebration dance (Phew!) Check the sheep for signs of shock. Make sure they have food, water and salt lick – electrolytes are especially important when scared and stressed. Ring the police. Ring the others for a debrief.
NOW I feel like a farmer!
When there wasn’t someone around to defer to or ask for advice from, I still managed to save the sheep. I did just as good a job as anyone else might have and I did it without more experienced help, in a stressful and impossible to plan for situation. There is no manual for ‘what to do if someone drives a quad bike into a fence whilst impaired and purposefully tries to murder the sheep’, but there’s also no manual for ‘how to make the padlock work’ or ‘what to do if Jellybean doesn’t want to be milked but is at risk of infection’.
Knowledge is important, but context is king.
As a part time farmer, I’ve learned that the only way through is to communicate (even if it’s with the sheep), try stuff and figure stuff out and remember…. Remember – we can’t leave until it’s fixed.