San Juan Islands Adventure

Every Spring for the past three years, our ward has journeyed to Shaw Island in the San Juans to work with the Benedictine Nuns at Our Lady of the Rock Monastery. The seven Mothers run a 300 acre farm with sheep, llamas, alpacas, cattle, pigs, and chickens. They grow food, flowers and herbs, and sell the products of the animals to support themselves.

Friday afternoon we set out with the Wise family for Orcas Island so we wouldn't have to leave Bainbridge on the 5:20 AM ferry Saturday morning. We drove up to Anacortes and took the ferry to Orcas. It was nice to get up there in the evening and still have time to play games and visit.

Saturday morning we caught the ferry from Oracs to Shaw, meeting up with the rest of our group.

It was a perfect day for working on the farm; it definitely felt like Spring was finally here. Jillian, Ben and I were assigned to work in the herb garden with Mother Felicitas.

Brad and Jimmy Wise repaired windows in the barn. Nathan and his friend Casey stacked firewood. Other groups started bonfires, repaired the compost shed, drove the tractor, cut up firewood, cleared brush, and worked on other odd jobs that needed to be done.

After our work was done, we watched the sheep being sheared. I'd never seen it done before and was amazed at how by holding the ewe a certain way, she is unable to move and submits patiently to being shaved.

Mother Hildegard is in charge of the sheep and she names every one. Brad enjoyed talking with her about taking care of them.

Ben and Jillian loved the lambs. There were so many! The trick to getting the ewes to the sheering area was to lead their lambs into the holding pen. The ewes would follow their lambs and then didn't put up a fuss.

We cooked lunch in dutch ovens and enjoyed a feast after our hard labor.

Then we caught the 2:20 ferry from Shaw back to Anacortes, drove to Edmonds, ferried to Kingston and were home by 7:00.
Except I left my key for our dog-sitters and accidently locked us out! Fortunately Nate sleeps with his window open a crack and was able to climb up on the roof and pry his window open.