Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Shepherd

Shepherding. Often referred to as America's worst job, or the job nobody wants. Several articles online report it as a miserable life. Having to endure long harsh winters on wind blown prairies in complete isolation. Living in make shift trailers with no heat,  running water, and leaking roofs all for a measly $600 to $900 a month working 12 to 16 hours a day. Now that may be true in other parts of the country, or maybe its just another false media portrayal , but whatever the case I stumbled upon a happy herder.
  

 Meet Sebastian, and his sidekick Rambo. If your a long time reader you've met him before. Sebastian has been a sheepherder for 9 years. Now I don't know all the details, but id say hes living the good life. In the summer months he spends his days roaming the cool forests with his flock of 1500 sheep, and in the winter spends them his meandering the alfalfa fields in the desert. 

Rambo does most the work running from side to side making sure there aren't any strays. As far as I could understand due to the language barrier Sebastian's staff is used to grab the sheep's leg in case they need to be administered any injection.

For his time he is compensated 700 a month. Provided with water, propane, living quarters, and I am pretty sure he said all the sheep he could eat. Seems to me to be a fair deal hes probably saving more a month then the average American. Here's a few more pics



Flock of 1500 as far as the eye can see.
Guardians of the flock you approach the sheep anytime day or not and you will be confronted by theses two 
His home. Not quite the ritz  carlton, but is a great solution to live a debt free lifestyle. Maybe Sebastian can go help solve our current set of problems in D.C. 

Anyhow, Still dwelling up on the Mogollon rim temps are going into the the 20's tonight, then will be warming back up for another week, or two. Almost time for my winter descent down the mountain. Dont want this to happen again! Thanks for visiting. Good Day!

3 comments:

  1. One year when coming down from Big Lake and the construction was still going on we had been stopped for a long time. But to the left of the road was a huge herd of sheep and the dog was rounding them up. What a site that was. At least it kept us amused through the long wait.
    Heard it was almost freezing last night.
    Maybe we will see each other over the winter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The sheep dogs are pretty clever. Its been close to freezing a couple of nights now almost time to drop a few thousand feet.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Reminds me of a profile I read about a gold panner he said he averaged about $5 an hour just straight panning for gold in the same stream every day and they asked him why he didn't upgrade his equipment to make more money and his response was that he didn't use all the money he made as it was and he didn't want to ruin his perfect job by having a generator and pump making noise and problems for him. He lived in a small cabin and had a couple fishing lines on the go while he was working and he worked for as long or as short as he felt like it.

    ReplyDelete