In Person: At Home with Goats
Sara-Malka Laderman, as told to C.B. Gavant
“Would you like to live on a farm?”
If you’d asked me that 20 years ago, I would have said, “Are you crazy? Who wants to live on a farm? It’s so smelly!” But I did want to teach Torah and grow organic vegetables, so when my husband and I found a beautiful farm near the Baltimore frum community, I knew it was home.
Monday, December 22, 2014

At first, we had no animals. One day, however, my husband realized how tall the grass had grown and thought to himself,
I’m not mowing this! He took us all to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, not far from our farm — and we drove back on I-70 watching other drivers twisting their heads almost backward to stare at the sheep in our backseat. Our four-year-old Ephraim named the sheepHarSinai, because it was almost Shavuos. He called it Heh (short forHarSinai). Ephraim pointed out that sheep are better than metal lawn mowers, because sheep can mow the lawn on Shabbos! Ephraim and Heh became fast friends. He named our next sheep “Bet” (for Brachah). Ephraim would take naps against Bet’s fluffy woolly body while she slowly chewed her cud. Bet wouldn’t move until Ephraim woke up.
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