Living Fences

I’m Erika, a 24-year-old gal from Edmonton, Alberta.

For the first eighteen years of my life, I was a city kid through-and-through. My family of four consisted of my parents, me, and my twin brother. We were raised in a cute little pale yellow “heritage home” in an old part of the city by the River Valley. We had a family dog named Teddy, a grumpy little Wheaten Terrier, who was the only animal I had access to (besides attempting the whole fish tank thing that didn’t ever end well) up until I left for college.

My main hobby growing up all throughout school was nature art and illustration. It was my way of coping with an otherwise uninspiring life– it got me through the tough high school years and acted as a vision board for my dreams of what I wanted my life to look like. After I went to college, I saw my visions of living amongst animals and off the land become reality and took a step back from art to enjoy living in the real world for once… and I haven’t looked back since.

It all started when I found myself accepted into Lakeland College in Vermilion, Alberta, in 2017. I was in the Animal Science Technology program with the vast majority of
classmates coming from family farms and farming backgrounds. As you could expect, I struggled a lot at first.

What the hell is this language that they all knew fluently already?? What is “silage” and who is a “heifer” if not just a cow?

With the help of some most wonderful professors and classmates, I made it through. I chose to take the sheep stream, as it felt much more beginner friendly and hands-on than any of the cattle streams offered. I learned so much
from working with the sheep in my second year at the college and was able to secure my first job on a purebred sheep operation in Langley, BC that following summer after graduation in 2019.

I’ve worked and learned on many various farming operations since then, mostly involving sheep, and have found my exact perfect niche; shepherding. I shepherded for the first time in the summer of 2021 out by Drayton Valley, Alberta on the logging cutblocks. We target-grazed grass and other vegetation with a ~1500 head flock of sheep on previously tree-planted cutblocks to keep competition for the baby trees down so that they could survive their delicate years. That job taught me so much and introduced me to real stock dogs and
stock dog training. It was a whole new way of living that I never even dreamed of experiencing and I still can’t describe the power I felt when I sent a well-trained dog out to go collect sheep for me for the first time. I’ll write about her more later.

I went shepherding again last summer and bought a bunch more dogs, and thus the idea for Living Fences was born. I hope that I can use this blog to share my adventures, my dogs, and my art with anyone who may be interested. If you’ve gotten this far, thank you so much.