

The farm is owned by Ken,
Kathy and Nathan Soder. We are located in picturesque southcentral Pennsylvania, approximately 20 miles
southwest of State College (home of Penn State). Please take a virtual tour of our farm, and
feel free to contact us with any questions,
requests for purebred
stock, freezer lambs, or just to 'talk Dorset'!
Ken
and Kathy Soder first became interested in raising sheep in 1991 when we
moved 2000 miles west (from Pennsylvania to Montana) for Kathy to pursue
her Master's degree in Animal Science at Montana State University.
With very little previous sheep experience, we suddenly found ourselves in
charge of 500-1000 sheep (depending on season) at the university sheep
farm where we lived (Fort Ellis Experimental Research Station), and Kathy
conducted research with a 500 ewe flock on the university ranch (Red
Bluff) 35 miles away. Let me tell you, there is nothing like
hands-on experience to drill hard lessons into your head. After
finishing her degree, they remained in Montana for two more years, with
Kathy working at the Montana Wool Laboratory and Ken building new houses
in the area. At one point, Ken went on a sheep shearing crew, and
met a lot of great Montana ranchers, saw a lot of territory, and had some
experiences he will never forget. He shears our flock now, as seen in
the picture to the right. Kathy obtained her Wool Classer
certification and also traveled with the shearing crews.
After
working for two years we decided to move back home for Kathy to pursue a
PhD in Animal Science at Penn State. We sure miss Montana and would
love to live there again, but don't regret our decision to move.
Once again we packed everything into the U-Haul and traveled 2000
miles. Kathy has since finished that degree (yes, we are finished
traveling across the country.....at least for awhile), and since 1998 has
been working for
USDA-ARS as a Research Animal Scientist, working with pasture-based dairy
and livestock systems. Ken is very versatile in his
working abilities, and is currently working as a zoning officer for a
local township (with a hankering to become a full-time farmer). A
year after moving back to PA, we purchased a 17 acre farmette with two barns, an OLD
house (that needed lots of work), and an apple
orchard.
One year later (October 1997) we brought home our first sheep, which was
the beginnings of K Bar K Farm. In April 2002 we sold the first farm
and purchased a 96 acre farm (which also needed a TON of work) about 40 miles south of the other farm, and moved the flock. The
motivation for the move was
a combination of a desire to escape development pressure and to obtain more
land to expand our flock.
The
Flock
At
first we had a hard time deciding what breed of sheep to purchase.
We both really liked Targhees after working with them in Montana, but
found several drawbacks to this breed in the Eastern US: 1) they
were difficult to locate, 2) of the Targhees we could find locally, they
just weren't of the same type as the western sheep, 3) we were concerned
about their adaptability to our wetter climate, and 4) with the strong ethnic
market, we needed sheep to lamb all year round, and 5) the wool market was
depressed, and it seemed that a meat breed of sheep that would
lamb out of season was the way
to go. So we started looking for Dorsets, at the time not knowing
anything about show or production Dorsets. We lucked into a lady (on
Sheep-L) in Binghamton, NY who was selling her flock. So we brought
home 14 Dorset ewes- many of which were Beaver Brook farm breeding. Many were
very old style, and three of the younger ewes were out of a prominent show
flock ram with VERY different body type. These foundation ewes have worked well for us, and gave us a
good leg on the beginnings of K Bar K Dorsets. For more information
on our sheep, please see our Flock
page.
The
Farm Help
We
have a variety of working dogs on the farm, including Border Collies to
herd the sheep, and livestock guardian
dogs (Great Pyrenees or Spanish Ranch Mastiff x Polish Tatra). The picture of
the two Border Collies includes a picture of Ned (on the left) who was Ben's
sire (Ben is on the right), and a great herding dog. We brought Ned home with us from
Montana. He was put down in 2000 at the
ripe old age of 15. We still miss him. Ben was put down in Dec. 2010
at the age of 12. Maggie (far right) is our current working girl and Nell,
a fully trained 3-year old Border Collie (not shown) joined our ranks as our newest employee. 

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