I'm learning to accept that that means
my house will always be dirty too.
- [Announcer] This is "Relocated,"
where we tour the living situations
of people who choose to live off the beaten path.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Caroline Nelson, I'm a shepherd
and a rancher in Townsend, Montana.
That just means I raise sheep.
Welcome to the sheep pen.
We've got a bunch of girls napping in the shade.
I moved to Townsend about four years ago.
Before I came here, I was a singer-songwriter
and I lived in Philadelphia.
Had gotten pretty burned out from traveling
and the lifestyle, had always dreamed of coming to Montana
and working with animals to be like a cowgirl on a ranch.
So I thought, "Well, I'll just give it a try.
I'll just move just for the summer."
But what ended up happening, of course,
is I just fell in love with my husband
and the life out here, and it was really
the sheep that stole my heart.
I love it here, and I feel like it took me
a long time to find what I really was meant to do.
Of course, it's pretty challenging to start
any kind of farm or ranch business from scratch,
but we started really, really small.
I mean, we started with four sheep.
Just slowly, slowly built it up.
We reused a lot of materials
and pretty much DIYed almost everything.
We had no backup plan, I had no savings.
We started this whole business
on credit cards and prayers, basically.
So you have to be willing to put it
all on the line and hope it works out.
Our house is a pretty standard farmhouse.
We have all the creature comforts.
When I first moved here, I was so concerned
with how our house looked, and I wanted things
to be a certain way, and now I barely look.
I love it.
People do make a lot of assumptions about ranchers.
They also make assumptions about people that raise sheep.
They're kind of made fun of by people that raise cows.
It's almost like raising cattle is the more
macho or bad-ass thing to do and people,
they mock sheep basically, but I have found that
to be so wrong, I love sheep.
I raise Icelandic sheep.
They're a very unique kind of ancient breed of sheep.
They're incredibly smart, they're tough.
They're a little bit smaller
than traditional commercial sheep breeds,
and they just have the most beautiful fleece.
And now we're up to 50 and growing every year.
Sometimes ewes will reject their lambs,
That's what happened to this one.
Her name is Yoko and I raised her from a bottle
which is why she's so friendly
and she's always coming up to me for scratches.
The last couple years, my husband and I have started
a direct-to-consumer pasture-raised beef
and grass-fed lamb business,
and we ship nationwide, and we also do natural ranch goods,
candles, all kinds of just great household essentials.
Everything's super, super natural.
My longterm plan is to really expand
our regenerative grazing operation
to have a couple hundred sheep and rotationally
and intensively graze them, prioritize native grasses
and native forage for the animals and just have
a really healthy mini-ecosystem here on the ranch.
(lamb bleating) Hey guys.
If you'd like to keep up with me and the crazy adventures
of the sheep flock, we're on Instagram
at @bigskycaroline and online at littlecreekmontana.shop.
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