where have all the sheep gone?

 

When I was growing up here in provincial New Zealand, it was all about sheep. There were apparently 60 million sheep and only 3 million of us people…a fact all children seemed to know. You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing sheep on the landscape. Now, apart from the odd lifestyle block with a couple of lambs, the rural scene is almost deserted of sheep. The vista of farmland now is entirely dominated by intensive dairy farming. But I did spot this little woolly scene while travelling recently. A sign of times gone by and I wondered as I took the photo… where did all the sheep, with their economic promises of wool and meat, (and not too forget their insanely cute little lambs) go?