Ravensbluff Farm
Roger Brunt
NOWA
  Indiana Jones is alive and well and living in the hills high above Weston Lake. It’s a good place for him. Although Indiana is halter-broke, and can be docile when caught and tethered, on the day I visited Bill and Donna Vanderwekken’s Ravensbluff Farm, it took Bill’s best efforts to get Indiana even to poke his nose into a bucket of grain.
  Bill and Donna don’t mind that Indiana Jones is as wild and rugged as the country he lives in. "He is not a pet." Bill says. "He is a working animal, here to guard our sheep." As a trained veterinarian, who practiced in Ontario and New Zealand, as well as on Salt Spring Island for eight years, Bill has a keen appreciation of an animal’s worth, and any animal that can earn its keep on a farm is a plus in Bill’s estimation.
  Bill and Donna decided they needed an animal to guard their sheep after a dog killed eight of their flock at their last farm, located off Mansell Road, just north of Ganges. They knew they wanted a llama, which have been used for centuries as livestock guardians. "We settled on Indiana Jones partly because he was so handy," Bill continues. "He was already living just down the hill at the end of Bullman Road (near where their new farm is located) and his owner was willing to part with him."
  Whether through good luck or good management, Indiana has done a fine job on the farm so far. Since he took over as protector of the flock, not a single lamb or ewe has been lost to dogs.
  And that’s important. Ravensbluff Farm is a working farm. The 25-or-so lambs that are born each spring are sold for meat when they reach 100 pounds--50 to 60 pounds dressed weight. The wool from the ewes is important too. Donna is one of Salt Spring’s best-known spinners and weavers. She has a degree in Home Economics from Guelph University with a major in textiles, and the finely crafted fabrics that roll off her loom are as varied as they are beautiful. She showed me a silk blouse she had woven as part of daughter Lynn’s wedding ensemble, and several silk scarves that were so finely crafted they looked as if they had come out of Europe’s top weaving mills. Donna also modeled a long coat she had made from a fabric woven from the wool of llama, alpaca, sheep, Angora goat, and even dog. Into this soft and flowing garment she had woven multiple strips of fur and leather to create an eye-catching design. Beautiful jackets, sweaters, blouses, scarves, wool blankets, rugs, skeins of dyed yarn, and sacks of wool in every stage of finishing fill Donna’s studio. That’s partly why Bill and Donna feel so good knowing their flock of sheep, which produce the wool, is protected as well as possible. I say ‘as well as possible’ because the thin cry of an eagle echoed off the rocky bluffs as we toured the farm. "He’s keeping an eye on your lambs," I chided Bill, and he gave me a look that let me know he agreed. Even under the watchful eyes of Bill and Donna and Indiana Jones, no flock of sheep can be protected from every eventuality.
  Although a llama was Bill and Donna’s first choice for a guard animal, it’s true that another logical choice would have been a dog, especially those that have been especially bred to guard livestock, the Komondors, Shar Planinetzs, Maremmas and Anatolian Shepherds. "We haven’t had too much luck with dogs," Bill told me. "We had a wonderful border collie at our Mansell Road farm, but he started going after the chickens and sheep, so we had to give him away. The dog we had before that we had to give to my brother when we left for New Zealand to work for three years. It was either that or ship him off to Britain where he would have had to spend nine months in quarantine. That didn’t seem like much of an option for him, and we knew that he would be happy on my brother’s farm." Still, it hurt to give their dog, Caesar, away. A Scottish collie, he was one of 11 pups Bill delivered by Cesarean section from the dying mother collie.
  After their return from New Zealand to Ontario, Bill and Donna, and one-year-old daughter Lynn moved to Salt Spring, where Bill carried on his veterinary work, and Donna continued to develop her interest in spinning, weaving and the creation of fine fabrics. Then Bill became seriously ill and everything changed. "It didn’t seem like it at the time," he told me, "but in some ways it was the best thing that could have happened. With my veterinary practice, we had to live close to Ganges, because I was always back and forth to town. Once I was no longer able to practice, it allowed us to look for a piece of land farther out from town. We looked at acreages all over the Island, but when we saw this property, we both knew at once this is where we wanted to live."
  Developing the wild and rugged property on the rocky slopes high above Weston Lake seems like a project that would have overwhelmed many ordinary couples, much less one with a family member seriously ill. But Bill and Donna agree that the last 10 years spent creating Ravensbluff Farm have been the best therapy Bill could have had. Bill bought an excavator and carved out a road and, on the days he was well enough to work, began construction.
"First I built the barn, as we needed a place for the animals and their feed," Bill said. "Then I built the house—all of it—the framing, the plumbing and wiring and roofing, the insulating and the drywall. The family, of course, helped too, but it was Bill who undertook the bulk of the work."
As so often happens when a new venture is begun, unforeseen opportunities present themselves. When Bill and Donna began creating Ravensbluff Farm, Viticulture (the growing of grapes) was not yet an option on Salt Spring in any commercial sense. Now, with vineyards and wineries seemingly springing up all over the Island, Bill, with his excavator, has terraced a steep south-facing slope and put in more than 300 grape vines, mainly the Pinot Noir and St. Laurent varieties.
  As we complete our tour of the farm and vineyard, Bill says, "My illness may have been a blessing in disguise. Certainly it has presented challenges that I never dreamed I could overcome before I became ill. And the creation of this farm has been, in away, a miracle, that has given us all a great deal of satisfaction."
  Indian Jones can attest to that miracle as he stands like some royal prince on a rocky outcrop overlooking Weston Lake, as if he is lord of all he surveys. Where, 10 years ago, there were only rock bluffs and second-growth forest of arbutus and Douglas fir on these slopes, now there exists a thriving farm with a comfortable home that has provided a special kind of nurturing for Bill, and Donna, and their three children Lynn, Penny, and Eric.
"It has been a rough road, all right," Bill says as he surveys their livestock, land and buildings. "But we wouldn’t have missed it for anything!"