Sheepherding is not an easy profession, as any of the sheep farmers in the Wood River Valley will tell you. And they will tell you, at this year’s Trailing of the Sheep festival which is going this week.
The Festival brings history, food, music and sheepdog trials to Ketchum along with the Big Sheep Parade, where more than 1,000 sheep are herded down Main Street.
The Festival began more than 30 years ago when sheep farmers, like Diane Josephy Peavey and her husband John started educating folks about sheep farming, by telling stories about what they did every day.
Those stories and others are gathered in the Ketchum Community Library at the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History. And it was the job of the library’s summer intern, Vance Cunningham, to sift through hours of historical recordings and turn them into the Sheep Stories podcast exploring the culture and history of sheepherding.
Vance, who is a current student at Western Washington University, joined Idaho Matters, along with Diane, who hosted weekly essays about sheep farming on Boise State Public Radio.
