Sylvia's Farm (23 page)

Each incident didn't manage to alter the feeling that had pervaded the day from its onset. The day began accompanied by the feeling that life was possible and even, on some level, quite manageable. In between all of the bottling of lambs, feeding out hay, caring for the chickens, geese, and the elderly lady who lives with me, I worked as intensely as I could on putting the house in order so I could live in it more easily. Food has been a distinct problem. I've not had time to cook very much, and while my guest eats some very nice little dishes, I don't. After realizing that I've been eating while walking, standing, and even while climbing the stairs it became apparent I had to cook. And so I managed to make a loaf of bread, a sweet ricotta tart, a spinach pie, and minestrone soup. In between. In between. In between. And it was while in between I heard the old familiar
sound of water running. Inappropriately. A pipe had burst on the third floor. And was flooding the apartment next door. With hot water. The tenant's bathroom ceiling had collapsed. I ran over there. Turned off the water. Mopped up the mess. They were not home. And the day didn't get any better.

O
NE OF
the yearling lambs, Scout Miller, freshened yesterday. She presented in front of me. I touched the little hooves that had begun to show, making room for a nose and then head. She resented the intrusion. Got up. Walked away. And promptly dropped the lamb. While walking. She seemed shocked. Looked behind her and saw the little bundle. It seemed absolutely bewildered.

I cleaned the mouth of the tiny ewe lamb. She couldn't have weighed two pounds. Only one more lambing pen was ready for occupancy. I put the new mother and her baby in its safe warmth. She licked her baby clean. I decided to leave her alone for a few minutes to bond with her baby and started up the ladder to the house. Suddenly the person building still another lambing jug for the barn called me back. She'd dropped another. The second lamb was even smaller than the first. Pure white. The length of my hand. I helped dry them off and left. Every couple of hours I went back to check on them. I tube-fed each one with a mixture of egg, corn syrup, cod liver oil, and lamb milk replacer, just in case they hadn't enough colostrum, and took their temperatures each time I went to the barn. They were always close enough to a normal temperature to make me begin to feel secure. Those two were lambs to keep. Twin girls out of a twelve-month-old ewe, a lamb herself.

I have a baby monitor in the barn. There is a receiver in the kitchen as well as upstairs. It saves lives. I can rush to the barn whenever I hear the sound of trouble. The two little ewe lambs were noisy, excited, and active.

Six more lambs were born throughout the afternoon and evening. A little ram was born to a most attentive mother. His legs were long and rangy. His voice was nothing short of a bellow as he followed close by his mother's side. She rarely took a step away from him. I saw him nurse and was satisfied with his appearance, even though he looked a bit on the skinny side.

The morning was greeted with a sense of excitement. I rushed to the barn earlier than usual and dashed through a new gate to the lambing pens. The tiniest ewe lamb was running around the jug. The larger was squashed to death between her dam and the wall. In the next pen was the day-old ram, limp but still moving his head. His mother hovered over him. I picked him up, tucked him inside my coveralls, and climbed back up the ladder. I have a fine book on lambing procedures that I got in England one summer. It describes how to discern between hypothermia in lambs due to cold or starvation. Starvation was apparent. Either his mother didn't have her milk come in or he couldn't suck.

I have given intraperitoneal injections of glucose to starving lambs before with only a fifty percent survival rate. One beautiful little lamb called Little Horse, because of her size, lived for six months only to be hit by a car while crossing the road to look for me at the mailbox. The others who didn't make it died after a couple of days. I boiled my needles. Then I mixed a syringe half full with glucose and topped it off with the boiled water to correct the temperature. There is nothing worse for me than giving an injection directly into a lamb's belly. I did it anyway. My syringe was too small to do it all in one or two doses and so I gave him three. Wrapped him in towels with warm bottles next to him, put him in a basket next to the wood stove, and went back down to the barn.

I am introducing the bottle lambs that have lived in a pen in the house back into the barn. The oldest and biggest was practically walking and talking. His leaps in the air after having his bottles were
wondrous to behold. He, of all of the lambs, was ready for the move. The first day or two was an adventure. I took him to the walkthrough gate over and over again to teach him how to go from the barn proper into the aisle where the lambs join together on the lamb bar and eat grain and second-cutting hay. He needed to be shown a few times before he could find the place on his own.

I checked the remaining of Scout Miller's twins. She is a quarter Finn-Landrace but looks like a classic little Finn. Talks like one, too. Aggressive, bright, alert, and less than two pounds. She was warm and toasty in the jug with her dam. Her fleece had dried out and emerged both thick and curly. A classic Finn although her sire is a pure Dorset (well, a Dorset with a sixteenth Cheviot in him). Thank goodness she was safe. And then I saw him. Red ribbon around his neck. Right next to the gate that I had taught him to walk through. Dead. He had been squashed to death by some grown sheep. The temperature in the barn dropped twenty degrees, in minutes. In an hour I started putting sweaters back on. I went back to the house, started the fires, tube-fed the weak lamb. He took two ounces on his own and let himself be tucked back in his basket. The temperature continued to drop. Evening approached. It was time to go to the barn again. Everyone had been fed. All chores were done. But I like to go down twice again during the night. I went from the warm kitchen into the unheated living room to get my coveralls. And became, suddenly, chilled to the marrow of my bones. I couldn't go out again that night. Sometimes the heart can handle only so much. And then it becomes just too cold.

Scout Miller's lamb is enchanting. This morning I heard her voice, a valiant little tin horn sound, absolutely frantic. Somehow she had slipped between the cracks of the lambing jugs and was separated from her mother by two-inch-thick boards. She was desperately trying to get to her dam. I ran over to the jug. Before I got to her she had squeezed her head and front legs into the gap I use to climb over the walls and was
scrambling to get her back legs back in. I let her try it on her own. She made it. Finns are very intelligent. I was so proud of her, and so pleased with Scout. I handle the ewe lamb as often as I can. Her tummy is always full. Her little Finn tail is always wagging. And she has presence, as rare a quality in a sheep as it is in a person. I've penned a ewe who hates her lamb in my new stanchions. Her baby ram is absolutely beautiful. He has a curly fleece as well, and one droopy ear. And a mother who hates him. After a week in the stanchion she still doesn't want him to nurse. I release her from time to time to see if she will appreciate him better when her head is not locked. But she still tries to destroy him when he comes near her. So back into the stanchion she goes. The stanchion walls are now lined in tarpaper to keep the lamb and his mom that much more comfortable. One of my favorite ewes, Jenny, has just given birth to a fine set of lambs, twin ewes. I had sold Jenny to a friend who was buying breeding stock a couple of years ago. When he decided sheep were too demanding, he gave her back to me as a gift. Each year she has an adorable set of twin ewe lambs. They, too, are Finn crosses. Jenny is half Finn. Their dad is a pure Dorset. They are bright little things, far more alert and personable than other lambs only two or three days old. They always draw my eye. I decided they too should move into the stanchion with their mom. Jenny doesn't need to be penned, but it seemed as if the added protection would be appreciated. They aren't running off their weight and have become round, soft, and full. I always pick them up when I pass through the stanchions, hold them close to my face so they will know me. They too shall stay with me forever.

It is not possible to separate these moments, one from another, into light and dark. It is not possible even to separate these moments into good or bad. Sometimes it isn't even possible to stand living them.

I
N HONOR
of an effort to make a daily improvement in the barn, I reinstalled one of the original windows near the sheep stanchions this afternoon. It doesn't fit exactly but shall soon. Doing so cast a fine amount of light into the pen where the stanchions are. In the pen are Jenny and the twins; a first-time lamber who was a gift to me with her little ram, the one she loves to hate; and another first-time lamber that I had assisted in giving birth a couple of weeks ago. I had heard her crying over the baby monitor, went down, and saw an incorrect presentation. Head, no feet. I promptly penned her in one of the new jugs, pulled the lamb, and put it next to her. He was alive, microscopically small, couldn't stand. I didn't fight to save him. If he were tough enough to make it, then it would be remarkable. If not, he'd not be worth fighting for. This was the first time I'd made such a decision. But the ewe was only a year old. It was her first baby, she'll have many more, and I'd had enough of bottle lambs to last me the season. I found him dead in the morning. She had a nice udder, so I decided to stanchion her and try to graft a lamb or two onto her. It made her, however, absolutely frantic, and I chose not to force a lamb on her on the off chance that she'd supplement one of the three lambs remaining there. She didn't.

I was working in the aisle, pleased with the new window, when I heard a different kind of conversation among the ewes in the pen than I was accustomed to hearing. The new window with its nine lights brightened the area in a joyful kind of way. And there was the
ewe lamb, the one who had lost her baby, cleaning a large sturdy ram lamb. His skin was wet and shiny with the bright yellow gleam that covers lambs that have been born under stress. I took the twins and lamb who was now in occupancy in the lambing jug back to the stanchion pen and brought the sturdy little guy who had just been born back to the jug where his mother gave birth two weeks ago to his brother. I then opened the stanchion pen gate. She leaped out, made a beeline to the jug where she had spent so difficult a day two weeks go, climbed in, and settled down with the little new ram. Oh, how pleased she is. This is the second time in eleven years that I've had a ewe freshen twice in two weeks. A hormonal accident.

There is a lamb about which I'd love to write a story one day. She is the tiniest lamb who ever survived here. Her mother is, herself, a lamb. The fifth of the lambing pens is only partially built. There is a light hanging above it, as well as the baby monitor. Her dam climbed into the partially built pen and proceeded to freshen, cleaned her lamb all by herself, and began to nurse that tiny, tiny little thing. Perfectly.

I came down from the house after hearing her arrival into the world. I picked her up. She was so light in my hand that she felt like a puff of cotton candy. Over the past couple of days I've been picking her up often. Every time I pass her. Sometimes I am just looking for an excuse to hold her. She is a wonder. This afternoon I let her dam outside for water. The lamb looked everywhere for her, to no avail. Then, suddenly sighting me, she ran up and stood still, only after positioning herself firmly on my boot. But I had to do my chores. I picked her up once more and put her down in a safe place. Not safe enough for her. Soon I noticed a pair of dark eyes staring at me. She had climbed into a small compartment in a grain feeder and was watching my every movement. She neither moved nor took her eyes off of me until I let her mother back inside. This little one has a mind, I kept thinking. And she shall stay here forever.

This is the story of how Rose Red Abernathy saved her mother's life. I was determined to start culling sheep this year for the first time. There are some ewes that just aren't doing well and some rams left over from last year. The latter would have to go, of course. And while the ewes lack of performance was a certainty, I've always offered my sheep a second chance. This year's incredibly high hay prices were an added incentive. My decisions about choosing which lambs I keep and how I manage this farm are often emotional ones. I try to choose lambs based on how I think they will perform, but sometimes a lamb will stay because she is the smartest or has a personality or curls up in my lap. As did one today.

I couldn't resist Snow White and Rose Red, the Abernathy sisters. They were both a practical and an emotional choice. Their dam is one of my oldest sheep and gave me a regular set of twins each year for the past eight. But this year and last she was unable to nurse her lambs. I decided she should go. Snow White and Rose Red have spent a couple of weeks in the house after their adventure of having been rescued from a snowbank, buried moments after their birth, but when the time came, they adjusted nicely to the lamb bar in the barn. They accost the milk with vigor and enthusiasm that are unsurpassed by any of their cousins or half brothers and sisters.

The other day, I filled the milk pail and went about my chores. It is always clear when the bottle lambs have finished. They tend to lie down in a heap on a pile of straw and take a nap. I heard a familiar voice. And there, in front of one of the piles, looking up was Rose Red Abernathy. I sat down on the floor. Rose Red climbed into my lap and put her head against me. She snuggled into my arms. Her mother Amanda had thrown a very wise little lamb. Amanda shall stay.

Giuseppe Nunzio Patrick MacGuire has spent the coldest part of the winter living in the lambing room, quite alone. The original plan
was to repair one of the stalls in the carriage house, but that has yet to happen. He sometimes has been known to chase the sheep out of his paddock. And lambs have made him nervous. It has been a major undertaking to keep them from running into the lambing room when I go in to water and feed him. Gradually I realized I wasn't talking to him very often. Rarely did I put my arms around his neck. He had become an afterthought. Oh, have I watered Nunzio? And so I decided to take a chance and bring him into the aisle of the barn.