What to call it: Mud Engineering, Makin' Meanders, Prairie Island Rutting Season?  Since I am no longer professionally restricted to verbiage appropriate for impressionable ears, I shall label it as I feel it, in my anxious mind and aching shoulders, back, & legs: F'ing hard work! Slogging through it, shoveling it, spreading straw to thwart it . . . my days revolve around run-off and mud management. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Winter 2018 has delivered, and I'm grateful for that. Nevertheless, mud and healthy newborns are incompatible, and, for now, mud holds the trump card. (That phrase has new meaning for me in light of the political chaos of this week. Perhaps I should capitalize it, but . . . never mind. The news from DC feels too remote, too out of control, too potentially disastrous to focus upon.) My muddy mundane reality has predictable consequences and is all I can handle for now. Among its possibilities: 1) Scours. We feel lucky to have had only one case to date, a week-old lamb that we popped into an isolated stall--along with her mum and twin sibling--and dosed with electrolytes and antibiotics. She is now back to full bounce; 2) Sore mouth - a pox virus that produces painful blisters on lips, gums, nostrils that can be transferred to the mum's udder, causing her to refuse to let lambs nurse and often precipitating mastitis. Several lambs, mostly triplets, have it. I'm catching lambs, treating their blisters, and checking ewes for asymmetrical udders and signs of soreness, particularly among those triplet mums that are receiving oats and free-choice, high-protein hay to encourage ample milk production.

​That brings me to our unprecedented statistic. 20% of our Prairie Island ewes are now raising three lambs. Needless to say, Jim and I are maintaining keen vigilance and treating potential lamb/ewe/calf/cow problems without delay, Before, after, and in between, I am focused on mud, refreshing my carefully engineered run-off channels every morning, and tending to new ruts each time I drive crosswise over my drain channels with deliveries of hay and straw to ewes and lambs eager for feed and dry bedding.     

Enchiladas and onion panade are on the menu for tonight; such fancy food for us. The panade recipe sounded totally seductive in the magazine, and we are primed to appreciate any sort of food. The day was productive--a triumph: the night drop pen is cleaned and re-bedded, to the delight of the remaining unlambed ewes, who appreciate a clean bed as much as we appreciate a shower and clean sheets; a difficult birth scene was resolved with a live, if too big, lamb, and first-time mama is as proud of her moose as if she'd done it unassisted; cows are home where we can keep an eye on them, including the one that calved ahead of our agenda; another mixing pen of ewes and their lambs have been moved to the old barn and lower corral, and their pen is cleaned, re-bedded, and now occupied by different ewes with younger lambs; tomato seeds and pepper seeds are planted in little peat pots and occupying the sun room space recently reserved for the Christmas tree. (We transferred the lights to an easel because we're not yet ready to say "goodbye" to Christmas lights.) And oh by the way, Western Art Week happens in Great Falls next week. This painting of mine, intended for the MT Watercolor Society display at Expo Park, is a scene from the Ovando country--country that I love despite the fact that it is painfully snowy every winter.

​If I twist the words Julie Andrews sang in The Sound of Music to be, "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something vile." am I perverting a metaphor? (Help me English teaching colleagues.) Whatever the figure of speech/literary device, I'm using that notion to explain why 20% of our ewes that have lambed to date have delivered triplets? I'm sticking with the belief that a good ewe should be able to raise triplets and acting on the fact that I do not like bottle bums, so . . . I have them poked every which where and have declared "No Vacancy for Trios at the Prairie Island Inn--Only Duets or Solos Welcome." That said, several more ewes look HUGE with babies, and I will, indeed, welcome them and give them my all. Nevertheless, I plan to be free as a bird next week to participate in Great Fall's Western Art Week. Come see the MT Watercolor Society display at the Great Western Living & Design show at the fairgrounds March 15 - 18. Unless our driveway is impassably drifted, I plan to have paintings on exhibit, including this one of the door latch on our 1914 era "lower barn". Whee! Some fun!