As many chafe at the isolation and boredom of stay-at-home restrictions imposed by our rampaging demon-virus, we feel remote from the fray. We trundle from house to haystack to hydrant, and back as though we are immune. The bum lambs’ bucket of milk gets replenished; round bales get unrolled; small square bales get distributed; pens get cleaned and straw gets spread. A pre-Easter blizzard had more impact on us than viral fears. And yet, the grim statistics on nightly news infect us with a vague anxiety that grips many. We mostly override it and focus on demands of the moment. We should be counting our blessings. We feel neither bored nor isolated. Our pantry is bulging and our freezers are full. Our routines are purposeful, if exhausting, and occasionally daunting, when weather tests our resilience, plans, and facilities.
Of course, most of our routines are just that . . . routine: feeding ewes morning and night, locking ewes with younger lambs in the barn at night, filling water buckets and troughs and draining hoses, mucking, liming, and strawing jugs and pens.
There is the bum lamb routine that brings both annoyance and joy. Every eight hours, I replenish their two gallon suck-bucket with fresh formula that I’ve pre-mixed and chilled in the refrigerator to discourage gluttonous over-consumption. There are more than enough nipples for each lamb to claim one, but they have favorites and at each re-fill they jockey to latch onto their preferred lifeline and hang on against all competitors. When the level of milk gets low they sometimes come in low from underneath the bucket in order to dislodge a persistent pen-mate that might be sucking the well dry. That strategy can knock the bucket out of its keeper, in which case I find it upside down in their pen. You’d think I would get creative and solve the problem, but there are too many other more pressing demands on my time. Anyway, it’s about time for them to drink less and eat pellets more, so the problem will eventually take care of itself. I look forward to the day when they are weaned from milk replacer, when my soup-kettle-become-milk-kettle is available for cooking, and when the fridge has a bit more room, but I will miss my thrice-daily bum time and their enthusiasm for me and for the full buckets that are exciting daily highlights.
Of course, most of our routines are just that . . . routine: feeding ewes morning and night, locking ewes with younger lambs in the barn at night, filling water buckets and troughs and draining hoses, mucking, liming, and strawing jugs and pens.
There is the bum lamb routine that brings both annoyance and joy. Every eight hours, I replenish their two gallon suck-bucket with fresh formula that I’ve pre-mixed and chilled in the refrigerator to discourage gluttonous over-consumption. There are more than enough nipples for each lamb to claim one, but they have favorites and at each re-fill they jockey to latch onto their preferred lifeline and hang on against all competitors. When the level of milk gets low they sometimes come in low from underneath the bucket in order to dislodge a persistent pen-mate that might be sucking the well dry. That strategy can knock the bucket out of its keeper, in which case I find it upside down in their pen. You’d think I would get creative and solve the problem, but there are too many other more pressing demands on my time. Anyway, it’s about time for them to drink less and eat pellets more, so the problem will eventually take care of itself. I look forward to the day when they are weaned from milk replacer, when my soup-kettle-become-milk-kettle is available for cooking, and when the fridge has a bit more room, but I will miss my thrice-daily bum time and their enthusiasm for me and for the full buckets that are exciting daily highlights.
Here they are to greet me.
(One needing extraction from
a bit of a predicament.
Then there are the non-routine routines. At the moment, we have one named “Stumper,” a lamb born with mal-formed, crab-like front legs. He tried to enter the world head first. I pushed his noggin back inside and got his front legs positioned correctly for delivery. After seeing what those fronts looked like, I was glad I had intervened in his delivery. Because his mother is built low to the ground and has an equally low slung udder, Stumps managed to nurse. He scuttled around on knees bent 90 degrees to the front for a couple of days, because I did not have time to deal with his deformity. Eventually, we fitted him with splints of split PVC pipe, padded with puppy wee-wee pads and strapped onto his legs with neon-colored vet wrap secured with duct tape. I’m not sure we will win this battle and “fix” his deformity, but for the moment he is a going concern stumping along on his now-straight and very stiff pins. He can run and buck, if a bit awkwardly, and has a wry personality that has won our hearts.
Late Breaking News: Moments ago, Stumps flew free of his splints. We were prepared with Plan B—shorter, softer splints made from a split open plastic container of Old Orchard frozen orange juice concentrate—but after cutting off his PVC splints, he seemed ready for launch. Although his knees still tend to buckle, for the moment he is able to straighten them, hold them rigid, and control them as he moves. He’s had two weeks of forced rigidity; I hope we can all move on with no need to wrap him into Plan B OJ splints.
Night checks of the lambing barn are usually routine, especially when no ewes are lambing. Calm prevails; jugged families are quiet; in mixing pens lambs are clustered under a heat lamp and resting peacefully.
But occasionally lambs that have graduated into mixing pens cut loose with their funniest maneuvers in the dark hours, and I catch them crow-hopping, and racing at top speed around their tight quarters, leaping atop and diving off sleepy ewes, and silhouetted against the dim lights like dancers possessed. Of course, their crabby old wool bag mothers disapprove of such high jinks and try to quash the antics, but to no avail, for their offspring have become too fast, too nimble, and very able to dodge any attempts to quell exuberance. I’ve tried to capture those moments on video, but for now, my efforts have been inadequate. At other more calm times, I find lambs nested atop their mothers—singles, twins, or even triplets—on board and riding waves of respirations like boats docked in a protected harbor.
Here, two of the three lambs being raised by our
old and only Border Leicester ewe, use her as a
step stool to get a better look-see at me.
I love these moments. Although a jangling
alarm clock rudely intrudes on slumber,
the rewards in the barn are rich indeed.
Also routine and welcome in this time
of anxiety are dozens of tomatoes
and peppers that have sprouted in our
sun room. Within a week, they will
need transplantation into larger pots
in our makeshift greenhouse.
Lambing barn heat lamps will be
re-purposed for greenhouse duty.
Toots will be called upon to
transition from her night bed in
the garage to night shift in the greenhouse, our best effort to thwart mice and packrats that have
clear-cut our crop in previous years.
of anxiety are dozens of tomatoes
and peppers that have sprouted in our
sun room. Within a week, they will
need transplantation into larger pots
in our makeshift greenhouse.
Lambing barn heat lamps will be
re-purposed for greenhouse duty.
Toots will be called upon to
transition from her night bed in
the garage to night shift in the greenhouse, our best effort to thwart mice and packrats that have
clear-cut our crop in previous years.
With thoughts of juicy ripe tomatoes in the months ahead, so goes our stay-at-home time during spring 2020. Although the Covid-19 pandemic seems surreal, our Prairie Island routines offer respite and reassurance.
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