Tax payments have been mailed. In most years, I trust that our contributions to MT Department of Revenue and IRS will be used judiciously and pay for that which contributes to the greater good. This year, however, I wish that I could direct my taxes to those causes I think are worthy and cut off any flow to the poison that seems to be overwhelming our traditional goodwill, submerging our sense of fair play, and drowning us in a toxic brew of meanness, selfishness, and fear of the “other.” I think that Covid-19 is merely the tip of the tidal wave curling over us and darker forces lurk at greater depth.
I feel tainted by the surge despite the fact that each day offers reasons for optimism. Those daily offerings are plentiful: the veggie garden is thriving and early volunteer spinach and lettuce were luxuriant; flower beds have been particularly lovely; wild asparagus was abundant; so, too, was moisture that carried us to first cutting without having to irrigate; all three dogs follow me like I’m a messiah, and they buoy my ego with their eagerness to be always close at hand, no matter how sweaty or grouchy I am; so far, the demon virus has not impacted my health or my family’s. For that last, I am particularly grateful. Masking when in public spaces and using sanitizer before and after are trivial and respectful accommodations when weighed against alternatives. I am grateful, too, for daily chores and routines that offer purpose and distract me from descent into sinkhole feelings of oppression and pessimism.
Lambs are weaned and eagerly consuming daily feedings of grain—peas and barley—plus hay. A few of them, averaging 93 pounds, have been marketed, along with a deep cut of ewes culled for their antiquity, bad udders, lack of milk, tendency to prolapse, etc. Before the next sale, I must determine which ewe lambs to retain as replacements, and identify another group of market-ready 90 pounders. I will probably keep more single ewe lambs than usual; in previous years I retained only twin or triplet-born lambs, but depressed prices encourage me to hold rather than market a few singles born to yearling ewes or old ewes with a long history of productivity.
I am kicking myself for an earlier decision to use fuchsia eartags on all of the lambs. Yes, fuchsia is the color for identifying sheep born in 2020, but I usually differentiate wether lambs with a differently colored tag. That simple management step makes wethers easy to distinguish in a crowded sorting pen. This year, however, with all lambs sporting the same tag color and style, I must wear my bifocals in order to read their eartag numbers, refer to my lamb record list, and then mark all replacement ewe lambs with a bit of spray paint in order to identify them prior to sorting them out of our cattle-sized pens and chutes. Needless to say, I won’t make this one-color-fits-all mistake again! Alternatively, maybe someday I’ll spring for a sheep-sized set-up that includes a sorting gate.
And then there are snakes. For the past several years we have sighted numerous bull snakes sunning on the grassy edges of our driveway, undulating into gopher holes, and even getting caught in our gopher traps, from which Jim releases them seemingly unharmed. All spring, we saw them as usual—big, slow-moving, and beautifully colored. Recently, however, rattlers have dominated. All three dogs, aversion trained a year ago, have backed off and avoided several that we spotted in the dryland pastures, but in mid-June, big dog Dozer received a strike to his snout while exploring an irrigated pasture just north of the house. Perhaps he did not smell the snake; the wind was against him. He certainly did not hear a warning for the snake rattled only after it struck. I drove Dozer to the 24/7 vet clinic in Great Falls where he received anti-venom and spent the night on IV fluids, pain meds, and anti-inflammatories. I believe he may now be addicted, not to the thrice-daily pain pills and antibiotics, but rather to the generous gobs of butter with which his large capsules slide down the hatch. Not only is Dozer pleased with his buttered meds, he is also very valuable, if his vet bill is any indicator. No matter, I am Dozer’s person and he is my bestie beast.
Shortly after Dozer’s adventure, we watched another snattler disappear into a hole near the haystack. Without a weapon at hand, Jim dashed to the shop for a shovel and then filled the hole with dirt and tamped it like a corner post.
A day later, Jim was surprised by a big rattler under the swather that he was trying to grease prior to hay cutting. That snake, pictured, received bird shot, followed by a ceremonial shovel decapitation. Perhaps you wonder why we kill them. Well, we don’t unless they are close to the house. Bull snakes, that eat more gophers than snattlers, are welcome anywhere, and we don’t bother any snakes on the dryland, but we draw a red line near our working spaces—shop, garage, barns, corrals, and the stackyard. Rattlers are not welcome.
I feel tainted by the surge despite the fact that each day offers reasons for optimism. Those daily offerings are plentiful: the veggie garden is thriving and early volunteer spinach and lettuce were luxuriant; flower beds have been particularly lovely; wild asparagus was abundant; so, too, was moisture that carried us to first cutting without having to irrigate; all three dogs follow me like I’m a messiah, and they buoy my ego with their eagerness to be always close at hand, no matter how sweaty or grouchy I am; so far, the demon virus has not impacted my health or my family’s. For that last, I am particularly grateful. Masking when in public spaces and using sanitizer before and after are trivial and respectful accommodations when weighed against alternatives. I am grateful, too, for daily chores and routines that offer purpose and distract me from descent into sinkhole feelings of oppression and pessimism.
Lambs are weaned and eagerly consuming daily feedings of grain—peas and barley—plus hay. A few of them, averaging 93 pounds, have been marketed, along with a deep cut of ewes culled for their antiquity, bad udders, lack of milk, tendency to prolapse, etc. Before the next sale, I must determine which ewe lambs to retain as replacements, and identify another group of market-ready 90 pounders. I will probably keep more single ewe lambs than usual; in previous years I retained only twin or triplet-born lambs, but depressed prices encourage me to hold rather than market a few singles born to yearling ewes or old ewes with a long history of productivity.
I am kicking myself for an earlier decision to use fuchsia eartags on all of the lambs. Yes, fuchsia is the color for identifying sheep born in 2020, but I usually differentiate wether lambs with a differently colored tag. That simple management step makes wethers easy to distinguish in a crowded sorting pen. This year, however, with all lambs sporting the same tag color and style, I must wear my bifocals in order to read their eartag numbers, refer to my lamb record list, and then mark all replacement ewe lambs with a bit of spray paint in order to identify them prior to sorting them out of our cattle-sized pens and chutes. Needless to say, I won’t make this one-color-fits-all mistake again! Alternatively, maybe someday I’ll spring for a sheep-sized set-up that includes a sorting gate.
And then there are snakes. For the past several years we have sighted numerous bull snakes sunning on the grassy edges of our driveway, undulating into gopher holes, and even getting caught in our gopher traps, from which Jim releases them seemingly unharmed. All spring, we saw them as usual—big, slow-moving, and beautifully colored. Recently, however, rattlers have dominated. All three dogs, aversion trained a year ago, have backed off and avoided several that we spotted in the dryland pastures, but in mid-June, big dog Dozer received a strike to his snout while exploring an irrigated pasture just north of the house. Perhaps he did not smell the snake; the wind was against him. He certainly did not hear a warning for the snake rattled only after it struck. I drove Dozer to the 24/7 vet clinic in Great Falls where he received anti-venom and spent the night on IV fluids, pain meds, and anti-inflammatories. I believe he may now be addicted, not to the thrice-daily pain pills and antibiotics, but rather to the generous gobs of butter with which his large capsules slide down the hatch. Not only is Dozer pleased with his buttered meds, he is also very valuable, if his vet bill is any indicator. No matter, I am Dozer’s person and he is my bestie beast.
Shortly after Dozer’s adventure, we watched another snattler disappear into a hole near the haystack. Without a weapon at hand, Jim dashed to the shop for a shovel and then filled the hole with dirt and tamped it like a corner post.
A day later, Jim was surprised by a big rattler under the swather that he was trying to grease prior to hay cutting. That snake, pictured, received bird shot, followed by a ceremonial shovel decapitation. Perhaps you wonder why we kill them. Well, we don’t unless they are close to the house. Bull snakes, that eat more gophers than snattlers, are welcome anywhere, and we don’t bother any snakes on the dryland, but we draw a red line near our working spaces—shop, garage, barns, corrals, and the stackyard. Rattlers are not welcome.
In between such daily routines, I continue to pound along on a project for the Columbia Sheep Breeders Association, a PowerPoint presentation based on wool terminology that is used in the breed standards and judging scorecard. It has been an all-consuming effort that entailed months of research, beginning in October. My project partner took most of the still pictures and video clips, and I did most of the narrative writing and slide creation. For the past weeks, I have incorporated narrative audio into the slide show, an on-going, time-consuming endeavor that goes like this: record using PowerPoint audio and delete all because of unacceptable background static; start over using other audio software; record, delete, and re-record paying more attention to enunciation; record, delete, reorganize sentences to avoid words that begin with puffing sounds like B and P that I evidently do not pronounce correctly and/or my audio software does not like, and re-record. (My daughter informs me that these are labial sounds. I choose to think of them as puffing sounds and avoid alternative anatomical associations.) For every saved segment, dozens of re-re-re-recordings have been rejected, surely numbering in the thousands over the course of the entire presentation. At last armed with files full of satisfactory audio segments, I insert each one onto its slide, listen to it carefully, and then direct the audio to play automatically with its slide. Lastly, I time each slide to advance automatically. As of today, I have auto-timed two segments, about half of the slide total, tweaked the timings, and submitted those portions to the Columbia sheep website contact person. Whew!
The project has taught me a lot about both wool and PowerPoint. I make no claim to being an expert in either, but I’m proud of the content-dense presentation and the proficiency that I have gained. The slide show is plain-Jane. Had file size not been an issue, it could have been fancy-fied with schnazzy transitions between or within slides, background music, trumpet fanfares announcing each new topic, scantily shorn sheep popping out of party cakes—well maybe not quite that fancy—but all such touches add weight to files, and the files have more than enough bytes of plain information without nude sheep thrills.
In more ordinary times, watercolors tempt me to escape from humdrum, and the juried Watermedia show motivates me to tackle something new and challenging. For the past months, however, I’ve been devoid of both compelling ideas and creative energy. I stirred up enough juice to submit three 2019 paintings to Watermedia; I like all of them and am glad that one got accepted—one of a series that I’ve done of our pond in winter, looking west toward Shaw Butte with our old barn and shelter belt in the middle distance—and I’m glad that it got accepted, but I’d rather have entered a recent piece exuding in-the-moment freshness. Perhaps autumn will re-energize me.
The project has taught me a lot about both wool and PowerPoint. I make no claim to being an expert in either, but I’m proud of the content-dense presentation and the proficiency that I have gained. The slide show is plain-Jane. Had file size not been an issue, it could have been fancy-fied with schnazzy transitions between or within slides, background music, trumpet fanfares announcing each new topic, scantily shorn sheep popping out of party cakes—well maybe not quite that fancy—but all such touches add weight to files, and the files have more than enough bytes of plain information without nude sheep thrills.
In more ordinary times, watercolors tempt me to escape from humdrum, and the juried Watermedia show motivates me to tackle something new and challenging. For the past months, however, I’ve been devoid of both compelling ideas and creative energy. I stirred up enough juice to submit three 2019 paintings to Watermedia; I like all of them and am glad that one got accepted—one of a series that I’ve done of our pond in winter, looking west toward Shaw Butte with our old barn and shelter belt in the middle distance—and I’m glad that it got accepted, but I’d rather have entered a recent piece exuding in-the-moment freshness. Perhaps autumn will re-energize me.
In the meantime, I need to haul some hay bales, irrigate some pasture, and pickle some cucs, cuz fall is just around the corner, and I have much to do before it arrives.
RSS Feed
