June has been glorious! The Sun River Valley and benches to the north have received more rain than our Adobe Creek Basin, but the two inches that blessed us have been game changing. Of course, thistles and quack grass have responded as enthusiastically as poppies and irises, but I’m onto them and working hard to throw the competitive advantage to favorites.

Most recently, our wickedly thorned yellow rose has taken center stage. A survivor from the Fleming family homestead—now our Prairie Island—I dug it years ago from what is now a pasture and transplanted it into a flower bed, where it has thrived. I wear long sleeves and heavy leather gloves to prune it, cut it back, and pull quack from its midst. Despite my protective gear, it always draws blood. Now it is thwarting my best efforts to propagate cuttings that fellow gardeners have requested. I’ve poked cuttings into potting soil and into vermiculite; I've tried cuttings that remained partially attached to the matriarch while encased in wet potting soil and wrapped tightly with plastic wrap. All efforts included rooting hormone for encouragement. Most recently, I punctured several potatoes, stuck cuttings into the holes and buried the potatoes in potting mix. Supposedly, that’s how pioneers carried ancestral rose cuttings west to new homesteads. If the “tuber” technique fails, perhaps the potatoes will sprout, and we can enjoy baby potatoes dug from my pots.  

Whether we successfully propagate roses, potatoes, or neither, “June is bustin’ out all over,” early flowers are resplendent, and our homesteader rose is putting on a show.      

Each year lambing season brings both joy and sadness. One particularly bright spot this year came in the form of a tiny lamb. Her full-sized twin brother was up and sucking in short order. The diminutive “Flea,” however, was slower to get up and not tall enough to reach her mother’s udder. I milked enough from the ewe to provide a good first meal and repeated the milking/bottle feeding every few hours.

In my experience, such early bottle feeding is a sure way to end up with a lamb that refuses to nurse. It seems that the tentative exploration that new-born lambs do—seeking and finding the udder on their own—is essential. And if that seek-and-find experience gets replaced by early bottle feeding they cannot be taught or forced to nurse, no matter how hungry they are, no matter how cooperative the mother is. The adage about leading a horse to water is exemplified by lambs who refuse to nurse from their mother, even when they are boosted up to the udder, their jaws are manually pried open, and a teat is popped into their mouth. The most-saintly shepherd could be driven to curse in frustration at the many effective resistances that a ten-pound new-born can devise. They sag and droop; they turn away and plant themselves in backwards mode; they lunge and fall off the teat after having been forced to close their mouth on it.

In full recognition of the inevitable—that Flea would become bottle dependent—I continued to feed her. A day later, after around-the-clock bottle feedings, Flea refused her bottle. Hm-m, I asked: “After all that TLC, is she simply choosing to starve?” Several hours later, I witnessed lambing barn magic: Flea standing tall, neck extended, sucking mightily from her mother. Because of her miniature stature and slow start, Flea and her family got a bit of extra time in their private jug pen before mingling with others, first in a small mixing pen with four other ewes and their lambs, then in a bigger outdoor pen, with access to barn shelter, but crowded with more ewes and lambs and, finally, in pastures with free-choice grazing, freedom to run with mobs of other lambs, and freedom to encounter danger from coyotes, eagles, hail storms, etc.   

Of course, as lambing season progressed, I accumulated numerous other lambs that became bottle “bums.” More than ten percent of our lambs are triplet-born. Ideally, we leave all three lambs on the ewe for at least 48 hours to get the full benefit of colostrum—that liquid-gold, first milk that is loaded with fat, vitamins, and antibodies that are essential for a good start. After that, one lamb is selected, or “bummed,” placed with similar orphans in a separate pen, and bottle fed with milk replacer every three to four hours. For reasons of efficiency, our bums transition from individual bottles to a 6-nipple bucket ASAP. Though that transition lacks pomp, circumstance, or ceremonious speechifying, it represents an epic graduation in the mind of any shepherd charged with bum feeding duties! So too, the transition from milk to less expensive pelleted feed. My entire bum brigade is now weaned off milk and eating pellets. Occasionally, they tag along behind me; after all, I delivered their eagerly welcomed bottles and buckets day and night for weeks. And sometimes they follow the dogs—who tidied their rumps and licked milk froth from their faces. But increasingly they are identifying as sheep and affiliating with a group of yearling ewes with young lambs that come into a corral at night.

I love the intensity and workload of lambing; we had a good season, pastures are green, and the lambs look great, but a respite in May and early June were much needed. I used the time to draw, paint, and garden, before the routines of summer arrive.       

With shearing scheduled for next week, our stretch of fine weather is predicted to turn a 180 and trend wintry. (In light of the timing, does “ewe-turn” work?) Until that turn, we’re cheering for continued moderate temperatures. Days of sun and 40+ degrees have shrunk our expansive ice rinks, and I no longer must cling like a burr to corral rails in order to stay upright as I go about my chores. Nevertheless, treacherous patches remain and I hope the muddy aftermath on trailing edges of each shrinking ice sheet will dry before we must sort ewes prior to shearing day. While Prairie Island fleeces earn no bragging rights for fine fiber diameter and next-to-skin comfort factor, I take pride in the cleanliness and yield of our wool clip. The need to sort ewes in mud-sloppy corrals can ruin that in a hurry. May the melting continue, accompanied by drying wind. 

And why do we need to sort sheep in advance of shearing? Columbia sheep should not have black fibers in their wool.  Many of our cross-bred ewes have Suffolk heritage and may have black wool in their fleece. Such colored fibers lessen fleece value in the commercial wool market, so the Columbias get sheared first and bagged separately so that black fibers cannot contaminate the white fleeces. Additionally, many of the cross-bred ewes have coarser wool than the Columbias. Small differences in fiber diameter, often indiscernible with the naked eye but measured in microns by accurate scanning tools, yield significant price differentials in marketing.  

Until our shearing date, I am readying the barn, preparing make-ahead lunch food, and organizing my to-do list.  
 

Despite falling nearly silent during these past years of distancing, masking, and boosting, I mostly carried on as usual; irrigation happened, hay got baled, ewes lambed, tomatoes overwhelmed, and seasons progressed. I could have painted, but ideas eluded me; I might have blogged, but my stories felt dull. And so, I trudged along, blaming COVID, blaming my age, blaming whatever . . . Thankfully, fresh energy is flowing and I am again painting, reading, sharing meals with neighbors, and staying in touch with friends—including classmates from grade school who met in July for a 50th high school reunion. I continue to follow news, however furious it makes me, and regularly contact my DC politicians, urging them to solve problems rather than point fingers. (I refer to that last effort as “tilting at windbags.”)

Carrying on with my website, however, is at a standstill until I can figure out how to log in. While I was AWOL, my website host, Weebly, was taken over by The Square, a payments-focused business that changed website-access protocols. As I keyboard, my post is merely a Word document residing on my laptop. If you read it as a 2023 website post, login issues have been resolved.     

In lieu of creativity during the past years, I threw myself into the job of chairing a national Columbia Sheep Association committee focused on support for commercial producers. During my tenure, I had several hard-working committee members whose ideas, advocacy, and activism in the interest of producers rattled the rubber-stamp, business-as-usual board decisions. Not surprisingly, before the committee and I could further upset the status quo, I was acrimoniously voted off the BoD last June. I remain proud of the committee’s multiple accomplishments in addressing and elevating concerns of commercial producers, but I have no regrets about departing stressful leadership of a committee with goals and accomplishments deemed threatening to the association’s nearly exclusive focus on show ring matters. Descriptors that continue to sour my thoughts after my four-year tenure on the Board include: vindictive back-stabbing, territorial posturing, self-serving decision-making, under-the-table manipulation, defamatory name-calling and insinuation, nepotism, and short-sighted thinking.  

In contrast, my work on the MT Watercolor Society BoD is congenial, collegial, and non-confrontational. Turnover on that Board is steady, without being stuck or disruptive; outgoing directors provide support and guidance for new members; fresh ideas and volunteers are welcomed. As a result, the Society is dynamic and offering evermore diverse opportunities for members—opportunities that range from local cohort groups to monthly painting challenges, to critiques shared via Instagram and Zoom, to varied workshop and exhibition options, all of which go beyond the group’s traditional quarterly newsletter and national juried Watermedia show. I plan to resign from my role as Signature Member Chair at the end of my term in October, not because I’m tired of the position, but because it’s time for someone else to learn the job. Additionally, for the past six years, a large box of Signature Member files has monopolized the couch in our sun-room. It’s time to make that space available once again for human occupation. Of course, recent files are stored on a thumb-drive, but the box contains records that tell a story of the society’s former years. I hope my replacement on the Board has more convenient storage space. 

Of course, no blog would be complete without mention of sheep. I brought the ewes back to home pastures yesterday, and it’s most satisfying to watch them in the field adjacent to our kitchen window. They had been on a leased pasture for the past months, digging for grass and eating snow for water. I fed them only four times, during the week prior to Christmas when our snow depth was daunting and temperatures were brutal. On one of those days, following Solstice night, when our temperature bottomed out at -36 degrees, neither the 4-wheeler nor the Gator would start, so I ferried square bales to the ewes in my faithful Subaru Forester. Tootie and Dozer ran beside the Suub that day, braving wind, cold, and drifting on the way out; however, they were delighted to accept my invitation to ride with me in cozy comfort on the return trip.

A sad note: Old Border Leicester ewe R-71 died during that coldest solstice night. Two years ago, Jim and I made the decision that she owed us nothing and could stay at home for the duration of her life. She was sassy and bossy to the end, hustling through gates and doors that were left open for a moment too long, pushing the three dogs away from her grain ration of sweet cob that they covet, bedding down at night in the tack room, beside the barrels of grain, and ignoring my gentle suggestions that she should move, rejecting all but the finest, most-leafy legume hay. One should never wax sentimental about livestock, but old Border earned an exception to that rule of thumb. 
Here she is, bellying into a bucket of grain intended for the lambs.

A smile-worthy note: For obvious reasons, we often refer to Dozer as “Double Dump.” This photo of him—wrangling two casserole dishes and gleaning leftovers from both—surely warrants his new name: “Double Dip Dozer.”        

On my personal 5-point smoke scale, today ranks as a 4.5, meaning Shaw Butte is mostly obscured. Alternatively, that same vista to the west can be a stunner.   

Yes, we've smothered in a dirty shroud of wildfire smoke since mid-June. Heat, too, has bored in with unrelenting vengeance. And grasshoppers, swarming in clouds ahead of each plodding step we take, have added to our gloom. Indeed, life has shrunk to a monotonous routine.

• 4:30 AM: Check clock. Swim through drowsiness. Sit up, flex stiff ankles, lump out of bed. Open all doors. Turn on bathroom fan to suck smidgens of night cool into house.
• Return to bed. Maintain consciousness sufficient to respond to mosquito’s whine: slap, pull sheet over head.
• 6:00 AM: Rouse from stupor; begin morning routine. Start coffee. Check temperatures; indoor—72 degrees; outdoor—65 degrees.
• Choreograph house shut down: As watermelon sun emerges from behind pine tree, shut one bedroom door, close windows, lower and shut blinds in that room. Repeat with 2nd bedroom door and windows + poop deck door as sun’s position changes & temperature climbs.
• When outdoor temperature 3 degrees shy of indoor temperature (thermometer slow to register change), close all windows, lower and close blinds in sun room windows.
• Before leaving house, put fresh-brew in thermos, shut off coffee maker, dispose of grounds to minimize sources of heat.   
• In between shut-down routine, do other chores: pitch hay to lambs, haul water to bucks, replenish grain in tack room barrels, move wheel line, feed dogs, pick garden produce. 
• 10:00 AM: Lower and close blinds on SW-facing kitchen windows.
• 1:00 PM: Lower and close blinds on NW-facing kitchen windows
• 2:00 PM: Emerge from darkened burrow. Squint in glare, assess smoke; we’ve been 4––5 on my scale almost daily since late June. (Scale: 5 = Shaw Butte to the west is mostly obscured; 4 = Water tank on ridge to north is barely discernible, 3 = Ashuelot Bench further north is lost in the haze, 2 = Smoke visible on horizon, 1 = Air is fresh, surely Monsoon rains or snowfall have arrived.) Cruise out on 4-wheeler to fill ewe water troughs & get mail. Helmet w/face shield advised to protect against grasshoppers flying like bullets. Back home, remove hoppers from inside shirt.
• 3–6:00 PM: Read, drink (water or alcohol), text, email, plan dinner—salads and sandwiches generate no heat.
• 6:30 PM Emerge from darkened burrow, do evening chores.
• 8:30 PM Marvel at sunset—eerily red. Enjoy cold meal with YouTube rerun of PBS Newshour.
• Later: Choreograph house opening: As outdoor blast furnace dies & balances oppressive indoor conditions, synchronize blind and window opening.           
• Sponge off, throw bed covers back, revel in momentarily cool sheets, sink into naked slumber.

Surely this is analogous to life as a mole. Despite such drudge & gloom, we are thankful for much: irrigation water, green pastures where water spread and sprinkled, hay in stackyard, 2nd crop sanfoin ready to cut, good books, tomatoes ripening like gangbusters, corn coming on, lambs ready to sell, swallows vacuuming skeeters, hopper-fat larks trilling songs of juicy joy.  

For now, blogging seems irresponsible. The mere thought of a respite devoted to writing makes me anxious and prompts me to run through my checklist. Did I forget something? Was I distracted from duty by a quickly resolved urgency? Did eagerness for quiet time overwhelm my dedication to routines—routines that have driven my days and nights, seemingly for eons: pens to clean, straw to spread, alarm clocks to set and reset depending on night temperatures and drop pen activity, bales to haul, ewes and lambs to paint brand, water buckets to fill, gates to latch, feeders to fill, orphan lambs to bottle. . . Yet here I am, perched at the keyboard, thinking that I have time. But wait, mention of that last chore reminds me to check the clock, and it is, indeed, time to feed Phoenix, the only one of our orphan lambs, AKA “bums”, still dependent on a bottle. Assuming that I don’t spot something else needing to be done, I’ll be back in a jiffy
              
Later:
              
The Phoenix of myth may have arisen from the ashes of a predecessor; this one arose from near death on a cold night, abandoned by her yearling mother and not breathing when I found her. I regret not having arrived an hour earlier, for I think the adolescent ewe’s maternal instincts would have kicked in, and her lamb would have rallied with a bit of towel drying and encouragement from the warmth of a heat lamp. Instead, I puffed some breath into her, tucked her inside my vest, and carried her to the house for a warm bath in the kitchen sink. She slept in a towel-lined box near the wood stove after receiving a tube feeding of warm colostrum, and she slept again after a second dose a couple of hours later. She made no attempt to stand until 9 AM and then readily sucked from a bottle. After that, however, I could not get her to nurse her mother, even though the ewe was cooperative. An altered adage is apropos: You can push a lamb to an udder but you can’t force it to grab hold and suck. After 24 hours, I gave up the effort; Phoenix became a bottle bum and her mother got marked as a cull.
              
It is common knowledge that orphan lambs need buddies. Our other bummers are penned together, but they are far too mature and rambunctious to share space with such a pip, so Phoenix has had to seek companionship wherever she can. She spins up and down the lane between mixing pens and jugs, communing with those lambs that have mothers; she pops out of the barn, through the tack room, and into sunshine, following whatever dog is available; she bunts all three dogs and Jim and me mercilessly; she follows the manure cart in its frequent journeys from the barn to the ever-growing windrow of discarded bedding and back again. Although she has not returned to the kitchen since the night of her birth, she’s a regular at all the other “joints” that we frequent. (No masks needed at any of them.) Early on, when lambing jugs were scarce, she slept in a dog crate; now that lambing is winding down, she spends nights in a jug of her own, warmed by a heat lamp and next door to a ewe with newborns. The dogs keep her spit-polish clean and compete for the opportunity to lick froth from her chin as she sucks her bottle every 4 hours.
 

​Most of our other orphan lambs derived from sets of triplets. With TLC and sufficient feed, ewes that are endowed with patience and ample milk can raise triplets. This year, however, having more ewes than usual, I had neither the time nor the space to accommodate any special needs, so each one of the seven triplet births yielded a bum lamb. They mostly defied the rule of thumb that tangled birth presentations increase proportionally to the number of lambs within. Only one threesome, out of a first time mother, came with complications, but that trio made up for the other trouble-free deliveries. Lamb #1 presented tail first, in classic breech position; I pushed the lamb back in, brought the hind feet into position and delivered it hind legs first; Lamb #2 came hind legs first—not a problem as long as delivery is fast and breathing is encouraged; Lamb #3 came front legs first but with her head folded back instead of resting nose-first between front legs. That particular presentation has been problematic for me in the past, but in this instance I managed to get her head situated correctly long enough to get the lamb out. However, the lamb so delivered would not breathe, despite my usual ministrations. I could sense Jim’s unspoken vibes as he stood by to assist if needed: “Let her go. She will be yet another bum.” Katrina, home for the weekend, knelt beside me in the jug and was beside me emotionally, as well. She did not hesitate to deliver mouth to mouth resuscitation, and at last, lamb #3 opted for life. Amazingly in hindsight, all of us survived. The ewe was exhausted but rallied to her role; she licked all three charges while crooning the deep welcoming gurgle that indicates good maternal instincts; she managed to get up and stand for her trio to suck, despite being in pain and wobbly from my crude obstetrical manipulations. A deep drink of warm water and a dose of Nutri-Drench helped. She now has two nice lambs at her side, and her last-born, head-back orphan is thriving in the bum pen. I have no regrets.
              
​This year, for the first time, we scheduled lambing in two stages. Ewes two years old and older lambed first, beginning in late February and ending after three weeks. Those lambs are now vaccinated, docked, eartagged, and corralled only at night. After a one week pause to clean the lambing barn and re-gird for Round 2, the adolescent first-time mothers began to deliver. Now, in late April, only one of those young yearlings—bred as eight month old lambs— remains to lamb.   
 
      

That young group has been a pleasure to work with, but not everyone shares my expectation that all yearling ewes should raise at least one lamb. It makes sense to me that large-scale producers should not impose such demands on young ewes. After all, range ewes and their lambs face challenges that farm flocks do not encounter: scarce feed, scarce water, and long distances that must be traveled to reach both. However, I don’t understand why small-scale farm-flock producers are content with range flock expectations. Under the relatively cushy conditions experienced by most farm flocks, I see no reason to delay lambing until a ewe is two years old when one can gain a year of production and learn early on whether or not a ewe is a “keeper.” I prefer timely marketing of those yearlings that don’t breed or that lack maternal instincts. I’d rather not waste a year of expenses on open yearlings when the good’uns can be raising lambs? Some say that such expectations of a yearling shorten their productive life. That has not been my experience. Fifteen lambs in eight years is our goal, and we rarely keep ewes beyond eight years of age, no matter when they first lamb. Others say that early lambing stunts a ewe’s growth. It is my observation that bigger ewes are NOT better; they just eat more.
              
Did I mention that fifteen lambs in eight years is our goal? Well, shooting at such an average obscures the reality of both awesome and disappointing individual records that contribute to that average. The only purebred Border Leicester ewe remaining in our flock is a worthy case in point. She is eight years old and this will be her last year of production. She raised twin lambs as a yearling, triplets as a two-year old, twins as a three-year old, and triplets in each of the following four years. Deservedly, she is now tired, and her fleece, that for several years won grand or reserve awards at the state fair, is now thin. Nevertheless, she currently is raising twin lambs, and her personality has grown larger even as she has shrunk. She shows up at the gate often, hoping for Jim or me to be within earshot; her loud deep voice belies her diminutive stature, and we cater to her calls for grain as long as she is not accompanied by other ewes.

She has always been quick to take advantage of unchained gates or walk-through gates that slam shut a bit too slowly, and her lambs mimic her quick opportunism and quest for open spaces. Many times throughout the years, she and her multiple protégées have forayed joyously around hay stacks and sheds with me in dogged pursuit. Even now, she can trot faster than I can run. (Perhaps I could run faster if I swore at her less.) She stamps her lambs with that Leicester look no matter what ram she is bred to, and quite a few of our commercial ewes sport a distinctively Leicester nose and their perky upright ears, both of which suggest that I should pay more heed to gate closures and personal fitness in the years ahead. 

Will Border be among the ewes culled for their antiquity later this summer? Probably not. Surely she deserves to roam free for a while--perhaps nibbling lettuce and spinach in the garden or browsing lilac and dogwood in the shelterbelt--until it’s time for the mercy of a bullet and a scenic final journey to the bone pile in our ceremonial ATV hearse.          

​    At best, elective waterline work in Montana in December is risky, especially in light of the fact that said work has languished on my to-do list for at least two years. No matter, the excavator arrived early in the month, and we are now the proud owners of an earth-warmed, automatic, livestock waterer. This singular waterer does not eliminate the need for dragging hoses here and there and draining them twice after every use during most of the year, but it will reduce our power usage and our workload.               
               On the surface, the project was straightforward: dig a hole, install the components, attach water lines, and fill the hole. That simplification downplays the minefield of demon difficulties hidden among the details, beginning with our preliminary arm-strong demolition.
               First, the old cistern shed, housing an unusable concrete water trough, a fatally cracked, concrete cistern, an electric fence charger and associated wiring, and decades of accumulated detritus, had to be emptied and torn down. Jim dealt with the electrical stuff, detaching wires, relocating and reconnecting the charger, and pulling an assortment of grounding rods, some of which required tractor power. I tore down most of the shed and the parts of two corral pens that we had built around the shed 30 years ago. That understates the physical labor. Suffice it to say that multiple hammers, crowbars, tamping bars, vise grips, screwdrivers, wrenches of all sorts and sizes were needed, often in tandem, along with brute force. Cans full of nails, spikes, screws, nuts & bolts, washers, and various home-built fasteners accumulated before we bared the foundation and were ready for machine demolition. 
             Although the foundational concrete had lots of cracks and heaved surfaces, its rebar reinforcement and heavy, thick construction made the excavator grunt, but at last we got down to dirt and were ready to work toward our two larger goals. 
               First, we replaced the leaking frost-free hydrant and installed a curb stop for it. The contractor supplied the new hydrant. I don’t know how deeply it was intended to be buried, but at the depth of our waterline, a ladder or stilts would have been needed for turn on and shut off. The need to replace that extra-tall version with a size-medium caused a two day delay to accommodate the supplier’s weekend hours. And, yes, we knew that December was marching on.  
               Second, we installed the waterer and its curb stop in those four simple steps mentioned previously. Annoyingly, each step called for creative adaptations and required trial runs—that is runs to town and practice-makes-perfect runs.      
               According to factory specs, polyethelene pipe was needed to carry water vertically from our main waterline through the interior of the waterer’s long earth tube to the valve at the bottom of the drinking bowl. The manual conveniently omitted psi specs for that pipe. To avoid bogging down in numbers and hyperbole, I again opt for understatement: A rating of 250 psi on the contractor-supplied pipe was monumentally too high, making it astronomically too stiff to work with! Substitution of impossible pipe with manageable pipe, in combination with all sorts of adjustments in fixtures and connectors to accommodate differing inside and outside diameters caused further delays . . . not fatal stoppages but, yes, we were keenly aware that winter solstice was approaching.  
               And then there was my calculation of the hole depth needed for installation. Based on my experience trying to teach junior high students to use rulers, I should have been skeptical of an eighteen year old helper wielding a tape measure. However, I’m cowardly about descending into or leaning over holes that might cave. As a result, we had to install the waterer twice. (Visualize lowering large-diameter, heavy, overlapping tubes to a recipient standing in a narrow, deep hole.)  On Installation #1, the drinking bowl ended up at a height appropriate for giraffes or arboreal guzzlers. So we reversed the process: we hoisted the awkward tubes out of the hole, I double-checked my calculations, and the excavator went back to work for Installation #2. This time I kept track of hole depth and, indeed, 80” was spot on, yielding a waterer that protruded 20” above the surface before we top-dressed it with gravel. Perfect! 

           I did not join in the fun of hooking the waterline to the looped hose just beneath the drinking bowl, or hooking that hose to the valve in the bottom of the drinking bowl, or hooking the float to the valve arm. No-sir-ee. The dogs needed both a jaunt and an escort.  
               Now, a month later, the verdict on the waterer is still out. We’ve not yet had deep cold to test the limits of earth warming. The ground remains too soft to plant permanent posts for fences that will subdivide access to the waterer such that it can be used from three corrals, but temporary wire panels and metal posts will work until the disturbed depths settle. And yes, the ewes share with Dozer.

                Meanwhile, winter arrived on the calendar. 
               Just before Christmas, electrical issues got our attention. In hindsight, what seemed like a damned nuisance—a low-tire-pressure warning light on Jim’s car—became a blessing. When the shop air compressor refused to power up to give those tires a check, Jim took it to the garage to plug into another outlet. As the compressor again sputtered, kitchen appliances began beeping, surging, and cutting out. We unplugged everything and called Sun River Electric Co-op; a two-man crew arrived a short time later. Of course, snow was whipping in horizontally while the bucket man repaired the wind-fatigued grounding line on our main pole.
               That, however, was not the cause of our surges and outages. Thankfully, the crew persevered and literally sniffed out the problem: old shop wiring had entangled, shorted out, and was charring the wall. They shut off the power to the shop but left the line attached in an effort to support the old power pole that was listing noticeably. Before they left, Jim soaked the charred wall. Later, we plugged in appliances, enjoyed our Christmas lights, and slept peacefully. Had the short continued, we would have awakened to a fiery disaster that would have consumed our shop and all tools within, the 4-wheeler, the skid steer parked in an adjoining lean-to, plus the old farm truck with its bulk fuel tank parked next door, as well as our adjacent winter firewood supply.
               Now, during these first days of the new year, we are counting our blessings yet again. After the Co-op’s initial trouble-shooting two weeks ago, I monitored the old power pole’s evermore-apparent lean; three days ago, high wind warnings convinced me that we must buttress it with the tractor loader until our scheduled date with the electrician. ​Though our legendary Chinook winds pushed, sturdy loader arms resisted, hydraulics held, and the old pole stayed close enough to vertical to keep all three of its attached power lines aerial. Today, in the safe embrace of an auger truck, it popped out of the ground like a watermelon seed, riddled with rot and fractured just below the surface.  

​               As of today, a new pole has assumed responsibility, the shop is re-wired, and power to the shop has gone underground. Surely that warrants both gratitude and celebration.               
       

In late September last year, we received deep wet snow that downed trees and closed highways. This year has spun us in reverse. Even now, in early October, daytime temperatures creep into the 80s, hay is being cut, and our garden offers bounty for all.








​Every golden sunflower thrums with bees
harvesting late-season banquet fare. 
​

Alongside them, I fill my bucket with fresh sweet peppers and tiny stir ​fry-sized zucchinis. Now that the electric boundary fence has been removed from the garden—a barrier meant to discourage raccoons—Dozer joins me. A devoted forager, he beats me to most of the ripe tomatoes that are his favorite. 

​

The photo understates green-stained consequences
of his search for perfect slicers concealed amidst tangled
vines. Although he strips the clumps of cherry tomatoes with
delicacy—one bite-sized gem at a time—in total he
consumes dozens during our shared foray. Fortunately,
there are enough to spare, for I have a colander-full in
the house. Later, he gleans from the corn patch that
I’ve abandoned for the season. He tears out stalks by
​the roots and carries them into the yard where he can rest
comfortably in the shade to gnaw on sugar-sweet stems,
peel cobs partially destroyed by earlier swarms of blackbirds,
​and nibble whatever kernels they left behind. 

And then there are apples. Our shelterbelt has lots of crabapples and homestead era early-season apple trees, to which we have added a couple of Macintosh trees, one of which is pictured. All bore heavily this year and windfalls are plentiful. I remove those downed apples from under the trees in our yard and store them in buckets for later distribution to the sheep. If I leave the buckets in the garage, Dozer takes responsibility for the apples within, crunching down dozens by day, storing several in his man-cave for nighttime snacking, and guarding them from Toots, Dot, and the neighbor’s visiting guard dog with raised hackles and deep growls. 

​It would be a mistake to conclude that Dozer’s diet saves on commercial dog food. In fact, his trendy locavore gorgings, augmented by the pea/barley grain mix that he steals from the lambs, pass through unscathed by digestive action. The aftermath evidence might lead one to conclude that we run a sanctuary for bears.
​
Despite inconvenient depositional consequences, we welcome Dozer's gourmet gusto. It provides us with laughter and distracts us from political chatter and Covid-imposed anxieties. I only wish that he would whip up a loaf of crusty sourdough bread to accompany our garden-fresh dining. I’m sure he would oblige, if he knew that I would slather his share with butter.  

     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. 

​     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.

     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.        

​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.   

      





​                                                           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. 

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.