I particularly like "pissitified."

The following as Trump reveals cabinet nominees and senators squirm:

The Big Squeeze in D.C. is on.
Victims scuttle, bob, weave, evade, avoid,
Dodge questions—softball or hard-edged--
Scurry to elevators, hide in offices,
Slam doors fast,
Dim lights, pretend absence,  
Tremble with cowardice, reek of fear.
 
Journalists swarm, sense blood, probe for rot.  
 
Power-bloated, Trump
Steamrolls,
Demands fealty,
Promises vengeance,
‘Midst obscene corruption.
 
Democracy  hangs by gossamer thread.  

                        *                        *                        *                        *                        *
 
Some observations:

Carville:
High-pitched.
Southern to core.
Hands flapping, loose-jointed.
Sprawled comfortably in chair, legs akimbo.
Unaffected and vulgar.
Unparalleled political canny.
 
Graham:
Moist, pasty, doughy.
Revolting.
Pious sing-song
Grating like gravel in brakes,
Painful as bone-on-bone old knees
Annoying as a rusty hinge.
 
Trump:
Aggrieved, vindictive, bloated,
Shiny with sweat or pancaked orange,
Man-spread
Torso leaning,
Tie dangling,
Code Red flashing:
BEWARE—LIES AHEAD.  

                  *                        *                        *                        *                              *

After listening to a Jen Rubin interview, I Googled and found hope in the following oath:

The Sworn-Again American Oath

I pledge to be an active American
To show up for others
To govern myself
To help govern my community.
I recommit myself to my country's creed
To cherish liberty
As a responsibility.

I pledge to serve
And to push my country:
When right, to be kept right;
When wrong, to be set right.
Wherever my ancestors and I were born,
I claim America
And I pledge to live like a citizen.

What an autumn!
     It’s November. Serious frost put an end to the growing season only last week, and our vegie garden is finally abed. The last sweet green peppers—two five-gallon buckets—were shared with neighbors. Well-cured buttercup squashes are in basement storage. The hot-wire, net fencing is wrapped up and stored. As usual, it thwarted raccoons and our trio of big dogs from decimating both sweet corn and tomatoes, but the black birds that flock to our corn were unfazed by it. Gallons of cherry tomatoes have been eaten by the handful, shared with neighbors, and doled out as treats for our canine trio. Green slicers stored in boxes continue to keep us hopping as they ripen into candidates for dehydration, salsa, and sandwiches—club style or open-faced on toast and topped with melted cheddar. Boxes of ginormous zucchini whales have gone to neighbors whose chickens make use of them.
     A fabulous four-day watercolor workshop and the opening reception of the juried, nationally respected Watermedia exhibition came and went in early October. Both were rewarding for me. My entry in the show sold on opening night and the workshop —taught by show juror Michael Holter—was energizing and fast paced. I usually paint slowly, but the pace worked for me, and I came home with a satisfying landscape, city-scape, figure study, and portrait. Yes, the latter still needs eyebrows, but I consider “Lily” to be a triumph, considering the time constraints.  
     Creative painting continued at a slower pace at home, with a new Eagle Tree piece completed just in time for submission to the MTWS online Signature Member show. Shortly after, essential painting took over, and the lambing barn now has a new coat of stain/sealant. As part of that job, we learned that our big Dozer dog has an appetite, not only for all things smelly, dead, and rotten but, also, “toxic, dangerous, and/or fatal if swallowed.” At least those are the words of warning on the label of stain/sealant that I painted on the barn. He managed to drink three laps from my paint roller pan before I could stop him. Thwarted from guzzling, he then proceeded to lick the freshly stained wall of the barn, until I again gave him “the word.” Now, several days later, he seems none the worse for his bizarre craving but . . . Geez!  
     In between creative and essential, Jim and I took a three-day junket east to Glendive for a first-time visit to Makoshika State Park. Despite being a native Montanan and residing in the state for 73 of my 75 years, I had never been to that park nor east of Lewistown on Hwy 200. What a grand and lonely expanse of state from Grass Range to Winnett, Mosby, Jordan, and Circle, before reaching Glendive for the night. The following day in Makoshika was splendid! The park made me proud that Montana supports such a badlands extravaganza.

     Our accommodations at the low-budget Yellowstone River Inn (YRI) were totally satisfactory, and our meals at the in-house restaurant, a favorite of locals, were perfect. On our return trip, we stayed alongside the beautiful Yellowstone River valley to Forsyth, then jogged due west through vast lonely country to Melstone, then along the Musselshell River to Roundup, before turning north through spectacular range country to Grass Range and back to Hwy 200 for the familiar route home west from Lewistown.  And, yes, we dropped off our ballots before departing Great Falls, just in case, a perfect segue into the following:
     Throughout the season, whether jockeying peppers or a paintbrush, the politics of election 2024 have plagued and distracted me. Podcasts and daily online essays have become an obsession. Among numerous favorite voices, I regularly listen to historian, Heather Cox Richardson, traditional-conservative political analyst, Bill Kristol, and plain-spoken, fearless, patriot, Liz Cheney. I have always been intolerant of liars, whether they be high school students or presidential candidates; and I have always been a stickler for facts – data-based and reliably sourced. Those bottom-lines are basic for me, and they have led me to question the judgement of several neighbors, as well as former colleagues and students. The flagrant lies and dishonesty that clutter the ether render me fearful for America's seniors, young people, middle-class folks, global allies, and those immigrants who bring vision and value to our melting pot traditions. Even as I wonder whether my mother’s birth in Dog Pound, Alberta warrants bonus points in the Canadian immigration system, I’m updating my passport and pondering the possibilities of extended travel abroad. Nova Scotia? Tuscany? Perth? All seem preferable to spending the remainder of my “golden years” furious, but muted, under the reign of a senile and vindictive tyrant or his bizarre and dark understudy.  I’d prefer to emerge from next week’s election with our constitution and our democratic ideals intact. I remain hopeful.    

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.