Early season snakes on Prairie Island are less precocious than our pestiferous gophers. In contrast to those cheeky rodents that pop forth with unwelcome predictability on sunny days in February, sometimes even January, our snakes maintain a thankfully low profile early on. We rarely see any before mid-April. Both rodents and reptiles are now in full bloom. 

Today, while checking my gopher trap-line, I discovered a bull snake doubly caught in one of my traps. It (Note my politically-correct, gender-neutral subject.) must have had second thoughts about descending into the gopher hole, turned around before its tail cleared the gopher-sized hole in the guillotine trap, and sprang the guillotine when its head exited the hole. In short, it got caught about a foot behind its head and 18 inches from the end of its tail. I could see no sign of life, but . . . I don't do snakes at close quarters, dead or alive. I manned the camera while Jim approached the site cautiously. We both spotted a bull snake approaching from the west, six or eight inches from the hole entrance. Sounding relieved, Jim exclaimed, "You caught a slow learner. He escaped but now wants to return to that same hole." 

Wrong.

My trapped snake, tail now flicking with obvious signs of life, was still caught, but a second bull snake was now intending to occupy the hole. What we had was a Montana style traffic jam. Jim pulled the trap out of the hole, opened the guillotine,  and the formerly-incarcerated snake glided out, unfazed and undamaged, to join its comrade in subterranean comfort. May there be two gophers within--enough to provide a royal, reptilian repast for two. 

I wanted to capture a closer-up photo, but I caught what I caught. It should be noted that Weed is looking on at about the same distance as I. She and I have similar aversions.            

Recent weeks have felt jumpy. Scatter shot, but productive.

Calves are booster vaccinated and branded.

With the exception of one lamb that seems chronically puffy, all are castrated, docked, ear-tagged, and vaccinated. Nearly all have received a 2nd dose of vaccine, a boost against Clostridial diseases and tetanus. That job sounds benignly passive until you understand that we function without any sheep facilities. Working Prairie Island lambs is, indeed, western. We snatch individual lambs from among groups of ewes and lambs, carry or pedal them into close proximity to the barn door escape hatch, and scoot them out the door after the doctoring routine. Thankfully, most of our ewes are docile; they form placid barriers to greased-lightning lambs bent on evading our snatching forays. As for the puffy lamb, he has received several doses of ginger solution, a dose of bicarbonate of soda, and a dose of Clostridial anti-toxin. I remain at a loss about what ails him, but I think a regular burp of cud would be a step toward cure, and he is feeling and looking better.

Then there are the tomato and pepper seedlings mentioned in my previous blog. Nurtured through single-digit temperatures and blizzards, over half of them succumbed to what I suspect was a greens-hungry pack rat. All seedlings were thriving at my evening watering hour in late April; at dawn, 100% of the Early Girl tomatoes, 75% of our favorite Sweet Baby Girl cherry tomatoes, 50+% of the hybrid sweet peppers, and most of the hot pepper seedlings were gone, demolished, obliterated, with no remnant trace of leaves or stems. Our rat-bastard, dark-of-night raider left unscathed only a few, never-before-tried, full-sized tomatoes. So much for visions of summertime bushels of flavor-rich beauties to use liberally and share generously. We hastily moved our sparse inventory of survivors into a garden cart and the little red wagon from Katrina's youth. Depending on wind and temperature, we wheel them out of the garage during the day and regularly adjust their position to maintain all seedlings at an angle to capture sunlight.

As for Jury duty, if the clerk of court (whose name I shall not mention) is vindictive, I may be saddled with duty until death removes me from the potential juror pool. As per instructions on my April summons, I called the prescribed phone number to receive a voice message with further instructions, As per those further instructions, I showed up at the courthouse bright and early Monday morning (after busting ass to get AM chores done before heading to Great Falls). At the appropriate office, I was pointedly ignored by employees. Finally, one of them, hands on hips for added emphasis, informed me that I should have read Step 2 in the instructions and called on Saturday. If I had, I would know that jury selection and the trial had been postponed. I whipped out my summons and read from it, aloud and emphatically, those Step 2 instructions telling me to call after 6 PM on Friday. "Well," she countered, "the message was changed on Saturday." How grateful I am to be retired and have no outside job demands, Because of that, I had time--time to document the dismissive insolence of said office employee and share my experience with the clerk of court. It was cathartic! Like I stated earlier, I may be a potential juror until eternity, but I will neither tolerate insolence in taxpayer-funded employees nor let it go without response. Though that trip to Great Falls was an inconvenient waste of time, it had one benefit: I picked up a case of Ménage à Trois Midnight wine previously ordered. Cheers to retirement and a judicial system that is the best ever devised, despite a bad apple employee or two.

Having channeled my inner rage into a temperate and carefully-crafted letter to the clerk of court, I was energized to take a preliminary shot at a half-sheet painting of a sheep, one of my long-term subject matter nemeses. Fly-away Killer Curls is the result. As of now, I'm too close to it for analysis and critique, but it challenged me and brought back vivid memories: bringing Curls home from Canby, Oregon as a yearling comfortably ensconced in the back of my old Subaru Forester, his Overall  Grand or Reserve Champion Fleece awards year after year at the State Fair. (Was it four or five years? I don't remember.), his gentlemanly manners when being handled, and, finally, his penchant for efficiently killing other rams, a skill that ultimately led us to cull him. He was quite a guy; I'm glad I have photos and a desire to capture his essence in watercolors.            

​       

How we welcome this brief respite from ongoing wintry sequels. Our thermometer registered 60 degrees today as I transplanted the last tomato and pepper seedlings into larger pots in the greenhouse. Heat lamps suspended overhead and a furnace-like heater underneath are my weapons against another convergence of arctic air and Pacific moisture forecast to arrive shortly. Last week, when we dropped to single digit temps at night, my greenhouse watering bucket froze over, but the earlier-transplanted tomatoes survived. If no bulbs burn out, if no fuses blow, and if no power outages sabotage my insurance plan, I look forward to a bountiful harvest: bushels of bite-sized "Sweet Baby cherry tomatoes", boatloads of juicy red slicers, and enough peppers to eat fresh like popcorn and freeze for future use. But first . . . some sunshine.

Our last-born lamb, out of a first-time yearling mom, arrived late Sunday afternoon, freeing me to luxuriate in bed, uninterrupted by 2:00 and 5:00 AM alarms jangling me into yet another barn check. Sleep is welcome, though I miss those pleasures unique within the barn at night--moments of humor as groups of like-minded lambs in mixing pens race at top speed, bank off reclining ewes, and use them as launch pads for moves worthy of gold medals, as well as moments of peace among cudding, contented ewes awaiting delivery. 

Early morning and late afternoon chores and mud management remain arduous, but mid-day hours feel miraculously free to focus on my watercolors; a perfectly timed show in Lewistown has provided impetus and a chance to submit up to five mini pieces. Feeling that small might be safe, I dug into watercolor combined with collage, and completed several duds, along with a couple that I thought were display worthy, including this hot orange/cobalt violet mirage piece. That was before learning that collage pieces will not be accepted into the show. Oh well, working small has bolstered exploration beyond collage--new pigments, new combinations of pigments, and a subject that has given me fits in the past: sheep. Working from photos of our old Border Leicester buck, Curls, I managed a couple that I think are keepers. Visions of a larger painting of the old boy now keep me awake. I'd like to get one done in time to submit to our state watercolor society's juried fall show. 

Until then, sleep can wait.    

I'm resigned to yet another blast of what NOAA is labeling, "wintry blend." Such a creative turn of phrase from sober-sided meteorologists! I prefer Dr. Seuss's expression for such unwelcome precipitating yuck from on high: oobleck.  (Writing of precipitation reminds me of a cartoon that I always displayed when launching into general concepts of solutions, cellular equilibrium, diffusion, etc. in my high school Biology class. I paraphrase the caption: "Don't be left behind as a precipitate; be part of the solution." My students rarely laughed, but I always chuckled at the joke, as well as their failure to appreciate its humor.) In any case, our wintry blend consists of north-wind-driven snow, a repetition of the same old/same old that we've been receiving for what seems an eternity. I again fed in crowded corrals and spread fresh straw in barns to encourage lambs to spend the night inside. My grim mood lightened amidst their joyous response to dry bedding: cork-screw sun-fishing, high leaps and fancy arabesques, madcap relay races into and out of their respective shelters--once in pursuit of a sad killdeer trying to huddle unobtrusively under shelter. Though I dread yet more precipitation and cold, though my legs ache from slogging through ever-deepening mud, though the job of digging out accumulated layers of wet bedding will be daunting, for the moment, I'm trying to "be part of the solution." That effort fuels my optimism. So, too, does this photo of triplets hunkered into their cozy and exclusive nighttime digs.           

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

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

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

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

Morning Show:
At 5 AM, a granny ewe, fiercely positive that a lamb freshly delivered by another ewe was her own, gave me a run for my money. Thankfully, the birth mom hung with me as I ran interference with the determined foster mom and packed the newborn to a warm, strawed jug, where a twin sibling soon joined the first-born.  

Three hours later, after spreading hay and releasing ewes from the barn to eat outside, I was busily mucking out the night pen when an old ewe appeared at the door, marched to an interior gate, and waited patiently for me to open it so she could move to a lambing jug.  She lay down before going into the jug--giving me time to get straw behind her--and delivered a lamb in the lane. Shame on me for harboring disparaging thoughts about how she could have licked wet lamb #1 a bit more thoroughly. Certainly she had ample reason to be distracted. When I returned to the barn thirty minutes later, after a quick breakfast break, she had delivered lambs 2 and 3 and had all three spiffy clean and sucking. 

Late Day Wrap-Up:
​I look forward to the night routine and linger alongside the night pen longer than is necessary in order to listen, observe, and prolong my sense of peace and purpose. No matter the hour, nearly all ewes are cudding, and the soft, moist sound of it indicates that all is well. The ewes trying to sleep groan with each exhalation in a rhythmic group-moan that suggests multiples within and restricted lung space. They often get up to change positions, stretch, and move about. When ready to lay down, the older matrons assert well-earned senior authority, pawing at younger reclining ewes and forcing them to get up and yield their warm nests.  Young novices learn how to avoid conflict--keeping their heads down, avoiding eye contact, and deferring whenever a veteran looks askance at them: good advice for all adolescents eager to achieve adult status. 

Bottom line: lambing barn news sustains and reassures me. Would that FOX and MSNBC could be equally uplifting.

   

Media may credit Punxsutawney Phil's shadow for the giddy ascents and eye-popping descents of our roller coaster weather, but my experience confirms that two events reliably predict wintry blasts better than Phil or NOAH. During my teaching career, junior prom weekend--featuring gossamer gowns, impossibly high heels, spectacularly sculpted hairdos, impeccable tuxedos, and expensive dinners in town--guaranteed blowing snow, zero visibility, and slick or slushy roads and sidewalks. Likewise, sheep shearing invites horizontal snow and sub-zero temperatures. Our sheep got sheared on Super Bowl Sunday. That night the mercury dropped to nearly zero and seven inches of snow fell. The newly bald ewes, packed like proverbial sardines into the barn, were reasonably comfortable during the night. Wednesday brought moderating temperature and partial melting. Today, our snow is like shrapnel, barreling in on arctic wind. On Friday night we expect to bottom out at minus 16. 

The week had wrinkles beyond weather. We were horrified when our shearer found a tick on the first ewe sheared. The source of that unwelcome freeloader became clear on the second ewe in line--one of eight outside sheep that had joined our ewes in late October to be bred by our buck. Each sweep of the shearing blades exposed fresh nests of those demon bloodsuckers, dozens of them, maybe hundreds, undoubtedly surprised to be so suddenly revealed in what had been deep cozy hiding places within the fleece. Each one of the seven flock mates was similarly parasite-loaded. All eight ewes had been purchased from a neighbor whose flock is well-known by our shearer to have a serious tick problem. ARGH! You can imagine my enthusiasm for packing those fleeces into wool bags. Our shearer said nothing, but I would guess that he was disgusted. 

The story could be nastier. Our ewes and the eight newcomers had been widely dispersed on pasture with the exception of two nights and one day spent crowded inside the barn just prior to shearing. Thus, not all of our ewes were infested and of those scattered ewes who were hosting ticks, the number of parasites is low. Supposedly shearing removes many of the adults and most of their glued-onto-wool eggs. Those bits of good news did not alter our response. After the eight outside ewes went home and winter paused for a day, we treated all of our ewes and bucks with insecticide. Although ticks spread through sheep-to-sheep contact, we cleaned out every bit of potentially contaminated bedding from the barn. We will re-treat all the sheep in two weeks in hopes of exterminating any new adults that hatch from eggs during the interim. That timeline puts a few of our ewes awfully close to lambing, but we will make every effort to be gentle, move them slowly, and finish the job with as little stress as possible. May that be the final chapter in this tastelessly titillating tale of treacherous, traitorous, traumatizing ticks. 

This morning began with a near disaster, a wrinkle averted. When I entered the barn to unlock the door and let ewes out, a brockle-faced ewe was stretched out groaning, not quite on her back but tipped over far enough that she could not roll onto her brisket. A boost and then support for her hindquarters when she first stood were all that she needed, but my help came none too soon, for she was wobbly and quite bloated.    

On the bright side:
- Each layer of fresh snow allows us to feed repeatedly atop previous feedings in sheltered areas without worrying about contamination.
- Outdoor and indoor Christmas lights continue to bring joy and feel appropriate. Likewise, Pandora's Classical Christmas station, playing now as I compose, continues to fit perfectly.  
- The vat of turkey/wild rice soup that I made last Saturday--featuring big chunks of carrots, onions, mushrooms, and celery--will last through the upcoming weekend.
- My daily trek to and from the mailbox on cross country skis is fun and keeps me warm. 
- All mats are cut and assembled and frames are ordered for my new paintings destined for Western Art Week in mid March.
- Tomato and pepper seeds have arrived.
- The Christmas cactus that began blooming in mid-November continues to radiate hot orange splendor.
- A tall stack of must-read books awaits, should spare time hang heavily.     

  

​Lazy mornings provide comfort during this dark month. I revel in a preliminary cup of coffee while yet in PJs. Our still-lovely Christmas tree provides all the light needed to pour that first cuppa. Moving from window to window, I track the sun's ascent as it first gilds fields on the Fairfield Bench, then drops to the Ashuelot Bench, and finally creeps into our valley. In that earliest light, I try to locate the ewes. Always together in a colonial bedding ground but individually camouflaged in  a snowy nest selected at dusk, they often elude me in the faint dawn light, sometimes disappearing in the highest northwest corner of their pasture, occasionally--when Chinook winds are particularly fierce--downwind from the chokecherry thicket, or, most often, in the corner closest to the house. From that latter location, I imagine them listening carefully to the same weather report that I'm hearing and deliberating on their plans for the day based on our shared forecast. Before full light, they arise unhurriedly, enjoy a final satisfying burp of cud, and eventually move en masse to the north end of the pasture where sunlight first strikes their pasture. There they begin their routine, digging vigorously through our now-crusty snow for tidbits of grass. Any lucky strike that yields green treasure gets magically telegraphed, and others rush to share (or fight over) the cache.

I envy their industry. Jim and I await full daylight before venturing forth to feed heifers, shovel snow if needed, and retrieve our daily paper. We indulge in news, breakfast, and more coffee before rolling out hay for cows and ewes. Afterward, I paint, motivated by my commitment to be part of MT Watercolor Society's larger exhibit during Western Art Week in March. Last week, I broke from watercolors to obsess for three days on a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, a Christmas present from New Hampshire relatives. Thankfully, our puzzle-driven daughter Katrina came home for the weekend and  boosted the project to completion. Her help was welcome, despite the fact that she hoarded promising pieces, thus depriving me of several brief, but satisfying, moments of triumph at finding yet another perfect fit. The final assemblage warranted a toast. Today, after repeated unsatisfactory efforts to photo-capture ewes hidden within their landscape of dormant grass and snow hummocks, I opted to share my best shot and move on. Thus, January passes.