The Improbable Shepherd Read online

  The lambs sold for the Muslim holiday this year as well as some private orders have replenished some of the money I borrowed from my barn and the construction budget to buy extra feed and second cutting hay. All but one of the lambs I had for sale has been sold. Two, rather. The first one was a surprise. He was born at the end of July and was the mirror image of his half brother. Every time I saw him in the barn I thought he and his brother were one and the same. The brother was caught and sent to the auction. He remained. The other day, to my chagrin, I came upon him. A three-month old ram lamb with small horns. It would be best were he to not stay. I hope to not have to feed him this winter. Something needs to be done.

  Also kept was a very, very, very fine horned Dorset Friesian four-month-old ram lamb. I’ll keep him for a replacement ram although that is beginning to be too many. Perhaps I’ll sell him to someone as a flock sire. What shall his name be? There now are William Greenleaf Flock Sire, the Great Pretender, Burgo Fitzgerald, and Doby Fitzgorman. Four rams. A little too many here, I might say. But you, young ram lamb, whose highly compromised life has been saved, shall have a very fine name indeed. The Young Prince comes to mind, although there has been a Young Prince before. I’ve already had a Bixby, who now shall live out his life at the farm of some good friends. The Duke of Gloucester is another possibility although there may also have been one in the flock some time ago. The right name shall present itself in due course.

  There is, for the first time in several years, enough wood cut and split for the winter. The wood room is half full, being emptied and refilled with great regularity, but holding, as I speak, about 10 weeks worth of firewood. Outside, in front of the wood room is a stacked four weeks worth of wood. I’ve started hoeing out the basement and there shall be a well ordered, most conventional place in there to get even more.

  It snows. The fire spins out its story in the living room fireplace. It is warm here. And still. December will arrive in four more hours. I wait for it. The November I love so is leaving. I hardly know to where. Without me having loved it enough. To be ready for winter is utmost in my mind. Lambing on this farm starts at Christmas. I am doing some things here that do not directly seem as if they are related to winter’s approach, but they are. The ducks have been moved in the carriage house to the pen where the market lambs were kept. It is thick with the coarse hay the lambs did not want. The ducks spill so much water on the carriage house floor in an effort to splash and to dip their beaks in water so they can breathe properly. If they spill out their water, as they do three times a day, they will spill it onto a thick bed of hay rather than all over the floor. I’m afraid of an ice buildup shortly. The temperatures have hovered, evenings and night time, in the low thirties. It soon shall be the season of water freezing weather. It would be best if the carriage house floor were not to become an ice skating rink.

  I hoed out a closet, or half of it, in the middle of the night last night. It’s one that I haven’t looked into for years. Or so it would seem. There were many surprises. Not all of the best kind. Some things full of moth holes I had long forgotten. But there was a set of sheets for a guest bed that I like very much and am frequently at a loss for spare ones. And some glasses I didn’t like at all and can’t imagine buying, but shall be grateful for. And a cashmere scarf. A wide, long, thick one. Not a flattering color, but one that shall be exceptionally warm. There was a lot to throw out. Something I am also very happy about. Perhaps there shall be enough room to store the many feather beds I have accumulated over the years. Neatly, that is. Instead of being jammed in. Helter skelter. Every which way possible.

  I have created a new window in this house of many windows. It is in the wall between the kitchen and the living room, a wall which was, once, before me, an exterior wall. It is immediately behind the wood stove a spot which sometimes can register over 110°F on a thermometer. The wall on its reverse side can read as low as 40°. There is a pretty place in which to sit by my large French doors, formidable in winter and inhospitable early spring and late fall which are, by the way, the times I would love to sit there, have tea, and watch the sunset. It also is where I now put the Christmas tree. Too cold to comfortably stand and decorate it. But, we do, nonetheless. Many years of collected ornaments to put up. We do it. However, this year, this year, it won’t be even faintly chilly in that part of the room. I am gaining, in small increments.

  THE EXTRA MILE

  THE BARN IS remarkably peaceful and still of late. The silence before the expected arrival of lambs and the attendant commotion that accompanies them. Oh, it’s not that lambs are so noisy. But it is that mothers looking for their little ones and the whole sorting out process can bring a little excitement into the otherwise quiet atmosphere. The big doors, a work in progress, however, are temporarily installed. And do break the wind. In addition to keeping the building warmer. Considerably. The temperature inside the barn is at least 15°F higher than outside. The experience of it is even warmer because we’ve been persuaded it is winter by some winds, of late, that resemble those of March. And it feels far worse outside than the thermometer indicates.

  Some ewes even look decidedly round. Others simply look sleek and well fed without any certain indication that they are bred. I had put three rather thinner ewes in the carriage house where the competition for hay and grain will not affect them. The water line to the barn froze but thawed today. I had let them out to the brook to drink. A nice way for me to drop the hay and feed it into mangers without interruption. One of the wood cutters had left a gate open, however, and the sheep, or rather some of them, managed to escape to the neighbors’, where they haven’t, by the way, gone this year. At least not en masse. I managed to get them home without much fuss. In fact and in my mind. However, I am going to announce to the men splitting wood that I’ll dock five bucks from each paycheck if they leave the gate open again.

  I’ve not thought through exactly how I want the barn set up this year. Or at least, I’ve thought through many possibilities, but nothing that is completely satisfying. Perhaps the best thing to do is to set up that which I know shall work and plan out the rest around that. One big manger fit perfectly into a space that held a keyhole feeder for 12. It is a nice one that Brett Miller made for me 8 or 10 years ago. It has stood a lot of abuse. The second one needs to be emptied from a manure pack that has blocked its use for a year or so. I’m making a 40-foot-long utility area for myself, similar to one I had when the barn went down. It used to be swept and limed almost every day. It will be nice to have it again.

  The Horned Dorsets that arrived with great promise last year have been a great disappointment. I’ve one decent ewe lamb out of them. Two are in the carriage house looking “not great.” One is the mother of the very nice ewe lamb and, as she nursed heavily, is entitled to be not in the best condition. All of the sheep’s fleeces have grown back somewhat. Thick. Very short. Very dense. The whole flock is, as hoped, warm enough for now. It is the hopeful time of year. I’ve saved a ram lamb born this summer to breed the young stock this coming summer. My two older rams look fine to me. Last year’s “replacement” looks good, too. He was the fastest growing lamb I’d had in a number of years. He is a fine young creature. I’ve pinned some hopes on him.

  The remaining Sable ewe is growing wider and wider. I hope she is not bred to the last Toggenburg buck that I had here, but if she freshens before February, she, to my dismay, has been. The only other possibility is that she is carrying more than one kid. A little doeling, born on Christmas, at a friend’s farm, is curled up next to the fire screen in the living room. Fortunately I have a 15-inch-high guard around it made of copper. She didn’t know how to suck until this morning when she suddenly looked at me and began to move her mouth in a kind of sucking motion. She has had five feedings today and is almost up to the required number of ounces on her own. I did all of the things that are possible to do for her when she came. Tube fed with a milk, egg, espresso coffee mixture. An injectable antibiotic, a B complex shot. And when
she started to scour, Pepto-Bismol and Neomycin. It stopped in a few hours. One of her back legs isn’t working correctly. The other is a bit crooked in an attempt to stabilize her gait. She will make it, however. She is a game little thing. I’ll miss her when she goes home.

  Christmas on the farm lasts for 12 days. We have, in our family, always celebrated Twelfth Night, January 6th. It had always seemed too intense to me to cram everything into one day, and therefore, Epiphany always was a welcome escape valve. Presents that are not quite finished can be finished over the 12 days. Things that didn’t get mailed can be. And friends and family can be loved and entertained as leisure. I made an incongruous dinner for Christmas Eve that nonetheless met with approval. Cassoulet de Castelnaudary has been a favorite dish in the family repertoire for seemingly forever. It is a slowly cooked dish of sausage and beans, peppers, tomatoes, and onions. It has been served here at Christmas Eve, traditionally, for a very long time. One of its chief advantages is that it can cook on the wood stove, slowly, for hours, and still taste good.

  One Thanksgiving found me and my children in Paris. I wanted us to have a dinner that was familiar to celebrate the holiday. I ordered cassoulet in a restaurant we were told specialized in the dish. The waiter tried to talk me out of it. “The children. No! Garlic!” he kept repeating. I insisted. You can imagine my delight when he returned, a smile on his face, pointing to the empty plates in front of the kids and said, “Madam. The children. Garlic. No!” and I lifted the lid from the terrine and pointed to its emptiness and said, “The children. Garlic. Oui!” But also on our Christmas table was a more recent addition to the menu. Cod fish. Baccala. We’ve been having that as well for several years. Needless to say, while many of the ingredients in both dishes are the same, there is a distinct difference between dried salt cod soaked in olive oil, and sausages and bacon cooked with beans. My family and friends all seemed to enjoy the meal. The combination is, I’m the first one to admit, peculiar. But it was all gone at the end of the evening.

  This was the first Christmas since sheep that I was almost satisfactorily organized. I started shopping in October. Had some gifts mailed in early December. Actually got the tree a few days early. It even was up in its stand before my son arrived. It seemed as if I would start to decorate it before Christmas Eve but that didn’t happen. It still has a few empty spots that I keep filling in. There are years of ornaments collected here and a missing box to be found. The last perhaps shall be on January 6th. Therefore I don’t feel terribly remiss to not be quite perfectly finished.

  We are entering a new year. I have some strong feelings of optimism this year that are new to me. And a few feelings of discouragement that have grown increasingly familiar. There is something about the way I managed Christmas this year, quite a bit more focused and possibly efficient than ever before, that is most encouraging. I hadn’t expected myself to improve the way I do things. Too much “putting out fires.” Too much giving way without trying hard enough. “To go the extra mile” are words written next to the front door of my house. Without doing that, progress will not be achieved. But I’ve been “showing up.” And that has resulted in its own kind of progress. Somehow this coming year has brought a touch of enthusiasm and promise with it. I am looking forward to it. My birthday is at the beginning of the year as well. There is something very nice in knowing that each day grew brighter and the sun shone longer as I grew into the world.

  THE PENHALIGAN AND MERRIMAN SISTERS

  TWIN EWE LAMBS arrived a couple of days ago. Fat, chunky, nice little creatures. Their mother is a sensible older ewe who freshened in the safest place in the barn and kept her girls there for several days. I brought her second cutting hay and she slipped outside for water from time to time. The lambs and their dam shall be bedecked with bright orange collars and shall stay forever. I had once thought that at a certain point I’d stop keeping replacement lambs and let the flock diminish naturally, but I’ve passed that point and find it impossible to resist keeping certain lambs to augment the herd, read to delight my heart. That means that they and I expect to be around and farming it for another eight or 10 years. I want their names to be pretty. The unclaimed names on my list are amusing for the most part rather than pretty and so I’ve not made my choices yet.

  Clearly it is naming season again. Of the doelings, two are Merrimans and two are Penhaligans. Adelaide Merriman’s girls are bigger, older, and stronger. Rebecca’s girls are Sables although one looks like a Toggenburg, albeit a black one. The other looks like a Saanen. They are supposedly Sables. I don’t know any more. The little white one is going to be a piece of work. She is the brightest looking little thing on the farm. She figured out almost immediately that the strange object in my hand, read bottle, was a source of delight. Milk, that is. It took her sister no less than three days to come to me of her own volition rather than having to be caught by one leg, thrown up into my right arm, and having the bottle’s nipple jammed into her mouth. The little black-and-white goat, her twin, looking like a black Toggenburg, is a little slower at everything. The white kid, who has just now become Verity Penhaligan, figured out how to escape from the pen in the carriage house in about 20 minutes after being moved into it from the pen in the cellar. When rescued from a knocked-over garbage can she decided to never again attempt leaving the pen.

  Glynnis is a skittish three-year-old goat who thinks that I am, perhaps, her enemy and she may be right. She races away from me in her pen every time she sets eyes on me. She freshened with a charming chocolate-brown single doeling about a week ago. To my dismay I realized Glynnis was missing one teat. The left side of her udder had become hard and swollen with milk with no way for it to be released. Her little one nursed quite nicely from the right side; however, it was apparent she was making too much milk even from one side to feed a single little goat. I caught her. Trapped her. Got her onto the milking stand and milked some from her swollen right side. When I put her back into the stall I realized there was a solution, Verity. I grabbed her and in a moment Verity knew what to do. She nursed on Glynnis and Glynnis stood for her. At least she seemed to. I had my shoulder digging into her flank and my free hand tightly grasping her lead cord. I fed her some corn. Backwards, a handful reaching behind me in the direction of her mouth. Thank goodness she has no horns. Then Verity’s sister realized there was something to be had and dove in as well, pushing Verity aside. I tried the same maneuver today. Glynnis’s bag wasn’t as full today as yesterday, so it is possible the twins nursed her quite on their own as well as her still as yet unnamed little girl, or she wasn’t making as much milk.

  I still may not be able to keep her. And so her look of distrust may be well grounded. This is something I may be able to stand. The way she stares at me. And she is right to doubt me now. I know someone who wants a goat for a brush hog. However, he is certain to want to breed her at some point. That may not be a feasible idea.

  The Wilcoxes, my vet and his wife, are due to arrive in about an hour. They’ll help me to decide what to do. Glynnis is a wonderful mother to her little doeling who dances around the pen with all of the joy that kid goats bring to the world. Another reason to not want to part with her. My motherless kids do not dance. Not for me anyway. They consider me to be the bad mother who only bottles them three times a day rather than intermittently as real goat mothers do all day long and so become excited upon seeing me rather than lay about, relaxed, or dance and play together. In other words, they try to jump all over me. They all live in the same pen with Glynnis. Today they all become disbudded. That, too, is an ordeal; however, they become totally anesthetized, and, in theory, won’t remember anything of it. The very fine chestnut-colored little buck shall be dehorned as well. He is sold to a friend for a flock sire, in exchange for work rather than cash. I need the work done so badly.

  I’ve been rereading Angela Thirkell, of late, fourth time around the Barsetshire series of novels taking place in a county in England. The people in said county are far more varied an
d the subcultures, which on occasion, do overlap, are also more varied than anything we experience in this neck of the woods. Some families have lived in Barsetshire for many hundreds of years. Some, perhaps, for thousands. And then there are the newcomers, who are either first or second generation, or perhaps even third. For the most part they marry among their own social class. On occasion, however, someone who doesn’t quite fit in, such as Lydia Merton, as an example, marries dramatically out of her class a man who successfully integrates part of himself into the world to which she belongs. A rare few leave the county, usually because of marriages.

  Each reading gives me a fresh insight into the life here. Everyone in Thirkell’s Barsetshire seems to be interdependent upon one another. Those systems of living have evolved over centuries. In this country, ours haven’t been in existence long enough. Families there were large and extended. There always was to be found someone whose particular gifts were the ones needed to do the job. Jasper, part Gypsy, is an example. He understood horses and people in a very deep sense. His grandmother was a witch who turned herself into a black hare. He manifested seemingly out of nowhere with just the right animal whenever a horse or a pony was needed. He appears throughout a half dozen of Thirkell’s books. As locked in as social class in England seems to us, there was fluidity as well. A young woman, born in one of the lower middle classes, rose above it with the aid of both an education and the mentoring of a well-meaning upper class matron. Her husband to be was from a wealthy brewering family (lower class, of course), went to Oxford and emerged looking and speaking like one of said matron’s sons’ friends, some of whom would be taken for a brewer’s son. He “passed.” And presumably their children shall as well, although not to be thought of as “county” for several generations, they shall float in and out of the county’s lives with ease.