Another Day, Another Life Saved

Lambing season has begun! On the 29th of January, I went out to check for eggs and found Cassiopeia in labor. She was lying on her side, grunting and straining, with only a stream of goo hanging from her backside. I gathered that she had not been laboring for long, but she was already tired. Ewes usually give birth standing up.

Conventional wisdom states that when you see a ewe in labor, you should run inside, boil water, sit down and have a cup of tea, and by the time you have finished drinking it, the lamb will be born safe and sound. So, I went inside and set the kitchen timer for half an hour. I couldn’t stand waiting that long, though, so I went back outside in half the time. Cassi was still down, but now there appeared from her hind end four toes and a nose, a perfect presentation. I spent the next fifteen minutes or so helping Reed bring in firewood.

When I checked Cassi again, there’d been progress, but the poor girl was really thrashing and straining. She looked sore and exhausted. So, I helped pull the lamb. It was not easy. I could only pull so hard without risking hurting the lamb. I had to massage and try to stretch the vulva over the lamb’s forehead, but it just wasn’t coming. I considered doing an emergency episiotomy, but I had no sterile equipment, experience, or anesthetic, nor am I set up to be able to do stitches. But before I got that desperate, the lamb came out, a little white ramling. A big boy!

I dragged him around to Cassi’s head, but she didn’t pay him any attention; she just lay there panting and gasping. I had to use a wad of hay to clean the lamb’s face so he wouldn’t aspirate amniotic fluids. Within a minute, Cassi recovered enough to start licking him. I went back inside to prepare a bucket of warm water with molasses to help get her strength back.

Cassi happened to be in the front half of the barn, by herself, so I had closed the gate to keep the rest of the sheep from bothering her. When I came back out with the molasses water, Firefly, the matriarch of the flock, was by the gate. I thought it might comfort Cassi to have an old hand at mothering nearby, but Firefly must’ve sent out a signal. As soon as I opened the gate to let her through, the whole flock came charging through the barn’s back door and they surged through the gate faster than I could close it, so I gave up trying. Everybody sniffed the newborn, sniffed Cassi fore and aft, checked out the blood and discharge on the floor, and then sauntered out. It’s interesting how they all rush over to greet a newborn. It’s like a big party that only lasts a minute or so and then they leave mother and baby alone. I wonder what they communicate in that time. Is it so the lamb gets to know his flock? Or for the flock to get to know and forever recognized the lamb?

When the party broke up, Firefly stayed on, and slurped up every drop of Cassi’s molasses water. I figured poor, elderly Firefly probably needed a boost, herself.

Cassi never did properly clean the lamb. That first bath is critical, especially in cold weather. A good, rough licking stimulates circulation and prevents wet, sticky wool from sapping body heat. I went inside for a terrycloth towel and scrubbed him as dry as I could. A towel is no substitute for a mother’s tongue, however. The lamb started to shiver. Normally, that’s not a bad thing as the shivering generates muscle heat that helps the lamb to dry. I left them for a few more minutes, hoping Cassi would take over.

She didn’t. I came back to the barn to find the lamb shivering hard, his back hunched like an angry cat, with ears drooping weakly. I tried to steer him under Cassi to nurse, but he resisted my moving him around. I pried his mouth open to get to a teat and found even the inside of his mouth felt cold.

So I put the pair of them in the treatment room over in one corner of the barn, and went inside for a bottle. I milked Cassi into the bottle and stuffed the nipple in the lamb’s mouth. He resisted until he figured out there was something warm and delicious there, and then he drank all of the small amount I’d been able to squeeze out of Cassi. Her teats were softer than they’d been at the time of birth, so I figured the lamb had already been nursing, but I wanted to see some milk get into him, myself.

But he was still shivering violently, and his wool still felt damp. I scrubbed him some more with the towel, but it wasn’t going to be enough to warm him

I didn’t want to bring him in the house lest it break the bond with his mother, so I heated a rice pack* in the microwave, wrapped it in a baby blanket, put on ski pants, prepared another bucket of warm water for Cassi, and went to the barn to sit with the lamb until he warmed up. I settled myself on the hay-strewn floor with the rice pack between my legs and the blanket draped over my legs. I put the lamb in the middle and wrapped the blanket around him so that only his nose showed.

And there we sat. Cassi drank her “tea.” She ate some hay, sniffed at her lamb, and sniffed at me. I talked quietly to her, telling her what a good, brave mother she was. She had her nose right in my face, but because she was Cassi, a former bottle lamb who has remained very tame and friendly, I trusted her not to suddenly bash me in the nose. She seemed to perfectly trust me, too, that I had her best interest in mind, and I was not going to harm her lamb.

Gradually, the lamb’s shivering eased. Cassi finished her snack and lay down. I put the swaddled lamb against her shoulder and curved the rice pack along his other side. Cassi bent her neck down over his back, cuddling him. I heaved myself up off the floor and left them.

At my next check 45 minutes later, the lamb had improved. Both were on their feet, and I saw the baby, heretofore to be known as Wrasse, dive under Cassi to nurse. He was no longer shivering. His ears were perky, his head up, and he even jumped around a bit. Another day, another life saved.

Wrasse at two days old, enjoying the winter sun with his mother, Cassiopeia

*A rice pack is a comforting source of moist heat, great for tense shoulders or other muscle aches. It’s also good for warming a cold lamb! To make your own, cut a piece of cloth about 20”x20”. Exact dimensions don’t matter. Flannel works well! Fold in half. With Right sides together, stitch along the long side and one short side. Fold down the raw edges of the remaining short side and hem. Turn right-side-out. Stitch three channels lengthwise. Fill each channel with uncooked, dry rice. White rice is best since it won’t go rancid. Use about two cups of rice altogether. Machine- or hand-stitch the hemmed edge closed.

To use, microwave on high a maximum of two minutes.

A Wintry Mix—of Feelings

Two thirds of the way through January, it is finally snowing! We had a bit of snow in late November and a little in December, but not enough to get excited about. It melted not long after it fell. Instead, there I was on New Year’s Eve, sitting in the backyard on a 53-degree day, sorting the wool I want to take to the mill for processing. It shocked me to realize the temperature was about 70 degrees above normal for that time of year!

That’s terrifying.

I have never doubted that human-induced climate change is real. Even as a child in the 1960s, I could see that people were doing awful things to the natural environment. I’ve been an anti-pollution activist since the age of eight.

So now we are seeing the fruits of our folly: bigger and more frequent storms, drought, fires, floods, cold snaps where it’s supposed to be warm and warm snaps where it’s supposed to be cold. Maple trees are dying here in Vermont, fleeing to Canada. Ticks have moved in from the South. Our gardening zone has changed from three to four. Working outside on a warm New Year’s Eve, I wondered if this would be known as the Year Without a Winter or, worse, the First Year Without A Winter.

I do what I can with my own little self but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the enormity of the problem. I could stress and cry and wring my hands (I do that, sometimes) but worrying doesn’t solve anything; it just eats at my health and well-being. Thus, I turn my focus onto this day, and this moment, and the things I’m thankful for. While I’d be much happier if it were a good, proper, tick-killing, maple nurturing 20 below right now, I can also appreciate the fact that the sheep had liquid water in their tub this morning. I didn’t have to carry them a bucket of warm water from the house. The rabbit's’ bottles were still fine. I didn’t have to swap out frozen ones for thawed. I could scoop chicken feed and operate the latch to their door with bare hands. The air felt refreshing instead of brutal. The roads are wet but clear. I don’t have to go anywhere today, but if I did, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not the car would start. No doubt about it, homestead work is a whole lot harder in freezing weather. But while I appreciate today’s ease, I am simultaneously grieving, wondering what’s to come in the summer, and next year, and the year after. I have little hope that humanity will rally in time. Meanwhile, I live in a strange bubble of disconcertingly mixed feelings.

For now, for this moment on this day, I guess I’ll throw on a hat and a light jacket and go walk my dog amid large flakes of gently falling snow, seeking beauty wherever I can.

Sorting wool on New Year’s Eve 2022. 53 degrees F!

Transitions

Home for the winter!

The sheep typically come home around Thanksgiving time. This year was no different. The weekend just after the holiday saw a significant amount of snow. Snow is a deal-breaker for me in the fall! The sheep can paw through a couple of inches, but any more than that and it gets harder for them to find grass, and harder for me to move fences. Heavy snow will weight down the nets, too, and I’ve had escapees because of that.

So, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I backed the van into the paddock, opened the back door, put some alfalfa pellets on the floor, and seven willing volunteers jumped right in. I caught three more as they milled about and guided them into the side door. That was enough for a load and I took them home. The holdouts needed to be corralled into the sheep-shelter-turned-catch-pen, tied to the rails, and led one at a time to the van. Not as easy, but it could be worse.

And then they were home. My daily life changed considerably. No more daily walks to the field. No 30-90 minutes of work moving fences, the shelter, water tub, salt bin, and charging wagon. Instead of heading to the field at 10 or 11, I do wintertime chores between 8 and 9 most days. It takes 10-20 minutes to pull armfuls of hay off the round bales out front and fill the mangers inside the barn, and barely a minute more to carry a bucket of water from the house to their basin in the barnyard. When it’s over 25 degrees, I can get water from the spigot at the back of the house. Any colder than that and I have to get warm water from the laundry room instead.

There’s time in the winter, time to hang out with the sheep, talk to them, and pet the ones that like petting. When snow covers the garden and the last jar is put by in the basement, there’s time for music, for art, for sewing, reading, learning, socializing, and sometimes even a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t mind the snow. I don’t mind shoveling; I love to cross-country ski. I take delight in the demise of the year’s biting insects.

By spring, however, I’ll be tired of this routine and itching to get back to the field and garden. That’s the beauty of the seasonal life of homesteading. I enjoy each phase and each season as it comes, and before I get too stuck in a rut of routine, it changes. As the English say, “Change is as good as a holiday.” I quite agree!

Fall Shearing

By October, the winter lambs are ready for their first haircuts. It’s an exciting time. First of all, these babies have no idea what shearing is all about. Having been out in the field all summer, they’re not overly tame. Even the bottle lambs, who run up to humans, eagerly anticipating ear- and chest rubs, don’t like to be caught and tied. That, alone, is enough to send them into a tizzy, leaping and straining against the collar and rope, trying their best to get away. Imagine setting to a wild beast like that with sharp scissors and cutting off their wool to a quarter inch of the skin without nicking them.

Case in point, Elderberry. She was the first lamb born here in the winter of 2022. Given my naming theme of berries this year, it was obvious from the start what she would be called. Elderberry was unusually large for a Navajo-Churro x Shetland x Border-Leicester lamb. Nearly black in color, bright-eyed and energetic, she’s a keeper!

But this big girl wanted nothing to do with shearing.

I shear out in the field, without access to electricity. I use a good pair of kitchen scissors for the job, the kind that comes with its own sharpener, which I use two or three time during each shearing. I don’t do Sheep Wrestling in Twenty Easy Steps. I simply tie the sheep to a tree, post, or their shade shelter and start with whichever body part the sheep presents first, or at that which seems to offend her the least. Usually, I start along the spine, and then work my way down the sides and around the front of the neck. Elderberry was thrashing around so much that I felt a need to straddle her, holding her tightly between my knees, and cup her chin so I could shear down the sides of her neck. She didn’t like that much, but it conveyed to her the futility of continuing to fight me.

She was still wiggly when I returned to the task of opening up the fleece along her spine, but as I pulled away swaths of long, thick wool, a transformation came over her. My hand felt hot down there inside her fleece, next to her skin. As cool air touched her, I could see her eyes change. Sheep don’t express their emotions as clearly as dogs do, but there are signs to read in the position of the head, ears, and posture. Elderberry seemed surprised, and also content. From that moment, she stood stock still for the rest of the session, even allowing me to do the ticklish spots down her chest, under tail, and between her hind legs without a twitch of complaint.

Not that the entire shearing was uneventful, but the eventfulness came from other quarters.

I find the sheep are more comfortable being shorn within sight of their companions. I get right in the day’s paddock and work surrounded by the whole flock. My dog, Welley, comes in, too. He sometimes sniffs noses with his charges, but usually just finds a shady spot to lie down until I’m ready to throw his frisbee some more. His job is to keep the ram from becoming a nuisance. Hawthorn is generally pretty laid back, but I know I can’t trust him to not sneak up and use his head to let me know these girls belong to HIM. If I catch him backing up to ram me, all I have to do is shake a finger at him and say, “No, we don’t do that. Move along, now.” The key there is to keep an eye on him, which I can’t do while shearing. If he starts to hang out uncomfortably close to me, I call the dog. Hawthorn learns fast, though. Lately, all I have to say is, “Welley, come!” and Hawthorn decides the other end of the paddock is where he actually wants to be.

Meanwhile, Blackberry, a young ram born last winter, wanted my attention. He was a bottle lamb, which turned him very friendly, but also annoyingly bold if he doesn’t get the attention he craves. He stayed close to me almost the whole time I worked on his big sister. I had on a canvas vest with a lot of pockets. He managed to get ahold of a zipper pull and amuse himself by opening and closing that pocket. He liked the elastic toggle on my garden shoes, too. He’d give it a pull and let it go. Thwwwwapp! Thwwwwwapp! And then he’d just come over and lean on me, oh so lovingly, and nibble on the bare skin of my elbows and legs. That hurts! I had to bop him on the nose a couple of times with the back of a finger to get him to stop.

A professional shearer could do the job in less than five minutes. It takes me forty-five. But I don’t mind. Shearing time is a good opportunity to watch the flock, listen to them, enjoy the cool air on my own skin, pay attention to bird song, hear the wind in the trees, admire the fall colors, and just appreciate the privilege of working outside in such a beautiful place.

At the end, there’s a bagful of wool; soft, beautiful, and full of potential.

Elderberry before shearing.

A week later, Elderberry is already growing a new coat for the winter.

Early September

It’s hard to know where to begin when starting a blog a dozen years into being in business. So, I’ll start with today:

It’s raining. Canada geese are beginning to migrate south. Cool nights remind us that frost is coming, but not quite yet. There will still be beans, tomatoes, and peppers to harvest in the coming days. The dry beans aren’t quite dry. The summer squash is slowing down, but the winter squash is coming along nicely. We have 28 bales of hay in the yard, 21,000 pounds all told, transported from a farm two miles away by my husband and myself, in a two-bale trailer we pull behind our “farm truck” aka Town and Country van with rubber mats on the floor for transporting sheep.

The sheep are still out to pasture half a mile from home. It’s breeding season, so the ram is starting to get a bit testy. I have to keep an eye on him when I’m out with the flock.

The lambs, at about six months of age, are growing like weeds. Their wool is gorgeous. It’s time to shear them, but it’s also time to dig potatoes, harvest grapes, aronia berries, elderberries, and apples, and keep up with the snap beans, chard, and tomatoes. Late summer mushrooms are coming into their prime. If I don’t make time for long walks in the woods, I will miss out. It’s a crazy busy time of year, but I wouldn’t trade this way of life for anything.

It’s also a season for craft fairs. The Champlain Valley Fair has ended, but the Underhill Harvest Market is coming right up. I look forward to meeting neighbors and customers face-to-face, a joy especially sweet after Covid.

Today, I did bookkeeping. Tomorrow, I’ll dig potatoes. The day after, if the weather is nice, I’ll shear a sheep or two. Being outside is beautiful. It’s so green here. The very air smells full of life. I’m thankful every day for the privilege of homesteading, even on our tiny scale.

Ash Grove Farm: How It All Began

Ash Grove Farm, established 2010, had its beginnings many years earlier as an experiment to answer the question, “How much organic food can a family grow in a small space?”

Over the years, in a wide variety of settings, my husband and I grew food whenever I could.  We had vegetable gardens and planted fruit trees.  We got laying hens.  We bought a pair of goats, thinking to milk them, but they were Pygmy goats and not worth the effort of twice-daily milking seven days a week, 365 days a year, for the tiny quantities we got.  They became pet lawnmowers and 4-H projects for the kids.

Then came the day I visited a local, grass-fed dairy farm to ask about purchasing raw milk.  After an hour-long conversation, I went home with a jar of milk and a part-time job!  For the next seven years, I did the 4:00 a.m. milking a few days a week, along with many other farm chores.  Having been a registered nurse early in my adult life, and a home-schooling mom and freelance writer after that, I learned that I loved farming! I loved learning how to understand the cows and care for them.  I decided I wanted a farm of my own, but with animals a middle-aged woman could handle on her own, please!

Being a fiber artist, I chose sheep.  I liked the size, easy lambing, and hardiness of primitive breeds, so I bought a flock of 22 Navajo-Churro sheep.  I found their wool to be a bit coarse, so I added a Shetland ram and adopted a couple of homeless Border-Leicester ewes with glorious results as far as wool quality and texture. The only problem was we were still trying to raise as much food as possible on a small acreage, too small to support 22 grazers who needed fresh forage every day.

Enter the community.  A nearby horse farmer had a field he wasn’t using.  Later, another neighbor’s riding mower broke down and she invited my sheep to mow her field.  Adjacent landowners wanted four-legged mowers, too. Over the years, people moved away and their fields were no longer available to me,  but some new owners were intrigued with the notion of a property that came with sheep!

Currently, there are five properties along a gravel road half a mile from my home that host the sheep throughout the grazing season.  I walk there daily to move the flock to fresh forage, using electric fencing to give them only one day’s worth of feed at a time.  We make a circuit around those five properties that lasts from late April through late November.  The sheep spend winters—our lambing season—on our little homestead, where I can tend them as many times a day as needed.

The sun and rain makes the grass grow. Grass makes the sheep and their wool grow. By poking their sharp little hooves into the soft ground as they graze, the sheep make pockets that collect rainwater and allow it to sink into the soil instead of running off into nearby streams.  Manure and dead plant parts get stomped in as well, sequestering carbon into the soil.  These nutrients further help the grass to grow, drawing even more carbon out of the atmosphere.

Given my mix of breeds, each sheep in the flock produces a unique fleece ranging in color from black to white to grays and browns Some fleeces are great for weaving and felting.  Others spin up into beautiful yarn.  Each purchase of wool, whether raw, washed, or washed and carded, comes with a brief bio of the sheep who grew it.