Mia is doing OK, though she lost her lambs. After I wrote to you yesterday she gave birth to two stillborn tiny prem lambs. The crying from that wee sheep was harrowing. I shifted her and Mama out of the middle pen after the worst of the messy business was over and put them in the North pen, she just stood at the gate crying to go back. But she had to be somewhere very clean after all that. 
Then I worked as we waited for John to come home so he could drive the red truck with Mia in the stock trailer to the vets. The wind kept building from the South. The North side in the lee of the wind was eerily calm. It was like the North side of the barn was another world. 
I cleaned and toddled about in the barn for the rest of the morning so I could watch Mia closely. As time passed the noise from the winds became horrendous. I shut the South doors and all I could hear was the banging and crashing of doors as they strained at their leashes. In and out crash, in and Out crash. The barn was literally rocking. Mia and Mama snoozed and poor wee Mia healed.
Later I led Mia into a pen of her own so that I could transfer her to the trailer later. Though I was not sure how I was going to do this in gale force winds. Then I realised that all the animals had come back into the barn: the calves and Daisy were inside from their playgrounds, Hairy McLairy standing at Daisy’s shoulder. All the roosters, (I have caught all but one last elusive hen) guineas, dogs, cats, the lot, they were all in the barn with me. All standing listening. Listening to the weather build. The wind hitched up and screamed and the big doors bowed inwards like a sides of wooden ship. The small doors smacked and shuddered. There was a huge smash and every head swivelled to Daisy’s stall. Daisy looked around and back at us as if to say. My door just smashed into its own lintel. It is bent. Broke. Jammed sideways. Wrecked. Hey. I can’t get out. You will have to let me in with the calves so that I can get to water. Mia stood in her lonely pen wide eyed. The roosters settled back down. 
Then I realised that I could not open my own South doors either, the winds were now gale force, opening a door into that wind was now impossible. I could hear things smashing at the walls from the outside. There was a constant ring like the halyards at the top of a mast, the percussion section was out of control. To leave the barn I would have to go out Mama’s North door walk through the paddock, back around the barn and go from there. I walked out that way to go to the house but when I rounded the corner I was flattened by the wind. I must have walked into a particularly strong gust. I was literally forced to the ground and TonTon flew back into me. We crouched and scuttled back around the barn, along the wall and back inside the barn and so I stayed. It felt safer in here. Though the barn was rocking like a boat that special softness sat with us all.
Mia in her little South pen began to wail for Mama. 
She began to cry like a cat. The little sheep, her miscarriage forgotton, started taking running leaps at the gate in the little pen, standing on her hind legs like Pan looking for a way out. Baaing loudly over the thrashing of the wind. Why am I locked up? Why am I locked up? WAAAHY!!
We listened as the wind rose another decibel and watched the big doors curve in and out. Like they were a great bellows sucking in and out. Let me OUT! Called Mia. The walls are going to fall on me! I want my MAMA!
So I sat on a bale of straw and called the vets. I told her that Mia had cleaned up, that she was trying to jump out of her stall, leaping about on her hind legs trying to find a way out, trying to stuff her sheepy body through the slats in the gate. Yes, Eating and drinking, peeing and pooing, and what about this wind? She said it was probably not a good idea to bring a trailer across the prairie to them , the winds over there were even worse. I wondered how they knew that. She asked a few more questions, the answers satisfied her so I was told to give her another antibiotic injection. And come in tomorrow to pick up a few more meds. Stay home, they said. Fine with me, I said.
And then we (We being my animals and I as they all go quiet and eavesdrop when I am on the phone) called John at work to say no need to come home early. No vets. He said, what is that noise. We are in a maelstrom. I said. I think we are off to Kansas. Well, it is not that windy over here he said.
Get off the phone already and let me OUT wailed Mia. (well almost everyone goes quiet when I am on the phone). Well, she sounds back to normal, John said. Relief smiling through his voice.
So I gave in and led her back to the North pen with her Mother. And we waited out the storm in the barn. Mia took up her life’s work again and gave TonTon the hurry up. 
He was just checking to see if she was better!
And just in case you missed how truly enormous mama is getting. 
It was noisy but nice in there. Someone does not like the spotlight.
Good morning. It is almost dawn again. At my 4AM check this morning Mia was sat out in the yards with Mama, bright, alert and very much alive. I cannot believe she survived. She is a very hardy wee sheep. Miserable to lose her lambs. Enough said I think.
And thank YOU. Your response to our first crisis was brilliant. Strong, sensible and comforting. I thought long and hard about whether I should show you the darker side of farming. Whether this would put you all off reading. Whether the little farmy blog would collapse under the weight of it. But I decided that as you trust me to give you an image from yesterday, you also trust me to tell the truth without sensation but with feeling. We are allowed Feelings. So thank you.
And judging by all the fantastic comments and messages I received over the last while, I was right. You are all as pragmatic as you are gentle. You did not shy away. It is life after all. And as we sat out the terrible winds in the barn yesterday afternoon I thought about how I was not alone out there. I constructed sentences and ordered my thoughts to tell you all about our day, and this my friends, is a wonderful gift to a solitary farmer girl.
And as a few of you said, to farm sustainably we can only have a very small number of animals because we only have a small amount of land. I am not dealing with a flock of thirty or forty. I am dealing with a flock of three. This makes it tougher as it is all so intensely personal. Our decisions are up front and sometimes bloody and they are not softened by numbers.
I sat out there in the barn and thought about the pioneer women, who only had one cow and a couple of sheep or pigs and limited feed and too many kids and I thought about how they also must have grieved if they lost an animal. How they must have bashed the pans onto the stove and scrubbed the table extra hard with their jaws set and their eyes shining with hidden tears. And wondered how they were going to manage now. Ours is not such a difficult life.
Thankfully we are all managing just fine for today. Dawn is here and the wind is howling again but in a slightly less malicious tone. So lets start another day and see what it brings. And stay observant. We must all keep our heads up and watch hard at the life around us.
Good morning!
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
125 responses to “Straight to the good news”
I am so sorry for the loss of your lambs. I rejoice with you that Mia is doing so well!
Yes, joy and sorrow need each other to be truly felt I think. c
Good heavens! What an exciting day! I wish I could have been with you in the barn as I love wind and the adventure it carries. mIt must have been surreal particularly when all the animals joined you!
It always amazes me that wind is just moving air yet it pushes such clamor and noise ahead of it.. Morning Chris.. c
“Life is hard,” as my mother used to say to me. This in the context of one or another crisis, and meaning that we can never assume that things are going to always be easy. Life is also meaningful and moving and sometimes magical. Your writings reflect all of this. With tears in my eyes I read your post today. Thank you for your words, and for the courage to put it all out there so beautifully. It is life, in all its messy, bloody glory. Sorry for Mia’s lambs, but happy she lives to perhaps try again.
Morning Maggie, You mother was right, life is hard, and you are right it is also good.. I am not sure about mia having lambs again..I am not sure she will be able to.. c
I’m glad Mia is OK. She may have more lambs. I don’t like the sound of that wind. I have heard about the tornado damage in America. Are you near those places badly affected?
Tornadoes can come here, but so far it is all South of us, I joke about Tornadoes but John who grew up here does not.. he takes it very seriously.. c
First of all: I am so relieved that Mia is doing so well, though the loss of the lambs is very sad. Secondly, this has to be the best description of riding out a gale that I have ever read. Your writing is soooo good, so real and so observant. Thank you.
Morning Viv and thank you. Sometimes I think I should do my writing IN the barn, it has an atmosphere that draws words.. c
Wow! I missed one day and several lifetimes. So sorry.
Good morning, lives come and go so fast sometimes don’t they.. c
So good to hear that Mia survived, and seems to be on the mend. Hopefully, it was just a fluke, and not something that will happen with other pregnancies.
‘Ware the wind, out there on your prairie…straightlines can do as much damage as twisters. I don’t miss ’em. Not a bit…
Morning honey, yes I think the wind would be hard to miss, march is always worse.. c
So sad to have lost those two new lives, but great that Mia seems to have regained her health. Will she be able to have lambs in the future? I guess she’ll be allowed to get on with her ‘moaning’ for a while under the circumstances! Those gales sounded terrible – I thought we suffered badly but I suppose the surrounding hills give us some protection, unlike the far reaching prairie flatness.
Take care,
Christine
Morning Christine, my big worry with the wind is these two old disintegrating dutch elms in between the house and the barn. Every year they lose branches in these winds. But I am loathe to cut them down because they give so much shade and, well, they are trees! It would be dreadful without them, so I just run fast under them when it is windy and cross my fingers! .. c
Oh Lordy – I’m even more worried about you now!
Christine
I shall go down into the basement and hide out with the worms!!! morning Christine! c
Good morning, Celi. Glad Mia survived her own maelstrom and that you didn’t get harmed by any flying debris during yours. Those winds were something yesterday and I cannot imagine how much worse they must have been in your neck of The Plains! Wishing you a quiet, most uneventful day.
Morning john, still windy but not nearly as bad.. It is so nice to have a few warm days tough isn’t it! c
wow, the events of your last days!! Sorry about the loss and great that things are getting better!
morning mimo, Thank you, it is all part of farm life!! c
Loss will always be loss and felt as such, wherever it comes on the scale or whoever suffers it. So I feel for Mia and all her ‘family’, at least she survived and is doing well. I hope the wind has settled too. 🙂
The wind is still wild! Hopefully it will calm down later today, .. c
I’m so happy to hear that Mia is doing well. How sad that she has lost her babies. I’m glad and thankful that you post with honesty. Life is not perfect and clean, as you well know. I like to take the good with the bad and it always seems to work itself out.
Give Mia and Momma a little extra love from me today. Maybe you should tie a rope from the barn to the house so you have something to hang on to in those crazy winds!?
Hope your day is a little less eventful than yesterday. ~ April 🙂
April that rope idea is not as silly as it sounds!! I carried chook scraps out to the chooks this morning and the wind just whipped in and emptied the bowl.. potato peelings flying in all directions!! c
I saw the rope idea on a movie a long time ago. I can’t remember what it was called. Sally Fields husband died and they owned a cotton plantation. She rented out a room to a blind man and they strung a rope around the property so he could find his way around and be of help out in the fields. Makes sense to me! Even if you just left it up for the windy month of March. 🙂
I missed your post from yesterday, and so was much dismayed by today’s post. I am so sorry about Mia.
Your writing about the terrible wind had me holding my breath! I was waiting for you to tell me there was a tornado outside that barn! (Living here I have tornadoes on my mind and with good reason)
I’m sorry. ~ Lynda
Morning Lynda, thankfully it seems that we do not get as many tornadoes as you guys, it is the month for them, John thinks we have just been lucky.. hopefully you are too.. c
So far so good. We have a Hobbit hole so we are able to be safe. BTW, Did you ever prep your root cellar?
Not yet, getting a door for it is the first thing on the list, and we will store something in there as a trial this coming winter, it should be interesting! c
Oh the ups and downs that our animal friends give us.
Morning Frank.. all part of the cycle of life! c
What an emotional rollercoaster the last few days have been for you all. I am sorry to hear that she lost her lambs, but relieved that she (and you of course) made it through the experience. As you say, imagine how it must have been when the loss of an animal could have really meant survival (or not) for a family. Desperate. Sending you some warm Spanish sunshine to move that wind away from you all. Take care.
Oh Tanya, I would LOVE some warm spanish sunshine, it sounds like just the ticket! c