Straight to the good news

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